‘No!’
It was a subconscious move, but the little elf quickly realized—if it were just ordinary goblins, that would be fine.
But this Goblin Chief was so smart.
With that one action, hadn’t she just exposed Luo En’s position?
Astraea realized it, but it was already too late.
The Goblin Chief, clearly no ordinary goblin, immediately spotted Luo En and Lily hiding behind the bushes.
The Goblin Chief gripped his wooden club again, but he still spoke: “Elf… leave… hostile…”
Astraea broke out in a cold sweat.
The Goblin Chief’s voice was loud; Luo En had definitely heard it.
Maybe she should start thinking about how to explain her identity now?
Luo En had indeed heard it, but his mind was a bit chaotic right now.
As the son of a noble, Luo En had received a good education since childhood.
Such education inevitably included one or two foreign languages—Elvish, for example.
And Luo En happened to be an expert in Elvish, so he understood every word the Goblin Chief said.
Even though it was already strange that a Goblin Chief could speak, Luo En was even more curious about why the Goblin Chief spoke in Elvish.
‘Where did he learn it? Or could he only speak Elvish?’
Luo En didn’t know, but he had a way to verify.
The squire calmed the slightly agitated Lily, then hefted his longsword and emerged from his hiding spot.
Seeing Luo En’s move, the clever little elf immediately felt that her cover was about to be blown.
Under her anxious gaze, the Goblin Chief spoke in fluent Human tongue: “Human, take your companions and leave this place.”
‘Ah…’
Luo En seemed to understand something, but he didn’t make a fuss.
He only barked sternly: “Heteromorph! How dare you invade the territory of humans?!”
As a knight of the All-Father, it was his duty to expel all Heteromorphs.
Without pausing, the squire, who had barely caught his breath, swung his sword and engaged the group of goblins.
The Goblin Chief snorted coldly, brandished his club, and strode forward.
“Don’t you dare!”
The little elf panicked.
Luo En was just a squire, not even wearing armor.
There was no way he could defeat this strange Goblin Chief.
Even if Luo En later cut her down for it, she couldn’t just stand by and let the Goblin Chief attack Luo En.
Astraea drove a Treant to block the Goblin Chief.
Facing such a powerful enemy, the Goblin Chief let out a thunderous roar.
A green light surged from his body, muscles bulging with veins.
Then he smashed his club down onto the Treant.
“Crack.”
The club, made of ordinary wood, shattered instantly.
Though Treants could not make sound, through the magical link, the little elf heard the Treant’s lament in her soul.
The Treant was cleaved in two by the immense force.
Such a grievous injury caused it to lose its spirituality and revert to a normal tree.
Still, it was fortunate that the Goblin Chief had struck the trunk rather than the roots; the tree could still survive.
But now the Goblin Chief had lost his weapon.
The little elf still had one Treant left, not to mention that her own combat power was not to be underestimated.
As for Luo En… Astraea didn’t really think he could defeat this Goblin Chief.
But as an elf—even one who had once been human—she still couldn’t fully understand the thought process of human knights in this world.
Just as the little elf was about to confront the Goblin Chief, she saw Luo En sweep aside the ordinary goblins with his sword, then roar and leap high, bringing his blade down from above the Goblin Chief’s head.
Astraea was dumbfounded.
She never imagined that a human squire, without magical enhancement, could jump so high and so far.
“Is this… right?”
Oh, it was right.
The little elf saw light begin to emanate from Luo En’s body.
That’s just how Clunier was—divine blessings triggered randomly for exceeding one’s level.
If you don’t like it, don’t play.
But as a knight of the All-Father, why was the light coming from Luo En’s body red?
Though the Goblin Chief was quite displeased with Luo En’s cheating behavior, he clearly wasn’t ready to delete his save file just yet.
Facing Luo En’s descending sword, the Goblin Chief instinctively raised his arm to block.
Yes, as a goblin, the Chief had impressive stats.
Look at that tall, muscular body—most banneret knights were about that level physically.
But blocking Luo En, whose entire body was glowing red, was beyond his ability.
The already sharp longsword, blessed by the divine, came down.
The Goblin Chief’s thick arm was severed instantly, his sturdy bones offering no resistance.
If the Goblin Chief hadn’t instinctively stepped back, he would have suffered more than just wounds on his face and chest.
“Holy shit, there’s something else!”
A voice rang out across the field.
It sounded unreal, so much so that the little elf felt it was fake the moment she heard it.
But after the voice finished, the little elf saw the squire, who had just landed and was about to change his stance, suddenly emitting a golden light.
The golden and red lights mixed together, dazzling the little elf so much that she could barely open her eyes.
Had she accidentally stumbled into some high-end divine battle?
Yeah, she’d probably just have to prostrate herself fully and beg Luo En for forgiveness later.
That was Astraea’s reaction.
As for the Goblin Chief, who was right next to her, he was completely blinded by the flash.
Just as he was about to roar and enter his second phase to fight to the death, Luo En swung his sword in a backhand and decapitated him before he could even let out a scream.
The Chief’s head, a full size larger than the little elf’s, shot into the air.
Then his massive body collapsed straight down.
The remaining ordinary goblins, not yet finished off by the Treant, stared blankly at the scene.
Then one of them let out a strange “Gah!” and they all scattered in panic.
