“Alright, you’re all jerky! Every single one of you is jerky!”

To the cheers of the goblin crowd, I lunge towards Gumgum and he does the same. As we meet, I catch his punch with my free hand while he catches mine with one of his. Locked into a grappling match where brute strength is king, I'd usually have the upper hand here if it wasn't for the goblin king's literal upper hands.

With his upper arms still free, Gumgum swings his fists down on top of my head, beating down on me over and over again without pause. Each impact sends shockwaves cracking through the air, rattling my body with every heavy swing.

I never understood what my sisters meant whenever they call me a ‘muscle-brain’. It sounds like a compliment but it feels like they’re making fun of me. But I guess I was wrong. I mean, how can having a muscle brain be a bad thing? Now I know for certain. What my beloved sisters have been trying to tell me all along is...

“Fwahaha! Pepper Black is a woman whose brain is buff enough to withstand any attack!”

Grabbing hold of Gumgum’s lower hands, I yank them down hard, pulling the goblin king toward me. An audible crack cuts through the jeering of the goblin crowd and I feel the crunching of bone as the top of my head meets with his chin.

Gumgum immediately stops his onslaught of punches, roaring in pain as he takes a step back, clutching at the dangling chunk of meat that used to be his lower jaw.

“Gumgum Curse... Gumgum... strongest...” he gurgles, barely managing to stammer out the words from between his half-remaining teeth and the tongue flapping uselessly over empty air.

‘Strongest’, huh? Ah, I get it now. The goblin king Gumgum isn’t some kind of special, elite breed of goblin after all. He’s just a regular hobgoblin. A regular hobgoblin who got a bit cocky because he happened to be born with two extra arms— A Curse. I guess having something like that would make him the strongest. The strongest goblin, that is. Gumgum the so-called goblin ‘king’ isn’t the only one with a Curse of their own...

Wearing a smug grin on my face— I throw up.

Feeling something hard forming in my stomach, I try and force it out but it catches in my throat. I wince a little as I reach inside, gripping the stuck object with my fingers as I try to pull it out.

Fweh? Isn’t this one a little too big? Like, really really too big?! It’s not coming out! What the hell is it? I was trying to show off a little but I think I might’ve made a mistake...

Seeing an opportunity to attack, Gumgum roars, lunging at me one last time. Reaching in with both hands, I grab the outer edges of the unknown object and yank it the rest of the way out of my mouth, swinging it down on the goblin king's head in the same motion. A deafening crack echoes across the cavern as he collapses to his knees and crumples to the floor, blood pooling from his ears.

“Fweh... Splinter.” I cough, plucking out the small wooden shard lodged in the back of my throat. “Yowch.”

Well, that sucked! I didn’t expect to throw up something that big! If I didn’t train my throat and stomach muscles so diligently, that thing would’ve torn me in half from the inside out! What the hell was it anyway? If it left splinters it was probably made out of wood...

I look over the thick wooden object in my hands as I stand it up against the floor.

Fwah! It’s a door! A wooden door! A wooden door, handle and all, had forced its way up from my stomach, out of my mouth, and slammed against the goblin king’s skull. This is the first time I’ve thrown up something this big. Bigger than myself even! Unlike the spoon from yesterday, I don’t think I’ll be sending this one back in again. No thank you!

“... Gu..." A pained gargle rises from a pool of blood near my feet.

Hm? Oh! Gumgum’s still alive. My bad.

I lift a leg into the air and slam my foot down on the back of Gumgum’s head. Hard. It instantly bursts into a puddle of pink paste, oozing out from between my toes.

“Goblin king, huh? Fwaha!” I scoff at the dead Gumgum. At the end of the day, a goblin was still just a goblin. The only thing that made this goblin special was the fact that he was a little taller than the other goblins, as well as having a pretty strong Curse.

In this world where rare individuals are sometimes born with bizarre supernatural abilities— Curses, as they’re commonly known, being born with four arms seems like a pretty badass one. Being able to throw up random objects from who-knows-where seems kinda lame in comparison, to be honest...

Realizing that their leader had been taken out, the other goblins shriek in anger. In an instant, they all begin to charge— Hundreds of shrieking goblins wildly lunging towards me, tearing and clambering over one another to be the first to get to me.

Did killing their leader enrage them that much? Or do they figure whoever kills me is the one who gets to be the new leader? Either way, I’m turning every single one of these dirty gremlins into jerky!

“Fwahahaha! So eager to be inside such a beautiful woman, are we? How very goblin-like!” I grip the door with both hands and lift it over my shoulder, ready to swing. “Don’t worry! There’s enough room for all of you in Pepper’s belly! Come!”

----------------------------------------

Bonk bonk bonk.

The screeching wails of fearful, fleeing goblins echo across the stone walls of the underground labyrinth before quickly being snuffed out by the hollow thunking of wood against bone. My feet slap loudly against the cold floor as I sprint down the winding tunnels, deeper into the goblin’s lair.

