by Rue Vespers
Jenner heard something. A hissing sound. “Another time, Rosy.”
Fffffpht.
He edged around the next curve and paused in a damp spot on the ground.
A thickset figure was ten paces away in a small cavern, its back to Jenner. Puddles were everywhere, and droplets rained down from the ceiling and dripped off stalactites. There was no sign of Hellsbore save for the water he left behind, and a tattered piece of his shirt fluttering from the spiked shoulder-pads on the creature. A battle had taken place here, and a vicious one if that could be determined by the amount of puddles.
Ffffffpht.
“What is it?” Jenner whispered about the figure.
“A goblin,” Rosy said in a low voice. “All NPCs. Normal to find them in dungeons, and roving around in the darker forests. But usually they travel in groups of three to six.”
Not this one. It was alone.
A tangled topknot jutted out from the crown of its otherwise bald head. Fingerbones were stuck through its braid, which dangled halfway down the back of its spiked metal chest plate. Slung around its hips was a belt, drooping on one side. No sword could be seen, unless it was being held flush to the front of the goblin’s leg. But there was a wooden club, tipped at the striking end with nails, and its weight was pulling the belt off-kilter.
Uh-oh! You have encountered a common goblin. These creatures abhor wizard light and dragon fire. Watch out for that club! Goblins hollow out the striking end and fill it with lead to cause more damage to their victims.
That wasn’t useful information, seeing as Jenner had neither wizard light nor dragon fire at his disposal. “Uhh . . . goblin status? Can I do that?”
The Common Goblin
Race: Monster
Health: 5/20
Stamina: 10
Intelligence: 3
Agility: 5
Dexterity: 5
Perception: 4
Charisma: 0
It had similar agility, dexterity, and perception to Jenner; better stamina and less intelligence; and no charisma whatsoever, not that that was surprising.
Now Mereene . . . Mereene had charisma. She was fairly oozing with it.
He shook himself. Much like the dungeon bunny glitch, this was not the time.
Ffffffpht.
He looked around, seeking the cause of the rhythmic, somewhat wet hiss. A snake? A broken pipe? Why would there be a broken pipe in these dungeon caves? Then again, why would there be a laser grid?
There was no pipe, or snake for that matter. Splintered pieces of wood were scattered about the ground, nails sticking up from some of them. A few of the wooden chunks were attached to rusty metal latches. He took in the details with curiosity before his mind stitched the pieces together to a whole.
While the laser grids were new to Jenner, he recognized the wood and latches as the remainder of chests. In Corazon’s Journey, discovering a chest meant you found something good. It could be a missing piece of a map, iron ingots or gold ingots or diamonds, armor or weapons, food rations or a health restoration orb, depending on where you were in that world and what you were doing.
These chests in the training dungeon had been beaten to bits. He counted three latches amongst the destruction. As for whatever was once inside, it was either destroyed or already claimed. If he had to hazard a guess, the goods were likely health potions to fuel the gladiator student in his or her attempt to defeat this goblin.
Did that mean this goblin was particularly difficult? That seemed unlikely. This was a chum school that accepted students at the rank bottom of levels. The goblin was not a Big Boss battle, if Scrambled Lives even had those. It was just an impediment.
Fffffpht.
At last, he realized what the hiss was. Though he saw no injuries from the back, it was the sound of the goblin breathing, or struggling to breathe. The puddle around its feet was not water but reddish-black blood.
“It’s wounded,” Jenner whispered.
“Then stop checking out its ass, you pervert, and get past it now before it heals!” Rosy advised.
Instead of growing wider, the puddle of blood was shrinking. Slowly and subtly, but shrinking all the same. The rasp in each breath was a little less than the breath to precede it.
“Goblin status!” Jenner repeated. “Health only!”
The Common Goblin’s health is currently 6/20.
It had already gotten one of its health points back. Jenner needed to move!
