The morning sun of Kuoh Town hadn't risen yet. I had devoured a quick breakfast in my newly renovated kitchen, grabbed a few bottles of water from the fridge, and walked straight through the heavy oak door of my closet.
The transition from the polluted, humid summer air of Japan to the sub-dimensional space was always weird, but in the best way possible.
I stepped past the Sage's glowing green barrier and immediately took a deep, grounding breath. The air here was entirely different. It wasn't just clean; it felt rich, in way that made my lungs expand and my blood race with energy. It smelled like pine, crushed mint, and fresh rain. Everything in this world was simply more. The greens of the massive, towering leaves were deeper and more vibrant, the dirt was darker, and the sky above the thick tree branches and leaves was a piercing, flawless blue.
"It's gorgeous," I muttered, my boots crunching softly against the forest floor. "If you ignore the fact that literally everything here wants to rip my throat out, it's basically a vacation resort."
I wasn't exaggerating. The sheer density of monsters in this forest was staggering. I had been walking for barely an hour, pushing deeper into the uncharted territory past the clearing where I killed the Calamity Ursa, and I had already been ambushed four separate times.
First, it was a pack of giant, heavily armored boars that charged me from the underbrush. I didn't even draw my sword I just focused on the Aerodynamic skill I got last night. I stepped up into the empty space, feeling the compressed air form perfectly beneath my soles, and casually walked over their heads as they crashed wildly into a cluster of massive oak trees. A few well-placed kicks and they had burst into black smog.
Then came the giant spiders. They dropped from the trees, spinning webs as thick as steel cables. I let the Lightning Field skill rip through my body, sending a blinding, violet web of purple electricity across my skin. The moment their webs touched me, the current traveled up the threads, frying the massive arachnids instantly.
"It really is strange," I monologued to myself, walking comfortably through the dense foliage, my hands resting lazily in the pockets of my dark hoodie. "To think my sacred gear could create this place, It's a literal fantasy wonderland. But there's no ecosystem. No natural prey, no peaceful animals. It's just an endless swarm of bloodthirsty freaks waiting in the bushes."
I kicked a stone, watching it completely shatter against a tree trunk from my passive strength.
"Maybe this whole dimension is just a hunting ground for me," I mused, scanning the shadows between the trees. "A controlled environment designed solely to farm experience and loot drops. If that's true, then there shouldn't be anything here but mindless beasts."
Rustle.
The sound was faint, barely registering over the sounds of the forest, but my senses picked it up instantly. It wasn't the heavy, aggressive thud of a monster preparing to charge. It was erratic. Nervous. It was the sound of something shaking too close for comfort.
I stopped walking, turning my head slightly toward a thick bunch of bushes to my right.
"I can hear you," I said calmly, my voice carrying clearly through the quiet woods. "You can step out, or I can walk over there and drag you out. Your call."
There was a tense, agonizing silence. Then, slowly, the bushes parted.
I blinked, genuinely surprised. I was expecting another wave of nightmare-inducing mutants, maybe a reptilian berserker or a giant insect. Instead, what stepped out of the foliage was... pathetic.
They were short, barely reaching my waist. Their skin was a dull, sickly shade of green, and their bodies were incredibly frail, practically skin and bone. They wore ragged, torn shorts and shirts that looked like they had been salvaged from centuries-old trash heaps. They held beat-up, rusted weapons—chipped daggers and wooden clubs that looked like they would snap upon impact.
Goblins.
But as I looked closer, my brow furrowed in confusion. These weren't the wild, mindless, rabid monsters of typical dark fantasy lore or as savage and ugly as the ones from goblin slayer. Their eyes weren't wild and empty, in fact they were sentient. They were filled with fear. They were literally shaking in their boots, huddling together as if my mere presence was a physical weight pressing down on them.
The one standing at the very front of the small group looked the most terrified of all. He was slightly taller than the rest, clutching a battered wooden shield and a rusted shortsword. Around his forehead was a dirty, faded red bandana. He was shaking so hard his teeth were audibly chattering.
He opened his mouth, staring up at me with wide, fearful eyes, and spoke.
"Gurak! Reka tona... human, moka si loka... business... in the forest."
I frowned, tilting my head. It sounded like complete, guttural gibberish, an ugly string of harsh consonants and rolling vowels. But somewhere beneath the noise, my brain felt a strange, jarring pull, as if the words were trying to force their meaning into my consciousness.
