Goblin Slayer, Vol. 15

“Um, you can wear this, if you don’t mind!”

Priestess came trotting over, taking off her own cloak. She was flummoxed, though, uncertain where to put the garment, over the human part of the princess’s naked body or the horse part. The pale, beautiful human flesh was the part Priestess found particularly distracting, but that wasn’t to say that the princess’s horse half wasn’t beautiful. Neither was it something that should be exposed, to be viewed by all and sundry.

Moreover, a human like Priestess didn’t know which part would help a centaur feel warmer. Finally, after much wondering, Priestess simply held the cloak out to the princess.

“H-here…”

“Thank you.”

Silver Blaze took it and put it on with a smile so gentle, one would never have imagined she had been a prisoner until a moment before. Only then did she seem to register the people around her. She blinked, which emphasized her long eyelashes, and then she said, “
Ahem.
You must all be adventurers, yes? I’m very sorry for having put you to such trouble.”

“That was the quest,” Goblin Slayer told her. “It’s no trouble.”

“I suppose I should thank you, then…,” Silver Blaze said softly. Her face suddenly took on a serious aspect. “Are we too late? Can we make the race? It’s the biggest! I don’t have a good sense of time in here.”

“Princess, you mustn’t overwork yourself…!”

“You can stop calling me princess,” Silver Blaze said. She somehow managed to struggle to her feet, and Baturu hurried to support her. They didn’t look like a master and servant, or like friends, or sisters, or even lovers. What existed between the two of them was nothing so simple or clearly defined as any of those.

But Priestess thought:
There’s an intimacy between them.
That much was clear and, Priestess suspected, it was enough.

“She’s…special, isn’t she?” Priestess remarked.

“You think?” High Elf Archer said, her ears fluttering. “Isn’t she just, like, how princesses are?”

An ambiguous smile was the only answer Priestess offered.

In any event, everything wasn’t over yet. One might even say it was just beginning.

“What’s the state of the goblins?” Priestess asked.

“One suspects they don’t quite grasp the situation,” Lizard Priest said, rolling his eyes merrily and sticking his head out to peek into the field. “They’re still ravenous for battle. In fact, they seem to think they have us cornered.”

“Yeah, and they’re coming for us right quick. A whole slew of cannon fodder,” Dwarf Shaman said, taking several drinks of fire wine to rev himself up. “We’re smack in the middle of their net. How do you want to handle this, Beard-cutter?”

“This is actually ideal. We can take them all out in one fell swoop.”

“Yes, you’re right—you are so right.”

The response came from none of the adventurers, who quickly brought their swords, claws, bows, and sounding staffs to the ready, facing the source of the voice—the tattered black cloak they had discarded. As they watched, a shadow seemed to stretch out from it, standing to phantasmal feet.

Goblin Slayer immediately swung his sword, but the shadow was faster.

“Survival is consumed by the sins of life, and life is consumed by the jaws of death.”

“Hngh… Ah!” Baturu collapsed to her knees.

“Hey!” Silver Blaze said, instinctively calling out Baturu’s name, holding her up.

“I’m…hngh…f-fine…” Baturu tried valiantly to stand, but her legs were weak and shaking. Her face was so pale that the blood spatter, which had grown dried and black, looked red again.

“Oh no…!” Priestess exclaimed. This was some kind of curse. She could see the muscles of Baturu’s neck spasming.

“What just happened?!” High Elf Archer said.

At almost the same moment, Lizard Priest howled, “I see! So this is the Vital Drain spell!”

Vital Drain: a magical spell wielded by necromancers that enabled the caster to steal life energy from someone else. The ability had begun
as a song in praise of life, ushering captive young lions into the future. But this was something else—someone on the edge of death stealing life from someone young and vital.

“That’s unnatural! Inhuman!” Dwarf Shaman raged. “Is that the real secret to immortality?!”

“…The life of one who, in the course of a century, will accomplish nothing and be forgotten? How much more meaningful for that life to become a foundation stone in
my
immortality!”

The cloak no longer rested upon a shadow but upon a definite human form—the necromancer was regaining his identity as a sorcerer. He hardly looked like someone who’d been chopped in two mere moments before.

He disdainfully pulled the arrow out of his staff hand, breaking it in half and throwing it away. “You’ve upset my plans…but also brought me a gift. An even younger centaur and the life of a high elf besides!”

He opened the cloak with a flourish, and Priestess couldn’t restrain a yelp of terror.

For there were faces.

People’s faces. Humans, elves, dwarves, rheas, padfoots, even dark elves. They were young and old, men and women; the one thing they had in common was that they all squirmed and writhed across the sorcerer’s torso. It was a sight that could have been created only by some devil, some demonic power far from any moral path.

Worse still, the faces appeared to be alive—or trapped in life. These people now existed only to feed the sorcerer’s life. One could easily have gone mad when faced with such a truth.

Baturu, looking so pale that she could hardly stand up, leaned heavily against Silver Blaze. She was consumed by the realization that she would soon be one of those faces.

“I know not who you are or where you come from, but I thank you,” the sorcerer said. “You are proof that even the scruffiest and most pathetic of us can do something worthwhile.”

Goblin Slayer didn’t say anything. He didn’t have any interest in this. He didn’t even think it was he himself who was being called
“scruffy”
or
“pathetic.”

He was simply digging in his pocket.

What do I have in my pocket?

He remembered the rhea cackling amid the blizzard in the icy cavern.

His own preparations. His party members—his party members’ spells. This situation. The opponent’s fighting strength. Suppose that— Yes. What had the sorcerer said?

“I know not who you are or where you come from.”

That was it. And if this sorcerer, whoever he was, didn’t recognize Goblin Slayer…

…Then he doesn’t know how
that
turned out, either.

“So,” Goblin Slayer murmured, “it appears it can be useful for your face to be well known.”

He’d never particularly worried about it before, but it actually might have helped him at this moment.

He did some quick mental calculations, then asked, “Do you still have some left over?”

“Hrm? Ah, yeah,” Dwarf Shaman said, briefly taken aback by the contextless question. He riffled through his bag of catalysts, and his eyes widened. The smile that came across his face then was like a child plotting some mischievous prank. “Yeah, I sure do.”

The expression on Lizard Priest’s face when he saw this was surely the lizardman equivalent of the mischievous child. “You have a plan, then?”

“Yes,” Goblin Slayer said simply. “I always do.”