Part two of the previous chapter. The next chapter will be one step closer to ending this long arc, so I'm pretty excited for that.
Anyways, same as before, this chapter has gore in it, just an FYI. Without further adieu, please enjoy this chapter!
Pinning the hobgoblin down to the floor after having just cut its arms off with its own large cleaver, Goblin Slayer mercilessly fractured and tore apart the bones and muscles within the nine-foot tall monster's busted face. Unable to hear nor care about the barely conscious monster begging him for mercy, Goblin Slayer dug his blackened fingers into the tenderized flesh of the hobgoblin's face, and began ripping pieces of its cheek off, before shoving it into his mouth to consume.
Covered in freshly acquired scars, including the large one he had on his shoulder from where the hobgoblin had cleaved his arm off, the unhinged fourteen year old was bearing his teeth at the terrified and bewildered green monster beneath him; blood pouring down his chin, as he swallowed the chewed-up pieces of meat. "C… Cross my h-heart (Heartbreak, tearing)… H-Hope to die (Die, die, die)… Stick my fingers in your eyes (It's in my eye, it's in my eye)," Goblin Slayer rambled on in a maddened state, before immediately plunging both his fingers deep into the screaming monster's eye sockets; shattering its socket fracture, along with destroying its retinas in the process.
"What's… What's t-three times itself, minus three (Stay awake, stay awake)? Your kind can strategize a raid (rapist), surely you have the brains to count (three, nine, six)… Don't you?" Goblin Slayer asked mockingly with a wide and bloodied grin spreading across his lips, as he scoped out the monster's jellied eyes. Slurping on the eye-pulp clean from his bloodied fingers, the blood Goblin Slayer was consuming appealed to the otherworldly dark magic infused with his hatred; giving him a high that was equivalent to one pumping a needle full of heroin through their veins.
"… Why don't we find that out? Whether or not you have brains to spare," Goblin Slayer muttered in an almost perverse voice, as he proceeded to pull apart the unconscious hobgoblin's skull from the top-down; pulling its jaw off and taking a bite out of it, before tossing the mandible-bone to the side. Crushing the bone fragment between his hardening teeth as if though it were toffee, Goblin Slayer swallowed the dying monster's mushed-bone fragments while his glowing red eye fixated itself on all the dark-crimson liquid that was gushing out of his victim's split-open face.
"C… Count with me: three, nine… Six, eighteen, fifteen, forty five, forty two, one-hundred and twenty-six…" Goblin Slayer muttered under his breath; his blackened fingers prying open the shattered fragments of the hobgoblin's skull. "Look at that, I guess you did have brains after all… Let's correct that," the demented young man said in a cold-emotionless voice, as he began to pull handfuls of the monster's gray matter out of its head, scattering the chunky bits of its bloodied brain around him like confetti.
By the time Goblin Slayer had finished looting the entire nest of dead insects, he had amassed enough black pepper to open up a business in it, and enough antidotes to be set for life. And with the large amount of small crystals he had managed to loot, Goblin Slayer was finally in a position to finance a better life for Cow Girl when he got back to the farm. Satisfied with his bountiful harvest, Goblin Slayer had Kaguya help him create a chakra seal to have all of his newly acquired goods compacted into separate scrolls.
Putting his arms back through the straps of his leather backpack, Goblin Slayer slid his ebony spear between his back and the backpack itself. Picking up the light sword back up from where he had set it on the grass, Goblin Slayer began back-tracking through the woods to where Hero was still waiting for him and used her weapon to slash through any wandering helmet hunters who hadn't been there when he used the sleep spell to accidentally annihilate their entire nest.
Returning to the cobblestone road covered in weeds and over growth, Goblin Slayer found Hero sitting down with her legs crossed; her apricot-eyes fixated on the small ladybug that she was playing with on the ground. "I've returned with your sword… What are you doing?" Goblin Slayer asked with an intrigued voice, as he knelt down to see what Hero had been preoccupying herself with.
