「……Is that all?」

「No, doesn’t seem like it.」

Rei replied to Elena, who muttered as she looked at the corpses of the 10 Goblin bandits in front of them.

In his hands, he held the Death Scythe, the blade of death that had sliced the bodies, arms, legs, and heads of the Goblin bandits.

As he held it, Rei’s gaze was directed towards one of the bushes growing near the oasis.

In desert environments, greenery like that was incredibly rare and he sensed something lying just beyond the bushes.

「Gurururu~」

Set seemed to have the same feeling. While staying alert, he gave a sharp look towards the bushes with his normally round eyes.

「Huh? There certainly are signs of something. Then……is it the work of these fellows?」

Elena readied her sword whip as she stared at the bushes.

The other party must have realised that Rei, Elena, and Set were aware of their existence and were on guard.

However, they didn’t make any moves to reveal themselves and just waited there silently without moving.

For several minutes, this strange equilibrium remained. Eventually, Rei got impatient with the lack of action and spoke out.

「……Hey.」

「Yes?」

「There’s no point continuing on like this, should we attack from here?」

「……Is that the best option right now?」

Since they had come to this floor to kill the abnormal species of Spear Frog, they couldn’t just silently confront their enemy here. Because of that, as Rei said, it was better attack first, even if the other party was hiding behind the bushes. As Elena was about to voice her agreement.

「-!? Tch-!」

From the back of the bushes, Elena sensed something rushing towards them, tearing through air, and swung her sword whip at it.

With Elena’s skill, her sword whip flew out faster than the object flying towards them, leaving the feeling of slashing something in her hands.

She turned to Rei, who was next to her. Rei himself had also slashed out at something with his Death Scythe while Set swiped at something with his sharp claws, crushing it.

「Is this……dirt? No, it’s sand?」

「Seems like it. It’s not just dirt or sand though. Look.」

Prompted by Rei, Elena turned to look at the ground, where a lump of sand that formed a snake like head was rolling around in a state of collapse.

「A snake made of sand? A Sandsnake? No, that’s not it.」

「Yeah. Even if it’s called a Sandsnake, it probably won’t turn into sand the moment it’s killed. It was probably formed by magic.」

Rei swung the Death Scythe towards the bushes as he replied to Elena.

A slash flew out from the blade, like many before it.

「Gyogyogyagyagagega!」

A more complex voice compared to the previous Goblin bandits was heard as sand was lifted up to form a wall……seeing that, Rei muttered with a smile.

「Naive.」

Slash-!

The flying slash cut through the wall that appeared in front of it with barely any resistance, striking the figure behind it while maintaining its power.

A few seconds after the flying slash had been shot out. After that, nothing further happened. The only difference was a rusty smell that came from behind the sheared sand wall.

「Looks like you did it.」

「Yeah. Set, take a look.」

「Guru~!」

Giving a brief cry at Rei’s words, Set jumped up and flew……or rather, leapt to the other side of the bushes and sand wall. In less than 10 seconds, he came back to Rei.

He held the corpse of a Goblin that had been sliced in half at the chest.

Walking over to Rei and Elena, Set threw the corpse he was holding in his mouth to the ground, as if he had eaten something unpleasant.

Goblin flesh was actually edible, but it didn’t taste very good. It tasted like something you wouldn’t eat unless you were starving, so Set’s attitude was to be expected.

「I’m sorry. Here, eat this to cleanse your palate.」

He took out several pieces of dried meat from the Misty Ring and gave them to Set, who left with a happy cry. Rei and Elena looked at the monster lying on the ground again.

In terms of size, it was a size larger than ordinary Goblins. It’s body was sand coloured just like the Goblin bandits they had killed earlier. The biggest difference was the cane it held in its right hand.

That was proof that the sand snakes and sand wall had been created by the Goblin using magic.

「Hmm, since Goblin Mages are a higher ranking Goblin species, I guess it’s not that strange for there to be a Goblin that can use magic among the Goblin bandits.」

「If Goblins have Goblin Mages, then this would make it a Goblin Bandit Mage. ……Sorry, that’s a bit off topic.」

Rei replied to Elena as he lifted up the cane used by the Goblin Bandit Mage.

There was some sort of gem that was attached to a branch that seemed to have been taken from a tree like monster such as a Treant.

Rei tried using the cane to create a small flame in his hands, but the magic conductivity was so bad that it was incomparable to the Death Scythe. The magic could still be activated, there was a 10 to 12 factor of difference in the result compared to using the Death Scythe when using the same magic.

「This……is a magic casting device, but it’s not a very good magic item. Well, it will sell better than the swords the other Goblin bandits were carrying……it’s still not worth much though. It’s something that only beginners in magic would use.」

「It’s still a magic item though……aren’t you interested in it?」

Elena knew Rei was collecting magic items, but it didn’t seem like he was too interested as he casually stored the weapons and shields of the other Goblin bandits into the Misty Ring.

