After a few minutes of walking down the path to Fellhood Grove and cleaning his equipment along the way, it was then he realized that he felt dizzy, sick, and very afraid. It was a sudden surge of feelings and emotions being sent to his brain. To him, it felt like something inside or outside of Vanveiss was holding back his feelings and emotions during the earlier fight with the goblins.
Sweat came out in droves and trickled down from his face and his entire body trembled from what he experienced. It was to a point where he almost passed out, but he managed to keep himself in check by falling down on all fours. It was such a sudden movement that the chest plate and bow he had fell off to the ground.
“God damn it... what the fuck even is this.” He said, clearly disturbed by himself. Eventually though, his vision darkened and his whole body went limp.
He woke up a few hours later, locked behind a metal cage being transported by a mule cart. ‘ugh, my head, where am I?’ he thought as he looked around. The sun had almost set and he could see a group of goblins just outside the cart. There were wearing far more intricate armor pieces than the last one and holding spears and halberds. It was a weird sight consdering how large these weapons were compared to their diminutive stature and posture.
Eventually, one of the goblins noticed him awake and called for the leader in their language. One of the goblins leading the mule cart turned his head when it heards his subordinate’s cries. He walked on over to the soldier and talked with him, passing his glance at Jorn before doing so. As soon as the other languages heard it, all of them stopped in their tracks, even the one holding the reigns of the mule. Their eyes showed clear hostility as they inched closer to the cage, weapons in hand. Luckily enough, the leader bellowed angrily and all of them stayed their hand. The leader looked at each of his soldiers menacingly before climbing up the cart.
It stood in front of Jorn in the cage and cleared his throat. The goblin tried talking in their language, but since he had never heard it once, he couldn’t understand anything. Eventually though, the goblin grew tired and took the gambeson’s scruff forcibly and took out a pellet from his pouch. He shoved the pellet to Jorn’s face, non-verbally telling Jorn to eat it. Since he had no other choice but to do so, he did. ‘tastes like candy’ he thought as he slowly swallowed the small green pellet. After that, the goblin also swallowed a green pellet.
“Can you understand me now, human?” the goblin asked, looking at the human angrily.
“No, I can’t” he replied, looking straight at the goblin.
“You have a pretty smart mouth there, human.”
“What can I say? I was born this way”
“You... no, tell me, did you kill my men?”
“Men? What are you talking about?” Replied Jorn with a puzzled look on his face. He knew what the goblin was talking about, of course, but he had to play dumb if he wanted to survive.
“Don’t play dumb with me, my men saw you collapsed to the ground wearing my men’s equipment!”
Jorn’s brain worked fast and he found a good answer. “I found the two dead goblins on the ground so I took their stuff, after that, I hid their body behind a bush. I collapsed to the ground because I had been travelling for quite a while now that I was absolutely exhausted.” He was lying through his teeth, but he didn’t have much choice.
The goblin looked doubtful as he listened to Jorn’ story. Of course he would be after seeing his men’s corpses and a human looter that had their equipment. It could also be that the killer was another goblin since the patrol didn’t see their assailant’s face.
“Whether your story is true or not, i’ll let the king decide” the goblin said, turned his heel and climbed off. He shouted something in his language and the other goblins immediately started back to the path.
‘There’s no turning back, I’ll have to flesh out this story for quite a bit if I want to survive.’ He thought and laid his body down to think. Though the soft rocking of the mule cart would be enough to lull him to sleep, he managed to keep himself awake to develop his story and in turn, survive.
It took a little more than two hours when they finally arrived to Fellhood Grove. The place was riddled with goblins just at the entrance. Many small to large huts lined the open patches. Many of the goblin passersby turned and look-in curiously to a human in a cage. It was really quite a shameful display.
Though they had already arrived by the grove, it took another half an hour before the cart mule stopped. Jorn looked over in front of him to see a stone castle, very unlike to the outers ones. The leader of the goblins climbed up again, holding a wood cuff to restrain Jorn with.
The goblin opened the metal cage, holding the cuff and a short sword.
“The pellet should still be in effect, hold your arms outright and we won’t have to get bloody” the goblin said, dangling the wooden cuff in front of Jorn.
Jorn sighed, he didn’t have much of a choice, did he? He moved his hands and let the goblin leader cuff him and push him outside the meal cage. Many of the soldier goblins made way and escorted him, along with the leader, inside the rock hut.