"Oh, I'm just messing around with a cool bug I found. Look, it shoots out weird orange-stuff from its bottom every time I poke it," Hero said, and waited until Goblin Slayer was looking before showing him what she was talking about. Using a twig she found while she had been waiting for him, Hero gently poked the back of the orange lady bug a few times; aggravating it until it squirted out a bright-orange liquid. "Heh! Pretty gross, huh?" Hero asked with a childishly amused grin, while Goblin Slayer stared back at her with a stoic expression on his face.
"… I completely agree— that is quite an oddity," Goblin Slayer said, before offering Hero her sword back. "Here you go," the young man said, and watched Hero's lackadaisical smile immediately fade away the moment she saw the current state her light sword was in.
"What… W-What the hell happened?! Why is the blade covered in so much crap?!" Hero asked with a flabbergasted look on her face, as she grimaced at how filthy her blade had become; muttering to herself as she gazed up and down the splotches of golden honey that had pieces of exoskeleton and insect organs caught inside of its goo.
"Your sword landed in a large insect nest, and I used it to fight my way back here," Goblin Slayer explained honestly. Hero then slowly stood up from the ground, appearing childishly saddened at what had become of her favorite weapon.
"Tch… That explains it, but like… Eren, can you take us to a lake or something first? I'd really like to rinse the sword off for a bit, and maybe even freshen up myself before we head back out" Hero requested, while also gesturing at how she was still covered in orange pollen.
Although Hero wasn't trying to make a big deal out of the situation, Goblin Slayer could tell that she was serious about maintaining the condition of her magical blade. Closing his eyelids while rubbing his chin thoughtfully, Goblin Slayer utilized Kaguya's amazing perception to locate the nearest body of clean water; which happened to be several days away. "… You're fine with water that's… Less than clean, right?" Goblin asked, before getting back up on his feet and heading down the path that they had cleared earlier; Hero frowning slightly at the thought of using dirty water, as she followed behind him.
Having developed a fascination with the strange mechanics of how the island's monsters had a chance to drop items upon their deaths, Goblin Slayer made sure to make a stop at where all the deadly dandelions had been slayed earlier. Showing Hero what he meant, Goblin Slayer climbed over the fallen branches of the elm tree Kaguya had used to crush a majority of the plant monsters earlier. Even though Hero was mystified when she learned of the "drop-system", as Kaguya dubbed it, she was more-or-less unimpressed with the fact that what all the dandelions ended up dropping were just either prickly seeds, or literal small bags of milled flour; something that made no sense to her as to why the plant monsters would be carrying something as mundane as an ingredient used for cooking.
However, the colorful gems Hero found scattered within the piles of spilled flour did excite her quite a bit, and made up for the disappointing items that they found from the deadly dandelions. Shoving a few handfuls of gems into her pocket, Hero continued to follow behind Goblin Slayer as he used Kaguya's powers to lead them to the pond of water that was hidden within the forest they were passing through.
On their way to the shore of the pond, Goblin Slayer and Hero had come across various other enemies that boggled their minds. Even compared to the strange oddities that they had come across in their journeys back on the mainland, the enemies they countered along the way were beyond bizarre. From fighting flightless birds who tried to bisect them using their axe-shaped beaks to cleave them into pieces, to fighting sentient sunflowers who shot their brown seeds at them like bullets, and of course the gelatinous mollusks who sprouted from the Earth to shoot fire at them, Goblin Slayer and Hero slayed every monster that they crossed paths with.
By the time they finished sealing all of their gems into their dedicated scrolls, the two of them were covered in pollen, honey, sweat, and the blood of their enemies. So needless to say, Goblin Slayer and Hero were both ecstatic in their own separate ways the moment they finally stumbled into the muddy shores of the pond; which quickly turned into disappointment the moment they saw how oblique the dark water was. Grimacing at the rotten smell emitting from the pond when she got closer to the edge of the body of mucky water, Hero made sure to distract herself by chatting away with Goblin Slayer, as the two of them stepped into the water to wash away all the grime from their bodies and weapons.
