Quartz scuttles back as the troll takes a look at the Ogre, tracing the heavy thick arms to the guardian — to Granite — still locked in his arms. “COKRO? WHAT IS THIS?”

“I dunno, boss. Two of dem attacked me. I guard the passage come behind the gobbo, like you said.”

The troll rips Granite from the Ogre’s grasp, taking the weight with an ease that surpasses its subordinate, and stares at it. “A GUARDIAN. THERE IS A SANCTUARY NEARBY?”

The troll turns to Mekka-Mekka.

“Yes, Big-gobbo-boss Sanctuary. Nasty golem thing. Tha be da big-bosses… let me kill!”

Is he talking about the corrupted sanctuary? Then... that has golems too?

The troll, Gorrok, slams the guardian onto the ground, then places the massive hammer on its chest. Granite tries to pull himself out of the small ditch, but the hammer doesn’t even budge.

“YES. DESTROY YOUR FIRST AS THE EMBODIMENT OF HUNGER. THEN DESCEND UPON GORROKOR AND CONSUME TO YOUR HEARTS CONTENT.”

God damn it, Administrator! Did you have some part in this? Is granite about to die because of you?

…

Answer me!

The administrator does not. Caau isn’t having it. He likes Granite — he’s actually his favorite of the golems. That stupid-looking rock-smile. He goes to the blessing menu, looking over the options.

Mekka-Mekka holds the blade high, suspended in an arch a few meters off the ground thanks to the long, muscular arms that sprout from his back. It grips through the stone, forming tight handholds. Then it drops, like an executioner’s axe.

Caau stops thinking, just speaks the words that come straight into his mind.

No! Don’t ble—

The administrator speaks too late. Caau has already started the chant of protection.

O', seeker of shelter, 'neath unfurled banner's grace, Guardian's mantle descends, protecting every place. O', behold the hidden shield, where safety finds its hold, Within the guarded fortress, hurt and harm unfold.

The golden blessing seeps from the Guardian’s skin, and in contact with the air, forms a blurred barrier of repulsive force. The sword stabs down, impaling the layers, cracking the protection like a thousand planes of glass.

It pierces them all, in fact. The sword sinks into stone, cutting through like butter. Mekka-Mekka snarls. Granite isn’t there — instead, it is face to face with the troll — staring deep into the red, blood-crusted eyes.

“HELLO, LITTLE CELESTIAL.” It speaks, its hand half-wrapped around Granite’s waist, pressing inwards, slowly sending cracks spiraling through the barrier. Caau feels Granite’s fear — and his understanding that the troll is testing the barrier for some unknowable reason.

It throws Granite into the air, catching the golem by the leg and whipping him into the ground, shattering yet more layers of hardened force. “COKRO, DETAIN.” It bellows at the Ogre — and the Ogre listens, placing a thick hand around Granite’s neck.

The troll begins to laugh, a horrific, belly-to-throat laugh that makes even the Ogre cringe away. Mekka-Mekka screams out of frustration. “Why!? Why do you take my kill!?”

The troll snaps the hammer up, looming it over the goblin. “HUSH, LITTLE ONE. NOW YOU HAVE BEEN GRANTED AN OPPORTUNITY.” It points a large, gangrenous finger at the immobilized Guardian. “THE BLESSING IS WEAK. THIS CELESTIAL-BLOOD IS NEWBORN. SLAY IT, AND BRING THE REWARD TO MY MASTER… AND YOU WILL BE PROVEN STRONG ENOUGH TO JOIN OUR FAMILY.”

It smacks Cokro on the back. “FOLLOW THE GOBBO. TAKE HIS COMMANDS,” he turns to the Goblin, smiling viciously. “CELESTIALS ARE BLEEDING HEARTS. TAKE TO GORROKOR, EAT, DEVOUR, PRESS THE GOBBOS INTO YOUR SERVICE — AND THEN WAIT FOR THE CELESTIAL-BLOOD TO COME. IT WILL COME TO RESCUE ITS GUARDIAN. DESTROY IT AWAY FROM ITS DEN, AND THEN FIND IT WITHOUT ITS PROTECTORS.”

The troll pushes the ogre forward, then turns, clomping heavy feet into the darkness, the hammer disappearing from Granite’s sight a whole second later than the troll.

Well… Granite’s not dead.

