Chapter 113: The Story of the Goblin Chief

  The sun bled out over the pins, painting the long grass in shades of fire and rust. Grok guided the carriage off the main track, following a dry creek bed to a shallow depression sheltered by a rocky outcrop. It was as good a campsite as we’d find.

  “Here,” he announced, his voice cutting through the twilight. He pulled the horses to a stop and set the brake with a solid thunk.

  The cabin door flew open. Neralia emerged first, her face pale with either exhaustion or fury, likely both. She stumbled slightly on the uneven ground, her fine boots sinking into the dirt. She looked at the barren campsite with an expression of utter betrayal.

  “We are to sleep here? On the ground? Like… like vagrants?”

  Lashley climbed out after her, stretching his back with a groan. “It’s one night, Neralia. Endure.”

  “Endure? I am not a pack animal to ‘endure’ filth and discomfort!” She whirled on me as I hopped down from the driver’s bench. “This is your doing. This… squalor. Is this how you always travel? No pavilion? No bedrolls even worth the name?”

  I ignored her, walking to the back of the carriage to start unloading the supplies. Grok was already pulling out a bedroll for himself, the motion practiced and efficient.

  Her voice rose, sharp in the quiet evening. “I am speaking to you! You drag us out here with no regard for basic decency, no pn beyond ‘walk into the scary forest,’ and you have the audacity to—”

  “Shut up.”

  The words were ft, quiet, but they cut through her tirade like a knife. I didn’t even look at her as I tossed a bundle of firewood onto the ground.

  She gasped. Lashley stiffened. “You dare…”

  I finally turned, a bedroll in my hands. I looked at Neralia, not with anger, but with a weary, dismissive crity. “You compin about the ground. About the smell. About the inconvenience.” I took a step toward her. “Tell me, what rank are you? Officially?”

  She drew herself up. “C-Rank. By the Guild’s own assessment.”

  “Right. A C-Rank adventurer.” I let the words hang in the cool air. “A real adventurer, who’s faced life and death, who’s crawled through mud and blood, who’s had to choose between a clean tunic and a dry spot to sleep that isn’t also home to venomous spiders… a real adventurer wouldn’t be crying about a hard patch of dirt one day’s ride from home.”

  Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her cheeks burned with humiliation.

  “You’re not an adventurer,” I said, my voice losing its edge, becoming almost matter-of-fact. “You’re a tourist with a guild card. You bought your rank with family donations and safe, pretty little quests. You have no idea what this life actually costs.”

  Lashley found his voice, stepping slightly in front of his sister. “You know nothing of our trials.”

  “I know the look,” I said, my gaze shifting to him. “I’ve seen real fear. I’ve seen the moment a person realizes they might die. You don’t have that look. You have the look of someone who’s only ever pyed at danger.” I tossed the bedroll at his feet. “Set up camp. Both of you. Or you can stand there all night compining. I don’t care.”

  I turned back to the carriage, but the silence I’d left behind was thick and charged. I could feel their rage simmering, but beneath it, something else. A dawning, ugly curiosity. They had been shamed, and now they wanted to know what gave me the right.

  It was Lashley who broke first, his voice tight. “And you? What great ordeal forged you into such a paragon of hardship? Please, enlighten us.”

  I paused, my hands on a crate of rations. The fading light, the empty pins, the memory of Gwen’s warmth already feeling like a dream from another lifetime. Maybe they needed to hear it. Not to bond, but to understand the gulf between us.

  I didn’t face them. I stared at the darkening horizon as I spoke, my voice low and devoid of its usual sarcasm.

  “I woke up in a cave,” I began. “No memory of how I got there. Just stone, torchlight, and the smell of wet earth and rot. I had the clothes on my back and a pouch of coins. And within minutes, I knew I wasn’t alone.”

  I told them the truth, but not the whole truth. I stripped out the System, the blue boxes, the choice in the void. I made it a story of pure, brutal survival.

  “They were everywhere. Goblins. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. The tunnels were a maze, echoing with their chattering and snarls. I had no weapon. No magic. No friends.”

  I described the first kill with the stone. The sticky feel of blood, the silent drag of the body into the shadows. I told them about the sword, the slow, methodical clearing of corridors, the constant, gnawing fear that the next corner would hold one too many.

  “It wasn’t a fight,” I said, finally gncing back at them. They were both staring, Neralia’s outrage forgotten, Lashley’s defiance muted. “It was butchery. Me or them. No rules. No honor. Just a dark, wet hole where the only w was who died first.”

  I told them about finding the prisoner, the noble. Rordan. The desperate, temporary alliance. The fire mage goblins with their staves and glowing orbs, the armored guards who actually knew how to hold a shield.

  “We fought our way deeper. He had his spells. I had… desperation. We reached the heart of it. A big chamber, stinking of offal and smoke. And there he was.”

  I turned fully now, leaning against the carriage. The twins’ faces were pale ovals in the gloom.

  “The Goblin Chief. He wasn’t just big. He was a force of nature. A wall of muscle and hate. His axe could have felled a tree. He didn’t say a word. He just… broke me.”

  I didn’t dramatize it. I stated it ftly. “He broke my arm with a backhand. Shattered my leg with a kick. I was on the ground, bleeding out, watching him walk over to finish off the mage who’d been throwing everything he had at him.”

  The memory was cold and sharp, even now. The pain, the helplessness, the sheer, towering rage at my own weakness.

  “I had one arm left that worked. One sword nearby. He had his back to me. He thought I was done.” I met Lashley’s eyes. “He was wrong. I threw that sword. Put everything I had left into it. No skill. No technique. Just the will to not let him win.”

  I mimicked the motion, a short, brutal jerk of my shoulder. “It took him in the side of the neck. Went right through. He stood there for a second, with my sword sticking out of him, looking at me like he couldn’t believe it. Then he fell.”

  Silence. The only sound was the sigh of the wind through the grass and the quiet shuffle of Grok preparing his own bedroll, entirely uninterested.

  “The mage died anyway. I crawled out of that cave, dragging myself over goblin corpses, my bones grinding, my blood painting a trail behind me. I don’t know how I made it to the surface. Will, I guess. Stubbornness.”

  I pushed off the carriage and walked toward the pile of firewood. “So when you compin about the hard ground, or the smell, or the fact that this isn’t the luxurious expedition you imagined…” I knelt and began arranging the wood, my back to them. “…just remember. You’re here on a quest. I’m here because the only other option was to lie down and die a long time ago. Now make yourselves useful, or get out of my sight.”

  I didn’t look to see their reaction. I focused on the task, striking a flint until a spark caught the tinder. A small fme bloomed, pushing back the deepening dark.

  The countdown in my vision glowed, a constant, silent companion. 289:02:17… 16… 15…

  But for the first time since we’d left the gate, the twins made no sound at all.

  Toshiro98