Who Says I’m Not a Legitimate Adventurer?

“You say that again?!”

Lance grabbed the collar of the adventurer in front of him, his tone filled with disbelief.

Just hearing the first piece of information from this man had already shocked him.

The adventurer was startled by Lance’s sudden movement. His body swayed uncontrollably, nearly collapsing.

Through the dappled sunlight filtering through the canopy, Lance finally saw the man’s miserable condition clearly.

The man’s equipment was clearly far superior to Lance’s patchwork gear. On his chest had originally been a finely crafted chainmail reinforced with iron plating, but now it looked as though it had been smashed in by some massive blunt weapon, leaving a deep dent. Several iron rings had snapped and were embedded into his flesh.

Although the wound had been crudely bandaged, blood still seeped out, staining half his body red. With his rapid breathing, the smell of blood was overwhelming.

Shouted at by Lance, the man’s previously unfocused pupils regained a bit of clarity.

“You… you’re the senior who was with Damian this morning?”

The adventurer recognized him.“I’m saying something went wrong… everything’s in chaos.”

“The intel was wrong! That wasn’t an ordinary Goblin nest at all!”

At this point, the tall, sturdy man’s voice was filled with regret and self-blame.

“It was a trap! The moment we entered the valley, we were surrounded. Leading them was a mutated Goblin Warchief! That kind of monster actually understands tactics!”

“The team got scattered. The captain was injured… that foolish kid Damian, to help everyone draw away the pursuers, split off with the captain in two directions as bait and ran toward the stream!”

His emotions were not only from the failure of the mission, but also from the shame of being unable to rescue his teammates and only being able to flee in disgrace.

Lance did not interrupt him. Instead, he calmly asked a few more key questions about enemy numbers and composition.

After receiving fragmented answers, Lance released his grip on the man’s shoulder.

He clenched his fist tightly, his knuckles cracking from the force.

Then he raised his hand and pointed in the direction he had come from that morning.

“Follow this path. This area is temporarily safe—you should be able to make it out alive.”

Those words made the injured adventurer freeze.

He looked up blankly at Lance, then at the direction indicated, before his gaze returned to Lance.

“You… you’re not retreating with me?”

The man sized up Lance’s light leather armor and the gathering pack on his back.

“You’re just a gathering-type adventurer, right? The deeper forest is already in complete chaos. Even we couldn’t handle it—you’ll just be throwing your life away!”

Lance did not answer.

His hand subconsciously moved to his waist, his fingers brushing against that ugly, twisted charm woven from thick blue hemp rope.

The rough texture against his fingertips strangely calmed his restless heart.

“Which direction did Damian go?”

The injured adventurer hesitated, looking at the hooded man in front of him. In the end, he still raised his hand and pointed toward the dense thicket in the southeast.

“That way… follow the stream downstream.”

Lance nodded, tightened the short bow on his back, and without hesitation turned toward that direction.

Watching the resolute figure moving against the flow, the injured adventurer felt his throat go dry.

An inexplicable emotion struck him, and he couldn’t help but shout:

“You’ll die!”

Lance did not turn back. He simply raised his hand and waved behind him.

“Then don’t die. Enough people have died today.”

Before his words had even fully faded, his figure disappeared into the forest shadows.

As he ran, Lance’s breathing remained steady.

He was not rushing to his death on impulse.

The moment he heard the term “Goblin Warchief” from the fleeing adventurer, the relevant knowledge from the Monster Codex had already surfaced in his mind.

It was an extremely rare mutated individual. Though only slightly larger than ordinary Goblins, its intelligence was terrifyingly high.

They not only enslaved their own kind but had even learned to use tactics and traps to hunt humans.

Damian’s party had clearly been deceived by the seemingly loose outer defenses and walked straight into a carefully prepared ambush.

“That idiot.”

As Lance sprinted through the forest, he couldn’t help but mutter inwardly.

He had clearly told him to survive like a cockroach, yet the kid had turned around and gone off to play the hero.

But his pace only grew faster.

With 【Hvergelmir’s Surge】, he didn’t need to worry about stamina at all, maintaining full sprint speed the entire time.

“Just don’t die…”

……

Deep within Copper Creek Forest, beside an unnamed stream.

On an open pebble shallows, the air was thick with a suffocating stench of blood.

“Clang!”

A sharp metallic clash rang out.

Gritting his teeth, Damian barely managed to block a spiked wooden club swinging toward him with his two-handed longsword.

The tremendous impact numbed his hands, and his legs sank involuntarily into the loose sand and gravel.

Surrounding him were not the frail, ordinary Goblins, but four or five heavily muscled Goblin Brutes.

These were units specially trained by the Warchief, capable of basic tactical coordination.

In their left hands, they held sturdy wooden shields; in their right, heavy spiked clubs studded with iron nails. They advanced and retreated in coordination, covering each other.

Whenever Damian tried to counterattack one of them, the others would immediately raise their shields and compress his movement space, forcing him to pull back his sword to defend.

Even worse, behind these brutes lurked three sinister Goblin Javelin Throwers.

“Whoosh—”

Another piercing sound tore through the air.

Damian rolled awkwardly to the side, narrowly avoiding a short spear that grazed past his scalp.

His situation was dire.

On the shallows lay seven or eight Goblin corpses scattered about—that was the result of his desperate resistance.

Originally, only twelve or so Goblins had been chasing him.

But as he fought while retreating and was forced into this dead-end, nearby Goblin scouts had been drawn by the noise and joined the hunt.

Now, instead of decreasing, the number of enemies surrounding him had grown even larger.

Aside from the four or five Goblin Brutes forming the main assault, more than a dozen Goblin Scouts were tightening the encirclement.

“Ha… ha…”

Damian’s chest heaved violently. Every breath felt like pulling air through a broken bellows, his throat filled with the taste of blood.

To break out of the initial encirclement, he had forcibly activated a breathing technique he had not yet fully mastered.

This explosive method had greatly increased his combat power for a short time—but it had also drained all his stamina.

Now, the backlash had arrived.