It was silent in the ruined town of Gerfrost.

This mighty trade hub of a city was once connected to the southern kingdoms, exporting the great kingdoms food surplus out to all the other kingdom and pulling in luxury goods and necessities from all around the realm.

Now it was a wreck, not a single building was left intact, the tall wall surrounding the city and segmenting each of the different sections of the city off was also a sad excuse for a defense structure, as multiple locations on the wall were simply gone, as if a great force had picked up segments of the wall and strewn them all over the area.

Pieces of the wall were everywhere both outside the side as far away as 500 meters and inside the city crashed down randomly. Whatever had done this to the walls had done so violently and quickly on multiple locations on the wall.

Now the only occupants of this once great city are now vermin and crows, and inside a single buildings basement, several human females and a group of goblins. All sitting quietly as in expectation. The goblins having stacked up rocks and other piles to give a defensive half wall towards the only entry point, a few steps leading up to a hatch that was closed.

The women were all sitting in the back of the room. Three of them standing guard, facing towards the hatch as well. One of the women wielding a short sword and shield was standing at the front. Though most of her attention was aimed at the goblins. Not the hatch.

Emily had regained some of her strength from being incapacitated for the long duration of her capture. She was "rescued" by these goblins, though she did not feel that way. She had ignored the goblin named Lurk and its attempts at trying to talk with her through Resti, the woman standing next to her holding a staff.

She seemed to trust the goblin and conversed with it eagerly, but she did have a slave collar on, so Emily did not trust her conviction of the goblin assistance. Though the goblins here had not done anything to harm them, despite one episode were one of the more "regular" looking goblins had been staring intently at the women for a while before it suddenly tried to grab at one of the women, its eyes mad with lust.

Lurk the apparent leader of the goblins, had promptly arrived and punched the goblin so hard it did a flip slamming against the nearby wall. Lurk yelled at the goblin, but she did not understand what he was saying. Lurk dragged the goblin over in front of the woman it had grabbed. He forced it to say something that it hurried to say.

Resti had come over and Lurk grabbed onto the Control rod for the collars and asking Resti to translate. What she said was that Lurk was sorry his men had succumbed to his instinct and that he was now sorry for his actions. She was flabbergasted by this action. The women too all looked at Lurk and the kneeling goblin in shock and confusion.

No goblin had ever done this before, most of the women here had suffered and lost loved ones, being captured and raped. Though some had not been raped and merely "stored" for the leader that Emily herself had been raped by. Lurk had bowed also an apology and then got the goblin to stand up as he guided him over to the other goblins, he then sat down with them all and began talking to them for a while.

Emily was not convinced, she refused to be convinced. It must be a trick was something she told herself. But Lurk kept being persistent and helped the women as much as he could, he healed them and made sure they had food. He helped the women that had been raped and were pregnant from the goblins. Asking each of them if they would be willing to give birth to the goblins, as he would do his best to change them to be different from the normal goblins.

Some refused, and he was sad but did not press the issue and helped them abort the offspring inside them. What was odd about the goblins that were born, that three of them were girls. Even the pregnant goblin female that hung around Lurk, but the pregnant goblin named Sala did not give birth yet, why was her pregnancy so long... All except two of the newborn out of six were all very human looking as opposed to the ugly deformed goblins.

Lurk had spent time with these newborn teaching them things and even tried at a time to involve the women, he seemed to want to bridge the gap, as Resti told her, between goblins and humans.

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But Emily was not convinced... When she was well enough to move five days had passed in total. Lurk had kept the women informed of their intent to try and get them all out of the Great kingdom back to their kingdom, or at least the human lands. But the other cave goblins were scouting around frequently making it hard for Lurk and the other goblins to leave.

Now they were all sitting at guard, as the skinniest goblin named Vorm had come in and informed them that goblins were once more looking around through the city. Lurk had given Emily weapons in case they were found and had to fight. He looked into her eyes as he asked her to help protect the basement.

