Goblin Slayer 01-12 -

She crumpled. The goblin’s knife cut air. In the next heartbeat, his blade was through the creature’s throat.

The girl cried. Priestess screamed at him. “You could have hurt her! You could have killed her!”

She thought of her first party. The swordsman’s broken blade. The martial artist’s empty hands. The scout’s quick smile, gone forever. She thought of the girl with the bruised knee, alive. She thought of the farms, the mines, the villages—places where children still slept in beds because someone had walked into the dark.

The Dwarf Shaman, gruff and bearded, added: “Aye. But even a weapon can break.” Goblin Slayer 01-12

She laughed. It came out watery and strange. “Yes,” she said. “They are.” That night, around a campfire, he took off his helmet.

“I know.”

Instead, a can of burning oil arced over her head. She crumpled

Priestess collapsed against a pillar, her heart a wild drum. Goblin Slayer stood over the champion’s corpse, breathing hard. He looked at his own hands—red to the wrists—then at her.

“Why here?” she asked, standing in the doorway, unwilling to step inside.

The goblins shrieked. The flames painted the cave in frantic, dancing shadows. And through the smoke walked a shape she could not name—not a knight, not a savage, but something in between. A scuffed helmet with a single angry slit. scratched leather and dented mail. A round shield marked with a crude sword. The girl cried

He did not take off his helmet to eat. He did not drink alcohol. He did not speak of his past, but the High Elf Archer—who had joined them after an argument about whether goblins could be reasoned with (they could not)—once found him staring at a ruined farmhouse. His gauntlets had trembled.

She wanted to say something brave. Instead, she started crying. Not from fear. From a sudden, terrible understanding: he had never expected anyone to protect him. He had fought alone for so long that the idea of a hand reaching for him, not past him, was foreign as a song in a dead language.

He caught her staring. He did not look away.