PING!
[Skill:Language Comprehension]
The golden system prompt flashed briefly in my vision and vanished. The moment it did, the jarring, guttural noises from the goblin's mouth instantly smoothed out, translating perfectly in real-time within my mind.
"—forgive me, but do you have some sort of business in the forest?" the red-bandana goblin finished shakily, bowing his head in submission.
I stared at him for a long, quiet second. This was it. This was the very first actual conversation I was having since arriving in this new world. I wasn't just talking to myself or interacting with a glowing blue menu screen. I was speaking to an inhabitant of this sub-dimension.
"Are you... talking to me?" I asked, my deep voice echoing slightly.
The goblin nodded shakily, his grip on his rusted sword tightening as if he expected me to strike him down for simply making eye contact.
I relaxed my posture, pulling my hands out of my pockets to show I wasn't holding a weapon. "Do you need something? You guys look like a stiff breeze would knock you over."
The red-bandana goblin swallowed hard, taking a tiny, hesitant step forward. "W-We... our village sensed a incredibly powerful monster roaming around this area. The aura was suffocating. We... we decided to come out here and investigate it."
My eyes widened. A sudden, massive surge of excitement shot through my veins.
"A powerful monster?!" I jumped up, a massive grin spreading across my face. I looked past the goblins, scanning the dark treeline eagerly. "Where is it? Did you find it? What level is it?! Tell me it's over level five hundred!"
The goblins recoiled, looking at me as if I had completely lost my mind. The leader with the red bandana gave me a confused, terrified look.
"S-Surely you jest," the goblin stuttered, his voice cracking. "You can't fool us, sir. Even if you appear to be a human..."
I paused, freezing mid-scan. The absolute silence of the forest suddenly felt very heavy. I slowly turned my head back to the shaking, pathetic creatures in front of me. I pointed a finger directly at my own chest.
"Wait..." I breathed, the realization hitting me like a freight train. "You mean ME!!!!"
The sheer, unfiltered shock of the revelation bypassed my common sense and went straight to my vocal cords. The scream was so powerful that it created a literall shockwave of sound.
BOOM!
The blast erupted from my mouth. The sheer force of it tore through the clearing, ripping the leaves off the surrounding trees and kicking up a massive cloud of dirt. The group of goblins shrieked as they were physically lifted off their feet and thrown backward into the bushes, tumbling over each other in a chaotic pile of green limbs and rusted weapons.
PING!
[Skill Acquired: Thought Wave ]
Description: Allows the user to transmute intense thoughts and emotions into powerful, concussive sound waves expelled from the mouth.
"Oh, crap!" I yelled, immediately rushing over to the bushes. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do that! Are you guys alive?!"
The goblins groaned, slowly peeling themselves off the dirt. The leader with the red bandana adjusted his crooked shield, looking at me with an expression of absolute, undeniable awe and sheer terror.
"S-Such terrifying power..." he whimpered, falling to his knees. "P-Please, great one! Spare us!"
"I'm not going to kill you," I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose, deeply embarrassed by the entire situation. "Just... get up. Why did you even approach me if you thought I was a terrifying monster?"
The goblin stayed on his knees, his hands trembling. "W-We... we have a favor to ask of the strong one. Please... would you accompany us to our village?"
I looked down at his desperate, pleading eyes. I had nothing but free time, and frankly, finding a settlement of sentient creatures in this endless forest was exactly the kind of progression I was looking for.
"Lead the way," I said gently.
The walk was tense, but short. The goblins scurried ahead of me, constantly glancing over their shoulders as if they expected me to devour them at any moment.
Eventually, the thick trees gave way to a massive, circular clearing. The moment I stepped into it, my heart sank. Calling it a 'village' was the greatest overstatement of the century. It was a refugee camp. Dozens of crude, ragged tents made from patched monster hides and rotting wood filled the area. The goblins walking around were in even worse shape than the scouting party—emaciated, covered in dirt, their eyes hollow and devoid of hope.
The scouting party led me to the largest tent in the center of the camp. Standing outside was a goblin who looked like he had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.
He was incredibly small, fragile, and frail, leaning heavily on a gnarled wooden cane. His skin was wrinkled and pale green, and his eyes were milky with age. He wore a simple, tattered robe that hung off his skeletal frame.