It would have been a perfect time to pursue, but Astraea, controlling the Treant, had no mind to chase.
The little elf felt that, compared to any goblin, this squire with gold light in one eye and red light in the other was far more terrifying.
Luo En had already sheathed his sword and held it in hand.
He stepped one foot onto the Goblin Chief’s headless corpse, slowly scanning the fleeing goblins, and finally fixed his gaze on the little elf frozen in place.
‘Seeing me, instead of running, you’re standing still and facing me? A heretic… a Heteromorph? Astraea-sensei…?’
Just kidding.
Actually, the little elf wanted to run too, but the aura emanating from Luo En had made her legs go weak.
Luo En’s mind was a chaotic mess, thoughts ranging from “cut her down” to “pin her down and kiss her.”
But his remaining reason told him that not all of these were his true thoughts.
It was only then that the squire began to understand what was happening to himself.
He wasn’t stupid; on the contrary, he was very smart.
From the clues—like what language the Goblin Chief spoke—he had been able to guess the little elf’s general identity.
Now, how could he not understand what was happening to himself?
But no one had told him that divine blessings could affect a person’s thoughts!
All-Father above, what was he supposed to do when he suddenly realized that the person he liked was a Heteromorph?
The Knight’s Codex didn’t cover this part!
Luo En felt his brain was overloading.
Fortunately, he quickly found a good way to solve the current problem.
After all, he was just a mortal.
How could a mortal withstand divine blessings?
Luo En relaxed his mind, completely gave up resisting, and in an instant was overwhelmed by the massive blessing, passing out.
The little elf stared blankly as the squire, who had been so awe-inspiring just a moment ago, collapsed straight to the ground like the Goblin Chief.
The terrifying aura that had made her blood run cold vanished.
The little elf sighed, hoisted Luo En onto her back, and headed toward the main road.
***
It was a small town.
The townsfolk’s houses were clustered on flat land, with scattered farm cottages and cultivated fields on the outskirts.
Many residents who still worked the land were tending their crops.
This was an agricultural free town made up of yeoman farmers of the kingdom.
It wasn’t poor, but it wasn’t wealthy either.
The townspeople couldn’t even afford to hire a large adventurer team to clear out the goblin settlement that had been harassing them for a long time.
But today was different.
A small, slender young girl leading a packhorse appeared on the road.
She looked very tired, but the townspeople still working in the fields didn’t intend to get involved.
Travelers—that was normal.
If it was a wandering merchant, they might be able to trade for some interesting little items.
It wasn’t until the girl entered the town’s Adventurer’s Guild that gasps of surprise came from inside.
Yes, as the organization that uniformly managed all the adventurers in the kingdom, even an unremarkable agricultural town had an Adventurer’s Guild.
Though the adventurers here were more like odd-job workers, their presence at least kept the monsters near the town from getting too brazen.
Astraea tied Lily to the hitching post in front of the guild, then dragged a large cloth sack inside.
The unconscious Luo En had been tied onto Lily’s back.
She had left a warning spell on him, so she wasn’t worried about anyone stealing him.
“Thump!”
The little elf threw the sack onto the ground.
The rope tied around its mouth came loose, revealing the Goblin Chief’s gruesome head, still covered in blood.
Alongside the head were a dozen green, pointed ears.
The little elf couldn’t carry that many.
She had only hastily cut off these ears before deciding she was too lazy to collect more.
The important thing was the Goblin Chief’s head.
“Aaah!”
The receptionist girl, who had never seen such a shocking sight, screamed.
The two adventurers who had been joking around with her at the counter were also startled.
“Is that… isn’t that the one from the Goblin Nest!”
“The Goblin Nest outside town? My god… I thought we’d have to ask the local lord for help to deal with that!”
Adventurers soon recognized the head.
In fact, as the highest-bounty target in the town, many local adventurers had tried to hunt the Goblin Chief before.
But their outcomes weren’t great.
The worst case was a female adventurer who had set out with her party a year ago to purge the Goblin Nest and never returned.
Perhaps among the goblins the little elf had killed were her offspring.
“Quest completed. Give me the money.” Astraea got straight to the point.
She was exhausted now.
The unexpected exposure of her identity and the magical battle had left her mentally and physically drained.
She needed to find a place to settle herself and Luo En as soon as possible.
Fortunately, though the receptionist girl was timid, she was proficient in her job.
Once the little elf prompted her, she quickly got down to business.
Trembling, she confirmed the Goblin Chief’s head, then removed the bounty and handed the reward to the little elf.
“After deducting the handling fee, that’s two gold coins total. Please verify.” The receptionist girl said this and handed the little elf a pile of loose coins, mostly silver with some copper mixed in.
It looked like they had been scraped together by the townspeople.
But even two gold coins weren’t enough for the Goblin Chief’s bounty.
The little elf knew that in a big city, the bounty for a Goblin Chief started at five gold coins, and even then, no one might accept it.
But she wasn’t in the mood to haggle now.
She had done this on a whim, and besides, most of the hard work was Luo En’s.
“There might still be captured girls in the goblin settlement. I’ll leave the rest to the guild.”
Without counting the coins, the little elf swept them all into her money pouch.
Now she had to get a good night’s sleep and think about how to explain things to Luo En.