I’m sorry… I did not see this coming.

What? Just tell me what happened.

Well you robbed me of my entertainment. You told me to go away… so I went to the goblin. I thought if I couldn’t watch from your perspective, I’d watch from another.

I… so, what, you did this just to fuck with me? Are you friend or foe, now? Will you do this again?

It wasn’t my intention that a fucking Infernal-blood would find him! They must have been looking to expand their territory to the corrupted sanctuary.

And now they have Granite. What the hell am I supposed to do?

Caau looks at his prayers. 39. Not much. The guardian-creation ability is still on cooldown for another four days. No reinforcements there.

Something flickers in his [ Zone of Control ] — two figures running towards the walls. It takes a second to identify them, but it’s the two lunar-champions… or that’s what they used to be.

He uses the knowledge skill on them, just to get their names. It returns the ‘Nocturna’ as Ameior, the ‘Lupis’ as Graskull. They are both rather fast, Ameior seeming to skip along as Graskull full-bore sprints.

They rush in the walls. Quartz is still a good distance out, heading back towards Caau. He longs to tell them to go back and get him, but of course… he can’t speak.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Seriously, how the hell do I get telepathy… or just some way of speaking to my followers?

I can only tell you that you can, not how.

Granite is strung up on a cave wall, looking over what must be Gorrokor. Mekka-Mekka devours goblins from heat to toe, slicing them open piece by piece.

Is he growing?

You wondered, before, if goblins were cannibalistic. The answer is yes. It’s their innate ability, actually. The large goblin boss you saw before was no champion… just a fat local.

The two once-champions burst through the walls’ entrance, where Arden waits, leaning against a wall. “I felt… what has happened?” He asks, taking a few steps towards his previous enemies as though they were friends his entire life.

Both of the immortals rest — Graskull with his hands on his knees, bent over, breathing large gulps of air. Ameior, however, is completely laid out flat on the ground. Through the deep breaths, the lupis gives information.

“Guardin… captured. We saw it… we were nearby.”

“You didn’t help!?” Arden snaps… then looks back towards Strauss, who shadows him a few meters back, and shakes his head. “I... am sorry. Could you have helped?”

Graskull shakes his head. “We fucking froze, kid. Pressed ourselves against the damn wall and begged Ameior’s ability to hide us worked.”

Well, it did. I didn’t see them. How close were they?

“Two Infernal-champions, neither of which the two of us were a match for. Our lunar instillation is out, gone, nada, nilch. They took one of your stone friends. The… big one.”

Arden nods. “Granite. He was out with… Quartz. Is Quartz alright?”

Ameior shrugs on the ground. “Unknown. We didn’t see him — though we heard fighting. That’s why we went to investigate.”

“A big fucking rumble in the caves. Don’t know what that was.”

I want to scream. ‘Quartz is alright! Just make sure he stays that way!’… but no. I need to speak if this is going to work. It’s stupid at this point.

[ Expedition Team 1 has found a new area! ]

Onyx is shuffling through a tight crack behind Sapphire, who picks away at certain parts as if she knows Onyx will be too large. When he emerges, Caau gets a good glimpse at this new area.

An expansive cavern lies before the two guardians, illuminated by glowing crystals scattered around a low basin the size of a small lake. Around the rim, small spires of wet stone are adorned by clusters of luminescent lichen.

A massive crack is the cave’s primary feature — and Caau sees sunlight for the first time. It cries tears that form two waterfalls on the opposite ends of each, cascading unnaturally down the sides of the rock walls.

One flows gently, guided by natural channels in the wall, then disappearing into the stone below. The other crashes energetically, diverting its flow away from the basin. The geysers erupt, spraying a mist of superheated water and steam in all directions.

Caau’s not-skin crawls. In the centre of the basin… are mounds of human corpses, with thousands of massive insects ripping chunks of rotten, putrefied flesh and devouring it in one.

Well, you’ve found a source of food.

What? What the fuck are you talking about?

Those insects — they’re livestock. Osmara — orcs to you, I suppose — don’t enjoy human flesh. So they create a single degree of separation.

No… that’s not right. There has to be another way.

This is the way of the immortal plane. Eat or be eaten. Your people starve, Caau. Don’t avert your eyes any longer.

