A blade swept through a goblin's torso, spilling entrails from the wound.
"Gugyagyaa!"
The goblin shrieked, clutching its slashed belly.
The adventurer stomped on its neck, snapping bone as he shouted.
"Damn it, how many of them are there?! There's no end to them!"
"I know! But we've got no choice but to fight right now! If we let these things get close to Gilm, the damage will only get worse!"
The hammer-wielding man shouted back at the longsword-wielding adventurer.
His hammer was caked in goblin blood, flesh, and bone fragments—a testament to the ferocity of the battle.
The goblin corpses littering the ground further proved just how intense the fighting had been.
Over ten adventurers were engaged against this goblin horde, but the goblins numbered over a hundred... no, over a hundred and fifty.
Each adventurer fought individually, but even so, fighting at full capacity for an extended period inevitably drained their stamina.
Had the enemy been slightly stronger monsters, the adventurers would have fought with far more caution.
But their opponents this time were goblins.
It was hard not to underestimate them, and that made everyone's fighting sloppier.
Several adventurers recognized that things would only get worse if they continued like this, yet there was nothing they could do about it.
However... the Guild certainly hadn't overlooked that possibility.
From the direction of Gilm, additional adventurers arrived in horse-drawn carriages.
"We're here to relieve you! Take a breather!"
An adventurer man dismounted from the carriage, nocked his bow, and began loosing arrows in rapid succession as he called out.
"Thank god!"
The longsword man shouted, then fell back toward the rear along with the hammer man and the other adventurers.
The rest of the adventurers withdrew as well, but... the goblins, naturally unwilling to let their prey escape, tried to pursue. However, as if to blunt their momentum, a volley of arrows sang through the air, piercing one goblin after another.
In that brief instant when the goblins faltered, the adventurers who had dismounted from the carriage surged forward all at once.
Similar scenes were unfolding at other points along the line.
The adventurers present here were almost all veterans of C-Rank or D-Rank.
That being the case, coordinating with each other on the fly posed no problem whatsoever.
The adventurers who finally caught a moment's respite sighed as they watched the blood-soaked battle raging a short distance away.
"The only saving grace is that these goblins are all idiots."
The longsword man said, and the hammer man nodded in agreement.
"Yeah. The fact that they can't ignore an adventurer right in front of them works in our favor too."
Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't have been unusual for several goblins to swarm an adventurer in the vanguard while the rest attacked the archers or adventurers resting in the rear.
No, that would have been the natural tactic—but monsters called goblins simply couldn't think that many steps ahead.
Their only thoughts were to kill the adventurer before them and make a meal of the body... or, if it happened to be a female adventurer, capture her for breeding. It was always one or the other.
That was why, with an adventurer right in front of them, they focused entirely on that target.
Of course, even goblins as stupid as these... or rather, precisely because they were this stupid, when struck by arrows they would try to seek out the attacker and retaliate.
"Still, why did things suddenly get like this? This many goblins is no joking matter."
"According to what we heard from the Guild, the pack wasn't supposed to be this large. You think other packs have merged with this one?"
When the hammer man turned his gaze that way, sure enough, goblin packs arriving from other directions were merging with the horde the adventurers were fighting.
No matter how many goblins they killed, just as many... if not more kept pouring in, so the battle showed no signs of ending.
"Tch. If possible, I'd have liked to finish them off ourselves."
The longsword man muttered this without a trace of anxiety.
He had no intention of losing to mere goblins, even if the fighting dragged on.
And even against goblins, defeating this many should have earned a decent reward.
What he really wanted, though, was to take down the Goblin Leader commanding the pack.
According to the Guild, the pack wasn't supposed to be that large.
And that itself probably wasn't wrong. When the Guild first assessed the situation, the numbers had indeed been manageable.
The problem was that even as they fought here, more separate goblin packs kept converging on their position.
At any rate, if they could take down the Goblin Leader leading this pack, their reward was guaranteed to go up.
(Capturing it alive would've been ideal, but... that's too much trouble, and way too dangerous on top of it.)
He tipped a canteen from the carriage back, gulping down water, then reached for some bread.
The Guild must have anticipated a prolonged engagement, because the carriage was loaded with a generous supply of provisions.
"Once evening rolls around, more capable parties should show up. I'd rather wrap this up before then, though."
Fortunately, it was still daytime. Those who had accepted the subjugation request for the goblin packs marching on Gilm were people who had been looking for work at the Guild and adventurers enjoying a day off.
That being the case, there was a good chance that adventurers who had accepted requests that morning, completed them, and returned to the Guild would rush out here as reinforcements.
Naturally, getting overwhelmed by goblins when they were already short on manpower would be the worst-case scenario—but conversely, having an adventurer with overwhelming combat power show up and wipe out the entire pack in one sweep was something they'd rather avoid as well, at least when it came to their own earnings.
At the longsword man's grumbling... the hammer-wielding man fell silent for a few seconds before speaking.
"I wouldn't hold out that hope. This job is already over."
"...Huh?"
The longsword man looked as if he wanted to ask what the hell he was suddenly talking about. But then he noticed that the hammer man wasn't looking at him—or at the adventurers fighting the goblins—but off in an entirely different direction.
He followed that gaze and spotted something flying through the sky.
At first, he couldn't tell what it was.
It was flying at a considerable altitude, so from the ground it appeared as nothing more than a small dot.
But that dot was gradually descending, growing larger as it dropped, until the longsword man understood exactly what it was—and the realization hit him hard.
