RUSTY
Chul and Rusty reached the victory platform to stand alongside the candidates who had made it to the end of the trial. Grizzletooth was there. Up close, the white scars that covered his his arms, face and neck, stood out in sharp relief against his dark skin. His incisors nearly qualified as tusks, and his mouth remained slightly open as he grunted his approval of the pair. Nearby there was a female goblin wrapped in brown and grey wool, about the same height as Chul. The part of her face that was visible was exceptionally light, with only the barest hint of green, and her eyes were crystal blue, a rare color among their kind. She was watching Chul closely enough to make him nervous.
He removed his hat, wringing it between his hands as he introduced himself.
“Hi there,” he said, “I’m Chul, and this is my scaly dog, Rusty.”
She nodded at them, her gaze steady, but said nothing.
Another victor took him by the arm, a slender goblin with a bald head who was wearing only a loincloth. “You did well, young one. My name is Windskip.”
“Oh,” Chul said, tearing his gaze away from the girl. “I’m Chul. Nice to meet you.”
Windskip nodded. “So I heard. I’m looking forward to seeing how you do in the coming trials.” He knelt down to be at a level with Rusty. “And you, little one. I am honored.”
“Uh, thank you,” Rusty said, nonplussed.
"Attention!" Grik warbled, cutting through the chatter of the crowd. "The day’s event is finished! Candidates, come up so that our fellow goblins can offer their loyalty to their chosen champions!"
Seok, Jiho, and the others who had failed the obstacle course shuffled onto a lower platform, while Chul and Rusty remained with the victors on the elevated stage. The assembled goblins surged forward, eager to pledge their support.
"Seok!" cried one enthusiastic goblin, clambering onto the platform. "You’re a tough bugger, yeah? I stand with you!"
"Thank you," Seok replied, touched by the praise. Though he wasn’t swarmed with admirers, others approached him after the first.
Jiho's temper simmered as goblin after goblin surged past him, barely offering a sideways glance as they moved to pledge themselves to the other candidates. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, and Rusty could almost imagine what he was thinking. How dare they ignore him - the rightful heir to the title of Great Goblin? Or something. Jiho thought extremely highly of himself, and it had to be painful to have reality clash so strongly with his delusions of grandeur.
The jeering calls and raucous laughter only compounded Jiho's anger. As a noisy group shoved past, nearly knocking him from the platform, Jiho whipped around with a snarl, displaying his scissors in warning. The goblin who had pushed him paused, eyes widening in surprise, then narrowing in challenge. For a moment, it seemed a fight would break out right there. But then a larger goblin stepped forward, shoving Jiho hard in the chest.
"Watch yourself, whelp," he growled. "No one wants the likes of you leading us."
With that, the group moved on, melding into the teeming throng. Jiho rubbed at his sternum, glaring daggers at their receding backs. Rusty felt bad for him, but not too bad. There were a few other candidates listlessly shuffling their feet, ignored just as thoroughly as Jiho. He glared at Seok, who was too pleased by the attention he was getting to notice.
From his place beside Chul, Rusty took in the entire scene. The young dragon pressed against his companion’s legs as they were surrounded by potential supporters vying to be the first to offer a pledge.
Movement caught Rusty's eye; the female competitor was moving around the stage as if to avoid any would be supporters. He heard someone call her Slink. She wasn’t a famous goblin, but she had breezed through the course with aplomb, and was getting a lot of attention.
An elderly goblin woman forced her way through and grasped Chul's hands, praising his performance. “You’re a pair, aren’t you? My name’s Tolly. By the Great Mother, I hereby give you my pledge of loyalty. Use it well, eh?” She looked at Rusty. “And you, you’re a pretty thing, aren’t you? Do you want me to sparkle your scales?”
Rusty arched his neck gracefully at the compliment, though he declined the offered sparkling. The elderly goblin blinked in shock when she heard his voice, but soon left the stage. There were others pushing forward to give Chul their pledge. Every time one of them did, Rusty heard a tinny ding, the [System] giving Chul notifications. Was this really all it took for a goblin to gain power?
It was only a fraction of the goblin population that came forward to offer new pledges. Most of the spectators would wait to see how the candidates did in future trials before making their choice. As the stages cleared, Grik made another announcement.