He cast a glance over the goblin’s armor to seek its weak spots. No helmet. The spiked coat of armor protected its chest and back and shoulders from blows. Below the shoulder, its arms were unshielded. Mail hung from the plate, tucked in at the belt and falling over the upper thighs. Below that, its legs were bare to the boot.
This was a battle for a gladiator student armed with a sword or a spear or a bow, not a dagger. Boomer didn’t care if Jenner or Hellsbore ever walked out of this dungeon. The guy was a total lunatic!
“Well? Do something!” Rosy scolded.
Coming out of hiding, Jenner walked boldly into the room.
Fffffpht! The goblin wheeled around at the sound of his footsteps.
Hellsbore had torn it up something fierce. The goblin’s face was slashed apart, obliterating its left eye and slicing through the bulbous nose to gouge its right cheek deeply. A worse wound was at its throat. A jagged piece of a throwing star was embedded in its flesh just above the armor, melting over the bloody spikes. Upon its arms and legs were smaller and far less critical wounds: gashes and scratches busily mending themselves.
Thick fingers clutched after the club, snapping it free of the belt.
The piece of star turned to water as the goblin roared at Jenner. The gash in its throat gave the roar an eerie whistling quality. A fresh spurt of blood mixed with water squirted out from its neck.
Jenner didn’t need to fight this creature to the death. He just needed to get around it to the passage that the goblin was blocking. Feinting left, where the majority of the broken chests littered the ground, he dodged to the right.
The goblin fell for the trick, but Jenner wasn’t fast enough. As he charged past, it lashed out with the club and struck him with tremendous strength on the shoulder. Rosy leaped away with a yell of fright as Jenner flew into the wall and crumpled to the rocky ground. The grakel scales protected him from pain, but they did nothing to counteract force.
“Shit! Shit!” Rosy hopped onto Jenner’s knee and hurtled back to his shoulder. “Do something!”
The goblin made its whistling roar and raised the club. Jenner jerked to the side as it hurtled down. Scrambling up to his feet, he retreated to put space between them. The goblin pursued, swinging the club and reeling from its significant amount of damage.
Jenner ducked under the next swing, which went overhead so closely that he felt the breeze in his hair. In that hunched position, he hurled himself at the goblin. Wrapping his arms around the creature’s waist, he carried them both down to the ground.
The blackish-red puddle sprayed outwards, drops splattering everywhere and a few sliding into the goblin’s neck gash. Jenner didn’t check on the goblin’s health points again, one hundred percent positive that he wasn’t going to like the number that popped up.
They struggled for control.
The goblin had lost its club in the tumble, but the blow of its fist nearly unseated Jenner from his straddle upon its thighs. He brought down the dagger, aiming for the exposed flesh of its upper arm.
And missed, the dagger hitting the armor when the beast shifted beneath him. Another punch was successful in knocking Jenner off and sending the dagger flying away, the goblin rolling onto its stomach to get up.
Jenner threw himself down upon the goblin’s back to pin it there. What was he going to do? What was he going to do? The dagger and club were out of reach, as were the pieces of the broken chests.
What could he do? He improvised.
As the goblin bucked, Jenner grabbed its topknot an
d wrapped the long length of hair twice around its neck. Then he yanked.
It did not die quickly. Or easily.
The spikes in the armor drove into Jenner’s arms over and over as the goblin thrashed about. Though the scales prevented the spikes from piercing in, the repeated jolts to his arms made it hard to keep hold of the hair-rope he was strangling the goblin with.
Gradually, the thrashing weakened.
Jenner waited until the goblin had been still for a full thirty seconds before climbing off. “Rosy?”
The pieces of a chest shifted, and Rosy bounced into view. “Not bad, Gramma.”
Congrats! You have earned a merit trophy for Goblin Down.
“Whoopie-doo,” Jenner said, collecting the cup and dagger. Exhausted yet exhilarated, he thought about recounting the cleverness of his kill to the gorgeous succubus. It wasn’t going to sound so impressive, though, when he mentioned it was in a training dungeon at a chum gladiator school.
