I took my time on the beach resting. After spending so many days hiding in the caves of Caslite and huddling with my party members against the cold, basking now in the sand alone was all that a goblin could ask for. I had to get back to Galhim and my hero's welcome, though. Today was the day everyone who ever doubted me got to eat shit.

Revelries waited!

Boulders the size of houses riddled the tropical forests beyond the beach. They'd been strewn over the landscape off the World Giant's falling corpse; the very same monster that I, a little nobody, had killed, saving the damn city in the process and maybe the whole world. I dared anyone to beat that.

As I began my walk back and left the beaches behind me, it was a long game of counting rocks and dodging sticker brush to go. The foliage here in Galhim was dense. It was hard to fight through, unlike the waning pine forests of Caslite. Yet at the same time, I couldn’t stick only to the sands, as they often faded into impassable rocks.

While I cursed the walking then, I was more than grateful.

The World Giant had carried us this far, and we owed him thanks in a strange way. He saved us the months-long hike just to get back here through monster land. It was something I truly appreciated since, by the gods, I hated hiking. I could thank anyone who saved me from it, even that big, evil sonofabitch.

Leave it to the giants to clear a thousand miles in a single night, I thought.

Going from snowy taiga to balmy beaches left me in a state of whiplash. Out here I could have happily gone naked, but just a few hours earlier I was dying of exposure. Now that was a good trade.

Suddenly, as I came upon the body of the World Giant in the woods, I stopped dead in my tracks. The solid, black stone of his bedrock torso presented an impassable object, a single wall, hundreds, and hundreds of feet high. There was no choice but to keep going around it along the coastline. I had to trace its outline.

"Nothing ever goes to plan," I muttered. It was the story of my life so far. Sometimes for good, and sometimes for bad.

I followed the stone wall up the body's torso and toward the head, sticking to the beaches as I did, but only half the time. I had realized that cutting straight through to the main gates of Galhim was impossible. My path needed to wind up toward the armpit, and that presented a potential dead-end. A sigh of relief left my lips when at last I saw that it was not, though.

The World Giant's brittle limb appeared broken off at the socket, and it had traveled some distance into the ocean from the body. It lay inert out on the waters like an island all its own, and I smirked at the sight. "Take that, you fucker!" I called, and I winced with pain. My ribs were not in good shape from the fall.

It was hard to take a full breath in as walking became arduous, but slowly and surely, I made progress.

Hours went by shrugging off insects. I shed layers of clothes as I heated up, simply leaving them hanging on branches behind me. There was no more need for a winter coat, nor for long underpants and a shirt. With every passing minute, I was tempted closer toward the buff.

By the time the forest started to wane around me, the hour was well past noon, and the sun was at its hottest. My feet bled, but my mind was silent. Something I never understood back in the badlands was how adventurers could ignore physical pain in the way that they did. Now I understood, though. Magical healing was a rarity for us monsters, but an everyday fact for adventurers, and in the cycle of healing they slowly detached wounds from consequence. It made bodily damage feel distant, I understood. Like it was unreal.

I had been healed enough times that numbness was settling in. I could simply choose not to feel the cuts and thorns. At least for a time.

Finally, a road appeared as I was getting very ready to be home. I looked out along its track, seeing nothing both ways. What an adventurer lost in pain, I supposed then, he gained back in paranoia. At any moment I expected a dire wolf or undead bear to come running at me along the dirt passage. It was just as it had been back in Caslite. Wary of every turn.

Yet, the forests around Galhim were tamed a long time ago. They had been hunted many times over, and now only the lowest level of Guild members worked to kill the pests that remained. Speaking of.

"Look there!" I heard someone shout.

"Oh, great. People are here," I said, and I meant it for once.

Idly, I wondered if I could get them to carry me and my aching feet. Surely the hero deserved to be carried for a while, right?

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A young man came around the bend of the road with two girls close behind. They wielded their weapons and wore silly, colorful costumes. A bunch of novices if I ever saw them, and maybe not even Guilded yet. They were trying their best though, and I couldn't mock them for that. Not more than a little.

"Hi there, ya kids," I called, waving a sarcastic hand.

The smaller girl in the back wielded a stave, and she clutched it close to her body in fear as she saw me. "A goblin!" she cried.

The boy adventurer had dark hair and dark eyes. He brandished a short sword and a buckler, clearly readying for a fight. "He must have fallen off the mega-giant!" he reasoned aloud. "Don't worry ladies, I got this!"

"Look," I told them, “Can we not do this?" I was too weary for this shit. An arrow whizzed over my shoulder as the second girl let it loose from her bow, but the shot was not even close, and I didn’t flinch.

"I said I got it!" the boy adventurer shouted to his archer.

