“Ah—? Should've looked up...” Yeung grimaced.

He turned around , only to face more goblins popping up from the way he came.

“Where'd the hell did these guys come from!?”

How do you deal with such a situation? Yeung hastily looked around for a path of retreat, only to sigh at the fact that he was on a bridge— giving him only three options.

Fight the goblins in front of him and triumph, or fight the goblins behind him and win?

Yeung decided on the more logical course of action.

“Let's jump down the ravine.”

He went over to the railings of the bridge and looked down— A three hundred meter drop.

“...Damn— it's the dry season...” He clicked his tongue.

The water below was shallow. A few feet deep, revealing jagged rocks that would be the opposite of perfect for cushioning his fall.

“GUUAAAAK!!!”
“GUAAAK!!!”
“GUAAAAAAAAK”

“Guaaak? Ha ha...?”
The charming voices of cute children getting closer to him, he failed to join in the group in so he looked for another alternative.

“A fourth option!!!”

Yeung ran to the turned over truck's cargo doors and pried the locks open with the crowbar.

“There's nothing inside, thank goodness.”
He climbed inside and postured himself for an upcoming battle.

“First rule. Fighting against a larger number of enemies—”

“GUAAAK!!!”

“—Control the terrain!!!”

A questionable statement that Yeung cried out as he swung the crowbar at a goblin's head, smacking the goblin against the cargo hold's wall.

“One.”

“GUAAAAAAAAK!!!”
Another goblin arrived and he repeated the action.
“Two.”

“Three.”
“Four.”

With every goblin entering the cargo hold, Yeung took a step back.

“T-Twenty-one... huff... huff...”

The hold was filling up with bodies.

Yeung started having a hard time breathing, not because he was tired but because of the smell. The thick smell of iron was filling up the enclosed space.

With every intake of air, he exhaled a soft grumble from his throat.

“T...Thirt... No more?”

One last swing— he could no longer hear any screeching. With the cargo area full of ugly children and their stink, he was eager to get out; Just as he was to step outside, however, he felt the platform on his feet vibrate.

“Something's coming.”

Something heavy.

It had arrived on the bridge, making everything tremble with each step.

“Should I go out? Or should I stay in here?”

Yeung deliberated.

He'd rather fight the thing outside than stay in here with the pile of corpses. The smell was already too much for him to handle. He decided to go out but it was too late, the cargo hold started shaking from being rocked.

“Wah—He's not gonna—!?”

Yeung didn't manage to finish his sentence as the opponent outside pushed on the hold's outer walls— unhinging it from the truck and sending it rolling along the bridge.

The cargo hold became like a carnival ride installed without any safety precautions. Inside, a little over thirty customers were taken along for the ride.

When the cargo hold finally stopped— Yeung, balled up in a fetal position, slowly stood up and stumbled out of the hold. His clothes, his bag, his whole appearance was dyed in dark red.

A sight to behold.

Yeung, disoriented, glared at the ride operator. A rather large goblin(?) having a huge build, still wearing loincloths still ugly, and equipped with a leather shoulder guard on one side.

“GUUHAK?”

“Goblin?” Yeung growled, his voice sounding a bit fiercer than usual as it resonated loudly from his chest and blew past the Goblin's body.

The goblin was taken aback for a few seconds before becoming enraged. It felt intimidated. It wondered why, when Yeung was just another puny creature like the others that it had been slaughtering the past few days.

“GUK!?” It wanted to charge at him but hesitated as it felt genuine threat.

Visible to its eyes was a thin string of cyan from inside the cargo hold, leading up to a thick mist outlining Yeung's figure.

With the experience points from the bodies of the goblins inside the hold wrapped around Yeung, half of him felt like a piece of meat inside a sealed container with marinade— shaken around and covered evenly.

The other half—

“AAAAAAAH!!!"

The goblin shuddered at Yeung's roar and suddenly found him in front of itself. It reflexively swung its arm— Yeung evading it easily by leaning to the right and returning a heavy sweep of his right leg— also evaded by the goblin by a partial lean backward.

Although, the kick wasn't meant to hit in the first place, Yeung used the momentum to spin around counter-clockwise twice before delivering the crowbar's claw end to the goblin's smug face and ripping half of it away.

“GUHUAAAAAAK!!!!”

The large goblin drew back, stumbling on its own feet before landing hard on the ground. It wailed and twitched furiously before almost half a minute later, a cyan glow emerged from its body.

It died.

Throughout the fight, Yeung's eyes were glazed and his consciousness was taking a backseat, watching his body move in the third person. Standing atop the goblin's corpse, he hovered his hand through the cyan mist and spoke with the same fierce tone of voice he did earlier,

“...Where is this? Why am I—?”

His eyes regained clarity right after speaking.

"Ah—?" Yeung stared at his hands.

Bloody red.

A large question mark was on his mind as he shifted his attention to the large goblin at his feet.

Half-ugly, barely clothed, and dead.

Yeung's nose twitched as it began to activate the sense of smell in his brain. After processing the information, he quickly ran to the edge of the bridge and showered the shallow river below with a colorful rainbow.

“W-What the hell—?”

The sounds he made as he vomited bile were some he had only ever heard others make in the bathroom after a night of glorious drinking. Never did he drink enough to get alcohol poisoning.

“Guhaaaak!” But today he learned how it felt to want to puke everything out.

And after a session of release, Yeung left the bridge.

“Urgh... I need a bath and some food.”

He felt weakness in his limbs and rumbling in his empty stomach as he trudged along the road.

Yesterday night, he had already eaten the last of the rations he brought along for his journey. This morning was supposed to be breakfast at a fast-food restaurant— piping hot coffee and pancakes. He didn't expect to be tossed around like fried chicken being coated in breading by a goblin.

“After defeating the boss monster in a game, you would be provided a moment of respite or a chest containing prizes,” Yeung grumbled.

He walked a few hundred meters without hearing a single goblin cry. And after reaching an intersection in the road, his expression akin to one of the walking dead suddenly turned into one of an energetic networking agent.

He no longer had to worry. His reward came in a different form.

A streak of orange, green, and red, along with the numbers eleven and seven— The doors were held together by lock-and-chain but nothing could stop Yeung from entering through the broken glass walls.

He slowly made his way and made a gesture of peeking through imaginary glass windows. Seeing that virtually nothing inside was touched as it seemed the goblins were too stupid to know that everything inside was food, Yeung smiled before awkwardly making a pun.

“How convenient. Huhuhu.”