The stone castle was really large, they had to navigate their way through quite a bit of rooms before they managed to get to the king’s study. It was an overly large room with quite a bit of green and red furnishing. The walls were lined with rows upon rows of bookshelves. At the middle was a table made hardwood and the Goblin King sat on the chair just behind.
He showed a surprise look when the goblins entered one by one, holding Jorn with them. He closed the book He was reading and gave out a tired-sigh. He spoke something to one of them in their language and returned the book to the bookshelf behind him.
Of course, Jorn couldn’t understand anything and felt apprehensive of the situation. He waited until the Goblin King looked to his direction as they spoke, it seemed like they were talking about him and his crimes. The king gave out another sigh and took the gold staff from his table and used telepathy to communicate with Jorn.
“Hello Human, how are you feeling?”
“Bad, I didn’t think I’d wake up to being locked in a cage after collapsing.”
“You’ll have to excuse us for that, you are a suspected murderer of our kind.”
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“But I didn’t even kill them!” Jorn asserted.
“Whether or not you did, the decision lies with me, though don’t worry. The reason I had wanted to talk to you was because i’ll be taking a peek inside your head.”
‘SHIT’ Jorn thought. ‘I didn’t think they would have that kind of magic, what the fuck?’ he added. If it were just verbal communication, he could get away with it since he was an experiened liar, but reading his mind was entirely different.
“Err, can we, ehm, talk this out?” he said nervously to the king.
“No” the goblin king said and cut the telepathy short.
Jorn was nervous to. Of course he would be. He stood at death’s door without controlling his own fate. Wasn’t he supposed to be the chosen hero? The champion of the land? It would be quite an absolute joke for fate if he died because of this.
As he thought this, the goblin king motioned his gold staff around his head and said something in their language. The soldiers only looked on eagerly, they wanted to hear if he was trully the suspected killer or an innocent.
The goblin king chanted and as he did, streaks of green light passed through his head. He could feel someone molesting his brain as he sat back, cuffed, with nothing else to do. The brain reading of the goblin king felt very smooth at times, but then painful the next, though it wasn’t the same pain he experienced when he absorbed the computer book. In comaprison, it was a breeze in the park.
The king did this for an hour before he finally stopped and plopped himself back to his chair. He looked extremely exhausted by the affair. He bellowed something in his language and pointed at Jorn. The goblin soldier gave a pellet to the king then forced another green pellet down to Jorn’s throat.
“You have been tried by the King of the Fellhood Goblin and found guilty of murder. Your execution is set tomorrow. Guards, sieze him.” The king said.
The soldiers looked on in horrid disgust at Jorn when they heard this and roughly handled him to the dungeons. The goblins dragged him to the lowest level of the castle and held him there behind a metal door.
‘Ahh, this is it for me, huh? I couldn’t even enjoy this place’ he thought as he gave out a defeated expression. He opened the codex and sent a message to the Collective.
[So, in the end, I’ve been tried and found guilty by the Goblin King. I can’t really do much now but wait a certain death. Can’t you guys do something about this?]
[We certainly can, we have enough power to influence the minds of that world’s denizens, but we won’t. If this is how the Hero of the Universe meets his fate, then so be it.]
[Man, you guys are harsh, and it hasen’t even been a week since I got designated as the Hero.]
[This is the consequence of your actions, find a way out yourself, or accept your death.]
He closed the codex after that exchange and stopped communicating with the Collective. They are right though, this was something he did and he should find a way out by himself, then he could give the collective a huge middle-finger.
He thought of many ways he could break out, but none proved feasible enough to do so, this was because he was under a damn castle. The hallways would be riddled with goblin soldiers eager to gouge his eyes out. Though he was sure that he wouldn’t have much problem because of [Heroic Constitution], the problem lay with his stamina.
As the hour grew closer to his execution, he grew even more desperate to get out, he tried calling out to the goblin guarding him to talk to him, but he forgot that he couldn’t speak or understand their language. He though he could knock the guard out by faking a problem and having the goblin enter the cage, but it was far more intelligent than he gave credit for.
“FuckfuckfuckhowamIsupposedtogetout” he said to himself, sweating profusely at the thought of heaving his head lopped off by an axe or a guillotine.