She squeaked back, "I'm sorry..."

My time in the city and with my party made me forget what this was like. In the eyes of most people, I was still a monster worth exterminating. Nothing more than a nasty fucking green-skin.

The swordsman boy started to close the distance carefully while I stood there grimacing. He broke into a run; no fanfare, just lining up his shot for an easy kill. I waited until his sword was coming down. The swing itself was slow and sloppy. Only then did I draw one dagger, and in a fluid sweep, I dashed his blade aside and sent it clattering over the road.

The swordsman fell to his knees as he lost his balance, and it brought us face to face.

My second hand drew in a reverse grip, and I placed my blade against his exposed neck. "First of all," I said, "It's not a mega-giant, it's a World Giant. Second of all, dumbass, I'm an Adventurer. Look at the dagger, alright?"

I had covered the guild emblem on my weapons’ handles back in Caslite, I realized.

Naturally, the kid had no idea what I was talking about. He threw himself back, thinking he'd done something very clever as he rolled in the dirt to his feet. Meanwhile, the girls stayed in the back readying for more attacks. It was all getting on my nerves. "Fuckin' cut it out already!" I spoke.

I dropped one dagger in the dirt while I worked on unwrapping the covered Guild emblems.

"Now!" the boy shouted.

His allies let loose. First with a cast of magic from the wizard-girl, and then with an arrow following soon after. The spell was nothing more than a ball of ice, and I cut it clean out of the air, dashing myself in its snow. The arrow flew truer this time though, and my confidence almost got me in trouble.

While it had soared straight toward my neck, it never did arrive. Before I knew what I was doing, I reached my free hand up. It acted on its own. I looked at what it had done then, chuckling nervously for how close I came to dying. "You guys... are really pushing it," I told them. My balls were all the way in my throat. Only pure instinct saved me.

"He... he caught it," the archer-girl said quietly.

I tossed the arrow down and finished my work, showing them that my silver daggers possessed the Guild's signature symbol. I searched for the pin in my pockets too, but I had lost it somewhere. Either back in Caslite or when I had fallen miles out of the sky. It didn't matter in the end.

"You can't fool us!" the boy told me. He recovered his blade from the road and clutched it tightly. "You killed someone for those, you monster. You're no adventurer like us."

I pointed to the World Giant whose body could still be seen over the trees. "I killed that thing, shithead! You would be on your knees thanking me if you had any damn sense, but ya don’t, do ya?"

He attacked again, and as I stepped around his swipe, I tapped the flat side of my blade against his stomach as I tripped him with my free foot. While the boy ate dirt, I continued speaking, though I kept a better eye on the ranged fighters this time. "I just spared your life twice. Use your tiny brain to think about that. Why would I do it, huh?"

Part of me considered just killing them. Out here, nobody was likely to find out. But then I remembered Beejoe's words; self-defense was not a concept that applied to our kind. The next time I went up for review at the Guild, they'd use truth-sight. I would be screwed when it came to light.

The little adventurers didn't know what to do with me anymore, and they regathered themselves at a distance. Whether I was what I claimed to be or not, one thing was clear. There was no winning this fight for them. Trying twice was enough to see that.

"You're... in the Guild?" the spell-girl asked.

I nodded. "Yeah."

The boy stood at the front of his group with his weapon still up. "What level then, goblin?"

"Fuck if I know."

"A likely story," he concluded. After thinking about it a little longer though, he had to add, "Still... you're not trying to kill us. That's strange."

"No shit."

"Then what are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm just trying to get back inside Galhim," I said. "I fell off the World Giant when I killed it. So, yeah, I'm kind of walking here."

The archer piped up, "We're lost too!"

Her swordsman shushed her, but I grabbed the common ground while I had it. "Well, this thing is basically a big human kinda shape, girly. I don't know if you realized that. All we gotta do is keep heading south on the coastline. Just follow me and we'll hit the city."

"You'd do that for us?" the other girl asked.

"Yeah. I really don't care. Just stop with the attacks."

The sword boy didn't trust me. "It's a trap. It's got to be," he said.

But he was overruled as his partners made up their minds. "We're going," they both said at once.

I had no way of knowing how many hours they'd already been out here following his lead, running into dead-ends and defunct roads. All I knew was that the two girls leaped at the first sign of a leadership change. That said something.

"Trail behind me," I ordered, putting stunned looks on their faces. "I ain't having no sneak attacks."

They seemed offended and shocked. They had done me the great favor of granting their trust so far, if only after trying to kill me a few times. How could I be so cruel? What a bunch of idiots.

I sighed heavily. At least there was still a parade waiting for me back in the city. With Lang vouching for me, everything would be alright.

The day was still young. I was still the hero of Galhim, I reminded myself.

No one could take that away.