Chương 14: The Reunion

Ch. 14: The Reunion Congratulations! You just killed 14/15 goblins! Finish the swarm to level up! I ignored the stats as I stepped toward the 15th goblin. He cowered in the corner, surrounded by his dead comrades. I covered his face with his hands, but I pulled him up by the scruff and forced him to look at me.

"Let's talk." That got his attention. I said it to him in… what I thought was normal english. But he turned to me and said, "You speak celestial?"

"I minored it in college. Why are there sapients here? What is this operation?" He was scared, having never met a supposed human who could speak in what seemed to be a universal tongue. He eventually did pipe up.

"We sell things. Things we find, or pillage. Namely weapons."

"Right," I said, "That's why they took Lee. You people wanted to use her to get to our weapons?" The goblin nodded his head.

"Okay, who's leading this thing?"

"Blad, The Butcher of Bladefall. He is a most powerful ogre. One of the more intelligent. He recruited us to fight for him."

"And what's the core?" He did not understand what I meant, I clarified, "The glowing animal? The door to this place. What is it?"

"The key? It is an Urulk."

"Urulk. That one isn't translating for me. What… hmmm, how do I put this. What animal is it the big version of? You know? Like, it's always a weird nightmare version of a normal animal. Do you get what I'm saying?"

"It's a.. mole." I put the goblin down but kept my hand on his collar, "Ahh, okay. A giant mole monster. Yeah, never fought one but with Kayla and the others it should be fine. That giant ogre might change the tides I guess. Where am I going to find it?"

"I can… I can show you the way if you let me live."

"How about you just tell me the way and I'll let you live."

"H-how do I know you won't kill me?"

"I'm definitely heavily incentivized. You know I get a level up once I do?" I could feel the goblin shaking, looking around for the exit, or a weapon, and only being reminded of his dead teammates.

"Stick your pinky up." He didn't know what I was talking about.

"Come on," I repeated, "Stick your pinky up." Confused, He stuck his hand up and brandished his pinky finger. I reached over and interlocked his with mine and shook.

"I will not kill you when you tell me everything I need to know. That's a pinky promise. We don't break those. Now go ahead." Once I released his pinky, he shifted to his index finger, pointing directly upwards. When my eye followed his direction, there was only a solid rockwall.

"She wakes us every morning with her digging. You will find her chamber above us. The way there is simple enough. You shall go further down the way. Keep going until you hit the end. There are two door ways on either side. Go up the one to your right facing the wall. Walk up that staircase and there will be a vestibule. You drop through the vestibule and you keep going until you see the kitchen. Once you do, here's where it gets complicated…"

"Hold on, let me try this." I squatted, and jumped up. My fists pounded against the cavern, cracks spiderwebbed from my impact. I fell back down and did it again. I created a hole, the rocks crumbling on either side of the incision. I turned back to the goblin. By his eyes I could tell he was probably wondering if I would hold up my end of the pinky promise. I grabbed his shoulder.

"One last thing, before I let you go."

"A-anything."

"When's the next split eclipse?"

"The next… well, it's in a year. But that's…"

"What was that!?" A woman's voice I'd heard before asked from the top floor. It was Kayla, and likely the others. I turned back to the goblin.

"One year!?" I hissed.

"That's our time. Your world, it goes slower. I don't know how long it would be." The flickers of the flares trickled into the hole as it looked my party was about to stick their head down.

"Go." I released him and pushed him along. He started to go but asked, "What should I tell people happened today?"

"Tell them whatever you want. Tell them I thought you were special. Tell them you killed me back. Just don't make yourself the victim." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. He nodded and scampered away as I heard Kayla's voice.

"Drake!?" I turned, surrounded by a mess of bodies. My own clothes stained in goblin blood. Just then I heard the voice in my head say, Aww, if there's a member of the swarm alive, it means you're still level 8. Just kill one more baddie and you'll get to the next level. Kay, hun?

"Down here, Kayla!"

"Drake… what the hell happened here?" I raised my hands, "I'll explain everything, but first, can you pull me up?" Kayla reached down just enough for me to jump up and grab her hands. She pulled me up easily. Another man from the party. Tall and lanky by the name of Hugh, pulled me too.

"Thank you so much. You saved me."

"Drake, we thought you were dead. How'd you… how'd you survive the fall!? What happened to those bodies?"

"Landed in deep river. Washed me for a long time until I got back up. Made it to a hellbat cave but I got out before they woke using the sound of the river. I eventually found some wooden stairs which told me there were sapients. Figured I'd follow it and luckily the door through was unlocked. Then I stumbled upon the barracks."

"And… the dead goblins?" Kayla asked. Nobody would ever believe me. Even if I tried the truth, they would think I was lying to try to get the money. People would not believe me and maybe it would be worse If they did. Instead, I had to protect myself.

