How long has he been hiding under the basement of his home? A boy thinks as he wakes up from the deep slumber.

Surrounded by old dusty pots and furniture, the boy has been starving and thirsty for more than a day already. Even being tormented by the stomach, he did not dare to move an inch to find anything to eat. The sound of the footstep above has been haunting him all this time. He had no choice but to lie on the ground motionlessly, but that did not help anything but induce stress on him. As a result, he has fainted many times then only waken up by the hunger.

(If only I was stronger man…) The boy cries in his heart as he remembers of the scene the other day.

His village was just a normal village with everyone living based on farming near the river. It is further away from the forest so there is little to no risk of a monster attack here, and the security has been always light. In addition, his village is also surrounded by other villages in four directions, so even if there was something wrong, this place would not be the first place of to meet a disaster and everyone would have a chance to escape. That was how it was supposed to turn out.

One day, a goblin army came by and swept through all the villages like a storm. There was no warning, no signal telling that they were coming. They just suddenly appeared out of thin air then brought havoc and massacre to every living being in the village. Men and cattle were cut down and turned to meat, while women were raped, kidnapped, and brought back alive to their nests.

The boy’s village was warned of the goblin wave, but that was only 30 seconds before the goblin got into his village. The messenger did not only brought back the information, but also the goblin riders chasing after him. It was not that the village was defendless or did not have any fighting power to fight back. There were adventurers and guards stationed in the village. The farmers also had the strength and experience to drive away the goblins from the past. However, it was just not enough to withstand the force they met.

Different from the small wild goblins, the goblin riders are much stronger, faster and know how to fight as a group. More importantly, they are fully equipped with weapons, even better than low-class adventurers. Before such a mighty army of goblins, the small defensive force of the village was annihilated in a few minutes.

With most of the men dead, the goblin riders left the village and went assaulting their next targets. However, that only signaled a worse time to come as a bigger horde of weak wild goblins arrived next. They searched and broke into every house, where the women and children stayed hidden inside.

The boy had an older sister as his only family, but she told him to stay hidden in the basement under the house alone. The boy objected that idea, telling her to hide together with him. But her sister denied that option, saying that the goblin had a strong nose to detect the females so it was useless for her to escape. Rather than dying together, she let herself captured by the goblin instead. If they completed their objective and satisfied their desire, the goblins would be lazy and not search the house carefully anymore, leaving a chance for the boy to survive. And luckily, that plan worked, the boy is still alive until now.

Even so, that fact does not make him feel happy or anything. The two emotions he is having now are fear and hatred. He is scared of any sound from above him, especially the creaking sound of the wood, scared of being detected and scared of being killed. However, the hatred inside him is much stronger. He hates himself for being a scaredy cat, for being a weak useless kid. More importantly, he resents the goblins. His heart aches every time he remembers the scream of his neighbors, his friends, and his sister. He swears once he gets out of here, he will aim to become an adventurer and slay every goblin that exists in this world.

Seeing the small rays of light passing through the camouflage entrance of the basement, he judges the time to be morning. He has been lying on the ground, pressing the ear on it to hear any sound coming from above, but it has been quiet for several hours already. Probably pressed by the hunger and the hatred, the boy suddenly becomes more courageous and decides to step out to have a look.

*creak**creak**creak**creak*

The loud sound of the basement entrance opening echoes the whole room. The boy is startled by how much noise he made and prepares to close it immediately. However, looking around, there is nothing but a total wreck of his old home. After a minute, there is no sound of footstep either. He musters his will then climbs up to ground floor.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

He searches the whole house but does not find anything meaningful. Her sister is nowhere to be found. There is no food, no water, even the money he saved together with his sister is gone too. The goblins have stolen away everything from him.

In a corner of the house, there lies a goblin corpse. On his head, there is a knife stabbing deep inside.

“Sister.” The boy sobs as he imagines the scene of her sister fighting back the goblin to hide him away. The glint from the exposed blade of the knife is reflected in his eyes, seeming to tell him to grab it.

As the boy grabs the handle of that knife, his mind becomes clearer than ever. A surge of courage floods his heart, wiping away any fear of the goblin. His memory surfaces again, but there is no more fear left, only a burning hatred.

