When I arrived at the city and saw the closed gates, I realized I had made a mistake. It was the middle of the night. Anatoly would be asleep. He would probably be happy to help me, even if I woke him up in the middle of the night, but I was not desperate enough to be that rude.
I turned away from the city that had been my home for half a year and wandered into the woods, trying to find something to amuse myself with until the sun rose. It didn’t take long for me to find the clearing where I had first started learning magic. Of course, it wasn’t a clearing when I started, and there was still plenty of evidence of that. Burnt, sliced and smashed tree stumps littered the area while their bodies were strewn about the edges of the area.
The wood had all rotted by this point, and if I focused, I could sense the many insects and other small critters who had taken up residence inside of it. I didn’t spend too much time inspecting them though, because something just at the edge of my magical senses drew my attention. It was a band of goblin scouts, much like the ones I had encountered shortly after I first arrived in this world. With this discovery, I had decided what I would work on for the remainder of the night. I would research the mystery that was the goblin race.
Goblins were the most common, but simultaneously least understood species of monster in all of Astraeus. They were uniformly weak, and dangerous only in large numbers, and every time they appeared to harass travelers, a band of adventurers would be sent out to wipe out the entire colony. Yet somehow, they always returned.
No one knew how they reproduced, as none of them seemed to possess reproductive organs, nor did they know where they came from, as infant goblins had never been observed. Some scholars believed that they simply spawned, much like Dungeon monsters. It was the most likely theory, but as no one had ever observed the phenomenon, it could not be proven. In addition, many argued that this theory was impossible, because monsters only spawned in Dungeons. It didn’t make sense that one specific type of monster didn’t follow that rule for no particular reason.
Those that disagreed with the spawning idea came up with a theory of their own. They posited that somewhere deep underground, there existed a Dungeon of unimaginable size that produced goblins, and the goblins that appeared on the surface were ones that had wandered there through some sort of cave system. This theory had been partially disproven many years prior by a wealthy skeptic who hired a large team of high-level earth mages to search for such a system, but there were still a fair few who believed that the ‘Great Goblin Dungeon’ existed, and that maybe the goblins came to the surface some other way, such as teleportation.
There was a third, much less popular theory that the world of Astraeus was itself a Dungeon. This theory was generally disliked for a multitude of reasons, but I suspected that the main one was that the people didn’t want to believe that they were monsters in a Dungeon. Some also argued that if the world were a Dungeon, then it would also have a clear condition, but that argument was invalidated by the fact that if the world were a Dungeon, then the people in it would be its inhabitants and therefore unable to clear it.
My personal favorite was the third. While I didn’t fully believe it, I had seen more evidence for that theory than any other. When I had arrived in this world, the System message was in an identical format to the message I received when entering Dungeons, and while the System didn’t give me a clear condition, Pride had, and even told me what the clear reward was. If that were the case, then theoretically, I would be sent back to my old world once I won without needing to spend my wish to return. It was too convenient an idea to put my full trust in, but when I won this stupid game, I would need to ask Pride about it before making my wish.
I cast [Greater Invisibility] on myself and followed my senses until I came across the small group of goblins. They were exactly as I remembered them: short, ugly and deformed, dressing in filthy loincloths and carrying sticks and rocks that I didn’t doubt that they had found in the forest a few hours prior. I watched them stumble about for a few minutes, yelling at each other, running into things, and overall doing a terrible job as scouts before I decided to make my move.
I stepped out in front of them and undid my invisibility, causing them to jump back in surprise. Before they could decide to attack me though, I activated [Demonic Aura], a skill that had come with the [Demon King of Pride] class to test its effects. The description told me that it would inflict fear on all nearby, its effects proportional to its victims’ [Willpower]. It was a powerful skill, with the only downside being that it would also make those around me instantly recognize me as a Demon King.
The poor goblins didn’t stand a chance. As soon as the skill hit them, they fell unconscious without so much as a gasp. I deactivated the skill and looked down at their immobile forms. If not for the faint sound of their heartbeats, and the fact that I hadn’t gotten any System notifications, I might have thought that they were dead.
I summoned 6 [Water Blade]s to decapitate all but one of the unconscious little imps, then used [Incinerate] to destroy their corpses. Then, I set up the heads in a semicircle around the lone survivor, who looked to be the runtiest of the bunch. It was a tad gruesome, but I didn’t want to spend all night looking for the [Goblin King]. It would be easier to just follow a terrified goblin back home.
I dropped a ball of frigid water on the survivor’s face, waking him with a start. He seemed confused for a moment, but when he saw his comrades’ heads and me standing over them, his face became twisted with terror, and he got up and fled back into the forest. I didn’t directly follow him, but kept my senses trained on him as he ran through the forest. At first, he seemed to be running in a random direction as quickly as possible, but when he realized that I wasn’t chasing him, or at least, that I didn’t appear to be, he changed his course and began heading to the east. I recast [Greater Invisibility], then took to the sky, following him from above, and a quarter of an hour later, I finally saw the main group.
It wasn’t anything impressive. Not to me anyways. There were a little under 200 goblins, with a couple dozen hobgoblins and one king. Judging by the other Goblin King I had killed, this one’s level couldn’t be higher than 35, less than half mine. The runty scout sprinted through the disordered crowd of monsters, occasionally being knocked to the side when he drew too close to a stronger warrior until he finally got to the king and fell to his knees. He shouted something unintelligible, and the king shouted back, equally unintelligibly, then beheaded the scout and returned to his slow marching gait.