The administrator’s words finally make him look. At the ones lying in bed. At the ones ‘sleeping’ because they are ‘tired.’

Sunken flesh and hollow eyes. Immobile, clinging to life only by the fact that water is relatively abundant. Half-starved before they even arrived…

Alright, yes, I get it. So you chastise me when I do the wrong thing — but you blame me when I do the right thing. What am I meant to do? Raid the village? I don’t understand the basics of this world. I don’t know if the goblins are outright evil — and in fact I’ve been shown the opposite. The gorakhin from the sanctum and the humans from the surface are living together.

I don’t intend to tell you what to do. In fact, I’m trying to help you. Warning you. You have two days… then your followers start dropping off one by one. The gorakhin can scrape by with the little cultivations they have… for a time. What could you do…? If you need food… what could you do?

An arrow slams into the wall next to Onyx — and Caau look as two orcs, dressed in what amounts to rags, notch another two arrows and prepare to fire.

Caau commands Onyx to put their hands up. Perhaps orcs are more reasonable than their rabid goblin counterparts.

To his surprise… they do stop. They look at each other, then begin to scream warnings. Caau tells Onyx and Sapphire to retreat.

Is this it, then? I either raid the orcs or the goblins… but I’ve got to deal with this ‘Mekka-Mekka’ you’ve created. I don’t know how to do all of this. I’m not ready to have lives on the line.

Onyx stops, coming back out of the hole. He removes the rudimentary plates that bolted onto his body as soon as he equipped [ Basic Armour ], and steps carefully towards the Osmara.

He places them down, then steps back. One orc holds the bow at the ready… but the other bends down to pick up — then sniff — the item. Its eyes light up as if were a legendary.

We. Trade?

Onyx points to the insects chewing away at the corpses. The Osmara looks back… then brings empty air to its mouth like it is eating. Onyx nods, slowly, then touches where his stomach would be. The orc tilts its head, but it points the bow in the air, making a harsh whistle. Not even a second later, one of the large insects flits to its shoulder, sitting like a parrot.

[ Emmoi the Osmara offers a trade: ]

[ Basic Armour ] = 1 x Geyser Beetle.

[ Assorted Goblin Weaponry ] = 2 x Geyser Beetles.

Offer other items for appraisal?

Caau looks at the screen in disbelief. It’s that easy? All they want is junk?

He looks through his inventory, then offers the [ Steel Longsword ], the remaining [ Crystalline Sword ], and the [ Assorted Goblin Weaponry ].

The Osmara offer these terms:

[ Crystalline Sword ] = 3 x Geyser Beetle

[ Steel Longsword ] = 4 x Geyser Beetle

[ Assorted Goblin Weaponry ] = 1 x Geyser beetle

Accept?

Sure…

He accepts — and in the Sanctuary appears no less than eight beetles. At the same time, he feels the items dissolve from his inventory. They appear in a pile, and the Osmara raises his bow and sings, rotating around in small little jumps.

But Caau is not looking at that. Instead, he’s looking at beetles — and their crusade against the MASSIVE mushrooms that have swarmed the sanctuary, their stalks taken root in the storeroom and grown until the only option is to expand into the rest of the Sanctuary.

The gorakhin inside — once working but now taking the opportunity to devour the mushrooms as much as they can — cry out in surprise as eight palm-to-shoulder-sized beetles crest the mushroom-hill, carving small channels in the fungus-flesh as they go.

He directs the guardians to return home. Why is that mushroom so damned big?

Look at the ceiling.

The small moon that [ Dark Growth ] created hangs there, streaming the smallest amount of light onto the storeroom.

Oh. ‘Dark Growth’. I was absolutely sure that it would somehow make me an unholy creature.

Alright… so shove mushrooms in there and we’re set?

If you wish all of your people to die from malnutrition. Mushrooms and, if you can even cultivate them, beetles do not a complete diet make.

Well, at least it’s staved off the inevitable?

What a victory for you.

Quartz steps through the walls, Arden alongside. Quartz sits down… putting his hands on his head. Arden, not missing a beat, sits down next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

The golem just stares at the ground.

Caau feels… sad?

A strange feeling.

He shakes it away. It’s not the time for sadness — it’s the time for action.

Guardians, gather. Quartz, we’re going to save Granite. There’s not a chance we’re letting him die. Time to grind a little experience...