*spurt**slash**thude*

The goblin’s head rolls on the ground. After taking out the knife, the boy used it to behead the already dead goblin. Blood splatters on his face when he does the process.

Without wiping away the blood, the boy heads to the door and goes out of the house, with the knife hold in hand. A mixture of blood and burning smell gets into his nose as he observes the surrounding. The whole place is filled with corpses, mainly of men and elderly. A lot of them have meat lost parts all over the bodies, along with the teeth marks. The only things that move in his sight are the black crows scavenging the dead meat. No, there is one green skin creature crouching down on cow carcass near the fence a few houses away.

“Geeek, ge, geee, gee.” The creature turns its face toward the boy as it notices him. The face changes from being surprised to savage as it detects a fresh prey for its meal. It can’t be helped thinking so, because the prey in front of it is only a small child about 10-year-old.

The boy looks at his sworn enemy with an empty expression. His hand is gripping the knife tightly, but his body is shaking. Even though he is only looking the goblin with hatred, his body does not think so, constantly sending the signal to run away. His brain sends the order to stop shaking, but the command seems to be invalid. Before he realizes it, his body has developed an instinctive fear for the goblin.

Seeing how its prey is shaking pitifully, the goblin gives a disgusting laugh then quickly approaches with a wooden club in its hand. The goblin does notice the knife in the kid’s hand, but it already knows from the experience that such type of prey never makes a successful hit if it makes a small feint. Right, human kids will never expect that a goblin knows how to do evading footwork of a martial artist.

However, it has severely underestimated the power of a kid filled with revenge.

The boy holds the knife up high and stabs downward, not at the enemy, but his own thigh. A deep cut occurs on his leg, but that’s enough for one purpose: stop his body from shaking. He then quickly retracts the knife then waves it in front of the goblin, splashing the blood straight at the goblin’s eyes.

The goblin staggers when its eyes sting from the sudden hit of the red liquid. However, its hand does not forget to swing the club at the prey, and successfully hits the kid on the left shoulder.

“Arghhhhh!” Screaming in pain, the boy has his left arm broken, but he does not stop. He approaches the goblin at closer ranger, hugging the enemy close to his body while restraining the shoulder of the weapon arm.

*bang*

A headbutt immediately comes from the boy while the goblin is still confused. His head hurts so much, but the enemy is not better. The goblin is even stunned for a moment as it struggles to comprehend everything going on, and that creates an opportunity for the final strike. The boy’s right hand pierces through the goblin’s heart from the back when the hand circles from below the goblin’s arm.

“Ke ….” The stinky breathing stops and the green skin creature drops on the ground as the boy releases the hug. Any battle can end with the most unexpected result. The goblin he fought just now was trained by a group of higher level goblins in the art of combat, killed several low-class adventurers alone, yet it was killed by a villager kid out of nowhere. It has forgotten the basic rule of fighting: never underestimate your enemy.

The boy’s body shines a while before returning to normal. It is the sign of leveling up in this world. He has not undergone the “Identification” process before, so he cannot check his level. However, with the increased strength in his body, he believes that he can now take on several goblins at the same time. And immediately, his thought is answered with the appearance of many groups of goblin.

There are more than 30 goblins surrounding him, divided into 5 groups. He does not know where do they come from, but there is no doubt that the sound of fighting attracted them over here.

“It’s already over. Sister, I am sorry that I cannot live the life you gave me any longer to avenge for you.” The boy sighs in dejection, then readies his knife “However, I will send as many of their heads as possible for you.”

After being baptized by the ritual of battle to death, the boy is no longer scared of the appearance of goblin. His sole objective now is to kill these goblins, as many as possible.

“That’s the spirit, boy.” A female voice reaches his ear. The voice is soft, yet it carries the impact and sounds clearly in everyone’s ears, including the goblin’s.

At the entrance of the village, two persons with different attire are walking toward the boy’s direction. One is wearing a blood red armor and helmet with strange design. Another person is a girl, wearing extravagant noble clothes with a mage hat on top of her head. A duo of a warrior and a magician, with a cat as their pet.