Chapter 4

The Goblin collapsed as its skull was caved in with a dull noise.

「Hmph. Are Goblins the only enemies that are going to come out?」

The High Priest of Alda, the G.o.d of Law and Fate, hurled abuse at the Goblins as he beat them to death with his favorite mace.

「High Priest Gordan, is it not likely that the Dhampir either escaped with his Vampire father or was buried alive when that cave collapsed?」

So said one of the holy knights under his command, but Gordan was not satisfied.

Bowmark Gordan was originally a commoner, but he was now a great man who had climbed to the position of High Priest by his thirties using his faith, physical strength and his magic of the life and light attributes.

Now he had a burning obsession with exterminating Vampires, Lamias, Scylla and the other monsters that Vida had given birth to.

『Alda, the G.o.d of Law and Fate is the only one with authority in the world of Lambda and he has determined that the mere existence of these creatures is evil. It is our duty as his followers to destroy them!』

Like the other zealous followers of Alda, Gordan earnestly believed this with no doubts. He felt no shame in having killed the Dark Elf or in his current task of hunting down her Dhampir son; he was proud, believing that his actions were those of justice.

For that reason, he had been conducting a very thorough search of this small forest to find the Dhampir, but the search had run into problems.

Unable to contact the hunters who had sold out the Dark Elf to lead them through the forest, he had hired other hunters and joined forces with the feudal lord’s knights, but they had only encountered wild animals like wolves, bears and boars and the occasional weak monsters like Goblins that came out to attack them.

Five days after they had began their search, they discovered a cave that someone appeared to have been living in that had collapsed, but they hadn’t been able to find the Dhampir’s corpse.

Gordan had thought to dig out the whole cave, but had no choice but to give up on that idea because of the risk of it collapsing on top of them. If they had a construction specialist or a Dwarf miner at hand, it would be a different story, but there was no demand for a construction specialist in this area right now, so they were unable to hire such a person.

The reason they continued searching the forest for two more months despite this was that the hunter that had sold out the Dark Elf and two of his friends had simply gone missing after setting out to hunt the Dhampir.

Three hunters who were all familiar with the geography of this area had all gone missing. On top of that, their corpses still hadn’t been found.

Gordan’s intuition told him that this was not the result of some coincidence or unfortunate accident, but something had taken revenge on them.

『The Dhampir in question is apparently still a baby, but it’s not out of the question. There was a reported incident in the past where a three-year-old Dhampir slaughtered a party of D-rank adventurers.』

Giving up here would mean allowing evil to take root and grow in the future. He had to hunt the Dhampir down and turn him into ash.

「High Priest Gordan, it is impossible for us to make our search of the forest any more detailed than we have already done.」

「Baronet Bestero has withdrawn his knights already as well.」

However, not everyone shared Gordan’s zeal or saw the impending threat that he did. The feudal lord, Baronet Bestero, had dispatched five knights and half of his soldiers to help with the search, but now he grimly refused to offer any help at all.

He could not allow the soldiers and knights that were needed to uphold public order to spend too long searching the forest.

In fact, he criticized the continuation of the search, asking,「Is there no other work that the High Priest could be doing for the people?」

「… I know that the inhabitants of Evbejia have expressed their discontent.」

This forest was an important source of resources for the people of Evbejia and the High Priest had told them,「You cannot enter the forest while we are searching for the Dhampir, as it is too dangerous.」It was only natural that the people of Evbejia were unhappy about being unable to enter the forest for two whole months.

「No, it is not only the people. The adventurers are not happy either. Well, they are F-rank and E-rank adventurers of no importance.」

「They are taking their complaints to the Guild, saying that they are having their work taken away from them.」

The monsters such as Goblins that the adventurers received payment to exterminate had heavily decreased in population during Gordan’s search of the forest. Of course, this resulted in a sharp drop in the income of those adventurers.

In addition, Evbejia was a central point of commerce between villages and towns so there were many merchants and wealthy travelers requesting escorts, but as the adventurers accepted those requests, there were less adventurers operating inside Evbejia itself. Naturally, the Adventurers’ Guild was not pleased by this.

Baronet Bestero didn’t approve of the number of adventurers decreasing either. High Priest Gordan and his men were keeping the population of Goblins in check for now, but they were not permanent resident