A Middle-Aged Man Becomes the Strongest in Another World: The Physical Specialized Awakener - Chapter 10

About 40 minutes deeper into the forest, Kaim suddenly whispered, “Hold up.”

We each took cover behind trees and looked toward where he pointed. There, in the forest clearing, was what looked like a goblin settlement.

Roughly ten huts made of branches were scattered between the trees, and over fifty goblins were either milling around or sitting nearby. From the looks of it, there were even more inside the huts, but there were too many for my Aura Sense to pick up clearly.

“Looks like just as we thought, about a hundred of them,” Kaim said. “Same plan as usual. Meribe casts a spell to cause chaos, then we rush in. After the spell, Meribe and Lavelt stay back here. If Meribe can fire off another spell, even better. Old man, can you charge in with us?”

“I can,” I said without hesitation.

“Then follow me and Lanan when we go in. Alright, let’s do this.”

At Kaim’s signal, Meribe raised her staff and began concentrating. It looked like she was preparing a spell, and I couldn’t help feeling excited, it would be my first time seeing magic in this world.

After about ten seconds, the top of her staff began to glow faintly.

“Here I go!” Meribe stepped out from behind cover and pointed her staff at the goblin settlement. The glow vanished and suddenly, several fist-sized stones appeared out of thin air.

They shot forward at blinding speed and smashed straight into the goblins and their huts. The impact blew goblins apart and reduced the makeshift homes to rubble. Bloodied goblins were left crumpled in the wreckage.

“Alright, charge!” Kaim shouted.

He and Lanan dashed straight into the panicked settlement without hesitation. I hesitated for just a moment, but then followed them in. Thank god for the Calm Mind skill, without it, I might have frozen from the sudden shift into a full-on battlefield.

Kaim and Lanan were cutting down goblins left and right, mowing them down with brutal efficiency. The goblins tried swinging sticks in defense, but they couldn’t even finish a swing before being struck down.

Kaim went straight ahead, Lanan veered to the right, so I went left. There were two huts in front of me and around ten goblins in the area. Just as I was about to rush in, I felt a sharp impact on my stomach. A rock, it hit me hard. I’d forgotten that goblins in the wild liked to throw stones.

Thrown rocks might not sound dangerous, but they’re surprisingly lethal. Fortunately, goblins aren’t strong enough to throw anything huge. My Calm Mind and Sharp Mind skills kicked in and told me this wasn’t the time to stop. 

I raised my buckler to protect my head and charged in. A few stones struck me, but adrenaline dulled the pain. I swung my mace sideways at the closest goblin. Three goblins were sent flying, blood and gore trailing behind them.

From there, I just powered through. I swung my mace and shield around wildly, knocking down every goblin that got in my way. Once I’d cleared the goblins outside, five more came out of the huts. I charged at them without hesitation, smashing each one to the ground.

I took a moment to destroy the huts as well, and had to make sure no one was hiding inside. Once I confirmed they were clear, I finally took a breath. Some pain flared where the rocks had hit me, but it was probably just bruising.

Looking around, I could still hear goblin screams coming from where Kaim had gone. I activated Aura Sense and headed that way.

“Damn it, Lanan, get over here! We’ve got a half-evolved King!” Kaim’s voice rang out, urgent and tense.

A half-evolved King? So, a boss-level monster.

I jogged over to find Kaim fighting while slowly being pushed back by a group of goblins. One of them was huge, about Kaim’s size, with well-developed muscles and a massive club. It was pounding Kaim’s shield relentlessly, not giving him a chance to counterattack.

Lanan had gone too far in the opposite direction and was just now running back. But it looked like Kaim couldn’t hold out that long. I slipped around to the big goblin’s blind spot. It hadn’t noticed me at all, too focused on Kaim.

I raised my mace and slammed it as hard as I could into the back of its head.

“Krrrk.” The impact was unlike anything I’d felt before. Its skull shattered under the blow, and the massive goblin collapsed face-first.

“Whoa!? Old man! That was sick!” Kaim shouted. With the tide turned, he made quick work of the remaining goblins.

Soon after, Lanan, Meribe, and Lavelt regrouped with us. Lavelt’s mace was stained with blood, some goblins must’ve gone after the rear team too. My Aura Sense didn’t pick up anything else. The settlement had been completely wiped out.

“Kaim, are you okay?” Meribe asked, her voice full of concern.

Kaim scratched his head. “Yeah, thanks. Old man showed up just in time. Didn’t expect a half-baked King to show up here.”

“No kidding,” Lanan nodded. “That kind of mutant shouldn’t appear in a group this size. We should definitely report this to the guild.”

“You really went for it, old man. I mean, one-shotting a pseudo-King like that, even by surprise? You’ve gotta have some serious training. You don’t fight like a new F-ranker,” Kaim said.

“Totally,” Lavelt added, a little too excited. “And the way you fought? Straight-up berserker! I love it!”

Berserker, huh? Yeah, I guess I did kind of lose control. I’ll have to work on that.