"I guess the goblins didn't get along here. Maybe they were from different tribes. I don't know. But… I walked into an all out gang war. It was nuts, Kayla. Terrifying. I hid under the beds just to survive."

"A… A gang war!?"

"That's right." Hugh spoke up, "We also saw hellbats, but they were all burnt to a crisp when we saw them.

"Huh," I said, "Maybe it was a different hellbat cave. They were all alive when I was there."

"Are you sure?" Kayla pointed to the empty door, "We didn't go up the stairs, but we're pretty sure it was right down that hallway."

"Hmmm," I said, placing my hand on my chin, "Maybe that's why it was so easy for me to escape."

"Right," said Kayla still trying to process, "Anyway, we've been looking for the core but this place is a freaking maze. We also keep encountering goblins as well."

"You should have seen it," Said Hugh, "The Slay Queen dispatched them instantly. We basically had to just stand there and watch."

"Wow!" I said, "Kayla, you really took down the goblins all by yourself?"

"I did. I'm glad you're safe, Drake. That was really dangerous diving in there like that. But… I know you did it for your friend. So let's go find Lee."

'Yeah," I said, "Let's focus on finding Lee, and if we find Wesley, that's cool too."

"Our… priority will be to find both of them."

"Right. So as far as I understand, this is the mole's sleeping chambers. We could probably-""Mole? How do you know the core's a mole?"

"What?"

"How do you know the core's a mole?" Kayla prodded again, "Did you see it?"

"Uh," I scampered for thought, "Yeah, I caught a glimpse of it when it took Lee away. I think it's based off of a star-nosed mole. The tendrils that took Lee being its nose."

"Okay. I guess so. Let's assume you're correct. That this is a mole monster. So, meet the rest of the team. That's Hugh. These two are Jan and Riley." She pointed to two women, both in heavy sweaters and work pants. Jan waved hello with the flare in her hand. Riley nodded to me. I smiled back at them but turned to Kayla, "I think we should look around. It's probably close by to here."

"If time is of the essence, it might be smart to split up." My eyes went wide. That would be perfect, providing me with less people to hide my powers from."

"That would be-""Not ideal," said Hugh, "We have one NPC with us and the rest of us are Alphas. If we encounter the core there's no guarantee we could out run it what with its tendrils. So, I believe we should spend the rest of the raid together. Thoughts?"

"I don't like that plan," I said, "I think we should split up."

"No, Hugh is right," said Kayla. I let out a breath.

"Okay, then where do we go from here?"

"We move forward. Drake, we came from that way, let's go the exact opposite route." I nodded, Kayla's plan seeming reasonable enough and we moved forward. It was about two rooms later that we encountered a much more open cavern, one with a table at the center with dead goblins.

"Was this you guys?" I asked. Kayla shook her head. We approached and we all pulled our weapons up. I took out my toothpick and sighed. I had literally done more damage without this thing.

"Wesley?" Hugh asked.

"Could be," Kayla said, "either way, let's keep our weapons out." I picked up a short sword from the goblin corpse. I used the inspect but all it said was: Common greatsword +2 strength Probably still better than the toothpick. I did not have a holster for it. But I would not need one. In the wet, dark, silence, we could hear two things. One was the sound of grinding. Like two hard things getting mashing together and one of those objects was clearly losing. The other were the hard plods coming down a long hallway.

"I think… that's the ogre," Said Kayla, sticking her magic weapon, a hammer out. Kayla whispered under her breath and said, " Griffon's Courage." A red energy sparked around each of us. There was a flare of anger in my belly that indicated I had just been given a strength boost.

"Have any of you seen an ogre that big before?" Jan asked. We all shook our heads no. Standing at around two people tall, the ogre dragged Lee in tow. He held her by the hair with her own axe to her throat.

"Woah, friend!" Hugh said, "Let's take it easy!" Kayla stuck her hammer out, but was across the cavern, very far for any of our short range weapons.

"We can figure this out," said Kayla. The ogre smiled.

"I agree."

"We just want the core. Please let our friend go and we don't have to hurt you." It had occurred to me. This relatively spacious cavern was lit up by torches, sure. But torches burned orange. There was a relatively 'office' lighting. That is to say, a bright white light that illuminated this tavern from above.

"How many weapons you got? One each?"

"We can give you one of the weapons for Lee," Kayla said, "But we'll only give you another one for Wesley. Where is he?"

"Oh, my god. I totally forgot about him," I whispered to Jan. The ogre let out a belly laugh and said, "One life for one weapon. How about four for four?"

"Where is Wesley?" Kayla repeated. While keeping both of his hands on Lee's hair and the axe, he whistled. Something crashed in front of us. We covered our faces and when we pulled our hands away to look, we saw a corpse. A nearly completely mauled corpse wearing the shreddings of an orange hoodie. And when we looked up to see where it came from, the large mole monster dropped from the hole in the cavern to meet us.