After ensuring that the girl was in safe hands, Goblin Slayer and Priestess made a beeline for the adventurer's guild. When they entered the building, Guild Girl looked a bit shocked.
"Oh, that was fast," she said. "Already cleared out those goblins?"
"Did any other adventurer take this quest?" Goblin Slayer asked, ignoring her question.
Guild Girl was confused. "No? You were the first ones to take it, and no one else asked about it since then. Why?"
"Someone beat us there," Goblin Slayer said simply. "All of the goblins were already dead or ran away."
Priestess chose this point to step alongside her companion. "W- We found a girl, and she said it was a single person… and there were a lot of explosions."
Guild Girl put a hand to her chin in thought. "I don't think I've ever seen any explosion magic users around here, lately. Perhaps they simply stockpiled their own stash of bombs for this moment?"
"They didn't use bombs," Slayer said, putting the objects he picked up onto the table. "However they operated, they used these."
Guild Girl picked up one of the cylinders, inspecting it closely. "It smells kinda like black powder… you sure these weren't bombs?"
"They're too intact for that," he countered. "I think it was some sort of projectile. There were bits of metal lodged in the walls around where we found these."
Guild Girl shrugged. "If you say so. Is it alright if I hold onto these, then? I might be able to ask someone with more expertise."
"Go ahead."
With that, Goblin Slayer turned to walk out of the building.
"W-wait, Goblin Slayer, sir!" Priestess said. "Aren't you going to take another quest?"
"There's someone else going around killing goblins, but they're doing it sloppily," he said. "If we hurry, we can try to track them down."
"W- What about the others?" she asked. "Shouldn't we wait for them?"
"They're most likely still busy with their own quest," Slayer said. "We can always regroup with them later if we need to."
Priestess and Guild Girl shared a brief look, before the former nodded and followed along.
Thankfully, the cave they went to wasn't that far from the guild, and Goblin Slayer was quickly able to find a secondary exit to the caves. There, they found the telltale signs of someone walking through the foliage, along with a few scattered drops of blood.
"Their armor was heavy," Goblin Slayer observed. "If we hurry, it should be easy to catch up to them."
"D- Do you think they're hurt?" Priestess asked, ducking under some branches as Slayer went straight through the underbrush to follow the trail.
"It's possible. But it doesn't look like they stopped for a breather at any point."
He was right; the trail they were following consisted of nothing but footprints in the grass or dirt, and displaced or broken plantlife.
"Do you think they were running?" Priestess suddenly asked. "Maybe, trying to… catch the surviving goblins?"
Goblin Slayer did not answer.
Eventually, the trail led them to a road. This meant that they lost the trail of this other goblin hunter among the many, many other tracks scattered all over the dirt. The lack of any displaced bushes along the sides of the road meant that they now had two potential paths to follow, with no indication which one was correct.
"Damn…" Slayer turned to Priestess. "You have that map, right?"
"Y- yes!" She fumbled a bit pulling it out, but quickly handed it to him. He studied it closely, looking up once in a while to make sure they weren't blocking the road for other travelers.
After some time, he folded the map back up. "There should be another goblin cave to the northeast. If we head there, we might be able to intercept them."
Priestess nodded as she took a sip from one of their canteens. "Okay!"
The two followed the road, curious to see who, or what, would await them.
Another cave, the makeshift sign outside meant to dissuade anyone from venturing in, lest they meet an untimely end.
The darkness within the cave no doubt helped with this, but his helmet provided enough low-light vision to eliminate any potential advantage they'd have.
Of course, even without his suit, he could think of a few other ways to see in the dark, idly carrying his shotgun. Might makes light, after all.
Still, this time, he knew a bit more about how these creatures operated, so he knew that using his guns this early would instantly put the whole nest on alert. That, plus ammo conservation, meant that he had to fall back on more… satisfying methods.
Just like before, once he was fully enveloped in darkness and could no longer see the outside light, there was a skittering behind him, followed by an inhuman cry as one of the green creatures tried to get the jump on him, dagger held high.
The moment it was in range, he whirled around and caught the beat in mid air, cutting its cry short as its throat was suddenly being crushed.
For a split second before it died, the creature's vision was filled with nothing but the transparent helmet visor of this intruder. There, it saw nothing but cold hatred within his eyes, the eyes of one whose rage was bottomless and burned white hot.
The next moment, the beast was being sent into the wall, until his fist reduced its head to nothing but a dark stain.
He didn't even wait for the body to hit the ground before he continued walking forward, heading deeper into their territory.
One down, who knows how many to go.
Following the map, Goblin Slayer and Priestess arrived at the entrance to another goblin cave, some distance from the road they had traveled.
Sure enough, they managed to spot those same footsteps they were tracking, heading straight into the cave.
Priestess gasped. "Two goblin caves in one day?"
"These tracks are fresh," Slayer concluded before lighting a torch. "If we're quick, we might be able to catch them inside."
The two entered the darkness, slightly faster than they normally would. As expected, it wasn't long before they saw their first casualty, in the form of a headless goblin slumped against a wall, its grey matter splattered behind it.
Curiously, Slayer noted that there weren't any more of those strange discarded objects nearby. Perhaps they only had a limited supply?
Suddenly, it sounded as if a massive explosion had gone off, echoing from deep within the cave. Priestess couldn't help but yelp at the sound, while Goblin Slayer tensed up, and drew his shield.
The two started moving towards the center of the goblin nest. The explosion went off again not too long after, sounding much closer- and much louder.
As they both winced from the volume, Goblin Slayer started taking some spare cloth from one of his pockets, and ripping it into smaller pieces, before giving them to Priestess. "Here, plug your ears."
