by Logan Jacobs
I tapped the blade to check its stats and could hardly believe what I was seeing.
Durability - 73%
Weight - 0.2lbs
Quality - High
Magical Aspect - Feathering
Magical Ability - None
I didn’t need a definition to know what feathering meant. The sword was longer and bulkier than my dagger, and yet it weighed less. I swung the blade a few times and found that it was no different from swinging my arm. Then I laughed and held it on my finger like Jax always did to test its balance.
“Mahini, check this out,” I said and handed the sword out for her.
She sheathed her own sword before taking the light one, and her eyes sparkled like the stars when she held it. “It’s like it’s made of air.”
“Isn’t it great?” I grinned and took the blade from her again. “I wonder how the light weight affects the performance of the sword.”
I swung the feather blade around a few more times before I decided to exchange it with mine. The sheath for the new sword had been destroyed with the shattering of the acid goblin, so I just removed my other sword and placed it carefully on the ground. I might not need it for the rest of the mine-clearing mission, but I wanted to make sure it was in a safe place so I could return it to Jax.
While Mahini trotted back to the left room to grab the torch, I made a new save since I really didn’t want to have to go through all of that again. I led the way to the opposite tunnel once Mahini returned, and I prayed that the group we had fought had been hiding here. I knew we could handle another battle, but I was getting sick of the stench of goblin blood filling my nose.
My instinct was correct, and the only things of interest in the room were a set of crates and a small chest. There were some furs laid out for sleeping spots as with all the other rooms, but they were so filthy that nobody would want to use them for anything.
“There are coins here,” Mahini said from beside a set of crates and a small chest. “Some more copper ore, too.”
The chest looked like something straight out of an RPG. It was made of wood and was flat on all sides. Its corners were covered in plates of dark metal, and it had an intricate metal pattern on the lid that reminded me of a tic-tac-toe board. The handles were small loops and there was a metal loop where a lock could be placed to keep the chest secure. The whole thing was about a foot long and maybe eight or ten inches wide.
I didn’t know the worth of copper coins in this world, but from the bland look on Mahini’s face, it didn’t seem like the small chest would make us rich beyond belief.
“Leave it for now,” I said as I made my way back through the tunnel. “We’ll come back and grab it on the way out.”
“Yes, Great One.” Mahini picked up the torch once more, and the two of us headed back to the intersection.
The next room on the map was the big room deeper inside the mine, and my heart was pounding with the thought of the battle reaching its climax.
We stumbled across two pairs of goblins as we traveled through the twisting tunnel, but they didn’t stand much of a chance against two skilled sword fighters. Mahini lit the torches along the way, and after about five minutes of walking, we came to another intersection.
A pair of guard goblins roared when they saw us and came charging forward with their spears down like lances at a joust. I swatted my feather blade at the right spear and was delighted to find that the sword’s light weight didn’t impact its ability to parry. As the goblin staggered from the deflection, I charged in and plunged my curved dagger into its chest.
Mahini’s target laid dead at her feet, and the tanned warrior flicked her sword to clean off some of the black sludge like a total badass. She saw me looking at her and gave me a nod, but then I puckered my lips and blew her a kiss, and she fought against a smile.
The entrance to the larger room was blocked off by a crudely-made wooden door. There was no handle or hinges, and scrapes along the ground on the left showed that it was frequently moved out of the way.
“That’s where the cave-in is,” Mahini said and pointed her sword down the left path.
“I’m interested in what’s over here.” I pointed down the right path. “That tunnel isn’t on the map. Let’s go explore.”
Her gaze was puzzled, but she had no answer to give, so I made a new save point, and then I led the way down the right path. The walls here were even rougher than the rest of the mine and looked more like the tunnel had been dug out with claws rather than picks, which made me think this path had been made by the goblins and not the miners.
The tunnel ended in a small room filled with crates of food, animal skins, and some shiny rocks that were definitely not copper. A single goblin was rifling through the animal skins, and it turned around with a shriek when we walked in.
I cut the top half of it’s skull off with a flick of my feather sword, and its blood seeped into the skins it had been looking through.
“Just a storage room,” I said as I wiped my blade on one of the skins. “This poor guy didn’t even have a sword.”
We backtracked to the door and shoved it out of the way. The wood screamed as it scraped against the ground, and I expected goblins to pour out of the room to kill us. Nothing happened, and when I peeked beyond the door, I saw another waiting for us about five feet away.
“Do they really think a door is gonna keep us out?” I asked as we shoved our weight against the second door.
Like the outer door, there were no hinges or a track that the inner door rested on, so the whole thing fell into the room and landed with a crash. The growls and cackles of goblins filled the air as we stepped closer, but it was all drowned out by a deep bellow.