"Listen up, all you goblins!" he shouted, commanding attention from both the competitors and their newfound supporters alike. With a thud, he slammed his staff on the platform, and a pale light came to being in the heart of its attached lantern.
"Today's trial has ended," Grik began, his high voice strained from the long day of overuse. "We shall proceed with the test of goblin cunning at first light. I expect each and every one of you to be prepared." He paused for effect, surveying the sea of eager faces before him. "And remember…" Grik leaned in slightly, his eyes narrowing as he imparted his ultimate piece of advice. "Try not to poop where you sleep."
A ripple of chuckles spread through the crowd as they dispersed, many heading toward makeshift dwellings to rest for the night. Chul lingered on the platform, the weight of the day events finally seeming to settle on his shoulders. As the others left, he turned to Rusty.
"Rusty," Chul whispered nervously, "do you think we did the right thing?"
Rusty tilted his head, meeting Chul's gaze with understanding, then gave a reassuring nod. Together, they made their way back to the patch of the Creaking Forest the gang had claimed for their camp.
"Can I really be the Great Goblin?" Chul asked. "Do you think I can?"
Rusty nudged him with his nose as they approached the gang. "People seem to like you,” he said.
“They do," Chul said, his expression tinged with awe. “They really do."
The night passed quietly, at least for the gang. Seok couldn’t stop talking about how proud he was to be chosen by the goblins who had given him their pledges, and Jiwoo spent the time needling Jiho with underhanded comments about his own performance. His grandson remained silent, refusing to rise to the bait, but his face darkened with every insult. After a meal of leftover foodstuffs they had brought from the den, Chul flopped onto the ground and fell instantly asleep. Rusty admired his carefree spirit, the doubts Chul had earlier expressed apparently forgotten. He was exhausted and sore from the obstacle course. His head ached, and his back felt bruised, but if that was the only consequence of having been smooshed under a small boulder, he wouldn’t complain.
He checked his [System] screen and found there was a meter under his health attribute that was about three-quarters full, signifying the damage he had taken. The meter was flickering, and as he watched, it ticked fuller. Slowly but surely, he was recovering, and at this rate, he would be back to full health by morning.
********
JIWOO
The following day, Jiwoo and Sooji ascended the creaky wooden steps of the stands that had been thrown together around the location of the second trial, their eyes scanning the construction below. Jiwoo looked down at the expansive escape room. The piled stone walls formed a large square, sectioning off a series of puzzles and [Tinker] contraptions. In the center stood a towering set of weighted scales, its long arms and baskets holding an assortment of blocks and locked boxes. Thick chains dangled between the scales, connecting the entire machine in a web of iron. To one side, an array of gears, pipes, and hissing vents comprised another mechanical device with a less obvious use, its brass innards glinting in the sunlight.
He knew the perimeter of the room would be riddled with an assortment of concealed traps, hidden spikes, ropes, darts, and swinging blades primed to trigger at a touch. [Tinker]’s loved that sort of thing, and traps had been a major feature of his own trials long ago, though the challenges had been different then.
As Jiwoo surveyed the escape room from his elevated vantage point, he likened it to a giant puzzle box. While devoid of a ceiling, its high walls corralled contestants inside, where they would scramble to solve challenges and evade dangers while an oversized clock raised above the end of the room ticked away their allotted time.
"Look at those walls," Jiwoo said, “what garbage, you could probably just dig your way out.”
“I don’t think that’s allowed,” Sooji said, taking a seat beside him. “But I’m sure someone will try to it anyway.”
Grik gave a brief speech from a platform near the clock, though the spectators already knew what this challenge was about, and Jiwoo wished he would get on with it and stop wasting everyone’s time. Candidates would have one hour to complete the room. As with the obstacle course, failure didn’t mean being ejected from the trials, but the better the performance, the more likely goblins were to give a candidate their pledge.
Once again, Grizzletooth was the first goblin to attempt the trial. Because of the nature of the room, the other candidates were sequestered outside of it so they wouldn’t be able to see how the puzzles were solved. That meant Jiwoo and Sooji were the only members of the gang who would be able to see the entire event unfold.
