Chapter 60 : Chapter 60
Chapter 60
"Isn't it funny?"
The king asked.
"The dog that should be protecting its master runs away, and the master risks life and limb, claiming to protect the dog."
He grinned, his lips stretching wide in delight.
"The bloodline of Moner hasn't changed a bit."
The king's gaze, as he spoke in a lamenting tone, turned to the flickering campfire.
"I was planning to capture Sven's child here and lure him out.
If I had, everything I've built would have crumbled."
I stared at him blankly, unable to understand his cryptic words.
"Didn't Sven tell you?
The soul of one who steps into the great domain embraces a will, and the will my soul embraces is justice .
A goblin that protects justice, is there a more mismatched combination in the world?"
The goblin, who had been chuckling, picked up a hammer lying on the ground and continued.
"So if I had used the coward who just ran away as a hostage, my own dignity would have fallen just as much."
The goblin's eyes, who had been laughing self-deprecatingly, turned to Ian again.
"It's a great relief.
A truly great relief."
As his wide-stretched mouth curved into a smile, the king's menacing aura enveloped the surroundings.
The murderous intent that hadn't been felt until just a moment ago filled the air, and a clear hostility pricked at my skin.
"Is there a more just act than severing the cursed bloodline of Moner?"
At the goblin's cold smile, I tried to move my body, but the goblin's mana had already spread everywhere, and I couldn't even move a fingertip.
The moment that hammer moved, my life would end.
I could clearly feel the death I was facing.
It was an end as futile as the countless failures I had faced in the game.
To die in the Demonic Beast forest, by a chance encounter with the Goblin King.
And not to a demonkin with immense power, nor to a demigod who had dominated and toyed with an entire race, but to a mere goblin.
"Hehehe……."
A laugh escaped me at the unbelievable situation.
I had never even heard the name Teheki in the game, so he was bound to die within 10 years.
As I was comforting myself that I didn't need to worry about revenge, the goblin's aura that had been constricting all around me instantly subsided.
"So in exchange for that life, please listen to my words just once."
The grinning king looked somewhat desperate.
"This is also my justice , which is worth less than dog shit."
* * *
The moment I came to my senses, everyone called me the Goblin King.
So I believed it, and I acted accordingly.
Leading my brethren , who were faithful to their instincts and desires, was by no means an easy task, but what was even harder was the hatred for my own kind that just wouldn't disappear.
Decades passed, and even at the moment when we had secured the edge of the forest after countless battles, I could not understand my own kind.
Why did they live for less than a decade?
Why did they, like demonic beasts, follow only their instincts and desires?
Why did they.
Why did they.
Why on earth did they.
And finally, I reached an inescapable conclusion.
'I am different from them.'
At first, it was a small doubt.
And that small doubt gradually turned into a conviction as I secretly followed the humans who had entered the forest.
I couldn't fully understand humans, but I was clearly closer to a human than a goblin.
I loved the humans' alcohol, their songs, their emotions, their fighting spirit and camaraderie, and their valor.
And that love became a pure hatred, directed towards my own kind.
'Why, why can't you understand!'
The goblins could not learn a language or to cook, and they could not even feign the slightest bit of altruism.
Unlike the humans who wailed over the corpses of their dead comrades, the goblins were busy tearing and eating the corpses of their comrades.
'It's because they are hungry, because there is not enough food.'
What use was language or songs in a situation where even survival was uncertain?
So, after countless battles, we secured a corner of the forest and held a festival.
'Now we no longer have to starve.'
'Finally, we will live.'
The first festival, filled with the king's wishes, ended in tragedy.
Unlike the humans who sang while drinking, the goblins who drank swung their swords in all directions with bloodshot eyes.
When someone died from a stray sword, the goblins gathered to tear and eat the corpse, and a fight broke out.
Even with a mountain of meat piled in front of them, the goblins ate goblins.
Only then did I hear their song.
Kihihi, kehehe, kikigik.
The sound of a song made by scratching their vocal cords in joy.
Lowly and savage two-legged demonic beasts.
The king abandoned his people only after seeing a father chewing on his own child.
As I stood there blankly, watching the hope and belief that I could save them flicker and die out along with the crudely made campfire, a retarded child who had approached me whispered, as if babbling with an immature pronunciation.
"Do not, abandon."
She was my first subject.
And those words were the first plea I had heard as a king.
"Do not, abandon."
She was a child without a name, just called 'the curse of the forest.'
A being who could neither walk, speak, nor fight, unlike the goblins who could walk and fight the day they were born.
The retarded children, whom I had never once thought of as valuable, whom the other goblins had treated as a charm to ward off the curse of the forest, were finally my brethren that I had found.
As I watched her grow, I also learned.
They could not walk as soon as they were born.
They could not pick up a sword as soon as they were born.
They had neither the shaman's spells, the soldier's agility, nor the hobgoblin's monstrous strength.
They had none of the wildness or instinct that a goblin should naturally be born with.
