So they aren’t all bad. But once a goblin sets his sight on something, he will fight all the demons in all the underworlds to get it. If he is wronged, he would have a fistfight with the sun if that was what it took to settle things.
Give me a human barbarian and a few gnome mages any day. Just not goblins.
After my initial shock wore off, I sized up my new opponents.
A goblin bard was holding a tambourine under one arm and a hammer in his hand, and a torch fixed to a pole strapped to his back. A warrior with a spear and shield, with the shield strapped around his wrist so he could hold a goo torch. Then there was a metal armored, obese goblin with a warhammer big enough to tear through a mountain, and a ranger goblin of some kind who had squirrels running up and down his shoulders and arms.
Back in the academy, I had been told to prepare for all manner of strange combinations of heroes. Some of the people who got together to form hero parties…you wouldn’t believe it. Dwarf paladins hanging around with troll clerics. Monk orcs forming friendships with kobold warlocks. Dungeons bring the community together. It’s like we’re performing a public service.
With that said, even I was stumped with what I saw before me, but I needed to work out how to beat them.
The obese warhammer-carrying goblin addressed the humans. The light from his torch lit over his armor, making him look impressive. It was covered in carvings of different goblin faces, each more fearsome than the last. I couldn’t help but look at this goblin in awe; he and his friends were a good two feet taller than most of their kind.
He pointed at tunnels ahead of him.
“What are you waiting for?” he said, his voice booming through the tunnels. It was a wonder I hadn’t heard it until now. Maybe they had given up any pretense of stealth after seeing Warren escape.
The humans looked at the tunnels and then each other. They didn’t look ready to move.
The goblin smashed his mighty warhammer against his palm. “I told you before this expedition that I had a sore throat, and that you mustn’t make me repeat myself.”
The humans seemed to share a look of understanding with each other. They walked toward the tunnels the goblin had pointed out, each person entering a different one.
Soon, there was a metallic snapping sound and a shriek of pain.
The obese goblin looked at his bard, ranger, and warrior friends. “Three tunnels clear, one trapped. Which way?”
A squirrel climbed up to the ranger goblin’s head and sat on his scalp while tugging his ears. The goblin didn’t seem to mind. “We go through the trapped one.”
“Go through the trapped tunnel?”
“The other three are just as likely to be trapped, we just don’t know it yet. This one, however…we already sprung the trap. Isn’t that why we brought our ferrets?”
The obese goblin nodded. “Ferrets!” he shouted. “Come back to Gerk!”
The bard sighed, while idly drumming his fingers on his tambourine. “Gerk? How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling yourself that?”
“It sounds better than my real name!”
“How does it sound better?”
“More goblinesque. Tougher.”
“Use your real name. Whitley. It’s a nice name. I know you idolize parts of our culture, but the days of monosyllabic names are over. We’re different now.”
Whitley nodded, and his great shoulders slumped a little. “Okay, Rupert.”
The humans arrived back, only three of them this time, each looking terrified.
“Ferrets,” said Whitley, once again hitting his palm with his warhammer, “Walk on. That tunnel there, where the other ferret went.”
I couldn’t see which way they went now; I’d have to go ahead a little. Something held me back. I guess it was that I needed to process what I had just seen.
For one, the Seekers appeared to be a highly sophisticated goblin race. They spoke well and they were well equipped.
Secondly, they kept humans as slaves of some kind and used them to disarm traps not with skill or deftness, but by blindly walking into them.
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” I said. “Why don’t the humans fight back? They have swords.”
“Perhaps for a similar reason your monsters do not fight you,” said Shadow. “I have paws and claws, do I not?”
Well, that put me in my place, didn’t it?
“Let’s get forward, catch them up a little. Not too close, though.”
“Thank you, Core,” said Shadow. “As a scout, I would not have thought to avoid getting too close.”
As shadow crept forward, I had a little time to plan.
I knew I was facing a party of seven Seekers. The three humans didn’t worry me, and it was more than likely they’d succumb to traps anyway given the goblins’ creative way of disarming them.
So, that left the bard, warrior, ranger, and the warhammer brute. I wasn’t going to take them lightly. With my present resources, they would pulverize any offensive force I could put against them. I could summon maybe five kobolds. Or four angry elemental jelly cubes. Or two sinister owls. Not enough by far. That wasn’t even a posse, let alone an army.
So, what about traps?
Again, I only had 340 essence points, which meant I could afford to place 3 pitfalls. With only a thin spread of essence vines so far, it’d take days before my essence regenerated. That was a no go. Three pitfalls wouldn’t take care of seven Seekers.
This left puzzles, something I hadn’t considered yet. While traps and monsters are there to inflict physical pain, puzzles are usually placed early on in a dungeon, to mentally drain the heroes. A good riddle door or two can sap a hero's brainpower just enough that later, in battle, they lose a second of their instinctual response. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.
The problem is that by themselves, puzzles won’t wipe out a party. Nobody ever died by guessing a riddle wrongly.
Hmm. What could I devise with the meager resources I had, that would either wipe out a party of seven or force them to flee?