Standing near the edge of the water over where Goblin Slayer had left the leather bag with her, Kaguya was keeping watch like she usually did; remaining extra vigilant, since they weren't using security seals to set up barriers around their temporary pit stop. While searching through the water for any possible monsters, it was then that Kaguya caught sight of a five-foot humanoid frog stealthily swimming beneath the oblique surface of the water and toward where Hero was trying to wash the honey off of her light sword.
"Goblin Slayer! There's a "Bad Frogger" lurking in the water! It's going to try to steal her sword! Quickly, use your spear to-" before Kaguya could finish warning Goblin Slayer, the young man raised his ebony spear above him; stabbing the neon-green frog in the head that he saw through her byakugans. However, rather than succumbing to the wound that would have been an instant kill, the bad frogger stood up on its hind legs from the shallow water; sizing Goblin Slayer up before smacking him across the face with its large webbed-hand.
Chuckling at how silly the bright-green frog looked when it awkwardly tried smacking Goblin Slayer with its noodle-like fingers, Hero's grin immediately disappeared the moment the bad frogger turned to look at her before spitting out a jet of dank water straight into her mouth. Gagging immediately, Hero tried raising her light sword up while still being disoriented by the foul taste in her mouth, but immediately stumbled backwards the moment she raised her arm up. 'W-What the…?! WAIT, SHIT!!!' Hero screamed in her head, the moment after she realized that the bad frogger had stolen the light sword.
Having used its long pink-tongue to grapple the weapon out of Hero's hand, the bad frogger croaked triumphantly at the two humans, and proceeded to turn around with the intent of using its powerful legs to torpedo itself away from harm. Awkwardly keeping the light sword close to its disproportionately small body, the thieving amphibian lowered itself underneath the shallow water to make its escape, but was quickly disoriented the moment Goblin Slayer pulled the spear out its head and kneed it in the face at the same time, and accidentally dropped the ebony spear into the water as the dazed frog tried to push him away.
Together, Hero and Goblin Slayer tackled the five-foot frog into the water, trying to restrain its floppy arms and legs. Wrestling with the thrashing frog who was trying to kick them away with its powerful legs, Goblin Slayer had the croaking monster in a headlock, while Hero sank her teeth into the bad frogger's inner thigh; biting off a chunk of slimy flesh from its mucus covered thigh, before spitting the bloodied mouthful of frog-leg into the water.
Croaking out in agony, the bad frogger did the most effective thing it could think to do in order to prevent Hero from taking another chunk of out its bleeding limb, and that was to secret its foul venom into the water. Upon tasting the foul flavor of the frog's vile liquid, Hero immediately rose to the surface of the water; screaming in disgust as she started to relentlessly spit out the mouthful of dirty water back into the pond. That small window of opportunity was all that the bad frogger needed to slip out of Goblin Slayer's arms.
Clumsily pulling out the rest of the spear out of its own skull, the amphibious fiend held the light sword incorrectly in its arms while attempting to once again swim far away from its latest two victims. However, in retaliation for trying to steal from the woman who it had poisoned and spat on, Goblin Slayer leaned forward and dug his powerful fingers into the slimy flesh of the frog's left leg; his left eye glowing as he pulled and ripped its limb clean off its body with a surprising amount of strength that not even Kaguya thought was possible for him to achieve.
"There's little in this world that I hate more than goblins, and one of those few things are cowards… Thieving little cowards, like YOU," Goblin Slayer threatened menacingly, as he grabbed a hold of the frog's other leg before using it to drag the terrified monster out of the pond. No matter how agile and slimy the bad frogger was, it couldn't escape the wrath of the enraged adventurer, who was getting more-and-more flashbacks of the first hobgoblin he vanquished. Once the bleeding amphibian had been dragged out of the water and thrown on the muddy shore, Goblin Slayer immediately stomped his leather boot down on its knee and broke its froggy leg, before pulling on the mangled limb and twisting it clean off.
