Chef frowned as he watched from his vantage point a few hundred goblin feet away. Fortunate as he was that green leaves made excellent camouflage for a goblin; he was just as unfortunate considering how that fight just went. Really, almost none of this had gone to plan.

He’d made the poison to paralyze non-goblins in order of size and just regularly poison goblins. Good old-fashioned death by suffocation or something. Who knows, he wasn’t a poison master, just a poison crafter. The cacophony of pings even now ringing in his ears told him he killed or assisted in killing plenty of things today so he knew it worked well enough.

But the stupid bear killed and ate the deer instead of the wolves. Honestly, Chef had forgotten that deer existed and were the same size as wolves give or take some. So, when the wolves and deer seized up, the bear capitalized on the deer instead. With the deer dead and eaten, the bear then froze up and, well…

Stupid wolves. They even had the audacity to eat so much that they got a second round of doses, freezing up at the absolute worst moment. So now, instead of one bear to kill, cook, and eat, one Turducken, he was stuck with a third of a bear, four wolves, a dozen goblins, and Chief. And still only one small stomach to fit it all in.

Great. Just perfect.

At least Chief could eat a lot. He was more than halfway through the wolf corpses by now with no sign of slowing. That hunger poison really worked.

Oh well, maybe he’d get lucky and another bear would show up. Probably not though. If Chef was lucky then things would stop trying to eat him so often.

But for now, Chef didn’t need to get lucky. That’s what poison was for. Poison and patience. With enough poison and patience anything was possible. Assuming you had skills that is.

Truly he never got enough of them. The things he could cook up with his skills, literally and figuratively, were incredible. By combining his Cooking and Poisoncraft, he could just think really hard about what he wanted his food to do, throw in the right kind of ingredients, stir, and them BAM! Goblin SurpriseTM!

Results may vary, of course. He never got that super juice to work. Well, it never did what it was supposed to do, but it certainly made for an excellent laxative. And honestly most things turned out as a goop of some kind which wasn’t very visually appealing, but it’s hard to argue with results. Unless those results involved you shitting your brains out for two days.

The experience was pouring in, skills were leveling, and quite frankly it was a lot of fun. He had to admit though that the experimentation was the most fun part. Looking down on the chaos he had sown, the scenario he crafted, coming up with contingencies and plotting the downfall of an entire goblin clan, why Chef had never been so happy before!

*Ping*

Congratulations! Your Connive has increased!

I can see it now. Chief always saw himself as King Shit of Fuck Mountain, so I’ll eat him like a king. First, I’ll butcher him up just perfectly, separate the meat from the bones and organs, and then build a huge fire! I’m going to bake the man. There’s still some flour leftover from that traveler we killed last week, so I’ll cook up one of those pies he talked about.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

A Chief pie, dish of kings.

Even Chef began to salivate at that.

Wait, why is Chief coming this way?

His tree shook violently as Chef held on for dear life.

“Get down here Chef! I don’t know what you did or how, but I’ll kill you for this insult!”

Chef looked down from his perch, confused.

“You were going to kill me anyway! And how did you find me?! My Hide skill is incredible,” he lied. He didn’t even have a Hide skill.

“You mumble to yourself when you scheme, Chef. Honestly, it’s a bit worrying.”

Damn! How did I not know that?

“I kinda figured you did. Guess everyone’s surprised.”

“Damn it, I wasn’t trying to say that out loud! Wait, does that mean you knew I was planning to kill and cook the whole clan in their sleep and then spend a whole month dining on your medium rare flesh?”

Silence filled the clearing as Chief stared up at Chef. Chef broke eye contact first.

“Guess not.”

“You’re a monster, Chef.”

“Yes yes, I am a goblin. Your point?”

“Fair enough. I mean I did plan to eat you before I even knew you planned to eat me. Goblins, am I right?”

They both nodded sagely, understanding blooming between them. Truthfully, the two had a lot in common. At least four out of five letters in common. That’s 80 percent! Beyond even that, they were brothers. Tenuous as the bond was for goblins given their number of siblings and general willingness to cannibalize, it still meant something.

“I feel much better about killing and eating you now,” Chief said, smiling sweetly.

For a goblin, kinship just made the meat sweeter.

“Well enough of that. Time for you to die.”

Chief began to swing his massive metal maul into the tree with extreme force, shaking it violently as Chef held on for dear life. There was no telling how long the poison would need to take hold on something Chief’s size, and time was one thing Chef was rapidly running out of. He needed a plan.

“Wait! Don’t you want to know how I did all this? Especially if you’ll be getting my skills soon.”

The shaking stopped and Chef panted as he got his bearings on the tree branch.

“I mean I did ask earlier. You just kind of changed the subject.”

“Well then,” Chef said, puffing out his chest as he prepared to monologue at his soon to be dead friend. “You see, I used my Cooking skill combined with my Poisoncraft skill to make a goop! A goop that turns anything that eats it into a ravenous, slobbering mess! Then eventually it will paralyze the creature unless they’re a goblin!”

“Huh. How’d you make something so oddly specific?”

“What’s that now?”

“I mean,” Chief began as he scratched his head. “That must have taken forever. An insane amount of planning and experimentation would be necessary to discover what ingredients in which quantity were needed to make just an effect specific to just—“

“Oh no no no, none of that. I just kinda did it.”

Once again, silence filled the clearing.

“What?”

“Yea I just use the skills and decide what I want my goop to do and it usually works.”

Chief didn’t say anything for a while as he just looked down and sighed something under his breath. Presumably so overwhelmed by my intellect that he didn’t know what to-

The tree started shaking even more violently than before as Chef struggled to hold on. All the while, Chief finally lost it as he swung viciously again and again while screaming at the top of his lungs.

“FUCKING GOBLINS!”