Ch 25
Deciding that the best way to avoid issues was to veer off to the side, Matt did just that as he leapt up the edge of the riverbed and turned to face the monsters. He had two boars and three horned rabbits chasing him at this point. The boars were significantly slowed by the need to struggle up the steep bank, but the rabbits easily cleared it in a single leap. This gave Matt a few precious seconds to focus on dealing with the three horned rabbits before all five monsters would converge on him.
Thankfully, his stats had improved since his first encounter with such a rabbit, and he noticed that two of these seemed slower than the third. This allowed Matt to react swiftly to their initial wave of attacks. He deftly dodged the fastest rabbit, stabbing his knife into the second one as it lunged, and swung the makeshift sack filled with the silver goods he had looted into the third. This maneuver ended one of the monsters immediately and sent another rabbit sailing back into the riverbed. Matt quickly set the sack down and retrieved a horn he had taken from an earlier skirmish that day.
The distant sounds of shouting could be heard from the group he had encountered earlier, but Matt remained focused on the fight at hand as the first rabbit launched yet another attack. This time, Matt was prepared; he parried its horn with the one he wielded, and as the rabbit paused, he dropped the horn he was holding and seized the attacking rabbit’s horn. The rabbit struggled briefly, but its resistance was short-lived. With all his might, Matt smashed it into the ground, killing it in the process.
Just then, both boars came over the edge, charging at him with wild determination. Matt, thinking quickly, used the dead rabbit like a club on one, pivoting to use that same boar as a shield against the other. Unfortunately, all the blood that splattered was from the unfortunate rabbit, and as far as Matt could tell, all he had accomplished was to further enrage the boars. Yet, he grinned defiantly as they prepared to charge at him once more. With a swift dodge, he managed to send them tumbling into the riverbed once again.
Taking advantage of the brief respite, Matt surveyed the situation around him and quickly noticed the other humans taking action. By this time, they had already dispatched the third rabbit he had swatted away, and moments later, two arrows found their mark in one of the boars as it struggled to rise from its fall. This injury diverted the boar's attention to the other group, while the second boar turned and charged at Matt again. This time, Matt refused to let it close the distance. He dropped down with his knife clenched in both hands, using the momentum from his fall to deliver a deep vertical slash down the boar's side, slicing through its thick hide with all the force he could muster.
Following the vicious attack, there was no time to hesitate. As the enraged boar lunged with its tusks in an attempt to gore Matt, he was already prepared. In a flash, he shot out his hand and clamped onto the animal's ear, throwing it off balance just as he plunged his knife into its neck. Although the strike earned him a total of 11 experience points for the fight—despite the system's uneven splitting of rewards—Matt sighed in resignation. Yes, the others had contributed, yet he had single-handedly taken on three of the monsters while they handled the other two. Still, he kept his disappointment to himself, turning his full attention to the surrounding humans as he prepared to flee should they prove hostile.
"Drop the knife and raise your hands slowly," ordered a middle-aged man with short brown hair and a pronounced widow's peak.
"Not going to happen," Matt retorted. "Sorry if I'm not ready to trust you at first sight when you clearly aren’t willing to do the same."
"We didn’t come barreling in like madmen pursued by monsters," countered the man as he, along with several others behind him, shifted into an aggressive stance. "For all we know, you could be here scouting us out for an attack."
"What do I look like, a goblin?" scoffed Matt. "Honestly, I've had a long day. Let me give you a piece of advice—the goblins are about to get extremely restless. They have a massive underground settlement merely three or four hours' run away. I'm just trying to find familiar ground since I exited through a different entrance than I entered from when scouting them out."
"What kind of nonsense are you spouting?" replied another man in his mid-twenties with a pronounced gut yet otherwise in decent shape.
"Just let me do the talking," shot back the man with the widow's peak.
"Nah, I'll talk if I want to, because this is absurd either way. We finally see another person, and now you've got us ready to fight him because he single-handedly fought off a group of monsters that was chasing him? I think you were just biding your time until there was enough of them to make the fight worthwhile after watching how you handled them."
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"We don’t know that—" began the man with the widow's peak.
"Hey, if you’re going to argue about things I don’t care about, I'll be on my way," Matt snapped.
"Hold it right there!" shouted the first man. "We aren’t done with you yet."
"Yeah, well, I'm done with you. I don't have time to waste on people who haven't shown anything worth trusting so far. By the way, I’ll mention to my group that I ran into your group—maybe they’d prefer to combine forces or trim a bit of dead weight."
"Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?" responded the second man. "What makes you think we’d take on dead weight willingly?"
"Simple. They can at least teach you how to make cordage and a few other useful things I already taught them. So, adding them to your group isn’t a total loss, and my group can shrink down to six as we focus on leveling up."
"Six? I your group didn’t start with 12?" asked a mousy woman, her tone a mix of concern and fear.
"We did," Matt replied coolly. "It's just that the group split by gender, and I set off on my own from the very beginning."
“Wait, then why do you have a group?” asked the second man, his tone laced with incredulity. “Plus, if there are six others who have you with the women, are you trying to build a harem or something?”
Matt could feel a headache building as he glared at the second man, restraining himself from shouting. He had long ago stopped caring about what others thought of him, yet he still felt the familiar itch to correct or scold those who jumped to conclusions. Before he had a chance to speak, however, a petite woman with dark skin and flowing black hair—likely a bit over twenty—stepped forward to admonish the second man on his behalf.
“Honestly, just because you’re hopelessly fixated on making this situation into the plot of a terrible anime—where you’re the hero who gets all the ladies—doesn’t mean everyone else is as deluded,” she chided sharply.
“Oh, come on, I can’t be the only harem novel lover in this world,” the second man retorted with a smirk.
“No, but you’re probably the only one foolish enough to shout it to the heavens,” she replied coolly. “Sorry about him, but as bad as he is, he has no idea how to talk to women. In his own strange way, he is chivalrous.”
“Of course, if I aim to have multiple women fawning over me, I must treat each of them the best I can!” he declared, puffing out his chest.
“This is hell,” muttered Matt under his breath. “Alright, now I’m really leaving; this has officially crossed the line into absurdity. Although, if you really want a harem, you might soon find a swarm of goblin women in the area just itching to have their way with you.”
“Hold on,” called out the first man again, stepping in with a tone of genuine curiosity. “You keep mentioning goblins while omitting key details every time. What exactly is going on, and how do you even know about it?”
Matt shook his head and sighed, wondering if he could glean any useful information from this odd exchange. “Fine,” he said finally, “but that guy over there won’t be doing any talking, and you’ll have to share exactly how far up and down this riverbed you’ve traveled.”
“Is your group camping near it as well?” asked the mousy woman, surprising Matt with her directness. “I’m sorry, but if our groups were to join forces, it would be safer for all of us.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” replied Matt thoughtfully. “The other way is to say it would only create more chaos. Who knows what kinds of issues might arise between our groups? Had your apparent leader not tried to disarm me right away, I might have been more inclined to consider working together. But since I despise authority, I just have a feeling things won’t work out.”
“Every society needs authority,” the petite woman retorted briskly. “Even if it is a flawed one like—”
“You misunderstand,” interjected Matt. “I have no intention of living in or forming a society. I simply want to live on my own once I escape this world, where monsters attack relentlessly if you’re alone.”
“Hold on—what?” asked the first man, incredulous. “What do you mean they attack if you’re alone?”
“Have none of you ever wandered off on your own?” Matt countered pointedly.
“No.”
Matt held back a sigh as he elaborated on his understanding and experiences of being quickly found by monsters whenever he was alone. He then recounted the circumstances that led him to seek out the goblin settlement, after which he refused to continue until they shared what they knew about the riverbed. From their account, it seemed that Matt had gone the wrong way when he headed downstream, and he began to question just how off his sense of direction was.
This exchange of information was not without its challenges, as more than one objection arose from the other group. Nevertheless, Matt felt reasonably confident that the information was reliable before he provided a concise summary of what he had learned while scouting the goblin village. After about an hour since his arrival, he was ready to leave, but then the mousy woman spoke up again.
“Wouldn't it be best if at least four of us accompanied you so the monsters would leave you alone and they could return safely?” she suggested, her voice laced with concern.
“Not when all of you should really be moving to avoid the goblins,” Matt replied firmly. “I’m serious when I say they will likely be here by morning, and I have no idea how far I need to go to find my group.”
“Then I say we should all go with you,” proposed the first man, his tone earnest. “I understand you don’t like authority, but there is strength in numbers, and I think we shouldn’t rush to judge any of us.”
“You just want to take advantage of his strength after hearing his story,” retorted the petite woman. “Still, I agree with teaming up.”
Matt wished he could run the current situation by Eleanor, at the very least, but that wasn’t an option. In the end, he shook his head, looking up at the sky as he took a moment to decide how to handle the situation.