Only after years had passed did they take their first steps.
And after years more, they learned a language.
They could cry, laugh, get angry, and be happy.
They could feel sensations other than hunger, bloodlust, and madness.
It was as different as an Ogre and a goblin.
It was the discovery of a species I had been waiting for so long.
The people who danced around a crude campfire.
The king truly loved them.
* **
"Hehehe… everyone called me king even before that, but it was only then that I truly became a king."
Teheki continued, his gaze fixed on the light where he had lost all hope and then regained it once more.
"You, as a human, may not believe it, but we were satisfied.
We were, until the curse began."
At the edge of the forest we had obtained.
Among the people who knew how to laugh, even though they had nothing in abundance.
'We' preferred to create rather than to destroy, so we didn't care about the humans outside the forest or the residents of the forest.
At least, not until the curse of the forest began.
"Little master of Moner, do you know why the fortress hasn't fallen?"
Without even waiting for an answer, the goblin with yellow eyes rolled them and sneered at Ian.
"A flimsy wall built by humans, even an Orc wouldn't be able to withstand it."
The goblin, who had been cackling, saying that the fortress would disappear without a trace if only the tyrant who ruled the Orcs among the many races and their kings moved, pointed to his twitching nose and said.
"The only reason you bastards are alive is because the residents of the forest hate the outside.
The things that live in that forest breathe with mana, so they don't even glance at the land of humans, which is lacking in mana."
Ian, who had been listening to the story with a serious face, frowned.
If that was true, how could he explain the monsters that had attacked the fortress during the less than a month he had been at Front Hold?
Teheki, who saw his face, cackled once again.
"Didn't your father teach you that either?
Before the fortress was built, Moner interacted with various races in the forest.
The Naga of the swamp, the two-legged wolves in the depths of the forest, and even us, who were insignificant at the edge of the forest, were given various weapons and tools."
I tried to recall the duke who had laughed, saying that as long as they could communicate, they could be friends, but his memory had faded as much as the long time that had passed, and only the sound of his laughter could be faintly heard.
"Then the curse spread.
A curse that swallowed everything except for primitive emotions and desires."
The residents of the forest repaid the trust of the humans.
They warned them of those who had been possessed by madness, and told them to build a high fence.
And so, the fortress that blocked the forest was built.
"If you've listened this far, you should understand."
The trembling eyes of the shabby goblin glared at the young master of Moner with a fiery intensity.
"That I feared the curse more than anything else in the world."
The family who had been laughing and talking until last night drooled with bloodshot eyes.
My family, my people, who had held crude swords and spears instead of the hammers they had cherished so much, exuded a menacing hostility.
In a form no different from the goblins I had so detested.
"So I begged Moner several times.
To just let us pass through the fortress.
Even a small piece of that vast land would be fine, no, it didn't even have to be Moner's land, just let us pass."
I had explained it to the duke before him, and the duke before him, and the current count several times, but no one could understand these beings who were goblins, yet not goblins.
The weak goblin, who could only watch helplessly as his people, trapped by the wall he had advised them to build, were killed by the humans on that wall, had built up his strength over that long time.
Endlessly yearning for justice .
"The curse may not disappear even if we leave the forest, and just as I killed my family, I know that you had no other choice.
Nevertheless, I hate you."
The king's gaze, recalling the faces of his people, of whom less than two hundred remained, was fixed on Ian as if nailed.
"Save us from this forest."
* * *
I scanned Teheki with trembling eyes.
His short, stout body, starkly revealed through the thrown-off robe.
His sturdy muscles, unbelievable for a goblin.
His yellow eyes, shining brilliantly as if embedded with gold, between his wide- torn eyes.
My eyes naturally followed to the extraordinary-looking hammer, and a thought followed.
'A hammer is his main weapon, he's short, he likes alcohol and songs, and he's a race that likes to create…….'
My eyes rolled and turned back to Teheki's face.
'His face looks like a goblin that's been severely beaten up…….'
Just by looking at the drool dripping from the corner of his mouth, which was torn up to his ear, there was no denying that he was a goblin.
"That……."
My suspicions hadn't even cleared, yet my back, which had been straight even in the face of death, bowed like a ripe ear of rice, and my two hands, which had left my sword, politely came together and moved up and down naturally.
"How much have you looked into it?"
[The 『Eye of the Gold Fiend 』 opens.]
At the existence of the Dwarf , which I had never forgotten, the talent of the great merchant who had interacted with them long ago awakened.
Gold glittered on his hideous face, and the sound of clinking gold coins echoed beyond his unpleasant breathing.
"I'm a pacifist who even accepted a Dark Elf!
You want land in the forest?
Do you need a mine by any chance?
If you look carefully, you'll find iron and copper too……."
At the sight of the untainted, pure Dwarf, the talent of the merchant, which had burst forth as if exploding, bared its teeth at the simple Dwarf who was blinking blankly.