CHAPTER 10

"The birth of a new villain?"

Arkhas did not want to go there.

If it hadn’t been for his parents forcing him to go with his two cousins and publicly announcing him as a volunteer, in front of the whole village, on the exploration expedition to the new world, the crazy idea of walking away from his beloved books and his entire collection of junk would never have crossed his mind.

Those were his treasures... even if he didn’t know how most of them worked.

But not even his thirst for discovering new things and knowing how they worked would have led him to willingly sign up for the group of experienced warrior explorers who risked their lives as they sought to expand their Lord’s territory.

“It’s about time you became a man of valor!” His mother had told him, with her old blue apron on. And her arms, which were far more muscular than those of Arkhas himself, on her hips, her brow furrowed, and her well-sharpened knife tucked away in the pocket of her hideous plaid apron.

If there was one thing his mother was good at, aside from the excellent aim she had at throwing a shoe at his head every time she caught him doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing, it was handling knives. A skill that, to his eternal misfortune, Arkhas had not inherited. Besides, she was two centimeters taller than the youngest of her three sons, two of whom had already died in the war against the orcs.

Perhaps that was why Arkhas could not understand his parents’ decision.

Isn’t it better to have a living child than none at all?

Then it was the young goblin’s turn to frown. As far as he knew, he had belonged to the male sex since birth, so he did not see much meaning in his mother’s words.

However, his father’s were another story.

“Xlena is right. It’s about time you stopped embarrassing the family,” his father’s parting comment hurt him.

Tall, for a goblin, with his stocky body despite the years that had passed since he held the title of the best hunter in the village, and with a thick beard that covered half of his greenish face. A beard that made Arkhas long to have even if he never developed a single muscle on his body, but the young goblin had only two tiny hairs on his jaw.

Two thin, lonely, miserable hairs.

Even his mother’s, who had one more than he did, were thicker and longer than his.

His father watched him with folded arms and his haughty gaze made him feel even smaller and weaker than he already was. All the strength his flimsy body was capable of supplying him with vanished as he heard those painful words.

His stomach churned as their eyes met and Arkhas watched the contempt and annoyance reflected in his father’s face.

The young goblin’s shoulders slumped, but for one of his cousins grabbing him by the arm, his knees would have given way and he would have collapsed to the ground. Which would have further humiliated what was left of his family.

Worst of all, he wasn’t even sure why he expected anything different from his progenitor.

Even if most of his attempts to invent something that could benefit his species had not ended well, Arkhas had always strived to excel and make his parents proud of him.

And even though he had flunked dagger training, he was no good with a bow either, and his ability to track prey was close to zero. He liked to believe that, if he tried hard enough, he would eventually find something he could excel at.

Something he could make his parents proud of him with.

But that definitely didn’t include a near-suicidal mission to go through a magical portal, explore a new world, and eliminate as many enemies as he could find along the way.

Not when he was incapable of hunting a single rabbit without using more than ten traps and failing at least nine of them.

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That’s not to mention that he wasn’t sure, or at least no one had bothered to explain to him, if they could go back.

There were a lot of things that could go wrong with a portal, and not just because the magic was unstable. But because of the exaggerated amount of mana that was needed to open one, not to mention all that was needed to keep it active for a couple of hours.

A number that his small mind was not yet able to comprehend. And he could count to a thousand.

And it was strange enough that he could read and write, at least for a goblin, so no one had bothered to teach him much more than he already knew. But he had found scraps of knowledge among the belongings of those his kin hunted, and had once encountered a shaman from another village who had told him of the hidden knowledge behind something called a system.

Arkhas had been fascinated by the stories of the old traveler. His parents, on the other hand, had given him a good thrashing and sent him to train with his older brothers and cousins.

But now, standing there, watching the warriors of other tribes, it frightened him to even think of all that the orc shamans had to sacrifice in order to keep a portal of such magnitude open.

But he doubted, and feared in equal parts, that they would be able to finish their mission before the mana of the shamans and that of all those magical creatures they had used as sacrifices ran out. And the dimensional portal, his only way home, would close.

Or worse, that he himself would never return alive.

And as his cousin dragged him away from the hut he had grown up in, his heart squeezed at the knowledge that the last image he would have of his parents would be this one.

He lowered his head as his eyes filled with tears that he hurried to wipe away, wishing no one had noticed his little slip, his weakness. Although his lack of muscles and thin legs should have been a good indicator of that. Especially when, after a long walk, they found the whole army gathered there in front of the huge portal stained with the reddish color of the blood of all the creatures they had slaughtered.

The only living beings were standing there, with their muscular bodies dressed for war, carrying axes, maces, spears, knives, clubs, shields, or swords.

There, too, stood Arkhas, his trembling legs barely covered by a leather loincloth, his thick boots firmly on, and a sharp knife in his hands.

One with which he feared he might accidentally cut himself.

And from the worried look his cousin gave him, it seemed that he, too, feared the same.

“I will protect you!” He assured him with a confident smile that began to die the moment the motley group of warriors of different races began to advance towards the portal.

When it was his turn to face the immense cluster of energy, the hairs on his green arms stood up along with the two hairs on his jaw. He gritted his teeth as his cousin urged him forward, along with the rest.

And as he was bathed in the chilling sensation of stepping through the eerie portal, an image of his parents crossed his mind. And he vowed to himself that he would find a way to return and make them proud.

He would find it, he was sure of that.

And he would return home with his head held high.

Or that had been his intention until it had all gone to shit.

It wasn’t even the fact that he had to think fast when his and his cousin’s feet, instead of touching the ground as they had until just a few seconds ago, only touched the air. And he had to rush to grab hold of the first smelly orc that was closest and shout to his cousin, Adielh, to do the same. Thank the old gods, Adielh soon copied him, as did many other goblins. If not that, soon after they touched dry land, his cheerful but naive cousin was killed by a cruel, ruthless, and callous human.

By the time Arkhas arrived there, accompanied by nearly thirty goblins, three orcs, and ten hobgoblins, two other humans joined the battle. But then a strange light ascended from the ground and devoured them all.

When Arkhas opened his eyes again, he was no longer in the new one-moon world trying to avenge the death of his cousin and with the firm intention of bringing his body back home so that he could perform all the funeral rituals with the rest of his family. Instead, he was now in another place, one with two moons, and not two suns, as in his original world, high in the pale sky.

Huge trees surrounded the clearing littered with bodies that reeked of death, and a little further a huge building could be seen in the distance, warning him that they were near some kind of human village, strong enough so that its thick walls and its coarse warriors had protected it from the invading army whose bodies now decorated the ground around his feet.

His hands began to tremble and as soon as he heard the battle cry of an orc in the distance as it fought fiercely against some knights and a pair of wizards, Arkhas ran into the leafy trees surrounding the clearing to hide. His clumsy feet collided with a body and he fell face-first to the ground, scraping his skin.

Pain spread throughout his body, but he fought to ignore it. This was no time to sit and check his wounds.

He needed to protect himself from the enemy army that had caused so many deaths.

They were cruel warriors, for sure. Like that evil woman who took the life of his beloved cousin.

And without wasting time, Arkhas ran. His figure fading among the low bushes and the old trunks of the immense trees. He ran until his feet ached and he was lost in the unknown forest, surrounded by strange creatures, but far from the danger posed by humans.

He ran towards the safety of the unknown, towards the temporary freedom that could augur a better future for him than the devastation and death that lay behind his skeletal back.

Then, without expecting it, out of nowhere, a strange sound rang inside his head and a blue rectangle clouded his vision.

[System loading...]