Her first thoughts were to agreed and then take the chance to flee, but the way Lurk had looked at her, and Resti's asking for Lurk while also looking at her. She decided to simply agree... She did not have any means to escape anyways afterward. Lurk then left along with Vorm while the rest stayed down in the basement.

She believed she could handle most of the normal looking goblins. Even the ones named Aurk, and Sala. But not all at once... Maybe if the other women helped, but she was unsure if they would. But if Lurk was here it would be impossible... That goblin was a monster compared to a normal goblin...

Holy, Earth, Wind and adept at fighting all at the same time... Clearly more intelligent than any normal goblin. She was scared out of her wits thinking of trying to fight this goblin. If she was in her prime before she had been captured and with all her gear... Then she might have had a chance... If her friend Mercia was by her side... Then it would be an easy match.

Being reminded of Mercia made her grit her teeth, she was angry that Mercia was saved but she was left behind... But she knew that the high elves would not care about humans. The only High elves that cared were Mercia and her human support group. Lurk had wanted to talk about Mercia, but he never got far into asking about it, and he was busy most of the time, either experimenting with magic while talking with Resti and the Beastgirl Sylvie or cleaning/fixing up weapons and armor and making proper clothes for all the goblins and women.

He even knew how to do tailoring! He asked the women to help if they knew how to help, even to prepare the food they had brought from the cave to make it rationable and last as long as possible. But they did not have a lot of food, they were hunting to make up for it, but they were being careful not to drag too much attention from the goblins they escaped from.

The workshop they were in had a lot of tables and one of the tables were able to make a fire. Resti had surmised it would be an alchemy location with inbuilt magical runes to create heat for brewing potions. It worked to cook food and also at the same time did not cause smoke to fill the room either. Lurk had been very interested in it and spent a lot of time examining the runes on the tables and the runes that were lined along the top of the walls all around the room.

But now the focus was on the hatch, she was staring at the goblins right now though, still calculating the hopeless risk of trying to defeat them and escape... But she would only be able to escape alone... She would not escape alone, she wanted to save the other women... She did not want to leave anyone behind and feel the same as she did back when Mercia was saved.

Suddenly one of the goblins collapsed in pain, it was the Female Goblin name Sala. The goblin named Aurk quickly brought her back, to rest on the beddings that her and Lurk shared. He talked with Sala for a while before he got punched in the head by her. He nodded at her and went back to guarding the hatch.

Resti looked at Sala as if she wanted to go help her, she had bonded a bit with the female goblin. Since Resti had been translating for Lurk and Sala when she held onto the control Rod when Lurk was not here.

Emily sighed as she gave the ok for Resti to go over and help her. At least she needed to get her to be quiet as much as possible. Sylvie also went to help and cast a few holy spells she had learned from Lurk, Salas pain went away a bit much like the other females had been having during their births.

Emily did not care. She focused on the hatch, trying not to be distracted by the activity. Though a lot of the goblins and even some of the women were looking over now and again at the commotion made by Sala.

But suddenly their attention all flipped to the hatch and they readied their weapons pointing them at the hatch as a sound of shuffling was heard, a click and the hatch slid open by its own force. If the hatch had not been damaged slightly she was sure no sound would have been heard. But it had a slight crack in it. Disturbing whatever magic was in it.

Lurk and Vorm came down looking calm. Everyone sighed and calmed down, but Emily only became more nervous... Now it was once more hopeless to try to escape, regardless of all the apparent good this goblin was trying to do, she still felt hopelessly out of control of her own situation. She stared at Lurk with her full focus, as he made his way through the makeshift fortifications they built as he talked with Aurk, Lurks eyes widened up.

But then her focus was broken when she heard a brief cry from the side, she turned to look seeing Resti holding up a goblin baby with two small blunt horns on its forehead.

"Its a girl!" Resti said smiling at Lurk, that looked a tad flustered as if not sure how to act. Emily looked at Lurk as he stepped over slowly to Resti, he was still slightly stunned, but then he smiled and laughed. Emily felt another chip of her resistance towards this odd goblin fade away as Lurk gave Sala a kiss and grinned.

"... what should I do... " Emily mumbled to herself.