They set out that following morning, under clouds promising more rain to come.
Riding a goat was not as easy as it sounded. Even with the wider back of a lion for seating, Damon needed to constantly adjust to the strange gait, and they both found it far from comfortable. But at least they were making good time. They’d spent the previous night spooning, but woke with the dawn to make sure they had all day to deal with the most pressing concern according to Damon.
Namely finding other people.
Damon made it clear, through grunts and half-assed gestures, that he wanted to find people like himself. The goat-brained creature didn’t totally seem to get it, but after some ten minutes of roaming, he did start to take Damon in a specific direction. So, Billy had either gotten the message, or he had goals of his own to be heading out towards.
Damon figured he would see which it was for now—while he worked on his kegels and whistling—and only correct the course of his new mount as needs be.
They remained wary of dangers, prepared to run at any sign of hostile packs of predators in the distance. His reluctant mount seemed to be moving with newfound confidence however, having made it mostly unscathed through a close encounter and now with backup prepared to defend him at need. I’m glad he ended up seeing my use, as I see his. I mean, this is great. I can see much further and stay fully focused on scouting.
At first it was all grasslands all around until they went beyond the river, where Damon finally reached a hill tall enough to see past the highland territory and into the grasslands to the west. There was still the occasional hill and craggy peak, but far less than in the hills they came from. Looks like a sea of grass. The impression was only broken in the far distance where it looked like thick forests were spread across the valleys like bushels of moss. While in the far east was a series of cloudy mountain peaks that seemed to cup that side of the range of hills which they'd just come from.
As it turns out, no course correction was needed. They traveled for several hours, beyond noon and past fragrant meadows filled with wildflowers and mushrooms. Billy took him by what seemed like familiar goat trails, until Damon eventually spotted a plume of smoke in the distance. Please be people. Please, just be people.
Once they made it to the top of the next hill, there was a short track down to the plains, and a small cliffside overlooking the lagoon where a gathering of huts looked to have grown from out of the ground on the other side. Damon found himself looking down at a nearly perfectly clear pond with no sign of any bottom, sporting lily pads and frogs making up a song of their people. He suddenly felt self-conscious, and tried smelling his armpits and fixing up his hair, which only served to make him feel ridiculous on top of smelly.
[Welcome Explorer, to Jacob’s Well]
[Pioneerquest unlocked: Exploring Lost Domains.]
What the!?
Exploring Lost Domains - You were the oldest remaining people. Stable in a paradigm turned obsolete, the lands you once ruled were taken into custodial keeping and have been optimized. Rediscover points of interest and fill out the world map. Map sharing enabled. Progress: (3/509,600,000)
Oh, shit that's a lot.
The quests just keep coming. This one looked straight forward, keep exploring. And exploring. The named regions he'd come across seemed to match the number, but holy shit. That's a ridicilous amount of named regions, clearly this isn't limited the way you might expect, she's really expecting me to fill out a map of the whole planet.
Sigh. In any case, let's focus up for now and make a good impression. I should have bathed... probably smell like goat.
But Damon didn’t get close enough to be smelled, not before they heard a voice call out, making Billy halt in his tracks.
“Oi, hold it, ya cunt! What’s that you’re doing to Billy there, ya fat headed prick? Our Billy ain’t for riding, not by the likes of you lilyways,”
What the actual shh, is that accent irish? Damon really had no clue, but the voice hardly sounded human. It was too high-pitched, but with a strange timbre to it.
Think fast. “Uhm, we've been helping each other. I was just letting him take me to his friends. That you?”
That seemed to set off some whispers amongst the houses, before the leader piped up again. “Letting him, aye, get off ‘im then, if’n the position’s voluntary n' all," Damon could hear the skepticism dripping off the next words. "You can hop back on again later, ye?”
He still hadn’t spotted who was talking, but he suddenly spotted a white liberty cap sticking up above one of the roofs for a second, before a shadowy hand appeared to pull it back down just as suddenly.
Is that? No, it can't be. Can it? Damon was rattled, but still keen to make a good impression, so he did his very best to keep talking. "Uhm, a, I mean sure. Like I said, we're friends. You've got nothing to fear," he finished lamely, before dismounting to put them at ease.
When Billy didn't take the opportunity to escape but just stood there, more whispering followed. Until the closer roof suddenly saw a silhouette rise above the ridgeline, aiming a shortbow right at him.
Damon stared in disbelief, before slowly raising his hands in order to shield his face, and appear less threatening.
