Goblin Kingdom

Volume 4: Chapter 286 – Battle of Lusis Plains III (1/4)

With a jolt, my consciousness seemed to become distant.

The thick stench of blood, the excited voices of the goblins on the verge of victory… Everything seemed to grow distant, and it felt as though my strength was leaving me, so I had to fix my grip over Sui’s reins.

“Your Majesty? Is something the matter?” Pale asked.

I nodded ambiguously before turning to Lusis’ direction.

“It’s… Nothing…”

The human prisoners showed little resistance, and though the enemy general, Grendal, resisted to the end, we eventually succeeded in capturing him too. According to the testimonies from others and Pale’s intelligence network, he should be the commander here.

With their main force now destroyed, we could try and get Grendal to advise the enemy to surrender. No matter how arrogant the enemy may be, if they know they have no way to resist, surely there would room to accept a surrender.

We can repeat this fight as many times as they want, but at the end of the day, all they have left are those wyvern knights – those same wyvern knights I’m watching fall to their deaths. Speaking of which, that is actually something that astonished me.

Who would’ve thought that there would be someone in this world who could come up with the concept of aerial combat?

It feels so far away already, but I’m certain I have a memory of many lives being lost in a battlefield in the sky.

I thought for sure that they would need to progress a bit more in their technology before they could graduate from the battles on land and water to fight in a three-dimensional battlefield that included the sky.

I was also certain that the skies would be the biggest advantage of the harpyureas led by Yushika, but this world actually overturned that. As expected of a fantasy world.

“If not for Douhet, this battle would’ve been really dangerous.”

I looked up at the flame ryuu high above in the sky. We owe this victory to him, but he’s just glaring at the distant northeast from up there.

The goblins cried out victory, but for some reason, I felt like turning to the direction Douhet was glaring at. What was there anyway? The city of Lusis? Some walls, and…

“What?”

When I said that without meaning to, Pale furrowed her brows and saw the same thing that I did.

“──A gate?”

A red gate dyed in blood stood there near the city walls.

“…”

Pale found the matter disturbing and didn’t say anything, but the chills I felt were much clearer.

It was like something was stuck.

At the depths of my heart was an unpleasant silent voice akin to glass being scratched. This premonition… It’s like a sense of urgency, as though I’ve forgotten something desperate, something maddeningly important.

Yet despite feeling like I’d been dropped in a hole with no exit, I couldn’t keep my eyes away from that gate.

◇◆◆

Dumbstruck by the scene unfolding before them, the defeated generals could only look up at the hero standing before them.

The people gathered before them were clearly just boys and girls, dressed as they were in beautiful armor and equipped with similarly glamorous weapons, but it was with these children in tow that the hero passed through the gate of the dead dragon and came here to this land.

“Hero…”

It was Eleanor who called out that word first.

“Hello, Eleanor. I’ve arrived to save you.”

When those words were said, Eleanor fell to her knees and started wailing with her hands clasped before her chest. This was the girl, who until just awhile ago, was leading a defeated army to retreat.

Rasdir too knelt before the hero.

“Hello, Rasdir. Are you alright?”

“I am ashamed.”

As though he were a vassal, the proud and young knight commander bowed his head before the hero, not a whiff of care that his knees would get dirty.

Like that a circle was made with the black-haired hero at the center. As though they were trying to cling to that one glimmer of hope called the hero, they knelt, bowed down, and honored him.

Not even the surviving holy knights were an exception to that.

Only one man proved different, and he looked as though he’d swallowed a fly.

That man was Gulland Rifenin, the hero of the humans [1].

There were no exceptions other than he, even the margrave’s army that he led – everyone – knelt before the black-haired hero and asked him for forgiveness or salvation.

Gulland puffed up his chest and thrust his great sword into the ground as he stood before the black-haired man. In that way, the hero of the humans confronted the black-haired hero.

Flowers seemed to surround the black-haired hero, however, as beautiful maidens waited upon him all around. Among those were even village girls ill fit for war, and there were even those that argued about love without the slightest care about the world around them.

A sense of discomfort began to rage violently within Gulland.

He didn’t know how to put that discomfort into words, but he was furious. Nay, he was disgusted. Though he hated the monsters, even that seemed to pale in comparison to what he felt for this group of clowns.

“What is with these people?”

Gulland said those words without intending to, so there could be no falsehood in them, but then again, he had just escaped from a losing battle. It was only natural for him to hold such doubts.

“You are…”

The black-haired hero turned to Gulland. That was all he did, and yet it was powerful enough to make Gulland wish to kneel, and yet, Gulland spat instead.

“…You give me the creeps.”

He pulled out his great sword from the ground and carried it over his shoulder as he approached the black-haired hero.

As he kicked aside the people kneeling to the black-haired hero, Gulland approached close enough to have him in range. A faint smile surfaced on the hero, but Gulland swung his sword at him.

As it fell diagonally from his shoulder, it cut through the wind and left a shallow wound on the hero’s cheek.

“Oh?”

Gulland did not miss the ferocious glint that appeared in the hero’s eyes in that one moment.

“…Who in the world are you?”

Gulland asked as he pointed his great sword at the hero’s throat, but the hero’s composure never broke.

“Why, I am the hero, of course. The hero that will save humanity.”

[1]

Two different kinds of heroes.

The hero used by the black-haired man is Yuusha, while the hero used for Gulland is Eiyuu.

Yuusha literally means brave man and refers to anyone with courage, while Eiyuu requires an achievement of some sort.

For example, you could be a delinquent high-school student that tries to do a good deed by saving some kid not paying attention to the road. In the process, dying and becoming a ghost, only to find out from the welcoming shinigami that the kid was never in any danger in the first place and his actions actually wounded the kid; thus, making his death pointless.

In the above case, he would be a yuusha, and not an eiyuu.

Now if said delinquent instead saved the world or something grand enough to leave his name to be remembered in history, then he would certainly qualify to be an eiyuu.

For the record, the black-haired hero always uses Yuusha when referring to himself as a hero.

I’m sure that’s not because he’s humble, but because most heroes that pop out of circles in syosetu or mangoes are yuusha because of the qualification thing, so yuusha is sort of understood to be that guy that pops out of nowhere to fight the demon king and save the world.