What is that? When she first saw them, Eleanor could not even begin to guess what they were.

She had been born in the Capital and grown up in the Capital. After that, she attended school and then started her teaching work in the quiet East, where wheat fields stretched out endlessly.

Even in a world where monsters existed, that was nothing more than a distant story to Eleanor, who had spent her whole life in safe places.

She was not alone in that. Even within the Capital, even across the vast expanse of the East, the number of people who had actually witnessed a monster firsthand was small.

And so Eleanor did not even recognize that what she was looking at now was a monster, something terrible.

Without knowing, without knowing at all, yet soaked through with a strange unease and dread, Eleanor slowly raised the lantern she was holding.

The small but bright light illuminated the dim scene outside.

And then, the moment the figures clinging to the glass window came into sharp relief.

“Hgh!”

A stifled scream burst out from beneath the lectern.

It was not only from inside the classroom. From behind her, in the direction of the student dormitory and the staff quarters, shouts and screams rang out like warning sirens.

Monsters. The sharp noise jolted her mind back awake from the brief freeze the terrible sight of them had caused. Eleanor, struck with horror, frantically searched her memory and found the name of the creatures she was facing.

Goblins. They had to be goblins. The green skin and red eyes, the long-slitted ears and protruding bellies, could belong to nothing else.

At least they aren’t orcs or trolls. She was recalling what she had read in the monster field guide she had gone through out of idle curiosity, and had just snapped her gaze urgently toward the lectern, when she heard it.

Bang. A crashing sound, followed by something breaking.

She lifted her head, her face drained of color, and saw the goblins packed against every window, pounding the glass with their fists.

Bang bang bang. The violent rattling of the windows rang in her ears. Eleanor took a step back, feeling the blows land on her own body rather than the glass.

Only then did she remember why goblins had been considered the most revolting of all the monsters.

The East was the empire’s breadbasket, and there were many warehouses storing food throughout the region. Large farms raising sheep and pigs dotted the land as well.

But leaving all those easy targets alone, the reason a goblin horde had chosen to attack Rodelline Boarding School of all places was probably…

To breed.

Goblins, small and weak but with a reproductive drive unmatched by any other creature, produced no females. Born entirely male, they could not mate with their own kind, and so they increased their numbers by assaulting females of other species.

That revolting explanation made Eleanor’s feet step backward. Bang bang bang. The sound of the windows shaking, on the verge of shattering, fanned her terror.

But Eleanor could not bring herself to pull the classroom door shut and run.

“M, Miss Aster…”

She had seen it. The small child trembling beneath the lectern, staring up at her.

The tear-streaked face of a young child who had no idea what to do, looking only at the adult she trusted.

The sharp little scream that had come from beneath the lectern moments ago had indeed been Maemi’s.

“Miss Aster, I, I can’t move my legs…”

Eleanor looked at the child sobbing and hesitated. But the hesitation was brief. The decision she could make had already been decided for her.

“Maemi.”

Eleanor forced her feet, which had locked up and refused to move, to carry her across the classroom threshold. Then she ran without breathing, dropped to the floor, and pulled Maemi up from where she lay pressed flat against it.

“Get up, quickly. We have to run.”

It was not that she had any particular sense of justice or a strong sense of responsibility as a teacher. If anything, it was the opposite. It was because she was far too weak for that.

The child was only twelve years old. She could not bear the thought of this girl coming back pregnant, or coming back as a corpse.

Eleanor did not have the strength to endure that kind of tormenting guilt.

“Come on. Once we get out of the classroom and into the shelter…”

Eleanor had barely managed to get the child up and was tucking her under her arm to support her, just about to turn and run, when it happened.

Bang bang bang. The windows that had been pounded without stop finally let out a groaning crack, the sound of something giving way.

The crack became a hole in an instant. The moment Eleanor registered the danger and shoved Maemi’s back hard without thinking.

Bang! The sound of the window breaking through.

