“Welcome…”

From the seat across the room, a woman offered a greeting in a lifeless voice. She was likely a village employee. With her golden-brown hair tied in a half-updo, a white shirt reaching her waist, and a worn, shabby leather vest—the kind commoners might have worn in the Middle Ages—she looked profoundly pitiable.

Was it because of her bleak expression, or perhaps because she looked so frail and weak? Keyal had much he wanted to say, but he simply nodded in silence, holding his tongue. To begin with, it wasn’t a situation or atmosphere where one could speak cheerfully.

Before the employee had approached, Keyal had been shifting in place, circling the interior of the Adventurers’ Guild, but he found himself pressing his lips even tighter. Everyone was either despondent or wrapped in bandages. Some even had severed limbs. Women stared at him with glazed eyes while blood dripped from their wounds.

Despite the phrase “A fantasy full of dreams and hopes!”, the scene before his eyes looked as though it depicted survivors dragged back from a gruesome battlefield.

‘Whoa, look at this atmosphere.’

He couldn’t possibly let them hear the playful remark he uttered inwardly. He had to at least try to act like he was empathizing with their pain—or at least put on the performance of trying.

“…Pfft.”

Despite witnessing the disastrous situation, Keyal did not sympathize with their pain. To be brutally honest, he didn’t give a damn about the suffering of complete strangers. He had no intention of empathizing with or judging their agony; his head was filled only with the desire not to be disliked and to live a stable adventurer life.

There was nothing to gain from being hated by the guild’s influential figures, including the Guild Master. While he could probably talk his way out of trouble with promising adventurers later, this was his first meeting with the guild employees who had close ties to the leader. In their eyes, at least, he had to be branded as a “good guy.”

If he built up rapport from the start, he’d surely find a use for it later.

While smiling inwardly, Keyal played the part of a sensitive young man on the verge of tears, casting lingering glances at the gloomy adventurers.

“Uh… Ex-excuse me, customer..?”

“…Ah—ah, I-I’m sorry… The atmosphere in the guild today is just so… heartbreaking…”

Perhaps his tearful, legendary “butt-kissing show” worked. The woman, who had been wearing a dark expression, lifted the corners of her mouth slightly and gave him a reassuring smile.

‘Oh, this actually works.’

“S-so, you’re saying you want to join the adventurers?”

“Yes.”

The table, made of wooden planks and covered in cobwebs and dust, looked even darker than it already was. The employee slowly pushed a document forward—one stained with marks that looked like rust. Keyal, hiding a sly smirk, carefully accepted it and picked up a feather pen to write his name.

????? This must be how it’s written.

Tracing his memory, Keyal began to copy the English nickname he used on the game screen. Since he was essentially drawing crooked characters rather than writing them… the handwriting was…

“Um, have you perhaps… never written your own name before?”

It was crooked, like a toddler’s doodle, yet looked blunt and clumsy upon closer inspection.

“Pfft… Hahaha!”

Keyal’s cheeks turned bright red. Unfortunately, because the gap between the employee’s desk and the adventurers’ tables was so narrow, people began to burst into laughter, covering their mouths at the sight of someone who couldn’t even write his own name. Some mocked him openly, pointing fingers while leaning against the wall, and even the wounded wrapped in bandages couldn’t help but let out thin, wheezing laughs.

The sound of snorting laughter circled the air before stinging his ears. Even back in Korea, he had never been mocked for not being able to write his name. He bowed his head in shame.

‘Sigh… damn it, this is embarrassing…’

Was this how a “nobody” felt, settling alone in an unknown land and being mocked by the locals?

“…….”

He kept his head lowered in embarrassment until he finally finished writing his name and left the guild. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to bear the gazes of those bastards judging a foreigner who couldn’t even write.

‘You pieces of sht. Just you wait.’*

He would definitely succeed and slam a fist right into their foreheads.

The first quest was very simple.

[Please exterminate the goblins in the Goblin Den.]

There was a goblin den in the forest near the village. They occasionally looted the villagers’ belongings, raided the village with small forces, and kidnapped children or women. Adventurers were supposed to be dispatched to stop this, but… they had all refused.

‘Well, of course they would.’

Adventurers were naturally a prideful bunch. They probably refused, grumbling about why they should have to catch mere goblins or hobgoblins instead of Goblin Queens or Lords found in high-level dungeons.

