Chapter 3 - New World Order

I sat upright and took in my surrounds. Grass and trees and songbirds are all things my world had, but things here felt unfamiliar. I was used to the taste of gunpowder in the air, used to the sounds of metals drilling through the ground or of jeeps riding along a concrete road. This strange world had none of that. No buzzing war jets flying overhead, no sharp smells of petroleum to prick my nose.

This world had not been tainted like ours. And to a soldier like me, that thought was frightening.

The field I was in had more vibrant greens than any grasslands back in Cuba. Trees with strange leaves stood tall. Birds of various colors I'd never seen fluttered around. And the scent of the air was sweet as if I were standing in a field of flowers.

I picked myself off the ground to take better measure of my surrounds when the voice of one of those asshole angels popped into my head.

"To your left you'll see a mountain range with dark clouds hanging overhead. That is where the Dark Lord is. To your right is a frontier town where you should go and greet the people of this world. Oh, and I gave you a pair of legendary slippers. They're your cheat weapon. Good luck."

And that was that. Those were my instructions. Go and greet the people of the town and then find a way to get rid of the dirty Americans who'd come to colonize this lush world. I checked my gun holsters only to find a pair of leather slippers on either side of my belt.

"Great," I mumbled. "New world. No weapons. And a pair of slippers."

An odd translucent box appeared before me with text written over it.

Slippers of the Greatest Grandmother of all time

Alternate name: (Slippers of the GGOAT)

Attack up + 99999

Evasion up + 99999

Dexterity up + 99999

Speed up + 99999

Special effect: One strike from the legendary slippers leaves enemies at the edge of their life and willing to obey you for eternity.

Now I didn't know what manner of bullshit this all was, but the knowledge pieced itself in my head as if I'd known of it all along. A million different things were jammed into me, just as those winged puta madres had promised, including knowledge of what they called 'videogames'. Those fuckers had just pumped me full of things and context like I was a fucking USB drive, and I only just learned what the fuck a USB drive even was!

I spat into the grass. "I swear by Christ, when I next die, I'll beat those pendejos red with these slippers and make them beg that God had ever made them at all!"

But these slippers made everything simple. Now that I had this new knowledge, I figured I had no need of going to this frontier town. With my new weapons in hand, I marched towards the Dark Lord's castillo where, evidently, there would be no Americans. Dark Lords were common occurrence in generic fantasy worlds, and whereas America was only a by-product of earth.

I'd been right. Those demon angels had lied.

So it was that I decided I'd fuck this world up until their God acknowledged that I was an accident. Only then would those shitty angels get their due.

With the 'speed up' effect on my slippers, I could travel quickly. But the nearer I drew to the Dark Lord's domain, the more desolate the lands around me became. The lush fields upon which I'd arrived turned bleak and grey in color. They seemed as if their very souls had been stripped of them. The sweet air I'd known turned acrid and hazy, and the smell of ash and burnt wood drifted about, as if a German Blitzkrieg had rolled through here.

Trees grew sparse and the mirthful singing of birds had been replaced by the incessant caws of carrion eaters. More than once I came upon a murder of crows roosting on bare limbed branches whilst staring daggers into my back. My newfound knowledge of the fantasy genre implied that these black birds were eyes for this Dark Lord I was to fight.

I slowed my pace, for the air of these lands was beginning to burn my lungs. A message appeared before my eyes just then.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Warning: You have entered the wastes. The wastes are poisonous to good people. Kill people and accumulate Corruption Points to nullify the poisoning effects.

Corruption Points… It required killing others. I put that thought on the backburner. I had a Dark Lord to slay.

The skies grew bleak, sunlight shrouded by an endless expanse of clouds. Thunder rumbled overhead, and a dark voice laughed upon my arrival at a ruined village now home to a copse of goblins led by a single hob among them.

"So you are the chosen hero sent to defeat me? And you've come alone. What a fool you are. Your flesh will nourish these low-lives among my armies. Die now, foolish hero."

I cracked my neck and stalked into the ash stained roads of this broken village. "I won't be suffering the name of 'fool' again," I vowed at the sky. The same laughter rumbled across the clouds.

Green skinned goblins laughed at my presence, pointing and taunting like children come upon an amusing toy. They were no taller than my waist, and yet they thought so little of me. I grinned maniacally and pulled out my GGOAT slippers, beckoning them to come.

And that was how I earned myself my first group of slaves.

