I firmly and deliberately placed my little rat grabbers on the cheeks of the goblin way too close to my snout and gave a steady push. I even achnered myself with Entrenched Footing for good measure.
“Personal space, Gig. Personal space.” I told the over excited young goblin.
She seemed to realise how close she had been and dropped back on to her butt, a look of chagrin crossing her face.
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry Boss.” She said, cheeks tinting a little blue in embarrassment. “But, I really really wanna know how you…” The goblin waved her hand around looking for the words. “Do all the stuff.”
I scrubbed my paws down my face while I thought about how to answer.
Gig wasn’t exactly wrong. There was a good bit of overlap between being an Adventurer and a Mercenary. On paper anyway. Fight shit and get paid. The main difference was how they went about it. The saying thrown around the guild on the topic was ‘Mercenaries take orders, Adventurers take jobs.’ The guild guarded the autonomy of its members with a ferver, not taking kindly to anyone who thought they could boss them around like their own personal hirelings. But I doubted Gig cared much about that sort of distinction. Clearly, what she wanted was advice on optimal skull cracking. Which I could definitely provide, still best to temper expectations a bit.
“Look, I was pretty much just a work a day shield swinger. A Lot of the advanage you’re imagining was just the fact I was like triple the size of the average goblin fighter.” I told the girl, her face starting to fall before I continued. “But, if you really want, I guess we can work some kind of deal. I should have at least a trick or two you can use.”
She immediately perked back up at that. “WHAT! REALLY!? THANKS BOSS!” The goblin all but shouted before remembering she was trying to lay low for the moment and adjusting to a more suitable volume. “I won’t let you down Boss, you can count on me.”
I held up a single claw to cut off her premature celebration.
“The first condition of the deal is we keep the whole [Deceased Adventurer] thing between the two of us. I’m concerned not everyone is gonna share your particular perspective when it comes to my history.”
“Eh, whatever you say Boss.” She said, then adding with a dismissive wave. “Don’t see why it’d be a problem though. We’d all be broke without Adventurers doing their Adventurer things.” She paused in thought a moment before going on. “I mean, yeah sure, some of the grunts talk about wanting to ‘gut them all belly to nose and wear their insides as hats’ and stuff like that, but I’m sure they’re just blowing hot air, you know?”
I thought about my insides being used as party favours and decided that I did in fact, not know.
“Let’s just go with me being a Changeling if anyone asks, ok? That was your first guess after we met anyway, right? Should do the job for the time being.”
Gig just shrugged. Somehow conveying that she didn’t see the point, but that she was willing enough to go along with it anyway.
“Second.” I said, bringing up a second claw this time. “You gotta help me figure out all the things, I don’t know, I don’t know about the Dungeon. Stuff like that whole status clock thing, for example.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Ok, Boss.” The goblin said, seeming to go a touch crossed eyed as she tried to process the request. “Not sure how I’m supposed to do that though.”
“Mostly by doing your best to answer any stuipid questions I happen come up with.” I replied. “And just explaining obvious stuff to me.”
She thought that over for a second and seemed to find it reasonable enough.
“Sure. I think I can do that for you, Boss.”
I nodded and held up a third claw.
“Finally, our contract gets extended to my entire stay in Pitfall. Which will be at the very least till I figure out what my next step is going to be, so it could take awhile.” I was maybe pushing my luck with this one, but if we were going to cut deals I was going to take it seriously. Still best not to press too hard, never smart to corner a goblin. “You won’t need to be at my beck and call the entire time or anything. I’m not looking for a servant, but I expect you to have my back when I need it.”
That one managed to give Gig pause. Forcing her to weigh the possibility of the precious Dungeon points she planned to extract from me against all the coveted secret adventurer knowledge I could share with her.
Eventually the allure of secrets won out, as it usually does, and she held out a hand to shake on the new deal. Which I did, then got the prompet I’d been hoping to see.
[ Do you agree to the revised terms of your contract with Giggera The Mercenary? Yes/No.]
Gig was a little firecracker of a goblin and seemed trustworthy enough in the circumstances. In short, I liked her, and was happy to have her around. However, I was still glad to see the extra incentive there encouraging her to stay an honest ally.
That taken care of, I voiced a question that had been creeping up on me since the conversation had begun.
“You won’t stop calling me Boss even if I asked you to, will you?”
Pretty much knew the answer, but felt obligated to try anyway, if only for the form of the thing.
“Wouldn’t be proper, Boss. We got a contract.” She answered immediately, adding a bewildered shrug that clearly stated that was obvious and I was indeed stupid for even asking. Had to give it to her, the kid had damn expressive shrugs.
“Ok, first Adventurer lesson: Knowing a losing battle when you see one…” I said with a slightly resigned sigh.
~~~~~
With the excitement starting to wear off and things between us settled for the time being we took the opportunity to just recover for a little bit. By which I mean we flopped over like a pair of rag dolls and stared into nothing till our brains agreed to start functioning again. We both needed the down time pretty badly too, I was sitting at a measly two [hp] after everything and the young goblin was looking equally roughed up by that point.
We also dug into Gig’s little snack stash for good measure.
She had a tin of salty crackers and some kind of dried fruit that tasted halfway between a grape and an apricot. A Grapricot if you will. Gig informed me they were actually called a bop-fruit and were from “Bert’s jungle”. I liked them rather a lot and snagged a couple extra to munch on later.
With food in me, the rest, and a few applications of Vitality Burst I was back to a comfortably full [hp]. Gig was also looking a good deal more together, at the very least she’d had a chance to dry out some.
My mind back up to the task, I laid out my current priorities for the Goblin. Namely, see what my stock pile of Dungeon points could actually get me and to properly gear myself up again. She told me the best place to start on both counts would be, quite conveniently, the shop she lived over, Dinkum’s Deals.
After Gig described it to me, I agreed wholeheartedly with her assessment. The place sounded like the quintessential junk shop of my dreams. I honestly couldn’t wait.