As the two stood there in silence, Eric finally broke it by speaking first.

“For now, we will need to discuss what happens moving forward. Obviously, you can’t tell anyone what I just told you. If people even suspected that you were the cause of the current events, then things would be difficult to deal with. Only me and Maria know about your Path’s destiny, so you should be fine for now. However, this will continue to be an issue in the future if we don’t address it after the Goblin situation is resolved.”

Nobina nodded, not saying anything. Her mind was still all over the place due to what she learned, but she knew that they had something important to do. At the very least, she had to do what she could to help resolve things now before she could worry about her own Path and dream.

“Right. So what’s the plan Eric?” asked Nobina, giving him her undivided attention.

“We’ll call back Mimiki and discuss using your barbed wire in both the operation and defense of the town,” he responded. “Go ahead and check on her to see if she’s ready to discuss the matter.”

She gave a nod, leaving the room. As she went downstairs, she saw Sarah and Mimiki working together at the receptionist desk, handling adventurers. At the moment, questing was suspended so it was them mostly helping adventurers prepare for the upcoming raid.

Mimiki, who noticed Nobina, called her over.

“Are you done speaking with Eric?” she asked.

“Yeah. He wants to discuss the plan moving forward,” responded Nobina.

Mimiki nodded, asking Sarah to take over as the two headed back up. Once both were in Eric’s office, Mimiki began giving the opinion she had been waiting to give.

“Eric,” said Mimiki. “Regarding earlier. We cannot risk sending too little adventurers to deal with the matter. Hopefully you have a plan for that.”

“With Nobina’s new barb wire, we should actually be able to send the planned amount without issue,” he replied.

Nobina listened as Eric went into detail regarding the plan. The plan would be to perform a minor culling operation to seal the entrance of the nest and to trim down the numbers to a “safe level.”

Eric then began talking about how there were two types of culling. The normal culling operation involved sending adventurers into the nest to deal with destroying anything that could lead to a major nest advancement. This meant the removal of nest weapons, destroying of objects that could result in goblins thriving, or even destroying parts of the nest itself if the goblins have expanded it too far.

“As you should know, a Goblin Nest isn’t a static thing. The Goblin Queens expand the nest in any way they can and culling them is key to preventing them from becoming threats. After all, a Goblin Archer cannot form if they have no bows, or a Goblin Assassin path is unlikely to appear if the goblins don’t have access to dagger weapons.”

“Right,” replied Nobina. “After all, you can’t tell the difference between a normal goblin and a Path Goblin just by looking at them. Their weapon of choice is what we use as indicators.”

“Which is why normally, to reset a nest we’d fully clear the chambers except the main nesting one of anything that could develop a goblin path. However, due to the urgency and uncertainty of the current operation, plus the addition of your barb wire, we can do a minor culling.”

A minor culling was merely the elimination of enough goblins that an invasion was not possible. The reason these were done was to merely deal with the immediate threat. The main issue with minor culling was that they didn’t deal with preventing Paths but merely weakened the immediate threat of a nest. With how many resources it took to start an emergency quest, having one just for a minor culling operation was normally wasteful. However, the situation they were in made it so they had no real choice in the matter.

“With Nobina’s barb wire, we can go ahead and seal the known entrances and kill any goblins that try to escape. It’ll take much longer to cull the nest and the goblins threaten building up an attack force to breach and escape containment, but it’s more defensible and we don’t need to deal with the dangers of going into the nest itself. Of course, if the goblins storm out of the nest before we can secure the entrances then we’ll have to issue a retreat, but it might be our only choice,” said Eric.

“The plan seems fine with me, but that means neither me nor you will be on this operation, right?” said Mimiki.

“Unfortunately that is correct,” sighed Eric. “If something serious happens, the C-ranks might be able to handle it, but they won’t have the firepower of an A-rank or S-rank behind them.”

Mimiki looked uncertain about everything, but her look turned determined after a bit.

“We have to trust in them to handle it. I might not know all our adventurers, but everyone I’ve promoted to C-rank should be capable of doing their job well.”

Eric nodded.

“Yes… I trust them as well. Now as for the defense of the town… Nobina. Can you work with Mimiki to discuss planning the defense of the town. Should the worst come to pass, which is both the culling fails and we are attacked by the other nests, we need to be prepared.”

“I’ll do my best Eric,” said Nobina.

“Wait,” said Mimiki.. “Aren’t you going to help with the planning?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“I’m planning to visit the council to discuss a few things, so please feel free to contact me if something urgent happens.”

With that, he dismissed the two. As the two headed down to the library, Mimiki’s worried expression made Nobina worried.

“What’s wrong Mimiki,” asked Nobina as the two headed into the library.

“Eric… seems worried,” said Mimiki.

“Well, aren’t we all worried? After all, this is a serious matter we are dealing with,” said Nobina.

As the two sat down, Mimiki shook her head.

“It’s not that… it seems he has something else on his mind. You haven’t known Eric as long as I have, so you wouldn’t be able to tell the subtle changes in his expression. He seems worried about something not involving the goblins, but… I wonder what it’s about.”

Nobina realized that perhaps Eric was thinking about her own situation and how he planned to handle it. Despite how serious the goblins were, Eric certainly had to have been thinking ahead. Otherwise, he would have been more focused on dealing with the matter at hand.

“I guess it’s something serious enough that its dividing his focus,” said Nobina as she began looking for a book regarding the town layout.

“Maybe,” said Mimiki. “Have any idea what’s causing it?”

When she said that, Nobina stopped. When she turned to Mimiki, her smile seemed to give away the fact she knew it involved something she had to know. Nobina knew she couldn’t say it, so she did what Mimiki always advised her to do.