Bonk bonk bonk.

Around every corner lies a trio of goblins, ready to attack. Their intentions of ambush quickly turn to escape once they see the naked, blood-soaked demon sprinting towards them with a hungry look in her eyes, a splintered, gore-covered door raised above her head— An unhinged broad with an unhinged board.

After killing Gumgum and cleaning up the rest of the goblins in the dining hall, I continued my killing spree down through the tunnels. There was something I needed to find. I’m sure one of these tunnels will lead me to an exit eventually, but that’s not what I’m looking for. The most important thing to me right now is...

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“Fwahahaha!" I laugh, bonking my way through another group of goblins. "Is it this way?! It's this way, isn't it?! Is this where you keep all the cute, kidnapped girls?!"

Cute girls! The most important thing right now is cute girls! For a goblin horde to have gotten this big, they must be running some kind of sick breeding factory down here. Abducting women from a nearby village, dragging them back down into their lair, and using them to spit out more goblins is practically a cornerstone of goblin culture!

Don’t worry, ladies. Pepper’s got you now, I’ll tell them, clutching them tightly to my chest as I softly massage their heads with my gently gyrating pectoral muscles. Fwah~! Pepper is so super cool and pretty and definitely my type! They’ll reply. For saving us from those disgusting goblins, please kiss us all on the mouth as many times as you want!

“Fwehehe...” Drool spills from the corner of my mouth at the thought of all the future mouth-kissing, confusing an already-panicked goblin in his final moments before being bonked into a red paste by a downward swing of my door.

Fwaha! This is the only tunnel I haven’t been down yet! They must be this way!

Sprinting down the tunnel, I notice an opening up ahead. Licking my lips in anticipation, I burst through into the new room.

“Don’t worry, ladies! Pepper’s got you now!”

Inside, the floor is covered in thick layers of animal furs and skins. The warm softness beneath my feet is a welcoming change from the cold, rough stone I've been slapping my feet against for the past couple of hours. A figure rises from the centre of the room amongst a bedding of furs, roused awake by my loud entrance. It stands and turns to face me.

“Where Gumgum?” it asks, scratching at a collection of boils forming underneath a particularly hairy breast. “Want baby.”

A giant creature, bigger than Gumgum himself, stands alone in the new room. From its rough, greenish-grey skin, plump body, and stupid face, I can immediately tell what kind of creature it is— A troll. A female troll too, if the ill-fitting fabric barely covering its chest is anything to go by.

My face drops as my excitement quickly turns to disappointment. I don’t want to kiss a troll. Especially not on the mouth. I’ve seen enough trolls back home and I can’t say I’ve ever thought of one as being anywhere near anything resembling cute. My elder sister Beans had a hemorrhoid once from falling asleep on the toilet too many times and even that looked more kissable than the troll in front of me right now.

It seems she probably wasn’t dragged here against her will too. She is a troll after all. If anything, she was the one who dragged them into all of this. I can’t imagine a goblin putting up much of a fight against a troll. And every girl dreams about being a queen at least once in their life, I guess. Even trolls.

Cute or not, a girl is still a girl so I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to still be somewhat polite...

“Uh. Gumgum died somehow. Bad migraine, I think. Sorry.” I tell the troll, before turning back to the exit. “I’m late for a meet-up with my sister so I’ve gotta get going. I’ll, uh, see you around may...be...?”

My words trail off as something about the troll catches my eye and makes me pause in my tracks.

“Where other goblin?” the troll asks, seemingly unfazed by the news of Gumgum’s death. “Want baby.”

My eye twitches a little as I look back at the troll’s ill-fitting clothing. Rolls of fat spill out in bubbles underneath the familiar yet barely recognizable black and white frills of the dress stretched across her wide chest. A black ribbon, once tied into a neat little bow, was now just a sad strip of unravelled string, hanging across her chest like a long, sad moustache.

“All the other goblins died too somehow. Sorry,” I hiss through clenched teeth. “Again, my sister’s waiting for me so I really have to—”

“You look like strong man. Like big goblin. Maybe small troll.” She scratches the underside of her belly, lifting it a little as she does. From underneath her gut, I can make out a tiny sliver of fabric buried between the folds of her undercarriage, supported by a thin, trembling waistband on the brink of snapping. Blue and white stripes. “Want bab—“

The room explodes in a shower of meaty troll chunks and splintered bits of door.

“Fwah~! I feel a lot better now. Mm!” I nod to myself, leaving the mess of a room, ruined outfit, and broken door, all behind.

Satisfied with the complete extermination of a goblin horde, I skip my way back up the tunnels at a leisurely pace. It had taken a few hours and well over a thousand dead goblins but I had completely cleaned the place out. In the end, there were no cute girls, but that was okay because I still got something very important out of the whole ordeal— Jerky!