What faced Damon was not the sort of people he had been hoping for, no. Not at all. Rather he found himself standing face to face with a tribe of… of somethings, all wearing little phrygian caps in various colors. Are they smurfs? They can’t be smurfs, they look too… Pretty. Maybe if smurfs were humans, these would be their elves? Except they’re green.
Damon wasted no more time, and helped confirm his suspicions via System assist:
[Redcap Goblin - Level ??]
The short, green woman staring down at him made Damon’s gut churn, like he was standing face to face with an ancestral threat. This was no mere animal, but something entirely alien. A people of their own. Oh. Oh, ok. It’s just goblins. Green ones. With hats on, or well, caps. Yeah. Uhm. Goblins, right. That’s cool. Actual frickin' goblins. Do they eat people?
Damon’s knees had started shaking, but he kept his cool outwardly. “Uh, hello everyone. Do you all really speak English?”
“Oi, watch it. What kind of useless twat doesn’t speak English? The System’s in English, fuck’s sake. You expect people to not even get their own levels? Billy, what the hell kinda dolt’d you bring around this time?”
The tirade made Damon's jaw drop, then his bottom lip started to quiver. No, he was not upset, not really. It was just so great to be hearing people’s voices again. Sure, he had been lonely for less than a week, but it felt longer, and he hadn’t been sure he was ever going to see anyone else, ever again.
While he was recovering from the wave of emotion, Billy walked on by and bleated at his favorites in the oncoming crowd.
Damon wiped away a single tear. “Hah, so you all really do know Billy, huh? I met him just the other day. Uhm, by the by. Have you guys seen any other humans around?”
While the crowd surrounded Billy and marveled over his new, super cool-looking scars, the leader of the goblins came up to look Damon right in the kisser. “What’s a humans, and why isn’t [Identify] working on ya, you prick?”
When Damon just looked at her strangely and failed to respond, he heard her mutter under her breath.
“Knew ya was a cunt, knew it right away,” Grumble, grumble.
Damon realized she was serious, at that point. “Wait, what. Is your [Identify] really not working?”
This is what she told him she saw
[?????? ???????? - Level 27]
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Damon learned three disturbing truths over the course of that evening in the goblin village. Among them that the goblins did not in fact eat any meat, at all. But oh, Damon, pray tell, why would that little tidbit qualify among the disturbing truths—to the degree of it even being mentioned first—you ask?
Because instead they preferred a nearly all-mushroom diet, and it gave them some outright devilish farts. The first time one of the young goblin kids came up and smiled at him, while slowly unleashing a butt whistle, was when Damon suffered his first Dao-infused chemical attack.
It was ridiculous.
He’d run off, hearing mocking voices laughing uproariously behind his back.
“Hah, breath through your mouth, ya daft cunt, I know you want to lilyways,” Only when Damon stopped and did as suggested did she finish. “Let it coat your tongue.”
Yeah. Disturbing truths. The second one he learned was how apparently if it weren’t for Billy, they and every other humanoid, was likely to try and kill Damon on the spot for having such a suspicious [Identify] response. No one in the village had ever seen anything like it, and they had some proper old souls around, or so they claimed.
They were vague on details.
The third disturbing truth was how they hadn’t ever seen anything quite like Damon before, and he found that far from encouraging in terms of locating his friends. Their red capped leader stood at just about 4”2 tall, and was half a head taller than the closest contender in sight. She’d hardly ever seen anyone taller, actually she was sure her people were among the bigger folk around.
When he asked them to list some other tribes, she seemed to grow suspicious, which was fair enough. She hadn’t even given him a name yet, and only grunted when he gave her his. Apparently not having tried to eat Billy was a good start, but it seemed they still weren't ruling out the possibility that Damon was part of some rival faction.
They’d tried offering him some mushrooms too colorful to trust—and especially when not even cooked or put on a pizza, Damon would rather decline. He’d had his fill of eggs on the road already. Although more food was apparently next on the menu regardless.
The leader put her black hair up in a ponytail before addressing Damon directly again. “Listen up, new guy. Now that Billy’s here we’re huffin’ to go for a round about the orchards, since the prick knows how to lean on a tree n' pull a load, but a tall bastard like you is welcome to cuff hisself along, provided you pick more than you eat,” She eyed him with what appeared to be her usual cynicism. “No lazy bums allowed, got it?”
