190 Chapter 190: Goblin Slayer

The eerie light flooded the chamber with a weird luminous glow that suffused the walls in sickly green. The capillary network pulsed and throbbed beneath the eggs, and they all began to hatch. Goblins tore their way through the leathery carapace, spilling out onto the ground as amniotic fluids slushed from their bodies and former containers.

Bursting into open air for the first time in a long while, the Goblins began roaring and growling in the most fake manner possible. You know, like those poorly paid voice actors bumbling their roles in a cheaply produced anime adaptation.

"Richard, these aren't normal Goblins," Anastasia warned me, her voice tense.

"Gee, you think?" I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. "Goblins don't usually hatch from eggs and receive grooming magic, right?"

"Grimstone Goblins," Anastasia continued, ignoring my sarcasm. "They are known for their ability to breed rapidly and their versatility. They are adaptable to any environments and can evolve more easily than most monsters…"

"So that's why the Dark Church chose them for their experiments." I suddenly understood the implications. "Oh, that sucks."

Hundreds of them began stepping forward…well, that number might be an exaggeration. There was probably less than a hundred in this chamber alone. Several dozens, yes, but not yet into the hundreds.

That meant…

"Are there more of these birthing rooms around?" I asked the giggling twin girls at the top of the Goblin nest, while putting myself between Anastasia and the Goblins in reflex. If they got me, I would just die, but Anastasia would probably face an ordeal far worse than death.

"We have no reason to tell you now, do we?" Mell taunted.

"But there's more Goblins than just here!" Nell added gleefully, earning a smack from her twin. Yeah, she just gave me the answer I was seeking.

Pushing my glasses up my nose, I smiled. "Did someone say goblins?"

If only I had a certain pal in armor who specialized in exterminating these pests by my side...oh well. I see. I guess I'll have to do things my way then.

Ursa Major swiped and obliterated the first wave of Goblins with a single paw, reducing them into blood and guts. Canis Major incinerated a batch of Goblin with his Sirius attack, and then pounced on a pitiful group, tearing and ripping them apart. I called forth more Constellation spirits, unleashing a pack of Canis Minor and a herd of Ursa Minor on the unfortunate creatures. Within seconds, the first batch of newly hatched Goblins were eliminated.

Behind me, Anastasia sliced through several stragglers, her poisoned blades causing the poor things to turn from green to purple. Writhing about, the poisoned Goblins crashed onto the ground, clutching their throats and foaming at their mouths.

"Even when enhanced, they are still vulnerable to poison," Anastasia remarked. She could really take care of herself. She glanced at me and snorted. "What? Did you think I'll just stand around and do nothing except let you protect me? What's the point of me coming along if I'm going to be so damned useless? If I leave all the bloody work to you, then what's the point of creating this elaborate backstory about me being an Assassin in the past? Just because you happen to be a male protagonist, that doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly forget all my skills and turn into a damsel in distress waiting for you to rescue me."

"I feel like I've heard that complaint several times already," I muttered. Anastasia shrugged.

"That's because it happened several times in the badly written web novel and its anime adaptation."

"All right, can we stop talking about that trashy series and focus on fighting?"

"Sure." Anastasia slit the throat of a last Goblin, causing it to go into spasms. "Except that we've pretty much cleaned out all the enemies."

"Heh…"

Both of the girls marveled when they saw that all the Goblins had been massacred one-sidedly. I began to have my doubts that they really did anything to groom or enhance the Goblins. They still felt so weak. Nonetheless, the girls didn't seem surprised.

"You're really strong!" Mell acknowledged.

"But that's still not enough!" Nell crowed.

The crystal ball in their hands glowed green again. A more sickly green than before, which kind of reminded me about those cliché cartoons about gamma radiation. Not that gamma radiation was green, but apparently they designated it as such because of the Incredible Hulk. But gamma rays did not have any color, at least not that the human eye could decipher.

Never mind, I was going off into a tangent here.

More eggs hatched. And this time, the number really did go above a hundred. Goblins filled the room for as far as I could see, and once again I wished I had a reliable Goblin Slayer friend with me.

Fortunately, I had a bunch of other friends to help me.

While my pack of Ursa Minor and Canis Minor, each led by Ursa Major and Canis Major, were massacring the increased number of Goblins without difficulty, I also reinforced their numbers by calling forth more Constellation spirits. Taurus manifested in front of me and unleashed Aldebaran, incinerating large swathes of Goblins. Those few stragglers who somehow got too near to me were cut down by my Gemini twin swords.

Behind me, Anastasia's twin daggers twirled and cut. The two of us drew close and continued to fight back-to-back against wave after wave of Goblins, each of us covering the other's blind spot. A Goblin that sprang at Anastasia's back was cleaved into two by my Castor. Another Goblin that launched a surprise attack at the back of my head had its throat slit by Ana. In this way, the both of us formed a flawless partnership that drove the bulk of the Goblins back, only for the little critters to be picked off by my Constellation spirits at leisure.