"In older times, the price of thievery would equate to getting a limb severed. An "eye-for-eye" policy, if you will… Allow me to show you the punishment goblins were sentenced to for stealing," Goblin Slayer said, as he straddled the chest of the squirming frog. Overpowering the helpless monster that was no longer on its home turf, Goblin Slayer proceeded to use his fists to smash in its toothless face.
Still sitting down by the leather backpack, Kaguya looked past where Goblin Slayer was mercilessly mutilating the disfigured amphibian monster, and watched as Hero thrashed her way out of the pond; screaming with anger and digest on her face. Giving the bad frogger a swift kick in the side of its head while Goblin Slayer was beginning to rip its tongue out of its mouth, Hero spat on the tormented frog before making her way toward where Kaguya watching her champion; feeling horrified at how brutal and sadistic he was, as he went back to beating the bad frogger's bloodied face into a literal gorey pulp.
And after five minutes of relentlessly beating the hell out of the bad frogger, Goblin Slayer had literally punched its head into a bloody pulp; its green body still twitching as he climbed off of where he had been pinning it to the muddy ground. Drenched in water and with the blood of the thieving frog, Goblin Slayer let out a cathartic sigh as he picked the light sword back up for what must have been the third time that day. Pocketing the extremely shiny metal "U-material" from the gorey remains of where the bad frogger's head had once been, Goblin Slayer turned around to where Hero was kneeling down beside Kaguya and the opened leather backpack.
Busting out her toothbrush and covering its white bristles in a hearty mound of toothpaste, Hero was using Goblin Slayer's flask of purified water to help wash out the disgusting residue from her mouth; scrubbing extra hard on her tongue, before using the water to wash it all out of her orifice. "I hate this, I hate this, I hate this," Hero kept repeating under her breath, as she shoved her toothbrush and toothpaste back into the leather backpack.
Retrieving the scroll that they were using to keep their food items, Hero unrolled it before darting her eyes over the list of edible choices that were scrawled neatly down the unrolled parchment paper; being so desperate to cleanse her taste pallet, that she, for a moment, forgot that she couldn't read. Frustrated and growing antsy at her inability to read what was written before her, Hero turned her head over her shoulder to stare pleadingly up into Goblin Slayer's scarlet eyes, as she watched him walk toward her.
With his hand still gripped tightly around the handle of Hero's nearly stolen sword, Goblin Slayer calmly took the scroll from her hand; putting it away. Taking his soaked gloves off, Goblin Slayer reached into the backpack to pull out a sealed scroll that had contents that he figured to be more suitable for her needs. "We don't know if what you ingested was toxic… Here, drink this— it's an antidote," Goblin Slayer said in a calm and caring demeanor, as he unsealed a single glass-bottle filled with clear liquid.
Watching her crush lowering his mouth down to sink his teeth into the cork top of the antidote, Hero smiled in spite of the disgusting taste in her mouth. Blushing as she opened her mouth with her eyelids closed, Hero couldn't help but to get dirty thoughts of something else as she accepted the tip of the bottle in his hands between her soft lips. Drinking the medicinal liquid, Hero did her best to ignore every dirty thought that was popping up in her head as she reached down to grab a hold of Goblin Slayer's free hand.
Although the antidote wasn't at all that sweet or flavorful in general, it was the remedy she needed to get rid of the rotten taste in her mouth. Smacking her lips together and smiling sheepishly, Hero found herself getting flustered even more, the longer she got lost in Goblin Slayer's scarlet eyes. "Eren… T… Thank you… Thank you so much," Hero repeated twice with her heart racing in her chest, while feeling blown away the moment Goblin Slayer broke out of his stoic expression to give her the brightest smile she had ever seen on his usually stone-cold demeanor.
"… You're welcome, Scarlet," Goblin Slayer said with a surprisingly sweet voice, as he stood up before reaching his arm down for Hero to take his hand. Feeling her cold-trembling fingers wrapped themselves around his, Goblin Slayer picked the smitten young girl before handing her back her light sword. "Come on… Let's get going," Goblin Slayer said with a gentle look on his face, as he picked Kaguya up before setting her safely down on his shoulder.
