I hadn't researched how durable hobgoblins were, but fortunately, when I fired my crossbow at one, it simply died.

  Given they were more bestial than humans, I'd worried they could fight with an arrow lodged in their brain, but it simply fell limp.

  That startled both the remaining hobgoblin and the small figure that had been following them.

  Unfortunately for me, said hobgoblin drew a sword. It was a clumsy blade, rough in its make and seemingly fashioned from an impure alloy, but it did look like it had been properly sharpened, at least.

  Even I could probably forge a better weapon with my current workshop, had I the metal to make one, but its quality didn't matter. It was sharp enough to wound or even kill me.

  But just like that, he died too.

  I blinked.

  A small knife on a wire had been lodged into his neck, before being pulled back. It defied physics, almost blatantly, moving more like a snake through the air than a weapon.

  Such weapons weren't useless. I never used them much myself, because one of their key strengths was disarming opponents, and I didn't have enough arm strength to take advantage of that.

  Most people would just pull back and disarm me instead, if I ever tried.

  However, it was definitely a Skill or something like it that enabled the movements this one took.

  So, I quickly drew my pocket knife to defend myself, before realizing what had happened.

  Van had killed the other one.

  "Ah."

  "Sorry, kiddo, but that's not a goblin. Rescuing her took priority."

  "Huh?"

  He cautiously approached the small figure, trying to seem unthreatening despite having just effortlessly killed one of her captors.

  Since the dungeon's natural lighting was dim in the area we'd chosen to ambush the hobgoblins, he also took out a small light so we could see her better, and vice versa, so she could see us.

  So I was finally able to get a good look at the figure.

  She had a lavender hue to her skin and hair, as well as dark red eyes that looked kind of like my own. Otherwise, she looked like an ordinary human girl, around the same age as me, or at least the age that I looked like.

  She looked around nine or ten.

  There had been no mistaking the hobgoblins treatment of her as kindness. We had definitely rescued her.

  However, as she trembled on the spot, it was pretty clear she was terrified.

  "(Pl-please don't kill me...)"

  'Huh?'

  She wasn't speaking imperial. She was speaking the Lost language that Kazzim had taught me.

  "(We won't kill you,)" I told her.

  That seemed to surprise both of them.

  "You can speak her language?" Van asked. "I didn't bring a translation scroll, since... outsiders usually aren't found in here..."

  "She speaks the language of my dungeon," I told him.

  "She's... from your dungeon?"

  He looked back and forth between me and the girl.

  "(A-are you my new masters?)" She asked, still quite fearful.

  "(Not exactly, but you should come with us anyway.)"

  "(I-I see...)"

  It didn't sound like she understood though. She looked pretty confused to me.

  "I'd like to remove her shackles. Can you ask her if that's okay?"

  "Sure."

  I pointed at Van. "(He's going to remove your shackles.)"

  "(O-okay...)"

  "She said it's okay."

  Of course, I hadn't actually asked her. Getting her permission seemed inefficient, given her current state of mind.

  Van took out some equipment, and managed to pick the locks keeping each shackle bound to her wrists and ankles, until she was finally free.

  There was a quiet absurdity to this. Unless they imported shackles from Terra, and especially considering goblin work was obviously quite crude, it seemed odd he'd have the right tools for the job.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  But it worked.

  ***

  Unlike the other two dungeons I'd been in, the hobgoblin corpses didn't fade away.

  "If there are hobgoblins," Van explained, "Then there's probably a major build up somewhere. I'll report this to the guild in charge of this dungeon once we get back. For now, although you should normally avoid hobgoblins since they're C rank monsters, I can teach you how to harvest them."

  "Sure..."

  And so he did.

  He claimed the only real useful part was the mana core embedded near their hearts, and showed me how to dig it out with relatively little mess.

  I wasn't worried about getting sick. In practical terms, unless it was just a super pathogen that affected everything, diseases had to evolve to affect me, which usually didn't happen since I was also a singular lifeform...

  But I had to ask, "Do we have to worry about blood?"

  "Of course. Make sure to thoroughly wash your hands when you get back. Here, wipe off with this for now, and consider getting some adventurer's gloves later. I'll have Suon help."

  He gave me a wet cloth, so I used it to clean my hands.

  "After that, you want to burn their bodies," he said, piling one atop the other before lighting a match and dropping it on them both. "It's not required, but breaking their weapons is considered good practice too."

  He used his foot to snap each hobgoblin's crude swords in two.

  "Can't they just reforge them?" I asked.

  "In theory, but they're not very clever like you are. Most rely on found weapons. The fact these have swords hints that there's a major infestation somewhere in here, big enough to have started making things."

  "I see... I wonder if the metal's useful..."

  "Probably not."

  After that, we continued onward, now with a strange girl in our party.

  "We'll have to take her to a doctor after this. You don't have to come, but I'd appreciate it a lot if you did. I promise, we won't turn either of you into lab experiments."