Strange. Even though this was the first time we were fighting together, our movements were so coordinated and our attacks were so in sync that it was hard to believe that we had only met for the second time a couple of days ago.

Aries and Capricorn joined the fun to, and before long, Leo and his pride of Leo Minor were hunting down fleeing Goblins, tracking down to the recesses of the room and flushing them out. The end was finally in sight…

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

The twin screams of the two girls caught my attention. Judging from the way she tensed behind me, Anastasia heard it two. Both of us turned to watch as the now-transparent crystal ball, which was no longer glowing an eerie green, dropped all the way from the top to roll onto the bottom.

"Not me!"

"Not me either!"

Mell and Nell were also fighting back-to-back, swarmed by a horde of berserk Goblins. The Grimstone Goblins shrugged off whatever spells the pathetic sisters were throwing at them and charged forward. Within seconds, they were upon the two girls, who screamed and thrashed violently as the humanoid monsters tore at them, ripping both clothing and fabric.

"Please save me!"

"Save me too!"

The sisters were wailing now, unable to fight off the onslaught of Goblins. Anastasia looked at them coldly, then resumed her own battle for survival against a cluster of Goblins that had thought to capitalize on the slight opening she showed. Not that it was a real opening – it turned out to be a feint as Ana sliced through the stupid group with her daggers.

"Why?!"

"NOOO!!!!"

They reaped what they sowed. They thought to breed monsters and unleash them upon the city's civilians, and now when they became the victims, they wanted to be saved? What nonsense. If the civilians were the ones begging them to stop, and to hold the monsters back, there was no doubt the two girls would deliberately taunt them before ordering their Goblins to kill and **** everyone.

I left them to their fates. They deserved what they got. Just because they were little girls didn't mean they should be forgiven for their crimes. They sought to murder and **** people, and now they were getting those done to them.

Mercifully for the censors, whatever happened to the screaming, struggling girls was completely obscured by the mass of Goblins that had piled on top of them. I turned away from their grisly demise and grimly resumed fighting the few Goblins that remained around me, Anastasia and my small army of Constellation spirits.

Still…

I glanced at the broken crystal ball, which had been stomped on by one of the rampaging Goblins before it got crushed in turn by Capricorn. I couldn't believe that this Solomon lied to even kids under his charge, telling them that it was a device that could control the Goblins.

"Clearly they still have yet to master the technology to control and command monsters, eh?" I remarked.

"Worried?" Anastasia giggled as she flipped over to avoid getting hit by a Goblin's club, kicking it in the jaw and sending it staggering. Before it could recover, she carved its throat apart and sent it toppling over. "That will take away your monopoly on summoning magic, wouldn't it?"

"It also poses a significant risk and weakness. Destroy the device and what happens? The monsters go out of control, and becomes a danger to both its former controller and his enemies alike. Though…" I glanced at the heaving pile of Goblins at where the twins used to be. "…I guess the Dark Church doesn't care about that, huh?"

Their screams had faded quite some time ago, but now that the rest of the Goblins had been exterminated, there were no other enemies in sight. I felt as if I had done Goblin Slayer proud. I could half-imagine the armored guy giving me a silent thumb's up.

"Taurus. End their misery."

I wasn't sure what the Goblins were doing to those two girls, and didn't want to know either. If they were lucky, the Goblin killed them immediately and were now feasting on their corpses. If they were unlucky…well, I would leave that to the readers' twisted imaginations.

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"Aldebaran!"

Taurus obliged and incinerated them all, both the twins and the Goblins. The creatures howled for a second before they were reduced to ash. Mell and Nell, however, didn't make a sound. They were most likely already dead, and if they weren't…then they were worse than dead and I probably helped them by putting them out of their misery.

"Ana? What are you doing?"

I was surprised when Anastasia leaped to the top of the chamber, landing next to the smoldering corpses of the two kids. The two girls had been burned beyond recognition, their ravaged bodies smoldering from the heat. Even so, Anastasia knelt down and began rummaging through their scorched clothes, not at all affected by the intense temperatures.

"Here…"

Anastasia inserted her hand into Mell's (or was it Nell?) pocket and pulled out her smartphone. It was warped from the heat, but still relatively intact. No matter. A little bit of magic was all we needed for it to work.

"That's…?" I raised an eyebrow, and then suddenly smiled in understanding. "Ah…you want the data inside their smartphone."

"You're learning, Richard." Ana gave me her usual dazzling smile as she hopped down to rejoin me. "We should be able to find the other birthing chambers with the information inside here."

"Great." I dismissed my Constellation spirits and began following her out of the chamber. As an added precaution, I turned around and sterilized the area with Alnasl from my Sagittarius bow, bringing the entire place down and engulfing it in a hellish inferno to make sure nothing survived. Turning back to Ana, who was busily hooking the smartphone up to the same hacking device I saw Dad used back in the mountains overseas, I exhaled wearily. "We should hurry and find them before they hatch."

"Yeah." Anastasia nodded, her eyes rapidly skimming through the massive reams of data that were being projected upward into a holographic screen. "It's going to be a long night."