Turning around to begin following the Ancient Wyvern's trail once more, Goblin Slayer stopped momentarily after feeling Hero grabbing a hold of his hand from behind. "Is… Is everything alright?" Goblin Slayer asked with a mildly puzzled voice, especially when he saw the nervous expression on the crimson-faced adventurer's face.
Swallowing the lump in her throat as she tightened her fingers on Goblin Slayer's hand, Hero took in a small breath and held onto it; her knees uncharacteristically buckling underneath her, as she smiled vulnerably while he was staring back at her. "Can… C… Can I… Can I ask something from you? Like… Without you making me feel weird again…?" Hero asked in a meek voice, while getting even more embarrassed after referring to the previous night when she tried to seduce him into sleeping with her.
Raising a single eyebrow at Hero, being completely lost as to what she was referring to, Goblin Slayer brushed it off before giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. "That's fine. What can I do for you then?" Goblin Slayer asked with a curious smile on his face, as he patiently waited for Hero to say to him what she needed to say.
"I… I wanted to know if… If you would be okay if you I, uh… Ya know? Uh… If we could… S-Start dating each other after this "Ancient Wyvern business" is all done and over with?" Hero asked with a confessing tone in her voice, as she smiled anxiously at the soft-puzzled expression Goblin Slayer was giving her. "I mean… Y-You don't have to if you don't wanna; I'd understand if that was the-"
"-That's fine," Goblin Slayer interrupted with a reassuring look in his scarlet eyes, as his smile radiated with the comfort that Hero so desperately needed to calm her nerves down.
"O-OH?!? Like, for real?! You're actually gonna- WAIT!!! Do you even know WHAT a date is!?" Hero asked suspiciously with a wary look in her apricot eyes; the last thing she wanted was to look forward to a romantic dinner with Goblin Slayer, only for her expectations to be let down by his lack of understanding how normal people socialized.
Knowing exactly what Goblin Slayer was about to say, Kaguya quickly intercepted his thought before telling him the proper definition of what "dating" was. "… Dating is when two or more consenting people spend time together under the pretenses of romance and developing a relationship with one another; usually, it starts off by having dinner at a fine-dining restaurant," Goblin Slayer explained out loud, which immediately tipped Hero off of who spoon-fed him that answer.
Crossing her arms over her chest plate, Hero gave Goblin Slayer a half-cocked smirk while staring knowingly at the white horned rabbit on his shoulder. "Uh, huh, yeah… She totally told you what to say, didn't she?" Hero asked smuggly, which made Kaguya quickly turn her small rabbit head away from her accusing gaze.
Smirking softly with a mildly embarrassed look on his face, Goblin Slayer let out a nervous chuckle as he reached around to rub the back of his head. "Heh, uh… Y-Yeah… Yeah, she did," he confessed, which earned him a playful punch in the shoulder from Hero. "But even so, the way I see it is that we won't be in such a rush to head back home to Vesteria, so perhaps we can have dinner together when we land at that city along the coast? I'm certain they have restaurants that are more than adequate," Goblin Slayer suggested, with his cheeks becoming a shade of pink, which Hero found to be absolutely adorable.
Piping up with a wide smile across her blushing face, Hero put her closed hands on top of the large protective metal skirt that covered her hips. "Heh! Guess you're not as hopeless as I thought you were, Eren~!" Hero said playfully with a teasing look in her eyes, before lowering one arm down while reaching up with her other to grab a hold of Goblin Slayer's hand. "Okay! You can't go back on your word, by the way; I'll be expecting you to take me somewhere really fancy after this. After all, it's the least you can do to pay me back for all my services," Hero said half-jokingly, as Goblin Slayer and her began walking side-by-side while holding hands with one another.
"I see. Yes, I suppose that's a fair trade- Wait. Weren't you the one who chose to come with me, even when I made it obvious that I wanted to do this quest all on my own?" Goblin Slayer asked with an inquisitive look in his eyes as he continued down the path Kaguya was showing him.
