The feeling of controlling a weapon— truly controlling it—was more magical than Grey would have ever thought.
Honestly, he didn’t really understand what was happening to him, but what he did know was that every time he made a move, the war drums made his blood boil. It was like he had his own personal background hype music bouncing around in his skull, and he couldn’t have been more here for it.
He went from accidentally bopping goblins in the head with a failed attempt at a knife throw to splitting their skulls with a toss of an axe from a dozen meters away.
The difference was like night and day, and it was only after he finished killing the last of the encampment goblins that he took a pause.
Should he really be happy about this?
Something or someone had made a huge change to his body, and he wasn’t even aware of how or why it happened.
If he had to guess, he would have thought that it was related to the Last Goblin Swordsman. But he had died after that battle. Shouldn’t everything have reset?
’If I can bring back my memories, why can’t I bring back other things? Or...’
The realization hit Grey, and he could practically feel his neurons firing.
Obviously, he couldn’t bring back physical items. But his memories were just firing sequences of his neurons, were they not? Grey wasn’t exactly a scientist, but even he knew that.
Maybe so long as it was a change to his neural network, he would be able to keep it no matter how many times he died. And what could this sudden fighting prowess be other than a change to that?
He didn’t feel like he had grown substantially stronger physically. Though the sword felt lighter in his hand, it was more like he knew how to better fire certain muscles to stabilize it. The reason all of these battles were so much easier was purely because his reflexes and skill with weapons had taken a massive leap forward.
There was no one here to confirm or deny Grey’s suspicions, so he began his search instead.
Carefully, he went around all the crates. When he didn’t find anything on the floor or in the tents, he paused.
’The crates, then.’
Grey nodded to himself and then pulled an axe out of the head of one of the female goblins. Then, using its blade like a lever, he began to pry the crates open one by one.
He mostly found piles of scrap metal and what looked like dysfunctional warheads. None of these things still worked—otherwise, when Grey blew up the area before, he would have been blown to smithereens as well.
There were enough dead explosives here that, had they been active, they could have probably blown a bite out of a mountain. The goblins must have been scavenging for parts and built the smoke bombs and pipe bombs they did have from these materials.
Unfortunately, Grey was no engineer or explosive tech. These materials were useless to him as well.
He had been taking a gap year before college when all this happened. His grandfather wanted him to just take over the range, believing college was a useless waste. But Grey kind of wanted to experience college life even if it meant having a useless degree.
Either way, the best he could do was fix up old rundown trucks and tractors. Though, he had always been quite good at that.
Still, an engine was one thing. This was above his pay grade.
’Still nothing. Before I start really digging into the weeds maybe I should just check their bodies? I’m an idiot, that’s probably the first thing I should have checked.’
Grey was still just speculating on the existence of the item he was looking for. For all he knew, it didn’t exist at all. In fact, he might have already come across it and just didn’t recognize it as something special.
In that case, Grey knew that he would have to just cut his losses if things didn’t go the way he hoped. If he didn’t find anything obvious, there was no point in continuing to search because, odds were, if it was an obscure item he couldn’t even recognize as special, he wouldn’t be able to make any use of it anyway.
’Alright. I’ll check the corpses, and if I don’t find anything, I’ll go fight the boss. When it dies, the timer for this Tutorial Zone should be up. Then I can go back and use the gel to finally see what’s going on in the Safe Zone.’
Though Grey didn’t want to get burned again, at this point what other choice did he have?
’Nothing here... Nope, nothing here either.’
Grey hardly flinched as he sifted through the corpses. There wasn’t much on them to see anyway. The male goblins had only worn loose skirts, and the women wore much the same. They didn’t even cover their chests.
It was because of this that Grey hadn’t thought to even check them. What was there to check?
’Hm?’
Grey’s eyes narrowed as he stopped over the corpse of a child goblin. Even compared to the others, it was much smaller, maybe only three feet tall at most, give or take a few inches. But it wasn’t just because of its size Grey had assumed it was a child. Its tongue had far fewer pockmarks than its fellow goblins, and its features were smoother.
The hallmarks of youth. The child goblin wasn’t nearly as worn by age.
Grey had still not hesitated to split its chest in two with an axe, though. He didn’t know where these goblins were spawned from, or if they had been ripped from their world just like he had. But what he did know was that it was either him or them.
And he would always pick himself.
The question he was asking himself right now, though, wasn’t about morality. It was a question of why a little goblin like this one had such a shiny ring on its finger.
Grey squatted down and touched it.
A familiar jolt ran right through his body and down his spine.