Chapter 3: Goblin

Goblin,

They are as notorious as cockroaches and are distributed in almost every plane that can be associated with the element of "Western Fantasy."

This small creature is inherently greedy and despicable; if it weren't for the fact that its race's average IQ is at the bottom of intelligent creatures, perhaps the adjectives "cunning" and "skilled at deception" could be added.

The species alignment, which is heavily biased towards "Evil," and the low productivity caused by backward intelligence, make their survival behaviors often linked to "looting" and "stealing."

Coupled with the fact that there are no females in their race, they must rely on looting the opposite sex of other intelligent creatures to reproduce.

This has caused them, to some extent, to have a worse reputation in the multiverse than Abyss Demons and Hell Devils.

The individual combat power of a Goblin is extremely weak; an ordinary farm woman holding a pitchfork can easily deal with a blank-slate Goblin without weapons or equipment.

But just as Hunter Maji described earlier.

These little things are like the stray dogs seen everywhere in town.

A single one can't achieve much, but once they gather, and the group size reaches two digits or even three digits.

Then the courage and destructive power of the Goblins will increase exponentially.

Looting caravans, attacking villages...

Especially when the size of their community develops to a certain extent, some elite individuals with leadership roles will naturally appear.

Over time, if left to develop, they could even grow into a kingdom-level disaster.

At the moment, the Goblin tribe that the Scum squad was tracking might not have developed to the scale of looting towns.

But clearly, they already possessed the ability to actively attack humans.

The cold corpse of the humorous Halfling who used to like telling untimely cold jokes on the ground could prove this point.

"Roar!!!"

An inhuman roar suddenly sounded in the forest.

The Orc Gagu jumped up like a startled jungle beast, his hands tightly gripping his blood-stained two-handed axe.

The sudden attack and the death of his squad companion seemed to make this half-breed mongrel with thin Orc blood recall some of his ancestors' glory.

The vaguely elongated canine teeth and the obviously swollen and reddened muscles all over his body showed that this Orc was entering some kind of combat state.

Hunter Maji was the fastest in the entire Scum squad.

Almost the moment that pitch-black wooden club emerged from behind Erji's head, he reacted.

While shouting a warning, he climbed up the towering hard-skinned oak tree behind him with his hands and feet, extremely nimbly, while carrying his longbow.

The lean figure disappeared into the dense canopy in an instant.

Although he didn't want to admit it, Xia Nan was undoubtedly the slowest responder in the entire squad.

The thirty-plus years before his transmigration were almost spent sitting from the classroom to the office, and he hadn't even killed a chicken;

In this life, he was also just an honest farmer who faced the yellow soil and turned his back to the sky.

One second he was considering how to get more information about this world from Erji, the next second the other party was smashed in the head with a wooden stick right in front of him, even his brains were flowing out.

Xia Nan felt his brain go blank; although he picked up the one-handed sword on his knees by instinct, his body stood still, as if he had fallen into some kind of rigid state.

Until...

"Whoosh!"

His hair fluttered, and a violent airflow scraped past his cheeks, leaving a stinging pain.

A wooden arrow passed through the shadows of the forest and shot out from the canopy above his head.

"Ah!"

A sharp cry of pain sounded from behind him.

Xia Nan jolted, instantly coming back to his senses.

The world, which had seemed to be pressed on the mute button, became vivid again in an instant.

Too late to thank Maji for extending a helping hand from the canopy above, he turned around quickly.

His gaze swept over, his pupils constricted!

Those were two short figures crouching down.

The dark green, rough skin was covered with scars, and the scarlet eyes were filled with cunning and malice; they were only wrapped in a dirty brown rag around their lower bodies, and their limbs were slender but the muscle contours could be vaguely seen underneath.

Don't know when, two Goblins had quietly touched behind him!

If it weren't for Maji's reminder, he would probably have been hit just like the Halfling Erji.

Xia Nan felt a lingering fear in his heart, subconsciously tightening his grip on the sword handle wrapped with thick rope.

"Wacha!"

The stealth had been exposed, and one of the Goblins even had its foot pierced through by the wooden arrow from above, firmly nailed to the ground.

This naturally timid monster seemed to have lost the courage to continue the attack at this moment.

It just raised the wooden club in its hand high in a threatening manner towards the young human in front of it.

The pitch-black club body revealed a dangerous orange-red under the reflection of the campfire.

Xia Nan looked at the rusty iron nails embedded in the surface of the wooden club, and his brain suddenly recalled the miserable scene of Erji's head cracking open just now.

Like some kind of stress response, under the influence of the deep fear in his heart, his right foot stepped forward fiercely, and at the same time, his right arm holding the sword bent to store power.

"Tap!"

The soles of his feet almost instantly sank into the soft muddy ground.

Like the roots of a tree growing downward to absorb nutrients from the land.

An inexplicable force burst out from the soles of his feet, following his bones and muscles, gathering all the strength from his whole body.

Finally, it poured out along with the blade.

【Spinning Slash】

Chirp—

Accompanied by the shrill sound of tearing the air, the lingering mist rolled violently.

A sharp silver light with a beautiful arc flashed past in front of Xia Nan.

Time and space seemed to fall into a standstill at this moment.

The carefully maintained blade, combined with the technique he had practiced hundreds of thousands of times, made the Goblin's skin, muscles, and bones as fragile as sandpaper, unable to withstand a single blow.

"Proficiency +1"

A string of translucent characters flashed before his eyes.

Xia Nan only felt a brief sense of lag in his hand, and the one-handed sword had already been slashed in a circle from left to right, diagonally upward, just like he had done on countless days and nights before.

Blood splashed.

Falling on the mud were the Goblin's severed palms, half a skull, foul-smelling internal organs, and their dirty, scalding blood.

Those two insidious monsters that tried to sneak attack were, with just one sword, like the countless scarecrows on the ridge before, easily split in two.

The forest seemed to fall into a kind of dead silence at this moment.

Above the towering canopy, Maji subconsciously released the longbow he had already pulled to the full.

Looking at the fragmented corpses on the meadow, his eyeballs turned, and he looked at Xia Nan, who was slowly exhaling and retracting his sword.

His Adam's apple rolled twice, and his face was full of uncontrollable surprise.

"This is a newbie!?"

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 4 =====