Skipping my way back through the tunnels, and back into the dining hall where most of the goblin corpses lay, I make sure to collect as much usable goblin meat as I can find. Unfortunately, most of the goblins had been splattered into unrecognizable pastes of varying consistencies across every surface of the goblin lair, and if I have to peel it off a wall, I probably can’t make jerky out of it. I probably should have considered that when I was going on my rampage...

Oh well! Let’s just make do with what we have!

Hmm. Usually, it'd take just a few hours to properly prepare, dry, and cook a handful of little goblins. But there are hundreds of bodies in here. And not just little ones either. I mean, Gumgum himself is like four goblins in one. This could take me days! Weeks even! Weeks that I don’t want to spend knee-deep in goblin. I still have to meet Trish in town after all.

Fwahaha! Let’s do it the hard way then! There isn’t anything in this world that can’t be brute forced with Muscle and Power! Cooking included!

I slap my thighs together and flex them to their absolute limits. Rapidly vibrating the muscles in my thighs, I start feeding goblin parts between my legs. Squeezing just enough to push the meat through while leaving the blood and bone behind. Where goblin parts are fed through one side, completely cooked, cured, dried, and seasoned jerky is pushed out of the other.

It’s a simple enough process. My thighs squeeze the meat, wringing out the moisture and drying it out. The vibrating muscles cook the meat, heating it through the friction of my intense vibrations. And the sweat dripping from my legs seasons the meat, boiling away into a simple salt as it’s massaged into the jerky.

My thighs are throbbing in pain, but I continue to cook. Squeeze and cook, squeeze and cook, squeeze and cook. Hundreds upon hundreds of goblin meat passes between my rapidly vibrating thighs, until finally...

“Fwahaha!” I burst out into the fresh open air of the Outside, laughing up into the bright blue open sky. “Jerky made!”

I had done it. Hundreds of goblins, fully jerkied in a matter of mere hours. Usually, something like that would be impossible but...

“Fwahahaha! Pepper Black is a woman who doesn’t know the meaning of the word impossible!”

Now, what was I doing before I... Fwah! That’s right! Trish! The town! It looks like it’s still only morning, but I better do this before I forget...

Slapping my trembling thighs back into action, I find a tall nearby tree and scoot my way up the trunk. Making my way to the top, I look out over the sea of greenery. It’s definitely a much more pleasant sea of green than the one I had to deal with last night. The wind feels really nice up here too. And the warmness of the sun is... Fwah!

Looking towards the direction of the sun, I spy something in the far distance. I flex the muscles in my eyeballs to get a better look.

Wagons rolling over dirt roads. Smoke rising from tiled roofs. Wooden fences. High walls. And most importantly — People! Hundreds of little blobs, swarming around like colourful little ants in the distance. It’s the town! The human town! Finally!

Once I get there, I can meet up with Trish and we can buy those supplies Mom and the others wanted us to get. Mostly just spices and other ingredients that can’t be found in the Underground. Apparently, the shiny rocks that grow near our home are pretty valuable up here on the surface so trading for stuff we need is easy breezy.

Usually, Trish makes these supply runs by herself once a year, but this year I begged Mom to let me go too. She seemed really worried but Trish reassured her that it’d probably be fine. Pepper’s not a kid anymore, Mom. She told her. That muscle-brain will be fine no matter what happens to her.

As soon as we got to the surface, Trish slapped a map in my hands and told me to take my time getting there. She said there was something she needed to do first and to meet her in town later, before racing on ahead of me. A few nights wandering around blindly in the forest and a few thousand strips of jerky later and... Here I am!

Judging the distance from here to town, I’d say I’m about an hour’s sprint away. Perfect!

Sliding back down the tree, I pop back into the cave quickly to load up as much jerky as I can comfortably carry, and then immediately leave to continue my journey, making sure to mark my scent along the tunnels on my way out. I’ll be back later to collect all my jerky, of course. Can’t have others stealing any while I’m out.

Pumping my calves into overdrive, I take off at full sprint towards the direction of the town, a wide grin on my face.

“Fwahahaha!” I laugh, branches and thickets whipping at my exposed body as I trample through them. “Make one hundred friends! Kiss one thousand girls!”

As the landscape starts to take a sharp slope downwards, I leap into the air, soaring over the dense brush and past the tips of the trees below me.

“Daughter of the Demon Queen Gluttony! Sister to the Bloodstained Blackspawn! Like my mother and sisters before me...” I shout out over the treetops as I fly over the green landscape.

“Pepper Black is a woman who will rampage across the Outside as her demon blood compels her! A woman who will proudly live up to her title of Strongest Demon!”

I fall back down to the forest floor and, landing with a heavy thud, I hit the ground running.

A town full of humans, huh? This is gonna be so much fun!