THUD

The cowering goblin was perfectly fine, besides a few cuts and bruises he had taken on his rather ill-performed escape. The source of the horrible crunching sound was not, as Steal had though, his own skull. It was the skull of that dastardly human; who’s once arrogant smile was now little more than a somewhat startled, dumbfounded expression. The man’s pale white skin was stained red in places, a thick crimson liquid gushing from his shattered scalp. Above him stood another goblin, one Steal didn’t recognise, though to be perfectly fair, all the goblins here looked almost identical, and they never really talked amongst each other.

The bloodied, snarling goblin simply scowled at Steal; seemingly looking down on him for running away, though from Steal’s perspective, it was hardly like the goblin that saved him was particularly brave, the one that looked down on him held a bloodied rock, jagged on the end that was smeared scarlet. From the looks of the human’s bashed in skull, the goblin had caught him unawares from, behind.

Steal could admit that the other goblin was braver than him, but hardly brave enough to fight the human one-on-one.

“Me Blud, you follow me. Move.” The goblin, Blud spoke in a raspy, grating voice, commanding and aggressive. Blud bent down to take the corpse’s short sword, although the man could wield it one-handed, the goblin had to grip both of his bony hands around its hilt. To pick up the sword properly, he had to drop the rock he was holding, kicking it towards Steal, he continued in his raspy voice “Take that too, bash stuff, come on”

Steal gave himself a moment to think. He could go with the goblin that proved himself to be relatively capable or go it alone and probably get murdered, it was clear he had no chance of running away considering how easily that man had caught up to him.

His decision was made; the wiry little goblin grasped that bloodied rock and followed along. Steal wasn't sure where he was being led, but he was certain it would at least be better than hanging around here. Probably.

The pair of goblins were padding along, passing slowly under the dim lanterns that very slightly illuminated the gloomy caves.

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Every so often, the sound of screams or howls of pain or rage would echo around the walls; though it seemed like something had changed in the past few minutes. Although it was still the majority, the high-pitched yelps of pain and terror from defenceless greenskins had died down, and now it was humans that howled. Not much though.

It seemed that the scrawny little goblins were putting up a fight. Just not much of one.

Steal’s coal-black eyes widened as the relatively fresh-born creature became more accustomed to the dim-lighting. He wasn’t particularly aware of this, but goblins, like most monsters were much more equipped for seeing in the dark than their more civilised foes; it was one of the few advantages that they had against the adventurers and heroes that were currently raiding their birthplace.

Another howl from ahead. A goblin.

The pair continued their advance, Blud and Steal gripping onto their weapons tightly. A human had it’s back to them, clothed in thin, black robes. The human was clobbering one of the supposedly wretched creatures with a long, gnarled wooden staff. The two approaching goblins figured they were just sneaking up on a brutal attacker, lost in his own world whilst bludgeoning one of their kin; they were correct, but they didn’t realise or think about why he was using the wooden staff rather than the bladed weapons that their previous attacker had wielded. The man was, in fact, a low-ranking mage, after having gotten too much into the combat, he’d ran out of mana and had simply changed to bludgeoning the puny creatures whilst his mana steadily replenished.

In a low-level dungeon like this, newbie adventurers would enter without simple items like health and mana potions. Some adventurers were so new they simply couldn’t afford them, whilst others didn’t see the point.

Nevertheless, the pair of wide-eyed goblins snuck up on the man, promptly raising their respective weapons and bring them down in the man’s back, they were much too short to strike at his neck or head, but as the iron blade slashed a long crimson line down his back, Steal threw his rugged and sharp stone at the shocked and wounded man, the rock cracked against his face as the mage span around to face his attacker. The throw was rather weak, but enough to knock the already injured foe onto his back.

The mage stumbled for a moment, and the goblins were upon him, viciously and desperately tearing at his flesh as the shocked wizard howled in terror. Then the screams stopped. Entirely.

A simple blue box full of text blasted into both Blud and Steal’s minds; they couldn’t read the plain text, but nevertheless understood it.

Your Racial Job ‘Goblin’ has advanced to Level 2

STR +1 ,DEX +2 ,AGI +1, FRT +1 ,INT +1 ,WIS +1