“Go, Maemi!”

Eleanor watched the goblins pour in through the broken window with grins on their faces, and screamed at Maemi, who had stumbled and fallen just inside the classroom doorway.

“Run and tell someone there are people here! Hurry!”

At the desperate cry, at Eleanor’s face drenched in cold sweat and wild with urgency, the child who had been doing nothing but shaking finally found her fawn-like legs and got them moving. She started running hard, just as her teacher told her to.

Eleanor confirmed that Maemi had made it safely out of the classroom, then spun around. Keh keh keh. The goblins, reaching roughly to her waist, came running at her with grotesque, cackling sounds.

At that terrifying sight, Eleanor’s back went rigid for a moment.

But even as fear wrung tears from her eyes, Eleanor clenched her teeth and hurled the lamp in her hand at them.

Fwoom. The oil lamp toppled and the fuel in its base spilled across the floor. A wall of red flame roared up along its path.

Kreeeh!

The information Eleanor had recalled about goblins a moment ago was not only about their method of breeding. The field guide she had read also contained a brief note on what they feared.

Fortunately, what she remembered was correct. The goblins that had been charging gleefully toward their prey shrieked and fell back at the sight of the flames.

Good. Now I just have to run.

Eleanor wiped her tears and turned quickly. She intended to flee and get into the shelter prepared in the basement of the student dormitory.

“Eek!”

But she had underestimated the goblins’ obsession with breeding.

A goblin that had crossed the flames by stepping over the burning bodies of its own kind targeted her legs while her guard was down.

Sharp claws grazed her leg. She spun around in shock to look behind her, and in that instant another goblin climbed onto her back.

The contemptuous thought she had had moments ago, comparing the goblins flailing before the flames to bugs sprayed with pesticide, had been premature.

Now it was she who could not shake the goblin mounting her, screaming and twisting her whole body.

Goblins were smaller than an adult woman, and weak to match. That was why they always moved in swarms, overwhelming their prey through sheer numbers.

One, Eleanor could throw off. Two was a struggle, but possible.

But when it became three, then four, and then far beyond even that, when more than ten goblins came at her at once, there was no easy escape even with survival on the line.

Keh keh keh. The goblins bared their red gums in grins and clung to Eleanor’s body with relentless tenacity.

Thud. Eleanor crashed to the floor and thrashed desperately to shake off the monsters pinning her down.

But even that frantic struggling was not enough. Eleanor gagged as the glistening green skin began to fill her vision.

No. Her skin crawled every time she felt the damp flesh against her. Her stomach lurched every time a foul breath grazed her ear.

But no matter how much she screamed, no matter how much she cried and fought, nothing changed. The weight pressing down on her only grew heavier.

Mama. Eleanor finally broke into sobs like a small child and called out to the guardian who had left the world long ago.

Mama, save me.

Even though she had chosen to sacrifice herself to protect a child, she herself was only nineteen. Not yet twenty, an age at which she had not yet truly come to understand what it meant to be an adult.

Mama…

She had thought of herself as an adult since the age of fifteen, but the truth that she was still nothing more than an immature child was something she only came to understand in the face of a terrible catastrophe.

But unlike Maemi, no matter how much she cried, there was no teacher here who would come to save her. Eleanor’s heart was full of despair as she called out to a mother she could no longer see, when it happened.

Nearby, a crunching sound of something breaking was followed by a sudden sharp stench hitting her.

At the same time, the weight crushing her chest grew a little lighter. She wondered whether it was a delusion born of extreme fear, but the same sound that followed, and the way her body could breathe more easily, proved it was not.

The sounds continued. The pressure on her body lifted in an instant.

Eleanor, still unable to grasp the situation clearly, only understood what had happened to her after the goblin’s body covering her face was pulled away.

A knight in blood-red armor stood over her.

His face looked so beautiful that for a brief moment Eleanor wondered whether she had been taken into the arms of a goddess.