Oh well. He would have to do something else to impress her.
“Stop thinking about that whore of a succubus,” Rosy chastised.
Startled, Jenner said, “How did you know what I was thinking about?”
“Because you get such a stupid look on your face every time she crosses your mind! Now come on! You have more of this dungeon ahead of you.”
Jenner would think about the sexy succubus later. Preferably when he was alone. “How much more? You said the cheapest dungeons are designed to be gotten through in an hour or less.”
“Then you’re a third of the way to the finish line.” The cup looked down to the ground. “Take the club.”
Jenner picked up the goblin’s club. It was extremely heavy.
Congrats! You have temporarily acquired a Club belonging to a Common Goblin! Though this weapon is crude, it can deliver a lot of damage to your enemies.
He gave it a test swing and staggered. It was so heavy that his arm felt like it was coming out of its socket. Taking the handle into both hands, he swung it like a baseball bat. That was better.
Something roared.
He headed into the passage to deal with it.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Oh, look,” Jenner said dryly at the next fork. “More lasers.”
Rosy grumbled on his shoulder. “You should have picked Jawbreaker. At least he flat-out admitted his broken dungeon was crap!”
This time, Jenner took in all three grids instead of just the one directly before him. The hallway proved to be impassable once again.
Perversely, a heap of chests was visible beyond the last grid. The wood was bright and the latches glowing, designed to entice a student into taking a risk through pockets too brief and small to wriggle through. Even worse was the radiant black splotch beyond the chests. The exit to the dungeon, Jenner thought, another enticing sight. But all for naught when it couldn’t be reached.
The lures had worked to some degree with Hellsbore. A chalk arrow pointed to the wizard lasers, and then he’d crossed it out with angry slashes. Jenner drew an arrow below Hellsbore’s mark and quit the bars.
He quickly arrived at another obstacle in a pit that could not be crossed. Every time Jenner took hold of the rope, which hung down from an empty spot in the ceiling, he readied to jump just to have giant wheels with razor-sharp edges swing out of the walls. One could not cross the pit without getting sawn into pieces.
Maybe it wouldn’t work on Jenner with his grakel scales, but those wheels were also going to sever the rope and send him plummeting down into the nothingness that existed within the pit. “What the fuck?” he mumbled, releasing the rope in his fists.
“You can throw me over,” Rosy suggested. “This could be a two-person operation to force comradeship among the gladiator students, and there’s a switch on the far side to shut down the wheels.”
Jenner didn’t see anything that looked remotely like a switch over there. “But if there’s not, then how will you get back, Rosy?”
The pit was too wide to leap unless one was an elf, or had ice skimmers or wings. No puddles could be seen on the far side. Did that indicate Hellsbore died here? Or had he gotten across and just stopped using his ice?
On impulse, Jenner picked up a loose pebble and hurled it over the gap. Though he wasn’t touching the rope, the wheels of death activated anyway.
He shook his head. This wasn’t the way. But if this wasn’t the right way, then it was back to the laser grids.
Stumped, he doubled back and paid close heed to the finer details of the passage. Then he saw what he’d missed the first time: a narrow gash in the wall almost completely concealed by a stalactite, which was hanging down like a rock icicle.
“Ugh,” he muttered. “Will I even fit through there?”
“Suck it in,” Rosy advised.
Jenner sucked in his gut and squirmed between the wall and the stalactite. The hidden passage here barely qualified as a passage at all, forcing him to walk sideways, but at least it was short before it seemed to open up into a cavern ahead.
Just as he emerged from the passage, they seized him.
“Goblins!” Rosy shouted a beat too late.
There were two of them. Jenner writhed, his arms pinned to his sides as they frog-marched him away from the opening in the wall.