“This is going to be good,” Jiwoo chuckled as Grizzletooth approached the balance puzzle. “This guy’s a baboon. He won’t come out of this as pretty as he looked yesterday.”
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Grizzletooth paused to study the contraption. He carefully picked up and put down the blocks on the scales, testing their weight in his big hands before placing them back on the pans. He switched a few of them, watching the scales shift as he did so, and then switched a few more. His actions were unaccustomedly measured, considering the reputation of the [Skirmisher], and in a few minutes, he had it solved.
The scale released a key, which allowed Grizzletooth to open one of the small boxes near the entrance of the room. Each box contained a clue that would give a hint of how to pass through the final door, which was itself locked by a complex [Tinker] device.
"Wow," Sooji breathed, clearly impressed. "I didn't think he'd solve it so quickly."
"Give it a minute," Jiwoo punched her lightly on the shoulder. “Just wait and see.”
As Grizzletooth moved on to the second puzzle, the brass contraption, he stumbled over a tripwire and took a dart to his shoulder. The [Skirmisher] ripped out the dart, throwing it down angrily, and proceeded to examine the puzzle. The machine was missing pieces, which had been scattered around the escape room, but he didn’t appear to understand the challenge. Grizzletooth punched and prodded the machine, his frustration mounting with each passing moment, unable to make heads or tails of what he was supposed to be doing.
“Do you think the dart was poisoned?” Sooji asked.
“Oh yeah,” Jiwoo said, patting his belly with satisfaction. “Big time poisoned.”
A bell rang to signify that the first half hour had elapsed, and Grizzletooth had made no progress with the second puzzle. He brandished his axe, as if threatening the machine, looking unsteady on his feet.
"Uh-oh," Jiwoo muttered, anticipating the impending outburst. "We’re in for a show now."
"Maybe he just needs more time," Sooji suggested. "Not everyone can be a genius at everything."
They watched intently as Grizzletooth's breathing became labored, his massive hands shaking with poorly concealed rage. After squaring off with the machine a moment longer, Grizzletooth's rage finally erupted in a roar that echoed throughout the entire arena. He stalked back to the entrance of the room and hacked away at the second clue box with his ax.
“Is that allowed?” Sooji asked.
Jiwoo shrugged. “Guess so.”
After retrieving the second clue, Grizzletooth repeated the performance with the third box, chopping it into splinters. With all three clues in hand, he proceeded straight to the exit to struggle with the locking mechanism. He now had the instructions, but he still spent several more minutes wrangling with the levers and dials around the door before it unlocked.
“Well,” Sooji said, “I suppose that’s one way to do it.”
His victory came with mixed reactions from the spectators, many of them cheering him on enthusiastically while others complained that the trial was hardly a test of goblin cunning if they could solve it with an ax. There was a brief break between attempts, as Grik’s followers rushed in to replace the boxes and reset the sprung traps, but the trial was soon underway once more. The acts that followed Grizzletooth ended in failure, with some proceeding cautiously, only to run out of time, while others succumbed to the traps. There were fewer candidates than there had been the day before, as last night’s pledges, or the lack thereof, had discouraged some aspirants. Jiho, however, had been sure that this was his chance to display his superiority, and his turn came early in the afternoon.
“Here’s our boy,” Jiwoo said as his grandson entered the room.
Jiho entered cautiously, and he spent a few minutes standing at the entrance to take it all in. His focus was unwavering, ignoring the jeers of the spectators, who thought he had lost his nerve.
He emptied the scales of all their weights, feeling them out as he went. Once he had found a pair of identical blocks, he placed one of them in each dish, and the scale registered the balance, dispensing the first key.
“Huh,” Jiwoo said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“He isn’t completely useless,” Sooji said fondly.
Jiho immediately understood the significance of the brass contraption and began his search for the missing parts. He picked out a gear lodged in a pile of rubbish, a copper pipe hidden in a pile of wood, and a cluster of valves tangled in a net. On the way back to the construct, burdened with the finds, he triggered a pressure plate hidden in the floor. With a twang, a cluster of darts shot from the nearest wall, forcing Jiho to drop everything and dive to avoid them. It wasn’t a clean maneuver, but it worked, and he came up cursing under his breath. After gathering the pieces once more, he retraced his steps to make it safely back to the second puzzle.