「I’m collecting magic items that can be used in actual combat. Well, there are ones like the Dagger of Flowing Water, which I can only use to produce water rather than wield in combat. ……Rather, instead of use in combat, it would be more accurate to say that I’m looking for magic items that would be useful when camping out for adventurer requests.」

「I see. ……By the way, what do you plan to do with the corpse? It might be an abnormal species considering Pleiades never mentioned it.」

「Yeah, that’s true. Let’s hide it for now. We’ll look it up in the guild or in a book and if it isn’t an abnormal species, we’ll sell the materials and excess magic stones to the guild. If it’s an abnormal species, then we don’t want to sell it here, it would be better to sell it at the guild. However, considering that there were so many of them, I think they are just ordinary monsters.」

「Guru~」

Set gave a cry in agreement with Rei as he piled up the Goblin corpses into a pile with his beak.

「Sorry about this.」

Stroking Set’s back while thanking him, Rei turned to look at Elena.

Elena nodded back at Rei’s silent question.

Seeing that, Rei took out his dismantling knife and cut open the chests of the Goblin bandits to remove their magic stones.

As for their organs, he didn’t know if they would sell, so he just left them for now.

Normally, internal organs were the most perishable materials, but Rei’s Misty Ring solved that problem, hence his decision.

「The leather armour……is mostly destroyed and can’t be used.」

Using the blade of his knife, Rei peeled off the leather armour from the bodies of the Goblin bandits.

「Given their size, even if we could sell it, it would only fit a small person or child. I don’t think there would be a demand for it. You don’t mind if I just throw them away, right?」

Elena asked as she removed the leather armour from a Goblin bandit.

「Let’s do that. Even though the item box has no capacity issues, it isn’t good to endlessly keep things we don’t plan to use. And, above all, it takes time to take things out.」

(That said, not all garbage is useless. For example, when I used that fire whirl.)

Thinking to himself, Rei gave a sigh, thinking that even stones would increase the power of a fire whirl more than leather armour.

「Mm? What’s wrong? Is it fine to throw away the leather armour?」

「……Hm? Oh, yeah, do that.」

Briefly replying to Elena’s question, Rei removed the leather armour off another Goblin as he thrust his knife into its exposed chest.

Feeling the sensation of tearing flesh as he cut with the knife, finding the heart, he used the tip of his knife to gouge out the magic stone.

As expected of Goblins, their magic stones were small. That said, they were still higher ranking species, so their magic stones were clearly still larger than ordinary Goblins.

After taking out the magic stones of all the Goblin bandits, he finally removed the magic stone from the Goblin Bandit Mage.

「Heh, as expected.」

The magic stone was about 1.5 times larger than the Goblin bandit magic stones.

By the time they had removed all the magic stones, about 30 minutes had passed.

This was just the time needed to remove magic stones and it would have taken them more than an hour if they had stripped other materials as well.

(Considering we’re here to hunt the Spear Frog, it was the right decision to only take out the magic stones for now.

Muttering to himself, he washed two Goblin bandit magic stones and the Goblin Bandit Mage’s magic stone, which he didn’t store into the Misty Ring, with water from the Dagger of Flowing Water.

「Should we do this first? ……Even if they are higher ranking Goblins, I can’t expect much since Goblins are Goblins after all. Set!」

Calling out, Rei threw a magic stone over to Set. Catching it in his beak, Set swallowed it.

「I knew it.」

There was no skill acquisition announcement in Rei’s mind.

As it was a Goblin’s magic stone, even Set and Elena seemed to have expected that. None of them looked particularly disappointed.

Rei absorbed a magic stone using the Death Scythe as well, but no skill announcement was heard even after slicing one apart.

Because he was already half expecting it, his gaze turned to the last magic stone, the one belonging to the Goblin Bandit Mage, without a change in his expression.

Unlike the earlier failed magic stone absorption, there was only one of this magic stone. Naturally, the question arose weather to give it to Set or the Death Scythe……

「Gururu~」

Set gave a cry as he rubbed his face against Rei.

It was clear what Set meant by that.

That is to say, Set was telling Rei not to worry about him and to use the magic stone himself.

「……Is that okay? If you absorb this magic stone, you would probably gain some magic skill.」

「Guru~!」

It’s fine! Set seemed to say with a cry.

Rei smiled at Set and gently stoked his head as Set rubbed against him.

「Well then, I’m sorry about this. I’ll do as you say.」

Holding the Goblin Bandit Mage’s magic stone in one hand, and lightly stroking Set’s head with the other, Rei took some distance before throwing the magic stone into the air as Elena and Set watched……

「Hah-!」

Swinging the Death Scythe, the huge blade slice through the magic stone.

However, there was no announcement message for skill acquisition in his mind……

(So it was no good after all, huh? Well, even though it’s a mage, it can’t be helped as it was still a Goblin.)

As he was thinking that, the next moment.

Thump!

It felt like something was flowing back from the Death Scythe, forcibly entering his mind.

「Ga……ah……?」

Fro the first time since coming to Elgin, he inadvertently dropped his Death Scythe and fell to the ground as if enduring something.

「Rei? Hey, what’s wrong? Rei!?」

「Gururururu!」

Elena and Set instinctively called out to Rei, who wasn’t behaving as usual. However, Rei didn’t seem to hear them as he stumbled on the ground.

And……

「GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH-!」

He gave a loud scream and, the next moment, lost consciousness as he fell to the ground.

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