A cook-fire was burning at the center of the cavern, a cauldron on a spit bubbling atop it. Within a cage hoisted up into the air was Hellsbore. The demon’s chest was moving, but his eyes were closed. A padlock held the door to the cage shut. Pieces of armor and fragments of bone littered the rocky floor everywhere.
This was bad. This was very bad.
The way through the cavern was clear to see. Dismaying so when one was trapped by goblins. Ladder rungs jutted out of the opposite wall, leading up to another passage high above. Jenner strained to no avail, his eyes locking desperately upon those rungs.
The goblins were dragging him towards a second cage. It was upon the ground, the door already open and waiting. Rosy hopped from shoulder to shoulder to paddle the goblins about the head with its spoon. It had no more effect than Jenner’s straining.
“Don’t let them put you in that cage!” the teacup yelled.
Jenner dropped to his knees, which made no difference. They just carried him along. “I can’t stop them! They’re too strong!”
The teacup jammed the spoon up one goblin’s nostril. Suddenly, Jenner was free on his right side. He wrenched away from the second goblin and swung the club at it, nailing the monster squarely across the face.
It spun away with a howl of pain and Jenner swung again. The blow landed on the back of the goblin’s head, propelling it into the wall. Aware that the first goblin was coming up behind him, Jenner brought the club down in a crushing blow to the second goblin’s crown.
It died with the nails of the club stuck fast in its skull.
The other goblin seized Jenner before he could turn and grab his dagger. Despite Rosy’s best efforts, the creature squashed Jenner and the teacup through the door to the cage and slammed it shut.
The padlock snapped.
Going to a wheel mounted on the wall, the goblin turned it. A chain lifted Jenner’s cage into the air until he was level with Hellsbore.
Uh-oh! You’re trapped within a goblin cage. The bars are impervious to all but the highest levels of wizard magic. Better find some way out, or you’re going to be the main ingredient in a tasty goblin stew!
If you had a skeleton key, few locks could hold you. Unfortunately, you do not have one in your inventory. Visit the Fortune Islands sometime and acquire a skeleton key in the mountains!
Whoops! Are you in a goblin cage that happens to be hanging over a cauldron? Get out of there fast! Once the broth turns green, it’s cooking time.
Fun Fact Time! Goblins carry around a replenishing broth in a small vial. One drop will fill a cauldron. In a pinch, a human player can drink this broth for its revitalizing properties. But the taste is foul, and drinking it more than once wi
ll permanently reduce the player’s mental and physical abilities.
Inner-World News: Though trolls and goblins would seem like natural allies, it takes complicated magical spells to convince them to work together. The crown prince Atoras the Unprepared learned this to his dismay when his scheme to unseat his father upon the throne failed, due to an incomplete wizard spell that resulted in the trolls and goblins of the army turning upon one another. Yikes!
“This game is absolutely psychotic,” Jenner said as the blocks flew away.
Below him, the goblin was stirring the cauldron of yellowish broth with a splintered ladle. The death of its comrade troubled it not at all.
“So close, yet so far,” Rosy said mournfully. The cup was staring out through the bars.
They were up so high that Jenner could see the passage at the top of the ladder. And there it was, that radiant black light no more than fifty feet away. No monsters stood in the way. No laser grids. It looked like the only obstacle was another pit, but Jenner needed to be a little higher to be sure of that.
Hellsbore woke up. Touching his head, he winced.
“Hey,” Jenner hissed. “Do you have any of your ice left?”
The demon looked away in distaste.
Then the gravity of their predicament appeared to make an impression on him. He grimaced and deigned to speak. “I used most of it fighting the goblin in the other cave.” Sneering, he said in a defensive tone, “You don’t have as much to work with at Level 4. I’ve got some of it back now.”
Jenner’s cage swung as he shifted his weight while looking down. Slung around a stalagmite was a key on a leather thong. “Just one star. All I need is for you to throw one star to break my lock. Then I can drop down and get the key for you.” The bars were impervious to most interference, but the notification hadn’t said squat about the lock being like that.