When the monster stalked out of the woods, Kevin felt equal parts fear and excitement. For most of his life in this world, he hadn’t had an opportunity to fight monsters. After all, there was no way monsters were coming anywhere near his parents' nest. The aura of the Great Ones was unmistakable, and even having one of them around was enough to make any monster steer clear for miles.

His mother had been far too overprotective to let him go out fighting monsters on his own in the past, too.

He was excited to finally get some combat experience in this life, but Kevin was not enough of an idiot to be arrogant. Although he had plenty of combat experience from past lives and some interesting powers in this life, he was not familiar with all the monsters in this world. And he was alone. But probably the greatest factor eroding his self-confidence was his goblin body.

Kevin truly, genuinely enjoyed being a goblin now and thought of himself as one, but it was also true that he was smaller and physically weaker than he had been in his previous lives. If he were back on Earth, or on a technological world, being a goblin might actually be an advantage, combat-wise. As long as he could still shoulder and shoot a rifle, his smaller stature would make him less of a target. But in a swords and magic world like this one, reach and distance were very important while melee fighting. They were issues that could be overcome, but were objective disadvantages.

The monster staring Kevin down was not small. Standing about five feet at the shoulder, the creature looked like a cross between a wolf and a reptile, maybe a crocodile. It also had a tail that writhed around. With surprise, Kevin noticed that the end of the tail was the head of a snake. The monster's tail literally had a mind of its own as it curled up around and stared at Kevin from a vantage of almost ten feet up. Kevin didn't make any sudden moves as he watched the creature about a stone’s throw away. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Branch had vanished. The fairy had probably taken off and was hiding behind a tree somewhere.

With his hand on his weapon, Kevin drew the goblin-sized longsword up, sideways, and out in one slow, smooth motion. He briefly considered polymorphing into one of his human forms but decided against it. This was his real body in this world, and he wanted his first real fight to be as a goblin. Of course, this definitely meant he could die, but he was at peace with that.

As he held the sword to one side, Kevin studied the lethal-looking creature before him. It was like some sort of sleek, dangerous-looking chimera, but all the parts also seemed truly to meld with each other. It was made of, or mutated by, mana. The beast looked like it belonged naturally to this world. It was definitely not a demon, that was for sure.

The entire concept of monsters had been strange to Kevin in his second life, but now he was used to it. And in this world, monsters got stronger and more powerful than he remembered, but they were still ultimately the same sort of existence.

Kevin realized that what sounded like distant thunder was actually a noise the creature was making in its chest. The monster softly growling at Kevin was big and powerful indeed. It had a line of horns on the back of its head that looked like armor. Patterning on its fur, where it didn't have scales, was beautiful, almost regal. The creature's tail hadn't moved much since standing and glaring at Kevin, so he was able to clearly see how bright the snake's scales were and the fact that it looked like some sort of colorful cobra.

In fact, the snake's head was a bright blue with mixed purples, and throughout its entire body, the color slowly faded before meeting the main body. The effect was that the only bright colors were on the tail, and although the creature was a monster, its form likely followed the same logic as creatures in the natural world–bright colors meant venom or poison. When the snake suddenly opened its mouth, hissing, and Kevin saw a gleam of venom on its teeth, he knew he'd guessed correctly.

Kevin and the monster stood staring at each other for at least half a minute. His fear slowly faded, and he wondered why the creature wasn't attacking. Maybe it was wondering the same thing. As he watched it, Kevin decided that if the monster didn't attack, he was not going to kill it, either, and would adopt a live-and-let-live strategy. After all, he was just passing through, and he had no mission to kill monsters. Also, in this part of the world where his parents lived, almost no humans lived out here. He reasoned that the monster seemed to be very powerful and maybe even special in some way. It could be that it was just territorial and this was its home.

Of course, he could be wrong, and it could be terrorizing people whenever it got a chance, but without knowing that for sure, Kevin didn't want to kill such a beautiful creature for no reason with no evidence of wrongdoing.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

The decision was taken out of his hands when suddenly the monster roared and ran for him at breakneck speed. When its paws came off the ground, he could see its massive claws. With a thought, Kevin engaged his [dragon force], one of the dragon life skills that he had learned over the years. His parents had a very high degree of mastery and could coat all of their limbs, including their tail, with the energy barrier. In fact, that was one way dragons fought: with magic, breath, and the manipulation of dragon force. Kevin couldn't create very large barriers, not even fully up to his elbows on his arms, or not quite to his calves on his feet. For this fight, he chose to cover his hands, basically giving himself energy gauntlets.