“I’m sorry Mimiki… but I can’t tell you what the matter involves,” said Nobina.

“Oh don’t wo…”

Mimiki stopped mid-sentence, not saying a word. Her smile faded away and soon she gave a rather blank expression. It confused Nobina as she waited for her to continue to talk.

“Sorry Nobina. I need to step out for a bit. Can you… handle getting all the documents together?” asked Mimiki, not looking at her as she stood up and went to the doorway.

“Are you alright?” asked Nobina.

“Yeah… I just… need some air is all,” she said, her voice indicating she was not alright.

As Mimiki left, Nobina couldn’t help but worry about what was going on with Mimiki. What would cause her to just leave?

Nobina began spending the rest of the time gathering documents involving the town layout and any information regarding defense planning. As lunch rolled around, Sarah appeared, asking Nobina if something was wrong.

“What do you mean?” asked Nobina. “I’m just planning the town defense.”

“Oh, it just looks like your mind is thinking about something. You’ve been staring at that page for a while actually.”

Nobina, looking down, began realizing her mind really was somewhere else right now.

“Say Sarah… Did you notice something… strange about Mimiki as she left?”

“Kind of,” she replied back. “She looked upset. I have no idea why though. The situation is serious right now, but there’s no time to let it distract you from your work. Both her and you. Uh… Do you know the reason why she’d be upset Nobina?”

“Well…”

Nobina began telling Sarah about the conversation they had with Eric and then how Mimiki was noticing something was distracting him. Then she explained what she told Mimiki and before Nobina knew it, Mimiki left.

Sarah thought about it and shook her head.

“I can’t say I would know if anything you said or did would make her upset based on what you told me,” said Sarah. “From what you said, she should have merely accepted that you couldn’t tell her why, but… perhaps she realized something based the that supposed secret?”

“I don’t know,” said Nobina as she put her head in her hands. “I’m so bad with people sometimes.”

“Nonsense,” Sarah replied.

As she said that, her bag glowed. Nobina thought about opening it, but she decided to do it during their lunch.

“Mind if we… step away from the guild to eat. I’m having trouble thinking right now.”

“Sure,” smiled Sarah.

The two headed out to the inn for lunch. As the two sat down, Sarah asked Nobina what was wrong.

“I hate secrets Sarah,” said Nobina, feeling more comfortable speaking her mind. “There’s some major secret I can’t say and it’s eating away at me. Actually, there’s two major secrets I have. Normally, I would be fine but at the moment I’m just… ugh…”

Nobina put her head face down on the table.

Her bag once again glowed, prompting her to raise her head.

“And this thing…”

Before she could finish her sentence, a smell of food came from it. Opening it up, Nobina noticed a picnic basket of food she wasn’t too familiar with. The other thing she noticed was ten grenades.

“But WHY!”

Her voice came out loud enough that all eyes in the inn were on her. Noticing this, she immediately stood up and apologized.

“Sorry for disturbing everyone’s lunch,” she said. “Sarah… Can we go to my room?”

“Uh… sure,” she smiled, not letting what just happened phase her.

As the two headed into her room and Nobina locked the door, Sarah became more open with her worry.

“Nobina. This secret or secrets must be really getting to you if you’re blowing up like that,” said Sarah.

“You know what Sarah? Mimiki knows this so why don’t I tell you my first secret. I’ll feel much better actually if I tell you. I’m from another world.”

As she finished that, Sarah’s facial expression changed to pure shock.

“No way… you’re from another world? That’s so crazy,” she said, her face showing more join that Nobina expected.

“Uh… Yeah… Why do you look so happy about that,” said Nobina, confused.

“Oh… I was just thinking about how you must have so many cool things to talk about that you couldn’t tell me. Now that you’ve said your secret, it must be a relief to be able to talk to me freely about the cool clothes you couldn’t talk about before.”

“The cool…”

Nobina began chuckling before giving a full fledge laugh. As she laughed, Sarah laughed as well, both of them in full laughter. It took a bit, but eventually Nobina managed to calm herself first. When she did, Sarah stopped her laughter as well, now giving a gentle smile.

“You did that on purpose huh,” smiled Nobina.

“What? Make a joke? You look like you needed it,” chuckled Sarah.

Her bag glowed again, with Nobina taking out the new objects. This time, she saw three sets of really nice clothing from her world, all with the bee embroidered on the tags.

“Woah,” said Sarah, looking at the clothes. “Are all these for you? All these designs… They are otherworldly.”

“Please tell me you aren’t going to start to make so many other world puns now Sarah,” said Nobina with a sigh.

“Only if it makes you laugh,” she smiled. “But really… this explains a lot and it’s so cool… I don’t know why you are worried about these secrets.”

“Well… I wish I could just openly talk to you about everything Sarah… but one of these secrets has me so worried. If I tell you, and it ruins our friendship…”

Hearing that, Sarah gave Nobina a hug.

“Nobina… you can tell me whatever it is,” she said. “I know we haven’t known each other so long… but you can’t live your whole life in this world without someone you feel fully open with. I… I can be that someone for you. Sure, if you tell me you’re the most horrible person in the world and have done things that cannot be forgiven, I may not be able to forgive you… but I can help you move past it and become someone better.”

Nobina found herself crying into Sarah, who comforted her. It was only then did Nobina realized how much she really did appreciate Sarah for everything she had done for her. She felt that she was the best friend one could ask for and if she was going to open up completely to someone, Sarah would be that person.

“Sarah… Thank you… for allowing me to open up,” said Nobina.

“That’s… what best friends are for,” said Sarah with the smile Nobina had come to appreciate.