CHAPTER 10
First-leaf Godwin removed his boots and put his feet in the goat’s milk soak. It was hot enough that he could feel it seep into his skin, but not so hot that it burned. Getting the right balance was difficult, and he was finding it harder and harder lately.
As he sat there, in his home with the door shut and bolted and the windows covered, he let his face relax. Lately, the skin under his chin had begun to sag so much that it made him look like a toad. So, he’d started clenching his jaw whenever he was in public, and this made him look stern, and his voice sounded gruff.
“It won’t get any better,” he told Goldie, his pet Labrador dog who walked over to him now, tail wagging.
No, it was only going to get worse. Every year brought more wrinkles, more aches, more sagging skin. And for what?
So many people in Xynnar searched for the fabled mana springs that were said to be underground, and so few ever found them, even after years of searching, even after a lifetime of dedication to that one goal.
What none of them realized that everlasting life didn’t mean everlasting happiness, and especially not everlasting health.
Of course, it wasn’t everlasting life, was it? It was merely extended life, stretched centuries beyond what any mortal should have. First-leaf was a smooth-skinned, young gnome when he first filled a bucket with mana from the spring, and he hadn’t understood it back then.
Now, though. Now he knew what it really meant. It was as if life was a rock. It was the way it was, no changing it.
The mana spring turned life into a piece of dough so that it could be stretched out again and again, becoming hundreds of times longer than it should have been.
“What happens to a piece of dough when you stretch it too far, Goldie?” he said.
His best friend licked his shriveled hand.
“It weakens. It gets thinner and thinner, until it’s good for nothing, and then it snaps.”
&nbs
p; You only had to walk around the cavern to see that this was true. Every person, every gnome, every orc who lived in the caverns looked like a shred of their former selves. They shambled around like the undead, with immortality taking its toll on them. Every year they grew weaker. There would come a time when all the First Leaves were bedridden, yet kept alive by an annual drenching of mana from the spring.
Yes, there would come a time where their bodies were weakened to the point of being useless, yet the mana would keep their minds active. They would be trapped in their fleshy prisons.
The young leaves, like the Webb boy, would go if they had any sense. And yet, what would happen then to the older leaves like Godwin? Like Galatee, who was beginning to show signs of mana weakness?
When the first and second leaves’ bodies weakened until they were as much use as ooze, who would keep the Wrotun society in motion? Who would cultivate the underground crops, mend the houses?
This was the future that first-leaf Godwin saw for his people. Doomed by addiction to immortality.
Unless…
Unless he was prepared to do something else.
Godwin had first tried to persuade his people about his theory, and see if he could convince them to leave the cavern. He had called a meeting to discuss it, yet had barely gotten into the beginning of explaining when he began to sense that this wouldn’t go well.
He could see it on his people’s faces. As he began to talk about the dangers of immortality, standing there in front of them like a preacher, he saw flickers of anger and disgust on their faces.
He knew it then. They were all addicted to it. They would oust Godwin himself before they left the mana springs behind.
So, he ended the meeting abruptly, and he took a different tack. From then on, First-Leaf wore a disguise. He presented himself as a tyrant beginning to lose his mind, a paranoid leader who saw danger everywhere.
He began banishing people from the cavern. It didn’t matter what the reason was; all he had to do was proclaim them to be traitors to the mana springs, and the masses would stand with him.
Every person that the First-Leaf banished, he considered a life saved. They would go to the surface and travel, finding somewhere else to live where there was no addiction to mana.
This was hardly a long-term solution though, was it? He couldn’t banish everyone.
So now, he was reaching the beginning of the final stage of his idea. An idea that began with Galatee purchasing two little cores. The cores would be the end of the Wrotun settling here, if First-Leaf’s plan worked.
CHAPTER 11
I had the beginnings of a plan to deal with my visitors, and it involved more improvisation than a goblin jazz band playing in a back-alley tavern.
Shadow and I trailed the goblin party, getting as close to them as we dared. I realized that although the goblins had a novel way of disarming traps, they had little knowledge of traps themselves, nor the tunnels. They had no map, no direction. Their eyes were open, but they were blind.
Now, I knew for certain that I didn’t have the resources to defeat this party in a fight. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to.
I pulled up my map and pumped .1 essence into it so that Shadow could see it.
“Fascinating,” she said. “I can picture a map like this in my mind, and it’s amazing how similar they are. Ah, a door to the surface is north of us. Maybe I should go and check it, to make sure it is secure?”
“Nice try. Permission denied.”
Our location was displayed halfway between the surface door and the core room. The goblins were currently navigating a winding tunnel that ran parallel to ours.
I pointed to one end of the tunnel, the opening that the party had already walked through. “Can you take me there?”
Shadow grunted in assent. She was getting a little tired of carrying me around, and who could blame her? It didn’t help that I tend to whistle when I think really hard, and I can hold as much of a tune as a deaf badger falling into a box of broken accordions.