In the end, he couldn’t think of anything and could only accept his fate. There was nothing much he could do now but just wait for his death. Even if he managed to escape the guards that were escorting him to the site, it would prove still fatal as Fellhood Grove was large. There was also the matter with the Goblin King, who is probably a mage.
The hour grew closer and closer until a goblin soldier tapped his jail cell. He looked at the goblin and smiled before standing up by himself and letting the goblin tie his wrist. The smile creeped out the goblin though as he escorted him out of the dungeon. After leaving castle grounds, three more goblin soldiers escorted him to his execution grounds.
It took them about 20 minutes when he saw a large number of goblins, since their stature was small, he could easily see the guillotine at the middle of it. He gave out a sigh of relief as he knew that at the very least, his death would be fast and painless.
He climbed and found the king watching by a shade, with a group of soldiers guarding all corners. It seemed like the king wanted to see how the execution would go. There were also flocks of goblins watching all around the execution grounds. The world was modelled around the dark ages, if the clothing and the weapons are anything to go by, at least he thought that way. He let out a sigh and gave out one last curse to the Collective before being put down on the guillotine.
There was a goblin who wore intricate clothing, doing a speech in front of the masses. He couldn’t help but think ‘just this over with’ as the pompous noble goblin jumped around.
By the end of it all, a group of goblins wearing execution hoods climbed up the stairs to the stage. ‘I guess this is it. Fucking collective assholes sure aren’t doing anything, are they ?’ he thought and gave a defeated sigh. He accepted his fate already, but he is a vengeful spirit. He wanted to give the Collective the middle-finger but now he couldn’t.
He kept a smile as he was strapped to the wooden restraints, the blade loomed ever-so mysteriouly and beckoned the blade on his neck and wrists.
And that was it, the blade fell and cut off his head. The last thing he saw was the world deconstructing the same way he when was sent to the Collective’s abode.
“Oh c’mon Anderson, this is the 89th time you’ve died already!” A man in a labcoat said.
“Oh, piss off, its not like its my fault. You guys keep wiping my memory every time we do a dive”
“We don’t wipe it off, we block it”
“Same fucking thing” Anderson said, jumping off the white pod after the glass covering ascended.
The room was pure white, lined with numerous wires and thick machinery. There were also a number of screens hovering about in the room. At the middle was a white pod, connected a tube with a number of wires connected to the control console on the other room. Anderson looked up to see an aged man with a willfull haircut. He sent the man a middle-finger before walking off to the automatic door.
He truly didn’t mean it, of course. They were the people that helped him survive the entire flash-freeze phenomena. This was more of a sudden irritation more than anything.
He walked down the ever-familiar hallways to the other room, where the aged man in a labcoat resided in. The room was messy, with a bunch of papers and books strewn about. There were about 3-4 screens and two servers docked in by the side of the room. It was a classic mad-scientist feel.
“Mihel, you fucking cunt. I hope you realize by now that dying is a painful experience. You should try experiencing once in the simulated world.” Anderson said, walking to the far right and taking a cup of coffee from the table.
“Then stop being a loser and do things right for once” He replied, searching through his desk for his electronic tablet. The stacks of paper fell to the ground as he clumsily took out the tablet.
“Then don’t wipe my memory every time I dive!” Anderson angrily said as he took a sip from his cup of coffee. While he had been in the simulated world for about 2-3 days, it only attributed to about a day in real time. That didn’t change his craving for coffee.
“I have to! Its my experiment. You agreed to all of it, so you don’t have the right to complain.”
Mihel was right though, Anderson couldn’t really complain because he agreed to being his lab sample for the SWR project he had been working on.
“But the other SWR projects don’t even wipe their memories.”
“Because their projects have no need to block out their Guinea p—lab sample’s memory.”
“Ah! You were about so say Guinea pig, weren’t you? You sadistic, perverted old man.” Anderson said and threw the cup at Mihel’s way. It didn’t hit Mihel because of how agile he was for an old man.
“Ahhh, you know what, get the fuck out of my office. I’m going to create another personality program for your next dive.” He said as he pushed his office chair to the computer table and strapping it to a keyboard. “Shoo shoo” he added.
“Fine, i’m going to roam around. Call me when the new program is finished.” Anderson said, turning his back and walked off to the hallway. As the door closed behind him, the old man couldn’t stop a sigh from letting out. Mihel pushed the support button and asked for a janitor to clean his mess up.