Walking through the woods reminded him of his adventuring days. Many of those quests involved goblins as well, making it especially memorable given his current circumstances. Granted, back then he was looking to kill the goblins rather than cooperate with them, but the point still stood.

They’d been walking through the forest at a rather slow pace on account of Chef’s stumpy legs, but that wasn’t what mattered. They’d gained a good amount of distance from the town over the past two hours, and it was time to decide on his next course of action.

Obviously, aiding and embedding a criminal would be awful for his career as a guard, even if the charges were bogus. It wouldn’t exactly help him as a private citizen either, but he’d already made up his mind to an extent when he went to go check around town this afternoon. As he’d feared, his cook acquaintance prioritized eating over escaping his death sentence.

Any decent human being would have dragged the child sized creature away from impending death, really. But that had been two hours ago. Every minute entrenched him further with this discomforting monster; but, at the same time, Chef was beginning to grow on him. That shouldn’t have been the case considering how frustrating their conversations could be, but he actually rather enjoyed this dynamic. Strange as it may sound, their banter reminded Nerick of him and his wife, just with way better food and without the sex.

So really, they were pretty even.

He wanted the goblin to succeed. More than that, he’d seen with his own two eyes how easy it had been for Chef to take over the prison with his cooking. If they opened up a business together or, hells, if he just attached himself to the goblin, he’d be set for life. That was why he had been willing to risk so much for the little shit, annoying as it was at times… or almost all the time.

“You two are shockingly easy to find for being fugitives.”

Chef noticed their guest before he did, the goblin turning to look behind them was how he knew anything was off in the first place. The intruder he saw just a hundred or so feet away was someone that Nerick used to know quite well, but any resident of Berics would have been able to recognize him.

“Deren ‘Burning Blade’ Withers, the guild master for the adventuring guild and the strongest man in Berics.”

Erick spoke in a whisper despite having no expectations of privacy. The man before them was a legend after all.

“To what do we owe the pleasure of your company, guild master? The goblin’s stall is not yet open, but I’m sure we could fix that in short order for you if need be.”

The middle aged man looked him up and down with a cocktail of mild surprise and amusement in his eyes. As always, the weight of a powerful person’s judgement was not something so easy to bear, causing Nerick to perspire after mere moments. It was a common side effect of the Intimidate skill, a rare ability that was hard to defend against unless you were handedly superior to the user.

Chef looked as unbothered by it as he was curious.

“How did you find us so fast? I thought we were quite sneaky.”

Apparently, we weren’t.

“You weren’t.”

Oh joy, validation of the worst kind.

“Honestly, you barely even tried to cover your tracks. You barely ever turned! I basically only had to walk in a straight line and here you are. Really, the two of you would make shit adventurers.”

Nerick bristled slightly at the taunt, but it passed quickly. The guild master was right after all. Had he been cut out for life as an adventurer, he never would have retired to being a guard. Adventuring, like his current or not so current occupation, had been a means to an end and that was all. Once the risks outweighed the benefits and a suitable alternative became available, he made a swift exit from that field.

But the guild master was different. Like the guard captain, the battles he’d been through were worn like a heavy mantle over the man, coloring his every action and word. His taunts were considered, baiting them to see the degree of effect his Intimidate had on them. He’d learned long ago that Identify and Intuit wouldn’t always accurately represent someone or something’s power, and so he’d figured out other ways of gauging his opponents strength.

Nerick knew he had failed that test. But Chef on the other hand…

“I’ve seen what you call adventurers. And while they can eat a lot, I assure you that I am far more capable at both consuming and producing food.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The goblin puffed out his chest before delivering what he, no doubt, considered to be the logical conclusion to his previous statement.

“Which makes me better.”

The child sized creature might as well have stuck his tongue out at the middle-aged man and blown him the raspberry. The gap in maturity was only to be expected though, considering that one was a goblin and the other a guild master. Unsurprisingly, Chef’s comment went entirely ignored.

“I was asked some time ago by an old friend to investigate a particular incident that happened near a small town west of here. You see, an incredibly diligent and doting father let his spoiled son play adventurer for a mission near Tubersville. Ever heard of it?”

Despite the confusion on the goblin’s face, Nerick didn’t like where this was going. The guild master was entirely too confident of himself as he spoke for this to be a simple misunderstanding; after all, everyone knew about the recalled mission near Tubersville. Nerick was beginning to worry that this wasn’t a retrieval mission for an escaped criminal.

It was a subjugation request.