Two minutes later, we reached the tunnel entrance. Ahead of me, I could make out the vague shape of the human who had been sent to his death, stumbling through the passageway until a trap of some kind – I couldn’t see what – parted him from his life.
“Poor guy, sent forward as trap fodder.”
“As a core, you placed these traps, no?”
“I can’t take credit for this kill, as much as it would boost my legend a little.”
“Even so, you have sympathy for this man?”
“A spider can still feel bad for the flies caught in his web. As it happens, this wasn’t my web, since I didn’t place the trap. Besides, the human didn’t walk through the tunnel willingly, and I prefer some sport mixed with my slaughter.”
“You want to follow them?” asked Shadow.
“No, we’re done with that. We know that this tunnel runs for around twenty minutes’ walk, and they’re halfway through it. We need to be quick.”
Focusing on the tunnel opening, I gave a command.
Create riddle door.
110 essence points left me, and a web of light appeared over the tunnel, gradually forming into the shape of a door. It was made from dull iron, and it had a bull’s head for a knocker.
Riddle door created!
Essence: 195/380
The bull spoke to me now. “It’s a dungeon core! What a bore. He looks so dumb, it makes me glum.”
Shadow stepped forward before I could say a word. “You dare talk to your core this way?”
I was surprised that the kobold escape artist had defended me, given she had only reluctantly accepted her place here in the dungeon. Truth be told, I knew that she hadn’t stopped plotting to escape. That’s the thing with escape artists, you see; you can’t trust them.
The riddle door yawned, spreading its bullish mouth wide. I knew better than to get into an argument with it. Disputes with riddle doors just go round and round in circles.
“Let’s see. We need a riddle for you. Ah. It walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening.”
“What?” said Shadow, inexplicably alarmed. “What manner of creature walks on two legs when the sun rises, yet has three legs at sunset? Tell me, core!”
“It’s a riddle, Shadow. You don’t take it literally.”
“A riddle?”
“Yeah, a riddle. A question or statement phrased as to require ingenuity to get its meaning.”
“I don’t care for riddles, Core. I prefer plain speech. What is this two, four, three-legged creature?”
I looked at the riddle door. “Well?”
The bullhead snorted. “This door doesn’t know and doesn’t care, wishes you’d walk down there.”
“Stupid damn riddle doors,” I said. “The answer is man.”
“Man?” said Shadow, growing so confused that she was actually angry.
“Four legs in the morning, means when he is a baby and he is crawling. Two legs at noon, when he walks normally. Three legs in the evening means his old age, where some people must use a cane to walk.”
“Pah. This is silver-tongue speak. No kobold would enjoy such a tricky way of talking.”
“Well, that’s the riddle we’ll use. It’s a little too easy at present if this plan is going to work. I need a riddle that the goblins can’t guess.”
This was the problem.
See, here was my plan. I was going to place a riddle door here, and one at the opposite end of the tunnel. If the riddles were tough enough, the goblins wouldn’t guess them, and the doors wouldn’t open. They’d be trapped in the tunnel.
Why don’t they just bust the riddle door open? That’s what some of you might be thinking, given there was a goblin with a warhammer not far away.
There’s something about riddle door construction that stops this. Essence is woven into the wood or iron, reinforcing them at their innermost level. Only an incredibly high-level hero would force a riddle door open.
This meant that either they died of starvation or thirst trapped in the tunnel, or I killed them by some other means. Hopefully, the riddle doors would hold.
But there was a problem; I had to play fair. A riddle door would only work if you gave it a riddle that was logical and solvable. Otherwise, I could keep it shut by making up a nonsensical word that the goblins couldn’t even imagine.
So, there needed to be a riddle and a logical answer. You know, the kind that made you go ah yes! once you heard it.
However….
This was where I would rub my hands together if I had hands that anyone could see.
“Shadow,” I said. “Can you translate the riddle into kobold please?”
“Excuse me, Core Beno?”
“The riddle I told you, and its answer. I’d like you to translate it into the kobold language in just a second.” I spoke to the bullhead now. “Riddle door, here is your riddle. Go ahead, shadow.”
Shadow spoke the riddle to the door. To me, her words sounded normal because I was able to understand the languages of all creatures made in my dungeon.
To the goblins, though, and to their hero slaves…let’s just say I would be surprised if any among them spoke Kobold.
See, the riddle door rules say that I have to give a riddle door a logical riddle and a logical answer. They say nothing about what language it should be in.
Feeling more optimistic, I had Shadow carry me along the tunnel parallel to the Seekers, and then we headed east a few paces until we reached the tunnel opening the Seekers would emerge from when they walked the length of the passageway.
Here, I placed a second riddle door, this one with a cockatiel’s head for a knocker, and had Shadow give it a riddle in Kobold.
With that done, I was 220 essence points poorer, leaving me with just 85. But, the Seekers were trapped. It would be ten minutes before they realized it, but they were trapped.
“Let’s head back to the core room,” I told Shadow. “Thanks for your help, scoutmaster.”
“Scoutmaster?” she said.
“Yes. I will need to create more scouts in the coming days, and they need a leader.”
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 22