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Hours later, I hear the sounds of armored men making their way to me.

On the off chance that it was not my backup, I got to my feet, drew my sword, and spun up a few spells, ready to defend myself.

Fortunately, the ones who came around the corner were Dave and Sam, followed by Instructor Greyham, Professor Sageira, and a host of not just city guards, but Royal Guards. Apparently the kingdom takes shit seriously when their students are involved.

I pointed out the four prisoners and they were promptly taken into custody, the shaman even had a mana suppression collar slapped on before his ass got dragged off.

The moment the prisoners were taken away, city guards, Royal Guards, and some administrative types started turning the whole place upside down. While that was going on, a healer came up to me and got my stab wound patched up right quick.

When one of the rooms was cleared, Instructor Greyham brought me into it and sat me down. “Luke Ironcrest… the break has just started and already you have found yourself in the middle of quite the mess.” he sighs and continues, “We have already questioned Dave and Sam, now I want to hear your side of how events went.”

I nodded and told him of how events went down, not like there were witnesses of anyone seeing me use instinctive magic, this fight was above board in every sense that matters. I then told him the part I did not tell Dave and Sam.

“After I threa- I mean interrogated the three men, they spilled the beans and said this was a smuggling operation and they used the shaman and his hobgoblin pets as an intermediary to transport their stuff elsewhere, as for who they were transporting it to or for, they say they do not know.”

After some follow-up questions, Greyham released me to join up with Dave and Sam, but instead, I walked over to Professor Sageira who was still prodding the hobgoblin brute I stabbed in the neck.

“Find anything interesting?” I asked the engrossed Professor Sageira.

“Indeed I have… this mutated hobgoblin’s physique is most interesting and definitely not natural. Come and take a look.” she said as she waved me over.

As I squat down beside her, she pressed a finger on the hobgoblin brute’s arm, and hair-thin veins of light illuminated up its arm.

“What’s that?” I asked, to which she answered, “Mana pathways… but they are extremely atrophied.”

I just stared at the glowing veins on the dead hobgoblin brute’s arm and say, “Errr…ok? I will take your word for it, but I have no point of reference for what mana pathways on a normal person looks like. And what is that spell you used?”

She looked at me and replied, “This is one of the few diagnostic spells you will learn if you pick up the Healing Magic course next year. And as for a point of reference,” she then grabbed my hand and cast the same diagnostic spell.

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The moment she did that, my arm lit up with mana pathways roughly 1cm wide. Her eyes widened and she quickly dismissed the spell as she looked around. “Ok, you are a poor point of reference. You will see a normal mana pathway eventually, but let's just say a normal person’s mana pathway is many times smaller.”

She then pointed back to the hobgoblin brute’s corpse and said, “But these mana pathways are so small to the point of them being obviously unnatural, it is to the point that if it was any smaller, the mana pathways would collapse and cause the body to die. I also suspect that the way they did this was to somehow sacrifice their mana pathways to gain their vastly improved physique.”

“But why would they do that? Magic is so useful, it seems like a waste to me.” I asked, to which she just shook her head.

“That just means that you have not read up on enough history, tho I can't blame you, it is rather obscure history from a land quite far away from here, and a very long time ago. It was one of the cases of a mage thinking too highly of his own abilities and ended up punching a hole in reality.

To make a long story short, something not of this world came through, killed the mage, ran into a tribe of goblins who thought the entity a god, and the entity took the goblin tribe and slowly started building an army.

The only reason a few kingdoms were not wiped out by a goblin horde, was because some hunters saw the build-up of goblinoids, and informed the local lord, who mustered an army to crush the goblinoids who were in the low thousands by then.

The moral of the story is that someone may be trying to do the same thing again, but is much better equipped and prepared, we will only know when that shaman you captured gets interrogated.

As for the answer to your question, I will answer you with a few questions, how many babies can a goblin female give birth to in a year?”

“Errr… if I remember correctly, an average of three babies?” I answer as I dug through my memories of the bestiary I read years ago.

“Correct, and how long does it take for a goblin to reach sexual maturity?” she continues.

“Around three to… four… years…” I answer as her leading questions start painting a rather frightening picture.

Sageira continued, “That’s a lot of goblins if given the time to grow and reproduce, and sooner or later, depending on luck, one or more of those goblins will evolve into hobgoblins, and if there is a breeding pair of hobgoblins, the chances of babies being hobgoblins from birth drastically increases, and the time it takes for a hobgoblin baby to become an adult only takes five years at most.”

She then points at the hobgoblin brute, “So, hypothetically speaking, if there is a large tribe of goblinoids that has no shortage of hobgoblins, is it really a waste to turn these hobgoblins into these creatures that can butcher the average foot soldier with ease? Goblinoid life is cheap after all, they grow fast, have the concept of tool use, and are able to form complex enough societies. To any wannabe warlord, they are the perfect expendable soldiers. Throw some human wisdom and magic into the mix and you got this.”

“Oh shit…” I muttered as I started to see the full scope of the potential shit show of a situation.

She chuckled, “Oh shit indeed, and from what we confiscated here, this shaman and his hobs may not be the middle man, but the actual recipient of all this stuff.”

I gasped, “B-But this is madness, why would they even sell arms to a potential army of goblins? It is like selling a knife to a known serial killer, they would most probably end up getting killed themselves.”

She leaned over and sniffed me then replied, “With all the gold and gems we found, that I am sure you left alone,” wink “I am sure they would have had no problems finding someone who lacks all scruples.”

I started sweating a bit, “Haha… I think my friends are calling me, I will see you later professor.” I said as I fast walked towards Dave and Sam.