Volume 3

Chapter 64: Dale's Reminiscence (1)

I don't usually talk about my past because I can't change what has passed and it's not interesting or productive to talk about it.

If that were the case, it would be better to enjoy the present.

Picking up a beautiful older woman, having a drink with a colleague you happen to meet by chance and complaining about your problems, or just having a good time talking about trivial things.

The past is the past. Nothing more, nothing less.

But, well, sometimes I get sentimental when I dream about that day or meet a nostalgic person.

But yeah, such and such a thing happened.

So, let's talk a little about my past.

***

"Nghhh~!　Nghhh~!"

I was an abandoned child.

That's why I have never seen my parents' faces since I was born.

I still don't know what kind of person my father is or what kind of person my mother is.

Why did they give birth to me and then immediately abandon me?

Did they want to abandon me? Did they have to abandon me?

I didn't even know why.

I wasn't even interested.

In this day and age, there are so many abandoned children. It's not that I feel particularly sorry for them.

Even if they are not abandoned children, there are many parents who sell their children for money, except for their eldest son who has grown up a little.

I don't care why they abandoned me, or what kind of parents they are, and I didn't even try to know.

I was so busy living that I didn't have time to know such things.

Well, it was probably just a shitty parent and a shitty reason.

The problem is that the place where I was abandoned was in the deep woods.

In the middle of a forest infested with monsters.

You'd laugh if you didn't understand the meaning of the word.

How did they manage to carry a baby in their arms deep into a monster-infested forest?

I mean, if they were going to abandon a newborn baby in such a place, they were ready to kill it, no matter how you look at it.

Now, what happened to me, the baby abandoned in the middle of the forest?

If I had to guess, I would say that I was left there to die of starvation, or that the monsters in the forest ate me up and swallowed me whole.

On the other hand, I was not eaten by the monsters, but rather "picked up" by them.

"Nggyah nggyah nggyah!"

"Gegeu......geegeegee!"

Wrapped in a white blanket, one old goblin approached the screaming baby, who was in a cradle.

The goblin didn't just eat me alive, he picked up the whole cradle and took it back to the goblin territory with him.

His fellow goblins in the territory must have been so surprised.

After all, he had brought a human baby with him.

And what's more, he went crazy and tried to raise a human baby. It doesn't make sense, does it?

Not only the old goblin who picked me up, but also other goblins accepted me as a human baby and tried to raise me together.

What the hell is this? If they're monsters, why don't they just eat me like monsters?

Maybe these ferocious monsters also had a desire for protection.

I'm not a scholar, so I don't know much about that. Those who study monster ecology might have understood the inexplicable behavior of the goblins.

"Da~u~"

"Gege, gege!"

I was raised by an old goblin, and I grew up soooo fast.

I don't know how he raised a human baby without letting it die, because I don't remember what it was like to be a baby.

I seriously wonder how they raise me. There's not much meat, and babies are limited in what they can eat.

If there is a possibility, it's because I was fed with milk from a monster that can produce milk, or I was given nutritional support that is worth it. That's about it.

Either way, it's amazing, I'm a baby who grew up with it. I mean, how tough can I be?

"Dale, Dale."

"Oh my, Dale!"

"Da~u?"

It must have been about a year since the goblins picked me up.

Somewhere along the way, the goblins began to call me Dale.

As far as I remember, I was given the name during a kind of ceremony.

In the dead of night, in the pitch dark.

In the darkness, with a torch burning and the light softly bright, I was made to sit on an ugly altar made of stone.

I was naked, and my whole body was painted with the monster's blood.

Goblins were dancing around me, and an old goblin was waving a stick that looked like a ritual tool.

"Gege, gege, Dale!

"Da~u?"

By that monstrous ritual, I was named Dale.

My godfather was a goblin.