"Yeah, but that's not the point," Hero sassily retorted, and tightened her grip on Goblin Slayer's ungloved fingers, as the two of them continued on their way to their final destination that they needed to reach, in order to close in on the Ancient Wyvern who had been evading them for far too long.
Hearing the familiar and daunting claps of his tormenting mentor, Goblin Slayer stood up from the cold corpse of the massacred hobgoblin; his clothes covered in blood and goblin viscus. Craning his neck to give the smirking old rhea a glare from his glowing left eye, Goblin Slayer slowly turned around as Burglar approached him; his wrinkled and bearded face restored to how it looked, before the young man mutilated him.
'Fingers… Sawed off, one by one… Teeth pulled… My eyes… Daggers in my head, daggers in my chest… Asphyxiation of both mind and body; baptized by fire— left to die,' Goblin Slayer thought hallowly to himself, as he remained stone-faced while thinking back to the eleven days of mutilation he had been subjected to; all of it seeming worth it in the end at that very moment.
"All liabilities in this world are due to the inadequacies within ourselves: and we have the gall to call that "humanity"… You experienced what it was like to let go of that, didn't you? What it was like to finally break free of those chains that the rest of the world wraps themselves in like comforting blankets!" Burglar said in a poetically-mad voice, while his glowing yellow eyes radiated with pride for what his apprentice was finally able to achieve.
"… So long as you walk this path alone, you shall be unstoppable. Your will shall determine your own fate, and nothing, not even death itself, will be able to prevent you from achieving the destiny that you carve with your own two bloody hands," Burglar declared with a wicked tone in his low voice, while watching in delight as Goblin Slayer stared back at him with nothing but absolute hatred in his glowing red eye.
Goblin Slayer wanted to kill his master, wanted to tear him apart and the rest of the world for turning their backs to his misery. He was angry at the world that he considered to be twisted, angry at his old self for being too weak to protect the ones he loved, and especially angry at his family for failing him. There was a certain kind of satisfaction Goblin Slayer felt at the idea of rising above "humanity", especially when it meant that he wouldn't ever have to feel the pain he felt when he saw his sister getting raped. Absent of love in his cold-blackened heart, Goblin Slayer furrowed his brows at Burglar before taking in a deep breath to sigh.
"… That's fine," Goblin Slayer said in a cynical voice, as he stared down at his own hand; admiring the blood that coated his blackened fingers and scarred palms. Racing thoughts were pounding in his pulsating brain, and all Goblin Slayer could think about was wanting more vile monsters to take his hatred out on. "Goblins… I need more goblins to slay," he said in a cold voice, which only made the old rhea feel that much more proud of him.
"Good, good… Now come along, I shall show you to the adventurer's guild; they'll show you where to find more goblins," Burglar beckoned with a crooked finger, and called for his apprentice to return to his side. Putting his arm over Goblin Slayer's shoulder, the old rhea began to instruct his young apprentice about the importance of blending in with the rest of the "sheep".
"I've taught you how to fake a smile, and how to sound unbothered by the cruel world around you. But those red eyes of yours… They'll always tell others about the brutal monster you are. Make sure to lean forward when you talk to the "sheep", so that those bangs of yours can always cover your eyes," Burglar warned, as he reached into his pocket to pull out a pair of black gloves, along with a small leather purse with a flower embroidered on it.
Putting on the leather gloves to cover his blackened fingers and palms, Goblin Slayer tied his sister's purse full of coins to his belt. And as the two of them backtracked out the ravine and through the woods full of orange leaves, Burglar explained everything that Goblin Slayer needed to do when he got to the frontier's town; emphasizing the importance of fitting in, and to never open his heart up to anyone.
"You think you're hated now? Ha! The moment anyone else discovers the monster that you truly are boy, they'll turn on you like the ravenous dogs they are. It doesn't matter how many goblins you slay for them, the adventurer's guild and the entire empire will be wanting your head on a silver platter," Burglar warned, as he solemnly thought back to the day that he himself was forced to abandon his old life. "It's... It's all for the best, Eren."