“I only managed that because Kaim had its attention. Fighting together really does make a difference.”

“Yeah, solo’s have limits. Anyway, great job, old man. Now for the worst part, let’s gather the magic stones.”

“Ugh… this is why I hate field extermination missions…” Lavelt groaned.

Honestly, I get it. Compared to dungeon fights where the corpses vanish, field missions are a pain. People like to say extermination quests are the glory of adventurers, but stuff like that usually just hides how messy the work really is.

We gathered nearly 100 magic stones and headed back toward the nearby village.

I was wondering if we should leave the bodies like that, but apparently, deep in the woods, it’s standard practice to just leave them.

The village chief was grateful and offered us a night’s stay, but since we had to report the pseudo-King incident, we decided to return to the town of Tolson right away. Every time I think about it, I’m amazed by how absurdly tough awakened adventurers are.

We arrived back in Tolson around sunset and went straight to the guild. Receptionist Kisara greeted us with a smile. “Welcome back. Looks like your goblin extermination mission was a success?”

“Sure was. Here’s the magic stones. Go ahead and check ’em.”

“Alright, one moment please.”

Kisara called over some other staff to help with the stone count. Not long after, she noticed a particularly large one, about the size of a ping pong ball. “Excuse me, Kaim-san, this one…?”

“What’s it look like to you?”

“Well… it’s too big for a regular goblin’s. Not quite big enough for a full King, but definitely larger than a General’s.”

“Exactly. That’s from a pseudo-King. We found one in the goblin camp.”

“What!?” Kisara gasped and covered her mouth. The other staff looked equally shocked. I guess having a pseudo-King show up really is that serious.

A nearby adventurer, looking like a veteran in his 30s, probably D-rank, walked over. “Hey, Kaim. Are you serious?”

He took a quick glance at the stone and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, no doubt about it. This could turn into a real problem.”

“In any case,” Kisara said, “I’d like to hear the full story from everyone in ‘Silver Wheel’… and from Mr. Okuno too. Please, follow me to the back room.”

She led us to a private room. The veteran returned to his party, probably to start discussing the next steps. Could this be serious enough to require D-rank involvement?

The room was a meeting space with a big table and about ten chairs. We sat down and waited until the door opened again. Kisara entered with a man in his 40s who looked more formal and clearly outranked the rest. He must’ve been the guildmaster.

He sat down across from us and said, “Sorry to keep you, but I couldn’t let this go without hearing the full story.”

“No worries, Guildmaster. We get that this is a big deal,” Kaim said.

Guildmaster. So this guy’s the head of the Tolson Adventurers’ Guild. I didn’t expect to meet someone like him this soon into my career.

“Alright, walk me through what happened.”

Kaim gave a full rundown, with Meribe helping to fill in any gaps. From what I could tell, their report was thorough and accurate. When it was done, the guildmaster turned his attention to me. “So, you’re the one who took down the pseudo-King? I don’t recognize your face.”

“Yes, I just became an adventurer a few days ago. My name is Soushi Okuno.”

“So you awakened at your age, huh. Now that you mention it, Kisara did say someone like that had joined. Quite the challenge for your first outing. It’s impressive, taking down a pseudo-King as an F-ranker… keep it up.”

He gave me a guarded compliment. Understandable, I’m not exactly the picture of a rookie adventurer.

“Thanks for the report. We’ll escalate this and compare it with other reports to decide how to respond. For now, just continue your usual activities.”

“Got it. Be sure to give us a good bonus for this,” Kaim said with a grin.

“Of course. We’ll take that into account. You too, Okuno-kun.” With that, the guildmaster left.

Soon after, we were free to go. We split the reward money and returned to the inn.

Back at the inn, we had a little celebration before everyone returned to their rooms. During that, I learned more about goblin Kings from the rest of Silver Wheel. Apparently, just having one around can cause goblins to multiply like crazy.

Individually, goblins are weak, but in large numbers, stronger variants start showing up, and the danger scales fast. That makes a King incredibly dangerous. Defeating a pseudo-King before it evolves sounds like a good thing, but it turns out it’s more complicated.

You see, a King is born when multiple pseudo-Kings exist in the same area. That means… there might still be other pseudo-Kings lurking near that forest. And from them, a real King could emerge. If that happened without anyone noticing, the consequences could be catastrophic. That’s why the matter will likely be reported to the local lord, and some kind of countermeasures will be taken.

“I’ve only been an adventurer for a week, you know…” I muttered to myself, lying on my bed.

I’d hoped to slowly grind my levels, but fate clearly had other plans. Looks like there’s no choice, I’ll have to step up my training. I should take out the boss in the Boulder Dungeon before anything else happens and try to get a special skill.

Taking down that dungeon boss is one of the conditions for E-rank promotion. If I get a magic-related skill, maybe I could become a mage like Meribe.

Let’s be honest, at my age, a spellcaster looks way better than a wild-eyed berserker.