***

"Wait, wait, timeout," Rodrigues called, now listening more eagerly to his grandmother's tale. Truth be told, he had a slight interest in it despite the dire situation he was sitting in, and he very well had no choice so he might as well have enjoyed himself. "That's it? Just like that you had an army of goblins?"

Roberta snorted. The ugly sweater she was working on was halfway done. She snapped her fingers and the sound echoed down the long dark passage of wherever it was they were. Moments later, a pair of goblins brought to her a pitcher full of wine with a silver chalice.

Roberta wet her lips with a sip. Her lips quirked up in a smile at the taste. She then dismissed the goblins with a wave of her hand.

"What?" she asked. "Would you rather I bore you with the details about how I gave a good thwacking to each and every goblin you now see in my service today? There's not much more to tell. I'd honestly rather skip to the part where I beat the Dark Lord to death and get to when I sent out goblins to raid the world."

Rodrigues pinched the top of his nose. "You say it all so nonchalantly, abuelita," he accused.

Roberta shrugged. "Should I not?"

"People were slain and lands ruined!"

"My dear boy, you have to understand that morality holds no weight to me. To me, this world or second life or whatever is hardly real. My job was to make as much trouble as I could so I could fuck with those angels that threw me here with no regard."

"You mean you never even cared about anything? About me?"

Roberta sighed aloud. She downed her entire chalice of wine and then poured herself some more. "Stop asking complicated morality questions the author has no interest in answering. Besides, no one wants to read about an old granny spouting melodramatic hogwash. This is supposed to be about a badass grandma and her bandit adventures with goblins. So we'll skip forward in the story to after I've already become the Dark Lord and am now ravaging through the countryside with my obedient little slaves."

***

The year was 6949 of the Golden-Shower Calendar, and I'd just expanded my domain beyond the lands of Generic Fantasy Kingdom 1. At this point, all of Fantasia had become aware of the threat this new Dark Lord posed and were scrambling to form alliances to fight me.

I, of course, could care less. See, unlike many other isekai or fantasy tales -knowledge of which those angels pumped into my head- this world did not have any new prophecies. Fantasia's only prophecy was that a hero would one day arrive and slay the Dark Lord. And I did. There's no new prophecy about a new hero defeating me. So long as I had my GGOAT slippers, I was invincible.

And invincibility is one hell of a drug. Couple that with a hoarders mentality and that was what I'd become, a stat addict drunk on power and money. It was like injecting opium straight into my veins. I built up my armies and lands like I was playing Civ6. Various creatures with grudges against humans and elves joined my cause to hold against what is now known as the allied forces. I was no longer just another infantry gunner in the revolutionary army. I'd become a lord and commander well and true, just like Castro.

The world had come into my palms. On one side of the world, I played tower defense, organizing my forces in various arrangements along commonly travelled pathways of the allied forces. And on the other side… well let me tell you about the other side.

My army was built of monsters and demons I'd beaten with my GGOAT slippers. But the forces I'd always relied upon were goblins, and goblins alone. See, goblins are versatile, quick, and as greedy as a banker with oiled hands. They were the first of my slaves, and they, to this day, are my most prized. You asked me why I had goblins guarding my door, this is why. I'd rather they were not spent on useless fighting outside.

My goblin army were like no others. I sent them into villages and towns in the dead of night, carrying burlap sacks over their backs, and watched and waited as they brought me back an endless amount of loot like it was fucking Clash of Clans. The little green devils robbed anything and everything shiny they could get their hands on, and I couldn't be prouder.

They fed my addiction to numbers. I saw my money count go up in my status window. It rose into the billions. Granny Roberta was filthy rich!

***

"Time, time!" Rodrigues cut in again. "Weren't you known throughout Fantasia for being generous with your wealth, and giving to the needy?"

Roberta grinned. "And that was the fun of it all. I doled out all I'd earned just to steal it all back again! The people of Fantasia were none the wiser!"

Rodrigues stared at Roberta in disgust. The grandmother he knew was not at all the one he now saw before him. All of it had been a lie. He'd been wrong in his assessments. She was gone. Far gone. Insanity had claimed her long ago.

Roberta stood up from her rocking chair. She threw inside her finished ugly sweater. "Here. A gift from your abuelita," she said with her usual sweet smile. "Now behave and learn to clean that trashy tongue of yours, and grandma might just let you out. Story time is over. I've got another raid to attend."

Then she stalked away, limping against her cane, pattering footsteps slow and deliberate, just as they'd been when she'd arrived. A group of goblins came again to take away the chair and wine pitcher she'd left behind, one among them pausing to spit into Rodrigues' cell before cackling on his way out.