Keyal himself was only accepting this low-tier, pathetic quest because he was pressed for time and short on cash. Ordinarily, he would have rejected it flatly.

‘Now, if it were exterminating the Heavenly Clan, that might be different.’

Waving his hand in the air, Keyal stared into the empty space and uttered a single word.

[Status Window]

Immediately, strings of text began to pop up, and square windows blocked his view. Keyal smiled with satisfaction and swiped away the status and info screens.

‘I know this is a filler quest, so I’m not expecting any stat growth.’

QUEST

• Defeat 20 Goblins living in the Goblin Den. / Defeat 2 Hobgoblins.

• Success: Rewards will be granted.

• Failure: Keyal Klein will die.

It was a death notice that arrived without warning.

‘Holy sht, that’s extreme.’*

Keyal, who was about to snap-click the ‘Accept’ button, flinched for a moment.

‘No, seriously, why do I have to die just because I can’t catch a few goblins…’

Would you like to accept the quest? [ Y/N ]

[Encrypted string of text follows]

[ YES ]

With a sigh, he placed his hand on the ‘YES’ button. Whether he did it or not, death seemed to be the only alternative.

‘The reward is stingy… but well, it’s better than dying.’

Thinking that he could at least relieve some stress by being a menace to the mobs, Keyal headed toward the path leading to the Goblin Den.

Arriving at the cave shortly after, Keyal immediately took up a torch and stepped inside. With every step, the sound of his own footsteps echoed. Now that it was reality, was he really this nervous about facing mere goblins?

Keyal clutched his thumping heart, waiting for the palpitations to subside. With every step forward, the large patch of light behind him grew narrower and smaller, as if symbolizing his distance from the outside world.

The sound of his boots grew louder. A foul stench, disgusting enough to make his gentle smile crumple and distort in an instant, filled the air. Were they burning corpses? In the chilling environment, Keyal moved forward, relying on the cave wall and his torch.

Wait, do goblins even have the intelligence to burn corpses? Keyal recalled his time in TBG Heroes. As far as he knew, goblins were just trash mobs that appeared briefly in the tutorial quests. They had no intelligence; their looting was purely instinctive. The children and women they kidnapped from villages were merely food or outlets for their sexual urges. Aside from the Lords or Shamans, the goblins Keyal knew were basically dim-witted, short-statured savages.

Or at least, they were supposed to be.

“…Are you for real?”

Before he witnessed the scene with his own eyes, he couldn’t believe these were the actions of the goblins he knew. It was so different from the image in his head.

“…..”

Keyal blinked. What he saw were goblins building fires like primitive men, goblins sharpening spears, shields, and bone knives, and finally, goblins feeding black wolves. They clearly possessed intelligence and were acting in a pack, like a primitive human tribe.

Keyal blinked again. To him, goblins were supposed to be monsters steeped in madness, devoid of any sophisticated intelligence. Yet, they were acting like humans. They were mimicking the humans of the distant past.

Keyal, who had intended to slaughter them all, stood there with his mouth agape, frozen by the absurd sight. But then, he saw the goblins mimicking humanity—and…

“Haaah… save me… no… no… no…!”

He saw the sight that proved beyond any doubt why they were called monsters, why they were called demons, and why they were called evil. They were devouring children, tearing them limb from limb.

“Kerr-heuk!!”

“Ahhh… ahh…!!”

They were forcibly violating women who begged and wailed for them to stop.

‘Man… I guess a monster is a monster after all.’

Sssss—

At that moment, a black mist began to seep from Keyal’s palms. A black fog, similar to his hair color, began to spread powerful demonic energy like particles into the air. The mist moved slowly toward the monsters that were preying on the children and women.

‘First of all,’

“Ke-eu-heuk…?”

The goblins felt the demonic energy approaching. They belatedly discovered Keyal watching them from beyond the entrance. But it was too late. By the time they spotted him, the demonic energy had already blanketed the area.

As his kin began to collapse one by one after inhaling the mist without knowing why, Keyal watched them with a lingering smile. At some point, his dark brown pupils began to glow with a crimson light.

‘I just have to kill them all, right?’

By the time the goblins realized that it was slowly approaching them through the fog, it was already far too late.