"Village Chief," the red-bandana goblin announced nervously, bowing low. "I have brought the strong one."
The frail old chief looked up at me, his milky eyes widening slightly as he took in my towering, athletic frame. He bowed his head deeply. "Welcome, strong human. We are humbled by your presence. Please, forgive our meager surroundings." He then welcomed me inside the tent, allowing me to sit on the one cushion in the tent while they stayed infront of me standing.
"Please call me Ard, and it's fine" I said, crossing my arms. "Your scouts said you had a favor to ask. What's going on here?"
The chief let out a long, ragged, rattling sigh. "We have been having terrible problems with some nearby monsters. They are called Direwolves. They recently migrated to our territory and began attacking us from the east. Many... many of our brethren have lost their lives against their fangs."
"Direwolves," I repeated, committing the name to memory. "How strong are they?"
"To us, they are absolute nightmares," the chief wheezed, his grip on his cane tightening. "It is said that they are vastly stronger than any of our kind. It takes ten of our best warriors to kill even a single Direwolf. And even then, casualties are guaranteed. We had hope, once. There was a Named Warrior among us that served as the main defender of our village. He..."
I froze.
The blood in my veins turned to absolute ice. My heart skipped a beat, and my brain suddenly connected the dots instantly.
Green, frail goblins. Rusted weapons. A leader wearing a red bandana. A frail, ancient village chief. Direwolves attacking from the east. A named warrior.
"Wait," I snapped, cutting the old chief off mid-sentence. My voice was sharper than I intended, laced with sudden, undeniable panic. "What do you mean by 'Named Warrior'?"
The chief blinked, taken aback by my sudden intensity. "Exactly as it sounds, great one. That specific goblin was the only one amongst us blessed with a name by a wandering superior being. Because of that name, he evolved. He was far stronger than the rest of us."
No.
No, no, no, no.
The realization slammed into me with the force of a falling meteor. I stumbled back half a step, my eyes darting frantically between the red-bandana goblin and the frail chief.
This isn't just a random sub-dimension. This isn't just the Sage's personal hunting ground.
These are the goblins from 'That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime'!!!!
My mind went into an absolute, violent downward spiral. Highschool DxD was dangerous, sure, but the power scaling in the TenSura universe was completely unhinged. This was a world of True Dragons that could destroy continents by existing, Demon Lords that could bend reality, and primordial entities of absolute destruction. If this door in my closet connected to the Great Forest of Jura, then the "Sage" who built my cabin wasn't just some random magician.
Was the system just pulling things from different anime? Or was this an actual, physical crossover?
I felt a cold sweat break out on the back of my neck. I was Level 105. I had over two thousand in my stats. I thought I was untouchable. But if Veldora the Storm Dragon was sealed in a cave nearby, or if Milim Nava decided to drop out of the sky, my stats would look like an absolute joke.
I was so deeply buried in my own terrifying spiral that I didn't immediately notice the movement in front of me.
Thump.
I snapped back to reality, looking down.
The fragile village chief and the goblin with the red bandana had dropped to the dirt. They were pressing their foreheads firmly against the ground in a perfect, desperate dogeza.
"Please!" the chief begged, his voice cracking with sheer desperation, breaking through my internal panic. "We have nowhere else to turn! All together, there are about one hundred Direwolves in the pack. They will wipe us out completely!"
I stared at them, the heavy, suffocating reality of the situation grounding me. Whatever this world was, whoever's universe I had stumbled into, it didn't change what was directly in front of me.
"One hundred," I muttered, doing the math. If it took ten goblins to kill one wolf, that meant they needed a thousand warriors. I looked around the pathetic, starving camp. "How many people do you have left?"
The chief kept his head pinned to the dirt. "Including the women... we have about sixty who can still fight."
I let out a long, heavy sigh, dragging a hand down my face. Sixty starved, terrified goblins against a hundred giant, vicious wolves. It was a complete massacre waiting to happen. I looked at the shaking figures of the two goblins at my feet.
"And the warrior?" I asked softly. "The named one you mentioned?"
The village chief let out a choked, wet sob. He didn't lift his head, but his thin shoulders shook violently. "He... he gave his life. He knew the odds were entirely against him, but he fought the pack leader so that he could bring back this information to us. He..." The chief's voice broke completely. "He was my son. And the brother of the one beside me."
