Confidence restored, the sword refused the offer of another weapon and asked for a scabbard instead. He opened the pocket dimension and laid out everything he had collected — hides, fangs, shells, crystals — and Garus agreed to make things from them. The scabbard in three days. Protective gear in a month.
On the way out, Teacher told Fran to do the rest of her shopping. She bought necessities, and then went looking for cooking equipment and spices.
They tried a shop that had been recommended to them earlier. A tall man greeted them at the counter, and there was something about him the sword did not like, so he used appraisal and found that the man's strength was very high. The merchant admitted it easily enough: he had been an adventurer before he opened the shop. Fran bought her spices and her cookware, and they left.
She was so eager to eat something the sword had cooked that Teacher had to remind her they still needed a place to sleep.
The innkeeper checked her guild card and gave her a room. Fran went in and jumped on the spot from sheer delight — at the space, at the quiet, above all at the bed, which was soft. She sat down on it and became suddenly, quietly emotional, because all of this existed for her only because of her teacher. She hugged the sword.
Watching her, Teacher promised her that he would stay with her until she evolved, and thought that perhaps this was why he had come to this world at all.
Then he cooked dinner: fried chicken, seasoned with the new spices. Fran ate a mouthful, sat back astonished at the taste of it, and finished every last piece.
Afterward they held a strategy meeting about the evolution points. Fran suggested recovery magic, and the sword agreed with her — he had not forgotten Donadron's arm closing itself in front of them. He also thought resistance skills would be needed against tougher enemies, and he briefly considered doppelganger, but recovery came first.
He was still talking it through when he noticed she had fallen asleep, and he let her be.
Far away, a goblin army was gathering.
The next day Teacher taught her about herbs and about guild missions. He explained the plants that boosted stamina at some length, entirely convinced that she was enjoying the lesson, when in fact she was thoroughly annoyed by it.
Then, in the middle of the gathering, Fran stopped, sensed something, and ran.
Deeper in the forest a party of adventurers had been surrounded by goblins and were bitterly regretting how far in they had come. Fran watched from a distance and decided to help.
Eustace was trying to hold the goblins off with fire magic while his teammates praised him for it. Fran came down into the middle of the fight, and the sword promptly put the fire out — fire magic in a forest was a good way to kill everyone present, and earth magic would do the job better.
Fran used stone arrows and dropped several goblins where they stood, then charged in and cut down more.
The adventurers stared at her. She kept fighting, levelling as she went, and finished by leaping into the air and bringing the sword down in a blow whose shock wave cleared the whole area.
Then she healed the wounded with recovery magic.
She tried to leave afterward, and the adventurers insisted she take the rewards. She would only accept the hobgoblins — and they told her what that meant. Hobgoblins were class goblins. Where there were class goblins, there was very likely a goblin king nearby.
A goblin army under a king was dangerous enough. With a queen as well, the entire group evolved into stronger forms, and that kind of growth could escalate into a large-scale threat capable of coming down on human settlements. The adventurers agreed they had to report it to the guild at once.
Then Fran sensed something behind her and killed a goblin that had been creeping up on them.
She told the adventurers to go back to the guild. She would stay and hold the goblins off.
She saw it as training. The horde was growing, and she made herself ready for it.
They swarmed in and she cut through them, levelling steadily, and still she was not satisfied. She unleashed combination attacks — tri-explosion, dragon fang — clearing them in great numbers and pushing her level higher.
But they kept coming. Fran began to tire. The goblins started shooting arrows at her and moving against her in coordinated groups. One explosion very nearly reached her, and the sword blocked it with a wall of earth; he had realised by then that these goblins were working together strategically. As the attacks went on he built a barrier of fire around her.
With them closing in, the sword suggested they retreat. Fran refused to back down, and kept fighting, because she wanted to grow stronger.
Goblin heads went spinning away as she cut them down one after another and would not stop.
The sword had wanted to protect her. He had been worried about her getting hurt. Now he understood something about his wielder: she did not want strength to show it off. She wanted to be stronger, in herself, and he decided that his job was to help her do it.
Right then an arrow grazed her cheek. He healed the wound, and Fran killed the goblin that had fired it. More swarmed in and the catgirl kept going, and the sword saw at last that the girl holding him was not a frightened child any more. She was a fighter.
When it was over she was standing on a heap of goblin corpses, filthy and exhausted, and she had reached level twelve.
She went straight back to Garus in that condition. He was confused, and then his confusion turned to open astonishment when he learned that this small girl had just fought hundreds of goblins by herself — and intended to raid a dungeon in the morning.
For back in the forest, Fran had come across a goblin nest.
She had been ready to go straight into the cave, and the sword had stopped her, because she was tired. He suggested instead that she absorb the crystals from the goblins she had already killed and go back to town to rest.
And while she was absorbing them, the adventurers had walked in on her.
They took one look at the mound of corpses she had made and put her ability on a level with a D-rank adventurer. Then Fran pointed at the cave in the hillside, and caught them all by surprise, because there had never been a cave there before.
That, the adventurers realised, was a dungeon.
They told her to go back to the village and speak to the guild leader, and promised to keep watch until then.