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I blinked in surprise. I had known that goblins were monsters, but with how short their lifespans tended to be when I was around, I hadn’t realized how barbaric they were. I pondered the best way to deal with the situation. I was here to try to unlock the mysteries of the goblins, but I wasn’t actually sure how I would actually go about it. I had a vague plan to kill most of them and follow the survivors to wherever they fled, but there was no way that such a thing hadn’t been tried in the past. Standard procedure for dealing with goblins was to kill every single one, because if a single one survived, they would return much more quickly than if they were properly eradicated. Surely some curious soul had had the same idea as me to follow a survivor back to wherever they fled and observe them, but if that had produced any results, then goblins would no longer be a mystery.
Still, it might work. I had already witnessed a spawning in the Bizet Dungeon. It might have only been because I was undead in an undead Dungeon, causing the System or whatever controlled Dungeons to malfunction, but it also could have been something else. I had other qualities aside from my race that might have caused that. If it happened once it could happen again. And besides, it didn’t really matter. I was just passing the time, not investigating seriously. I didn’t need to spend so much time thinking about it.
With that settled, my next order of business was deciding how to kill the goblins. I had many spells that would work. The easiest would be to just use one of my storm spells, so I wouldn’t have to choose all my targets individually, but those spells were huge and flashy, and likely to be noticed. A mass targeting spell would be a bit more mentally challenging, but quieter and more efficient.
“Eh, fuck it,” I whispered, and started casting [Blizzard].
Even if it was flashy, who would be able to do anything about it? I was basically in the middle of nowhere. The only powerful person within 50 miles was Anatoly. And on the off chance that I was wrong about that, and someone strong did show up to try to stop me, I had [Authority]. It would be impossible for them to stop me from just teleporting away.
As the spell began, I also cast a [Hex Shield] around the Goblin King so that he would be able to survive. He shouted, and pounded on the shield with all his might, but the shield held firm, and whatever he was trying to say fell on deaf ears as his army was ripped to shreds around him by the frigid winds and sharp chunks of ice. It took less than 30 seconds for the entire army to be reduced to bloodstains and bodies, and the goblin king had stopped trying to escape, now staring at the carnage with a look of horror on his face.
I dropped my invisibility spell and the shield around him and floated down directly in front of him. At first, he seemed to actually be considering trying to fight me. I put an end to those thoughts by creating a large red icicle from his subordinates’ blood over my head pointed at him. He turned and fled at the sight, and as with the scout, I let him go, keeping an eye on him remotely.
Unlike the scout, however, he never changed his direction, nor did he slow down when he realized I wasn’t chasing. He just ran and ran and ran for over nearly two hours without stopping. He didn’t seem to have a particular goal in mind, and only focused on getting as far away from me as possible. I was getting bored of watching the fat green monster run, and considered just killing him and finding something else to do with my remaining hours of darkness, but decided against it. I had spent too long on this impromptu research to just abandon it like that.
The sky was already turning gray by the time the goblin king finally slowed down and stopped to rest. I was impressed that he hadn’t needed to do it already, with how hard he had been running. He had to have run over fifty miles, and he was at a full sprint and never slowed down once. He was now breathing heavily, but he still stood upright, and didn’t seem to be completely out of breath like someone who had just run an ultramarathon would normally be.
He looked at his surroundings, which looked much the same as the ones he had just fled from, minus the goblin corpses and ice shards, and apparently decided he liked it, and plopped to the ground below a tree. I watched for another hour until the sun was rising, but the goblin king did not move. He seemed to be waiting for something, which I assumed was the spawning of new subordinates, but nothing was happening.
I looked at the orange sky, wanting to head back to Bizet to visit Anatoly, but I still had unfinished business, and it was still probably a bit too early for Anatoly. He would be open all day anyways, and he didn’t know I was coming. I wasn’t on a schedule or anything.
Watching the goblin king do nothing as nothing happened around him turned out to be very boring, so I set up a sound barrier around myself and started messing around with my [Phantom Orchestra]. During the nights between the days during which I trained with Natalya I had discovered to my dismay that I didn’t remember any of my favorite pieces well enough to have them played properly. After that, it had become an ongoing project of mine to try to restore them from my fragmented memories, experimenting with the different sections and harmonies to try to capture sounds hiding in my memories. I had found mild success with a few pieces, and very little with others, but it was a good way to pass the time.
Before I knew it, noon had arrived, and even as the sun shone directly into the eyes of the monster, he did not move, nor show any signs of impatience. I, however, was done. Maybe if I staked out his tree for another few weeks something might happened, but I didn’t care enough to try that. I dispelled my orchestra, sent a [Greater Magic Missile] into the Goblin King’s head, and teleported back to Bizet as the System notification rang in my ears.
As I flew over the walls invisibly, I wondered what would have happened if I had just tried to walk in through the gates. It had only been a day since my escape. Would the gatekeepers be aware of it? Would they notice that it was me? Would the church even announce that I had been taken from my cell? I wanted to try it to see what would happen, but I didn’t want to be harassed while I still had yet to talk to Anatoly. Maybe I could try it afterward to see what would happen.
I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind as I neared Anatoly’s shop. It was the same as I remembered it, with the exception of the ‘Closed’ sign hanging on the door. I stood directly in front of it, invisible, pondering my situation. Was he out of town? He had his building warded so I couldn’t sense the inside, but if he was gone, what was I supposed to do? Wait for him? Maybe the patisserie next door would know when he would be back. I started heading toward an empty alley nearby so I could turn visible and create a disguise, but a familiar voice sounded in my head, making me stop in my tracks.
Come in, said Patience.