Sooji gasped but was relieved to see her brother was unharmed.
Jiwoo nudged her. “Close one, eh? If there’s one thing Jiho knows how to do, it’s avoid getting hit.”
There were tools lying around the machine, a wrench, hammers, and screwdrivers. He picked out what he needed, and with a practiced hand, reassembled the machine, taking care to align the teeth of the gears and match the threads of the pipe fittings.
With the device rebuilt, Jiho pulled a lever to activate it. Steam hissed, pistons pumped, and with a great churning of internal gears, the machine produced a small brass key. Jiho plucked it from the output slot and returned to the second locked box by the entrance. The key turned smoothly in the lock and the top swung open on a spring, revealing a slip of parchment. Jiho unfurled it eagerly, quickly absorbing the contents.
The third key proved far more elusive. Jiho searched to no avail. He was wary of more traps, proceeding around the room at a snail’s pace, and the minutes ticked away. The half-hour bell sounded, and he continued the search, overturning rocks and planks and tearing through piles of netting. Members of the audience taunted him as he went. Calls of “Songstealer” and “coward” echoed across the stands.
Glancing at the clock, Jiho saw that only ten minutes remained and abandoned his search for the third key entirely. He took the clues he had to the exit door and spent another minute staring at the levers and dials, utterly still. There were more boos and jeers from the spectators, calling for him to give up, but Jiho seemed not to hear them. With five minutes remaining, his hands became a blur as he speed ran through the operation of the locking mechanism, testing as he went. He had two-thirds of the answers to the puzzle with him, and the last third he attacked through sheer trial and error.
With seconds to spare, the bars over the door popped open, the gears of the lock unwound, and he was through.
"What do you know?” Jiwoo said, pleased. “He didn’t embarrass himself.”
Poor Seok was next to attempt the trial, his broken arm still secured in a sling. [Second Wind] had a limited duration, so there was no point in him trying to use it to ignore his injury for an entire hour. He emptied the scales as Jiho had done but did not find a ready solution. With only one arm to work with, he began a laborious process of weighing each block against the others, slowly stacking them up again, clearly guessing as he went. There were stops and starts as he built up the piles and took them off, using nearly the entire hour to come to the same solution that Grizzletooth had in the beginning.
When the scales were finally satisfied, he took the key to unlock the first box, and the clock sounded the ending bell before he had finished reading the clue it contained.
"That’s a shame," Sooji murmured, shaking her head. "He did so well the first time."
"Eh," Jiwoo grunted, his gaze following Seok as he walked back to the entrance in defeated. "He’s got a few pledges now. Maybe that means something. Brains aren’t his strong suit. This was never going to be his trial to win."
"True," Sooji conceded. "But maybe this will be discouraging enough to get him to quit."
“Doubt it,” Jiwoo said, “he’s as thick headed as a dump beetle in heat.”
The room was quickly reset, as Seok had never made it past the first area and had triggered no traps. Slink entered to the murmurs of the crowd. No one seemed to know who she was. Though she was obviously a [Sneakstabber], she didn’t belong to any major family Jiwoo was aware of. She had made her skill apparent in the first trial, and it was an open question as to how a goblin with no followers could be as good as she was, especially as she seemed too young and waiflike to have had many children.
“This one’s different,” he said. “There’s something off about her.”
Slink wasted no time in demonstrating Jiwoo's point. Instead of diving straight into the puzzles, she searched the entire room, quadrant by quadrant, running her fingers along the walls, the floor, and every major obstacle. When she found a trap, a pit or a pressure plate or tripwire, she deliberately triggered it, always keeping just out of range of the consequences.
"Interesting," Sooji mused, her eyes narrowing as she observed Slink's approach. "She’s clever. Deactivating the traps first will let her move around the room freely. It’s costing her time, though.”
"Stupid," Jiwoo commented. "Even as quick as she is, it’s tempting fate to take them all on. She could have just avoided half of them. Why bother toying with the triggers?"
