Goblin Slayer 01-12 -

He wiped his sword on a goblin’s tunic. “The goblin would have killed her first. She will limp for a week. She will live.”

That was his mercy. Measured in bruises and survival. The weeks turned to months. Priestess learned to check ceilings for drop holes. She learned to listen for the wet breathing of a sleeping goblin. She learned that Protection was best cast at the mouth of a tunnel, to split the horde. She learned to carry a second dagger—not for glory, but for the moment her first one got stuck in a rib.

Then the ambush came.

He did not know what to do with her tears. So he stood there, helmet tilted, and said the only comfort he knew: Goblin Slayer 01-12

He did not take off his helmet to eat. He did not drink alcohol. He did not speak of his past, but the High Elf Archer—who had joined them after an argument about whether goblins could be reasoned with (they could not)—once found him staring at a ruined farmhouse. His gauntlets had trembled.

That was Priestess’s first lesson: Goblins were not the punchline of a tavern joke. They were the punch. Goblin Slayer—for that was all the name he answered to—lived in a barn. Not a stable. A barn. The hay had been cleared for a simple bed, a workbench, and a rack of weapons so varied it looked like an armory’s rejected pile: short swords, torches, nets, a ladder, vials of strange liquids, a hammer meant for breaking locks. Everything was stained. Everything smelled of smoke and iron.

She had wanted to be an adventurer since she was old enough to hold a stick. He wiped his sword on a goblin’s tunic

Once, she saw him stop. Just for a moment. A goblin had grabbed a captive village girl as a hostage. The creature pressed a rusty knife to her throat, chittering in its crude tongue. Priestess raised her hands to cast Protection .

The battle ended. The temple fell silent.

He looked at her through the shimmering light. Nodded once. Then he pulled a small vial from his belt—the one he had shown her once, saying “never use this indoors” —and threw it at the champion’s feet. She will live

So she did.

“The goblins are dead.”

He nodded. Put the helmet back on. And somewhere in the distance, in the black hollows of the earth, a goblin coughed.