"Whoa, why the hell is he coming to a place like this? And heading straight toward us, no less."
At the edge of the longsword man's vision, the figure that had circled around behind the goblins conjured several fire balls around itself... and in the next instant, those fire balls rained down on the goblins from behind.
The Goblin Leader positioned at the rear of the pack was the first to be targeted. It became a living torch and collapsed to the ground.
Naturally, more than one fire ball was unleashed. They struck goblin after goblin, each impact erupting in explosive flames.
The goblins that had been fighting the adventurers must have been drawn to the explosions behind them. Many turned around in panic... and in that split second of inattention, the adventurers exploited the opening, unleashing a furious barrage of attacks that cut them down.
Then, after the fire balls had devastated the goblin rear guard—including the Goblin Leader—the creature delivering the assault descended from the sky in pursuit. Set unleashed its Fire Breath.
As it breathed a torrent of flame that engulfed the goblins, Set swept its neck from side to side.
The flames moved accordingly, and the number of goblins being consumed by fire climbed steadily.
Unlike the fire balls Rei had launched from Set's back earlier, the Fire Breath didn't have enough power to reduce goblins to charred ash in an instant.
But fire was still fire. If anything, the fact that it took longer to kill them only prolonged the goblins' suffering.
"Whoa... Rei's here?"
A different adventurer nearby muttered under his breath.
By this point, it was painfully obvious who was attacking the goblins from behind.
Any adventurer from Gilm... no, any adventurer period would have recognized him without question.
If there was an adventurer who didn't know about Rei, they deserved to be called a fraud.
And so, every adventurer present—the longsword man, the hammer man, all of them—knew exactly who Rei was.
They also understood that the moment Rei arrived, this goblin pack's annihilation was a foregone conclusion.
"If it had to be a high-rank adventurer, I wish it'd been anyone but Rei."
"...The Guild probably didn't want any casualties among the adventurers."
Since Rei specialized in wide-area annihilation combat, he was the perfect counter to monsters like goblins that relied on sheer numbers.
The longsword man understood this perfectly. But it also meant that the instant Rei showed up, their own part in this battle was effectively over.
Earnings from fighting goblins weren't much to write home about to begin with, but having slain this many should still have netted them a respectable sum.
Yet the thing that disappointed the longsword man the most was...
"Ahh... now even if I tell Miche about my exploits, she won't be all that impressed."
He could no longer brag to his favorite prostitute.
It was true that he had killed a great number of goblins, and his contributions—enough to say he had helped save Gilm from crisis—were undeniable.
But even so, the gap between his accomplishments and the overwhelming results Rei and Set had just delivered was insurmountable.
"You're making a mistake comparing yourself to Rei. He's an alias holder with a gryphon as a tamed monster. And not just any gryphon—it's Set."
The longsword man thought "rare species" should have been the term used there, but considering how Set was regarded in Gilm, he could understand why "because it's Set" actually fit better.
That was how high Set's standing was in Gilm.
...Though that standing wasn't as combat power, the way a typical tamed monster would be treated. It was the status of a beloved animal.
Naturally, even treated as a beloved animal, there was no denying that Set was a gryphon.
Its abilities were extraordinary, and anyone foolish enough to see Set as nothing more than a pet and try to mess with it would receive a painful lesson.
"Yeah, I know that. I know, but... not being able to tell Miche my war stories still stings."
At the longsword man's voice, ringing with genuine disappointment, the hammer man let out a sigh.
There were plenty of adventurers whose hobby was frequenting brothels.
But even by those standards, he couldn't help but feel his partner went overboard.
He had warned him about it several times before, to no effect, and had long since given up.
Even so, it still gave him plenty to think about.
"Then instead of saying you just watched Set take them down, why not say you fought alongside Set and played an active role in the subjugation?"
"That's... right! If I put it that way, Miche will be thrilled—she's been interested in Set! Alright, let's go!"
"Sure, sure."
Wondering where all the fatigue from moments ago had vanished to, the hammer man allowed himself a wry smile.
Still, his partner was undeniably reliable. Deciding to help craft a tale worthy of pillow talk at the brothel, he picked up his own weapon—the hammer.
Being a metal hammer rather than a wooden mallet, its weight was considerable.
Wielding a weapon of that heft required strength that, as expected, only an adventurer based in Gilm could muster.
After drinking water and eating some light fruit to recover their stamina and motivation with its sweetness—though in the longsword man's case, he was probably drawing energy from thoughts of tonight's brothel—the two charged straight back into the goblin horde.
"Ah, wait a sec—!"
A man who had been firing arrows from a position slightly away from the carriage tried to call out to the pair, but... with Rei and Set hammering the enemy from behind, the current situation was nothing short of the perfect time to hunt goblins.
Under these conditions, the more combat power they had, the better—at least to thin the goblin numbers even slightly while the opportunity lasted.
With the Goblin Leader already dead, the goblins here would likely scatter and flee before long.
From that perspective, having the two fight now was indeed the best option.
(Besides, they're volunteering to pitch in, so I've got no room to complain.)
If anything, he should be grateful, the man decided as he plucked his bowstring.
The arrows loosed from his hand pierced one goblin after another.
Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't have been strange for the goblins to immediately rush the one who had attacked them. But right now, they were thrown into chaos by the multiple explosions... and the flames erupting in their rear, and had no such presence of mind to spare.
Thus, the surprise attack by Rei and Set—specialized combat forces through and through—plunged the goblin horde into total disarray, and every last one of them except the lucky few that managed to flee was slaughtered on the spot.