  It wasn't that I didn't have some measure of trust toward Van. A forced trust, in the sense that if he had any ill intentions for me, there wasn't much I could do anyway, but it was there.

  But it was harder to trust mysterious doctors studying me.

  However, those doctors might have useful Skills, and I personally wanted to know more about this girl.

  It was hard to believe it'd even be possible for her to speak the same language as Kazzim, since he'd been alone for an unknown but incredibly long period of time.

  Any living language would naturally drift into unrecognizability after such a length of time.

  'Unless she's an undying immortal too...'

  "Okay, but since she seems related to my home, I want to know more about her."

  "Hmmm... I guess that's reasonable enough. We can probably pull her from the managing guild with that much."

  "Huh? You can?"

  "Naturally. Goblins often move their prisoners and slaves from one dungeon to another. They're a very stupid race, but they're natural dungeon hoppers. There's almost no chance she's native to this dungeon."

  "I see..."

  ***

  I tried to get more information from the girl, but she was too dispirited, and I hadn't wanted to press her.

  "So you're not sure if there are other prisoners..."

  "No. It didn't sound like it, but she didn't give a direct answer."

  "I see... well, either way, we're not equipped for a rescue mission. I'll make sure it's treated as a potential emergency."

  And before long, we found the other dungeon portal.

  The whole trip was about two hours, although we weren't traveling at a very quick pace.

  Van had shared spare snacks and drinks, giving them to me and having me help feed the girl.

  "Are you sure it's safe for her to eat this?" I'd asked.

  "Yeah. I can tell these things, don't worry, or do you think I fed you without knowing if it'd be safe or not?"

  "Right..."

  And once we reached the portal, we went through, returning to Terra.

  This portal wasn't a park like the others, by the way.

  It was basically like an inverted military fortress, protecting the outside world from the portal rather than the other way around.

  "We found an outsider," he explained to the staff there, and showed his ID to effectively force them into letting him handle the situation.

  "I see... very well, please take good care of her."

  They didn't seem to mind it though. Perhaps it was less work for them, or perhaps A rank adventurers just have that level of pull.

  Though as we left, I did hear him mutter, "Hmm... Suon might have trouble if there are two girls..."

  The girl was quite frightful toward every little thing, but by this point, she'd apparently started to associate me with safety, even though I couldn't actually protect her from this dungeon called Terra if it had decided to do her harm.

  She stuck close to me, even when we sat in the car to drive to the doctor.

  We didn't go to a huge major hospital or anything like that, though.

  Not unlike when Van took me to different offices, he picked a relatively small office. It gave the impression that we'd just stepped into someone's home, though there were a couple couches to sit at.

  A guy sat at a desk, and looked up at us when we came in, speaking into a headset, "Be right back, I got a customer," before speaking to us, "Hey, Van. She's in waiting for you."

  "Thanks, Beil."

  And so we went in. Van seemed to know the way.

  The doctor we were visiting was a woman, about as old as the guy who'd greeted us. "Picking up more strays, Van?"

  "We think she might be from her dungeon," he answered, pointing at the purple-tinted girl and then myself.

  "I see. I know the one's name, but what about the other? Or is it another Jil Baker situation?"

  Van looked at me.

  I didn't know the girl's name either, but I was the only one who could ask without a translation scroll, so I did.

  "(Do you have a name?)"

  "(Um... I don't remember it...)"

  "(Do you want one?)"

  "(I-If I need one...)"

  "She doesn't remember it. I'm going to call her Lilac though."

  Van gave a shrug, turned back to the doctor, and answered, "Looks like she's Lilac."

  "Is... it really right to have another child name her on the spot...?"

  "Who knows. If they're not from the same dungeon, her foster parents might come up with a name anyway, but if it's Kid's dungeon..."

  "Right..."

  ***

  I expected more magical Skill stuff, and a bit of that happened when we were put under complicated machines, but it was mostly a regular physical.

  Van had to step outside, since both of us had to undress at various points.

  The doctor tried to let us do it separately, but Lilac didn't want to leave me.

  The poor girl had a few scars beneath her robes. They weren't serious, although a couple wounds were fresh enough that the doctor had me put ointment on her.

  I had to do it because the girl still flinched every time anyone got close to her.

  Rather than minding, I made a mental note to research medicine later.

  "I'm going to let the kids use my bath. Go out and get some clothes for the new one, alright?"

  "What size is she?" He asked the doctor.

  "Same size as Kid."

  "What size are you?" He asked me.

  I shrugged. "I have spare clothes, I'll just let her borrow mine."

  "Wait... you don't know what size you wear...?" He asked, sounding astonished.

  "You don't either?" The doctor sounded astonished too.

  Anyway, I was right. This was just someone's home doubling as a doctor's office.

  "Do you need any help?" She asked me, after guiding us to a bathroom upstairs.

  "How do I get water?"

  She showed me how it worked.

  Technologically enlightened eras sure have it easy.