Ooh, orchard. That sounds far more promising than eating combinations of raw, grilled and mashed mushrooms, that’s for damn sure. “Alright, I can tag along and help out, I gotta work on my minimap anyway.”
“Your what?”
Apparently he was, if not unique in having one, at least rare enough that none of the goblins had heard of the like before. They appeared to grow instantly envious of the utility, whereas Billy started prancing about a bit, acting like he’d been in the know all along; despite how Damon couldn’t recall having mentioned it.
While they were walking in the direction of the orchard, Damon checked in on his ongoing quests and found there’d been only one change so far, but a welcome one.
Prowess Progression - Task - Spend 10,000 hours developing a new ability. Progress: (13/10,000)
Cool, the multitasking is working, it must be counting the riding too. But I've gotta learn to do something better than just whistling tunes, I guess now’s as good a time as any to figure this out.
He began whistling on a bird call he'd been hearing on occasion since waking, and managing it rather poorly to start. He’d never been a keen whistler, but the goblins certainly took notice, the children happily smiling and pointing out how much like a crippled, sick bird that odd, new fellow sounded.
God damnit. It seemed all the children had white caps on, but the bigger goblins also had various colors staining theirs, with one chosen color in particular mostly being prevalent. Although only their leader's cap was actually fully red, immediately calling the System's naming conventions into question, since they were all still marked as 'Redcap Goblin' specifically. I guess they start coloring them as part of growing up? I'll ask about it later.
He was getting enough odd looks for now, without starting an anthropological interrogation. When they finally reached the trees Damon failed to recognise the orange, pear-shaped fruits—and the [Identify] failed—but the trees themselves made it look sort of like an apple orchard. Huh, looks good. Why would they be eating mushrooms though, with a trove like this only an hour away?
Damon prepared to be disappointed by the taste, while the more energetic children ran ahead and started picking out likely candidates, then calling for Billy to come over and lean on the tree for them so they could pick the fruit directly. Damon wondered why they weren't climbing them instead, but when he saw one of the youngest try it, the goblin slipped down the trunk, almost as if the bark was covered in a slickness of some kind, and all the branches were too tall to reach.
Damon walked up to get a feel for the sturdy tree, and immediately regretted the choice when he caught a whiff of his hand afterwards. Why does it smell like burnt popcorn?
It was even weirder since the tree itself smelled like nothing, it was only when the trunk's coating came into contact with Damon's skin that the pungent odor appeared. At least I'm tall enough to reach the drier branches. He tried one of the fruits, opting to ignore the lingering snack smell on his fingers.
Mm. It was a peach, or close enough to that texture, only with a taste closer to pineapple. "Hey, this is amazing! Why don't you all eat this every day instead of mushrooms?"
Only the leader cared enough to hear him, and the only response was a raised finger. The rest of the goblins were too occupied gorging themselves.
Damon walked over to where Billy was busy helping, and started picking the tree clean of fruits as well, helping the goblins gather them into woven baskets clearly prepared for the task.
Once the lower branches were picked, Damon then had to question why the goblins weren't climbing on top of the beast to reach higher. The answer was apparently that they'd tried it before, and the bastard, stubborn goat wouldn't allow it!
When Billy simply stood there and accepted the treatment, as the much heavier Damon clambered all over him, there were immediate shouts of outrage. Damon literally heard someone call: "It isn't fair!" Supposedly in reference to Damon's already superior reach.
"What's the problem?"
Damon looked honestly perplexed, so they tried to explain. "You've known Billy for how long now, and he's gladily accepting that sorta treatment from you—n neglecting us, still; his long-long-longly-ardent pals of old? Why did ya think we weren't buying it, when you said ya were riding 'im all voluntary?"
Huh, Damon did find that strange upon reflecting back, so he turned to his companion with a smirk. "Really now, what gives?"
Billy's lolling eyes turned towards them both and just stared for a second, before he grunted twice and pawed the ground a few times, nonsensically.
But apparently not for missus goblin. "What the hell do you mean because he's strongest. Strongest what? A level 27? How strong could he possibly be, I don't care one whit about the height, one sting in the wrong spot from a Dorsin blow dart and the tart's finished!"
But the chimera did not bother arguing his case; the beaming smugness spoke volumes regardless.
So, the goblins all swung their skeptical eyes towards Damon instead. "You're that strong, huh?"
Damon had to swiftly figure out the move here, bragging had never been his strong suite. But they were still eyeing him oddly. "Yes? For my level? Fairly so."
He melted down under their disbelief. "I think."