The red-bandana goblin beside the chief let out a loud, heart-wrenching cry, his hands gripping the dirt as tears streamed down his green face.
A sharp pang of intense guilt hit my chest. "I'm sorry," I said quietly. "I shouldn't have brought it up."
I stared at the crying goblins, a heavy conflict warring in my mind.
I wanted to help them. I really did. I had the power to wipe out a hundred direwolves in my sleep. But a dark, ugly voice in the back of my head—the voice forged by years of abuse and neglect in Kuoh Town—screamed at me to be careful.
My parents in this new life had smiled at me, patted my head, and then dumped a massive, crushing debt onto my shoulders before vanishing into the night. They had taken complete advantage of my kindness. I had promised myself, the night I found the system, that I would never, ever allow anyone to use me again. I was not going to be a tool. I was not going to be a naive, bleeding-heart hero who worked for free just because someone cried in front of me.
I set my jaw, forcing the guilt down. I had to do this. I needed to establish boundaries.
"I can help you," I said, my voice dropping to a serious, commanding tone.
The chief and the bandana goblin snapped their heads up, their tear-filled eyes wide with sudden, fragile hope.
"But," I continued, crossing my arms, making myself look as imposing as possible. "I don't work for free. What's in it for me? If I step up, if I protect you and fight this army for you... what's in it for me? Is there anything you can offer as compensation?"
The village chief hesitated. The silence stretched, and I felt a wave of self-loathing wash over me. Asking starving, dying refugees for payment felt incredibly scummy.
But then, the chief's eyes hardened with absolute resolve.
"We have no gold," the chief stated, his voice surprisingly steady for a man so frail. "We have no treasures, and our food is scarce. But we can offer our absolute, undying loyalty."
He bowed his head back to the dirt, pressing his forehead into the earth with intense reverence.
"Please, strong one. If you protect our village, if you save our families from this slaughter, then every single one of us will offer up our undying loyalty to you. We will serve you for the rest of our days!"
The goblin with the red bandana slammed his head down next to the chief. "We promise! We will lay down our lives for you!"
Before I could even process the weight of what they were offering—an entire village swearing fealty to me—a sound tore through the forest that froze the blood in my veins.
AWOOOOOOOOOOO!
It was a loud, massive, bone-chilling howl that echoed from the eastern treeline, followed immediately by dozens of answering howls.
The entire goblin camp erupted into absolute, blind panic.
"What should we do!?" a goblin shrieked from outside the tent.
"They're coming!! The wolves are here!!" another screamed, the sound of scrambling feet and crying children filling the air.
The red-bandana goblin and the chief shot up in sheer terror, looking wildly toward the east. The fear in their eyes was absolute. They thought this was the end.
I closed my eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. The panic, the fear, the hesitation—I let it all wash away. I opened my [Item Box].
I reached my right hand into the glowing spatial vortex and gripped the cool, familiar silver hilt. I pulled the Omnisword out, the flawless blade catching the sunlight and gleaming with deadly, undeniable promise.
I stepped past the trembling chief, walking out of the tent and into the center of the chaotic, screaming village. I raised my voice, channeling just a fraction of my Thought Wave skill to ensure every single goblin heard me perfectly.
"Everyone, calm down!" I shouted, my voice cutting through the panic like thunder. "There is nothing to fear! Because I will defeat them!"
The frantic running stopped. The crying ceased. Dozens of wide, terrified green eyes turned to look at me, staring at the towering human holding a silver sword that radiated absolute power.
The fragile village chief hobbled out of the tent, leaning heavily on his cane. He looked up at my broad back, his voice shaking with a fragile, desperate sense of hope.
"So... you?"
I didn't look back. I just turned my head slightly, giving the old man a confident, fearless smile.
"Yes!" I declared, the adrenaline beginning to sing in my veins. "I will protect you all!"
There was a moment of absolute silence. And then, as if an unseen weight had finally been lifted from their shoulders, the village chief dropped to his knees. The red-bandana goblin followed. And then, like a domino effect, every single goblin in the clearing fell to the ground, pressing their heads firmly against the dirt in absolute, unified submission.
"Thank you so much, Lord Ard," the chief said, his voice trembling with overwhelming gratitude, ringing out clearly over the hushed camp. "We are eternally grateful to you, and from today forward... we are your loyal servants!"