"It seems to be working for her," Sooji said, clearly fascinated by the display.
"Bah," Jiwoo grunted. “It works until it doesn’t. Let’s see that little thing walk around after she gets a taste of a poisoned dart.”
As they watched, Slink continued to deftly deactivate the traps, displaying an uncanny ability to predict their locations and mechanisms. Her movements were swift and confident, and Jiwoo got the sense she had faced, and conquered, similar challenges before.
“What level do you think she is?” Sooji asked.
“Higher than makes any sense,” Jiwoo said.
Slink used nearly half of her time merely clearing the room of hazards before turning her focus to the puzzles. She used the same trick Jiho had, emptying the scales completely and balancing them with only two blocks. It earned her a murmur of appreciation from the crowd, which had so far been entirely absorbed in betting on whether each successive trap she bypassed would be the one to get her.
She repaired the brass contraption even faster than Jiho had, demonstrating a facility with machines that was not unheard of among [Sneakstabber]’s, but still impressive to see in action. She opened the second box, and then proceeded to the third, revealing that she had picked up the hidden key during her initial survey of the room.
That won a big reaction from the crowd, much of which fell to arguments about whether they had seen her pick it up or not. With all three clues, she was able to unlock the final puzzle far more smoothly than Grizzletooth, finishing the trial with ten minutes to spare.
“She’s scary,” Sooji said appreciatively.
Jiwoo growled in response, and she looked at him in surprise.
“[Sneakstabber]’s,” he said. “It says it all in the name. I’d bang a junk worm before I trusted one of them to be Great Goblin.”
There were a few other candidates to finish, Froglick among them. Windskip wasn’t able to repair the brass machine, and Heavyarm had the same problem. It was a stopping point for most of the more martial goblin candidates. They learned the names of some of the other notable entrants; Yellsmash, Leafsniffer, and Mudroot, but none of them finished either.
The trial had to be paused after Sparkfizz incinerated half of the room. He barely bothered with the puzzles and was about to melt his way through the exit door when Grik stopped the trial to declare that he was cheating. The wiry, cackling goblin didn’t appear to be bothered by the accusation, and he certainly didn’t lose any followers over it. Those who wanted him as a leader, few as they were, appreciated his style of problem solving for what it was.
“How can he be so strong?” Sooji asked, awed, as many were by the pyrotechnic display.
“He’s old,” Jiwoo said, “even older than me. He has children, and those children have children. No one messes with that family, and they stay out of the way of humans better than most. Raw power. He’s probably as strong as Toogi was, even without the tribe’s support.”
“He would be a terrifying Great Goblin,” Sooji said.
Jiwoo’s mouth twisted. “I almost want to see it.”
The pair shared a few eggs as Grik’s followers worked frantically to put the trial back together. Jiho and Seok soon joined them. With their turns finished, they no longer had to be sequestered, and would be able to watch the few remaining runs. Jiho was in a better mood than he had been in days, laughing and joking, sure that his success would force the tribe to at last recognize his value. Seok was more subdued.
By the time the trial was ready to resume, the light was fading. The clock was reset, and Grik called for Chul to enter the arena.
“You think they’ll make it?” Jiwoo elbowed Jiho.
His grandson glared at him. “Of course not. Chul is an imbecile, and Rusty isn’t much better.”
Jiwoo leaned in close, speaking low enough that Sooji wouldn’t hear.
“With a [Songstealer] stirring around in his head every night, poking and prodding, eh? Rusty’s settled in real good with the gang. I like that. But don’t ever think you’ll pull one over on me.”
Jiho stiffened, answering in a whisper. “I can’t do that anymore, grandfather. You know I can’t. I lost those skills when we lost everything else. You shouldn’t say such things. Consider the implications.”
“Lost everything?” Jiwoo knew his grandson, and he appreciated his shrewd, dishonest nature for what it was. He’d never been a fighter, and he got ahead in his own way. Jiwoo respected that. “How many goblin wives did you take to bed, eh? How many goblin men raised your children for you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jiho said, turning to face the crowd.
“What level are you again?” Jiwoo asked. “I’m so old, my brain’s gone to mush, and I can’t remember.”
To that, Jiho had no response.