“The lad was young, about that guard’s height, and wore over the top and shiny, bronze armor. He called himself Weis, Blade of Light and used his skills to illuminate his sword before striking. Any of that sound familiar.”

The goblin turned away slightly as he looked down, scratching his head.

“Nooooo…”

Chef had a great number of skills; and, while most of them were cooking related, there were some notable exceptions.

Lying was not one of them.

“Mr. Wallace would never suspect that a mere goblin could have killed his golden child, but too many things lined up for you to be uninvolved. An unknown element is one thing. Even if you did show up from the west mysteriously around the time that all communications had been cut off with the aforementioned town, so long as you committed no crimes, I could have turned a blind eye. But I’ll not let a child murderer go free.”

The guild master got serious as Nerick got increasingly uncomfortable.

So the mysterious monster that killed the guard captain’s kid really was this goblin? What kind of bullshit awful luck is that!?

“I keep hearing that word lately, but I don’t know what it means.”

Chef’s response made both humans in the clearing freeze.

“What word?”

Nerick almost didn’t recognize his voice with how frightened he was right now. In fact, he wasn’t even sure why he was speaking up. Perhaps it was an attempt to make himself feel better in this suddenly hopeless situation, or maybe he was still willing to believe this to be some misunderstanding. Regardless, he wasn’t prepared for what followed.

“Child. I thought it referred to small humans, but the light blade guy was way bigger and stronger than me.”

The guild master was caught between anger and surprise this time, making it unlikely that he was going to answer.

Oh well, I’ve got nothing left to lose if I speak up. Not like the guild master would just let me go now. Not with the looks he’s been giving both of us.

“Child refers to anyone that hasn’t fully developed yet, physically. It changes based on place and culture, but the common consensus is that you’re a child until you’re at youngest fifteen years old, but some places, like Berics, put the bar even higher. Since most humans grow until they’re eighteen, that’s the cutoff for a child for us.”

If the look on the guild master’s face right now could be described as indignant or, perhaps, frustrated, then what came next was beyond description.

“Oh. Then everyone’s a child killer, right?”

Silence once again filled the clearing.

“Excuse me?”

The guild master finally spoke up. While anger was the natural response in a situation like this, a high leveled and intelligent monster was making declarations regarding how it saw the world. Even if said creature would die shortly, that information was invaluable to the adventurer’s guild. He couldn’t afford to pass up this opportunity, no matter how furious the accusation made him.

“Well, humans hunt goblins and boars and deer and stuff, right? Do you really avoid the smaller ones and only kill the big ones? I doubt it.”

“Boar and deer lack sentience. There is no morality involved in their hunting.”

A cold opinion to be sure, but not an uncommon one, especially in the man’s guild. But Chef didn’t give up so easily.

“What about goblins? You’re telling me that no one in your city has ever killed a goblin? Really? Even I’ve killed goblins, and I’m a goblin! It’s impossible to avoid!”

This was a truly strange way to begin an argument, but Nerick hoped that Chef would succeed despite the odds. After all, death sounded very unappealing.

“Like you so eloquently said, it’s hard to avoid killing your kind. They so rarely see reason and usually attack on sight.”

Chef nodded and smiled in response.

“Just like the shiny man.”

The guild master was unwilling to give in to that, though.

“No. While you call him a man, he remained a child. He was too young, too inexperienced to understand the subtleties of life. He couldn’t have been expected to comprehend whether you were a threat to him or anyone else; and, even if he had, his mission was to slay you. No, that cannot be compared to the simplicity of a goblin.”

“But it’s the same.”

Chef looked the guild master in the eyes as he delivered the most shocking news either of them had ever heard.

“Goblins never get to grow up. It’s not that we don’t get bigger than this, just that we all get killed before we get to your size. The oldest in my tribe was nine years old. I’m only five. If you say he was too young to know better, then what of goblins?”

No one said anything for a long while as the two humans present digested that information.

“So what, humans shouldn’t kill goblins because they don’t know better? Your kind kill innocents without provocation!”

The guild master had resolved his internal conflict and returned to anger. But chef once again surprised them.

“Of course not. You do what you have to do in order to survive. Like I said before, you have to kill goblins or they kill you.”

They both knew what he was about to say; both dreaded it as well. True or not, perhaps it simply came down to a difference in perspective between humans and goblins. Regardless, there was only ever going to be one response from Chef, just as there was only ever one possible response from the guild master.

“Just like the shiny blade man.”

Deren Withers unsheathed his burning blade.