The Monstrous Hero-Chapter 42 - 41: Moved On

Z-34 was definitely not pleased.

Not with the dead goblins. Not with the stench. And definitely not with 27-C acting like she ran the whole damn squad.

She’d slipped into command so naturally it made his teeth grind. The way she barked orders—short, firm, like she’d been born in charge—just rubbed him wrong. Who the hell did she even think she was?

He didn’t say anything, though. Not because he agreed. Oh, no. Z-34 just wasn’t stupid. The woman had a reputation. A bad one. There’d been whispers back in his district, stories about how she’d once knocked a guy out cold with her bare hands for trying to grab her rations. Another time, someone said she broke a recruit’s jaw because he called her "sweetheart." Maybe it was just gossip. Maybe not. Either way, he wasn’t eager to find out firsthand.

So he bit his tongue. Let her have her little moment.

But it still burned.

It burned goddamn it!

The irritation had to go somewhere, and unfortunately for B67, that somewhere was him.

"Move your ass, kid!" Z-34 barked across the clearing, voice cracking in the cold air. "We don’t have all day! You think these things are gonna gut themselves?"

B67 flinched hard enough to drop the knife he’d been holding. His small hands shook as he bent to pick it up again. "S-sorry," he mumbled, even though no one was really listening.

Z-34 sneered, kicking over another corpse and muttering curses under his breath. He dug into the goblin’s chest cavity with his blade, cutting through cartilage and bone like he was trying to take out his frustration on the corpse.

The clearing was an absolute mess.

They’d been at it for what felt like forever — a torturous forever, I might add. Goblin bodies everywhere, piled, sprawled, broken. The ground had turned into a soggy, black-green swamp of fluids. Each time someone knelt, their knees sank into the muck with a wet disgusting squelch. Flies had already found the bodies, buzzing low and lazy, drawn by the smell of meat.

27-C moved from one carcass to another with mechanical focus. Her gloves were slick and dark. She worked fast, efficient, saying nothing. Each time she pulled a gem out, her collar chimed with a soft electronic beep. The sound should’ve been satisfying, but instead it just made the silence heavier.

E-26 crouched nearby, keeping tally. "That’s thirty-seven," he muttered, eyes on the digital counter. "No, wait—thirty-eight. Yeah. We’re close."

"Close?" Z-34 snapped, yanking his blade out of another body. The motion splattered dark fluid across his boots. "We’ve torn through, what, a hundred of these things already? And we’re still not at fifty? What kind of bullshit system is this?"

He wasn’t wrong.

There were lots of bodies—enough to carpet the clearing from one end to the other—but not every goblin had a gem. That was the kicker. They’d learned it the hard way after the first dozen dissections.

Turns out, only the stronger ones—the "higher-status" goblins, as 27-C called them—had mana cores. Gems, really. The rest were just meat and noise.

One out of ten. That was the average.

Liu Xian had stopped counting after the twelfth body. His hands were stained halfway up his arms now. The smell had soaked into his clothes, into his skin, into his head. Every time he blinked, he could still see the black blood dripping from his blade.

He wasn’t squeamish. Not anymore. But there was something numbing about the repetition. Cut. Tear. Dig. Search. Toss. Repeat. His stomach had twisted a few times, but after the twentieth corpse, even disgust felt distant.

The others filled the silence with their own noises—grunts, sighs, muttered swears. B67 gagged once or twice but kept going, cutting open small bodies while Z-34 hovered nearby, snapping at him for being slow.

"Pick up the pace, dammit! It’s just a little blood. You’ll get used to it!"

The kid’s eyes were glassy, but he nodded. "Right. Yeah."

Z-34 scoffed. "Useless."

E-26 glanced up from his work. "You could stop yelling for five seconds, you know. He’s just a kid."

Z-34 glared. "And what, you want me to coddle him? This isn’t kindergarten, old man."

"Old man?" E-26’s brow twitched. "I’m nineteen."

"Whatever," Z-34 muttered. "You sound forty."

27-C cut in before it could escalate. "Shut it. Both of you." Her tone wasn’t raised, but it didn’t have to be. Something in her voice made them go still. She tossed another gem toward E-26, who caught it with a quiet grunt.

"Forty," he said, updating the counter. "That’s forty total."

The number hung in the air.

Forty.

That was it.

After all the blood, all the effort, all the cutting—they were ten short. Ten miserable points away from whatever number the system had set for completion.

Oh right... the number was FIFTY!

Z-34 threw his knife down, frustration boiling over. "You’ve gotta be kidding me. We slaughtered an entire clan for this?"

27-C didn’t respond. She stood, rolling her shoulders, eyes sweeping over the carnage like she was calculating something. "There could be more cores deeper in the woods," she said eventually. "Maybe in the ones that ran off."

"Ran off?" Z-34 barked a laugh. "Right, sure. Let’s just go on a lovely stroll through goblin country after spending two hours knee-deep in their guts. Great idea."

27-C’s eyes flicked toward him. "You got a better one?"

He shut his mouth.

Silence again.

Even the forest seemed to hold its breath, the faint wind whispering through what was left of the leaves.

B67 shuffled over, clutching one last gem. His hands trembled as he held it up. "Forty-one," he said softly.

No one answered.

The exhaustion was setting in hard now. Muscles ached. The metallic taste in their mouths wouldn’t fade.

G-25 slumped onto a log, muttering, "We could stop here. Maybe the system updates later."

Z-34 snorted. "Yeah, and maybe the goblins come back for round two while we nap."

27-C ignored him. She pulled her uniform sleeve down, exhaling slowly. The gem light flickered across her face, making her eyes look colder than usual. "We keep moving. Forty is not enough."

Z-34 looked like he wanted to argue—but again, that reputation of hers loomed between them. He clicked his tongue, muttered something under his breath, and turned away.

The others followed suit.

They gathered their weapons, adjusted their collars, and prepared to move on.

Liu Xian stayed quiet through it all. His gaze lingered on the bodies one last time before he turned away. The forest swallowed their footsteps as they left the clearing behind.