Then he moved forward to meet the monster. As he did so, he also glanced at his sword and, with a brief effort of will, he cast [weapon strengthening,] [weapon sharpening], and [anti-bind]. He'd been tempted to use [weapon swiftness], but for this fight against such a large creature, the anti-bind would probably be more appropriate and would prevent his sword from getting caught in flesh or jerked out of his grip by the monster's two sets of mouths. He couldn't do magic, but he could still use his clerical buffing abilities that he'd developed in his first life as an adventurer after the Earth was besieged by portals and demons.

The monster was extremely straightforward in its attack, bearing down on him and leaping into the air for a savage finishing blow. Time seemed to slow as Kevin watched the extended claws and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth descend.

Luckily, the creature’s speed worked against it. Kevin used his own forward momentum to slide at the last second, barely dipping under the monster's outstretched paws. His longsword flicked up, around, and down with decades of practice, scoring as much damage as possible in a tiny fraction of a second. He barely remembered the deadly tail as he was coming up from his slide and jerked his hand up to stop it reflexively. The snake bit down, and its eyes went blank. It couldn't find any purchase on the dragon force. Despite its powerful muscles working, its fangs didn't get any closer than half an inch away from Kevin's hand. Then the forward momentum of the rest of the monster's body pulled the venomous snake head away.

Kevin got back to his feet, turned, and then sprang for the downed monster. [Jump] made his leap faster than he’d otherwise be able to manage. His entire goblin body weight shimmered as he brought it down on the point.

The monster's snake tail flipped forward to strike, and once again, Kevin's free hand came up to block it. Taking his hand off the longsword meant that he didn't have the support necessary to keep driving it forward with his body properly, and he couldn't maintain proper form. He slammed forward onto the hilt of his sword, painfully hitting it with his stomach. But luckily, there was still enough force to drive the blade home. The monster screamed in agony as the sword penetrated to the hilt.

Kevin sprang back, leaving his sword in the beast's body, and cautiously drew his dagger, prepared to continue fighting and end it if necessary. His continued vigilance was unnecessary. The monster never moved from where it had fallen and soon breathed its last. In a curious but terrifying twist, the snake tail stayed alive longer than the rest of the body and continued trying to strike and snap at Kevin as he stayed safely out of range. Finally, the snake tail laid down and died too.

He cautiously moved forward, gripped the hilt of his sword, and drew it out in a spray of blood. His strike had been true, which was one reason the monster had died relatively quickly. But even so, Kevin grimaced in frustration. He was intellectually aware that what he had just done probably wouldn't be possible for most warriors on this planet. But Kevin had high standards for himself, and he didn't like the fact that it had taken him so long to kill this monster. In his past life, it would have been over much quicker.

"I was a lot stronger then, though. Geeze. I have a long way to go," he muttered. The blood on his sword came off easily with a combination of flicking it and rubbing it off on pine needle trees. After he sheathed his blade, he called out, "Branch, where are you?"

Moments later, the little fairy was hovering in front of him as if he hadn't disappeared earlier. "Oh, I see you killed the Prince of the Tangle," he said.

"The Prince of the Tangle?"

"A dominant, named monster in this part of the forest. That is probably why it attacked you. Other monsters stay away. You are scary."

"I'm scary? Then why did you approach me?"

"I am sometimes too curious to be smart." The little fairy stuck out his tongue and did a dance in the air.

Not much I can say to that level of self-awareness, he thought to himself. Then he took a seat on a rotten stump. "I’m hungry. How far away is that lake again?"

“The one with the fish?”

“Yes, the one with the fish.” Now that the adrenaline dump was over, Kevin was too tired at the moment to even be irritated.

"Close, I think," said Branch.

Kevin eyed the fairy, but then eyed the monster. Over the course of his life, he had never eaten a monster before, but he had witnessed his parents eating monsters several times. They hadn't allowed him to eat any, saying that some monster meat had high concentrations of mana, and they weren't sure if his body would tolerate it. But Kevin was a full-grown adult now, and on top of that, he had been training rigorously for years. He was curious, and he had eaten plenty of snakes in his life. And the tail, especially, was an intriguing bit of meat.

"Let's take a rain check on that lake for right now," he said.

"A rain what?" asked Branch.

"Uh, we'll go there later," said Kevin. "Right now, I think I'm going to eat some snake."

"There's no snake here, just a monster,” Branch responded.

Kevin wordlessly pointed at the ten-inch-wide, stretched-out tail on the ground.

"Oh.”