She understood why, and she did as he said, muffling her own hearing. However, she noticed that he hadn't done it to himself. "Aren't you-"
"Don't have enough," he cut her off, taking care to speak louder than normal. "My helmet helps a little on its own, anyway. I'll tell you if I need you to cast Heal on me."
Priestess hesitated slightly, then nodded.
By now, they started passing more goblin corpses, including a few that could only pitifully crawl on the ground while bleeding from where their legs used to be.
When Goblin Slayer simply ignored them, he preemptively answered Priestess's question. "They're already going to die. Let them suffer."
As they closed in towards the center of the cave, they started to hear the telltale sounds of agitated goblins, along with an unidentified pair of armored footsteps.
Slayer paused upon hearing the steps. Despite how heavy they sounded, they were coming far too quickly for someone carrying that weight.
Suddenly, a pair of goblins emerged from the darkness in front of them, and went wide eyed as they came face to face with Goblin Slayer. He didn't give them time to think, as he threw a knife at one's throat before charging the other with his shield, knocking it down before bringing down the edge onto its skull, caving it in.
"Two," he muttered to himself out of habit as he stood up, shield still raised. "They were running away."
Priestess gulped.
Just before Slayer could keep pressing forward, there was the sound of some sort of terrible, high pitched roaring, which quickly lowered in pitch as the screams of a particularly unlucky goblin got louder, before fading away into a gurgling mess.
This gave Slayer pause. "That's new…"
The roaring stopped after a moment, and Goblin Slayer started jogging forward again, Priestess keeping close to his heels.
They finally made it to the main chamber, and what awaited them was chaos.
Goblin bodies scattered all over the place, almost all of which were dismembered or disemboweled in some way, their blood still pooling together.
A lone hobgoblin, uselessly trying to nurse the massive hole in its gut as it leaned against the wall, before finally bleeding out.
An ever-dwindling horde of goblins, clearly torn between attacking and running away from their target.
And finally, the one they had been searching for.
Goblin Slayer and Priestess couldn't help but stare at the fully armored figure in the middle of the goblin horde, effortlessly crushing any goblins that got near with nothing but its bare hands. On top of that, even from this distance they could see that his armor was like nothing they had ever seen before, its dull green coloring contrasting with the brighter green of the goblins' skin.
As the fight moved further and further away, Slayer suddenly noticed that the goblins had finally decided on a plan, and started trying to swarm the warrior all at once. It was not an uncommon desperation tactic for them to pull, and even the most skilled fighters could fall prey to it if they find themselves in the middle of a horde.
What he didn't expect, however, was when the warrior suddenly started wielding a large, green tube of some kind. It was as if, in the split second he couldn't be seen, it simply materialized in his grasp.
He pulled a trigger on the device while aiming it at the biggest clump of goblins, and the cave lit up as it spat out fire.
Fire, and a projectile.
Goblin Slayer barely had time to recognize what had happened before the projectile hit a goblin and exploded, forcing both Slayer and Priestess to shield their eyes from the sudden increase in light. While they weren't looking, there was the sound of several rocks falling, and when they looked back, all that was left was a scattering of blood and goblin bits, and a large pile of collapsed rocks, which now blocked off the passage that the warrior had been running into as he fought.
They could still make out the sounds of combat from the other side, no doubt between the warrior and whatever goblins survived on his side of the cave-in. Suddenly, the sounds of fighting were replaced with the sound of footsteps rapidly going away. It seemed that what goblins were left decided to run, and he was in pursuit.
Goblin Slayer hurried over to the rocks, in the small hope that he could dig himself a hole big enough to slip through, but had to give up that plan when he saw that a couple of goblins survived on his side, and decided to target him instead.
Once he finished digging his knife out of the second goblin's skull, he turned to see Priestess already hard at work on a few girls that were being held captive. It seemed that they, too, had their eardrums burst during the fight, but unfortunately she didn't have enough uses of Heal left to use on all of them.
While she tried to figure that situation out, Goblin Slayer decided to finish the job for this particular cave, and went straight to the hidden room behind the throne.
Unlike the last cave, this one wasn't empty.
Priestess decided to hold off on using her Heal incantation, instead working to stabilize and calm the girls on her own. Even after all they went through, she didn't want them to hear the sounds of dying goblin children not too far away.
Once the cries of juvenile goblins finally stopped, Priestess quickly went through the incantation twice, using them on the two girls that seemed the least broken of the group.
Unfortunately, they couldn't provide any more answers for what happened than the last girl they saved, so she instead spent her time consoling them, letting them know that they were safe now, even as she couldn't help but cry with them.
Goblin Slayer discarded his knife, too bloody to use in a fight now. He couldn't hear any combat sounds from the other side of the collapsed rocks.
He sighed. They might be able to catch back up with him if they left immediately, but he knew they couldn't just leave these girls here.
Whoever that was, they clearly knew how to fight. In fact, from what little he saw, the drive he saw behind that brutality almost mirrored his own…
He got up, having finally caught the last creature that tried to make a run for it. Thankfully, it didn't seem like they expected him to move as fast as he did.
He looked back at the cave he just left. He spotted those other two people just before he accidentally brought the roof down, and he considered trying to go back to talk with them, but ultimately decided against it.
As vile as these creatures were, and as satisfying as it would be to rip and tear every last one to pieces, he knew that it was comparatively a much smaller threat, and that it was better to be uninvolved in a world beyond eviscerating any and all demons that made their way into it.
Ultimately, he needed to find a portal of some kind, either to Hell or directly to Mars. Then he could continue the crusade he had been on for eons, as well as reclaim what was rightfully his from that arrogant robot.