The largest goblin we’d seen so far was seated at the far end of the room on a throne draped in animal skins. A two-handed sword leaned against the left side of the throne, and the goblin sat in a lounged position. It clearly wasn’t concerned about the two armed humans that had just busted down its door.
There were ten other goblins in the room. Four of them were the massive berserker types, four others were the smaller goblins, and the last two were most likely shamans if the ice in their hands was anything to go by. Two of the smaller goblins had crossbows, and my mind flashed back to the fight with the kobolds from the day before.
Well… shit. This wasn’t going to be easy.
The lead goblin asked some kind of question, but I had no idea what it was saying. When we didn’t react, the leader waved its long-fingered hand, and the rest of the goblins in the room rushed forward.
I managed to duck a chunk of ice hurled at my head, but my dodge took me into the path of two of the berserker goblins. I swung my feather sword at the one on the left and leaped out of the way as the right berserker brought his blade down like a club.
A crossbow bolt glanced off of the armor protecting my shoulder and clattered to the ground behind me. One of the smaller goblins slipped into the space between the berserkers and jabbed his sword at me, but I knocked it aside with my new feather blade and then stabbed it in the throat with my dagger. Another chunk of ice smashed over my head as the berserker on the right bellowed into my ear.
Then they were all on top of me.
It was all overwhelming, and no amount of slashing with my sword and dagger seemed to do anything. I was sprayed with blood from one of the berserkers, but the bastard just kept coming. Clanging filled my ears as a blow landed on my helmet, and I blacked out.
Chime.
I didn’t bother going down the path leading to the storage room this time. I wasn’t at all concerned about the lone goblin waiting there, and even if it came up behind us and grabbed a spear from one of the guards, I figured it would be such an easy kill compared to the four brutes waiting beyond the two crude doors.
Mahini and I shoved the doors out of the way again, and when the lead goblin started speaking, I listened carefully. I still didn’t understand the language, but I thought I could pick out individual words
this time.
“Grrragh apf eergl?” it asked.
“I wish we had a translator right about now,” I said as the leader waved his hand.
The second attempt was just as overwhelming as the first. Mahini tried to keep her position by my side, but with the two berserkers closing in on me and the ice shaman hurling its frozen balls, we were quickly separated and defeated once more.
Chime.
Three more attempts, and I was getting the hang of defending myself against the berserker brutes, but that’s all I was able to do. Whenever I tried to go on the offensive, the two of them would turn into a solid wall of muscle and spinning blades, and even if I severed an arm or a leg, they just kept coming. The smaller sword goblin and the crossbow goblin were always right where they needed to be, and although I managed to kill the sword goblin on the fifth attempt, the ice shaman retaliated and smashed me in the face with a ball of ice.
Chime.
When I respawned in front of the doors, I headed down the goblin-made path to the storage area. What if I didn’t kill the lone goblin? What if I got the beast to teach me its tongue? I doubted the leader would actually listen to a reasonable conversation, but I might be able to confuse the son of a bitch by speaking its own language at it.
“Guard the tunnel,” I said to Mahini as the lone storage goblin snarled at me.
She looked confused but did as I asked while I smacked the little goblin upside the head with the back of my armored hand. The strike dazed the creature, and I was able to knock it to the ground with ease. I placed my arm under its chin and placed my dagger against its stomach.
When someone wanted to learn a new language in my world, they could just take courses online or visit a country where the language was spoken. Those kinds of resources weren’t available in this world, and I had never tried to learn a language without having some kind of translator or dictionary to use.
This was going to be interesting.
“Dagger,” I growled at the goblin and pressed the tip of the blade just a little closer to the beast’s gut.
Its beady black eyes widened slightly and it snarled a string of goblin curses at me.
“You’re not listening to me,” I said to it. I pressed the dagger closer. “Dagger.”
“What are you doing, Great One?” Mahini asked from the doorway. “You should just kill it.”
“I want to learn how to speak goblin,” I answered as I withdrew the pressure of my dagger. I then brought it back in and tried again. “Dagger.”
“We don’t have time for this, Great One!” the warrior woman protested. “The room we seek is just beyond that door!”
“Humor me,” I shot back.
The goblin spat more curses at me and tried to buck me off.
“Dagger,” I growled again. “Kill.”
“Kill kill,” the goblin spat back. It then growled one of its own words. “Eeergl.”
It sounded like one of the words the goblin leader had said. The little goblin spat the word at me a few more times before it tried to claw at my face. It clearly knew our word for “kill”, and I could only assume its word “eergl” was related.
“That’s a step in the right direction,” I muttered. “Eergl means kill or death or something.”
“Kill, die, eergl!” the goblin roared.
“Very good!” I praised the goblin with a grin. “Now let’s try ‘dagger.’”
Each new word came a little bit faster than the last, but progress was still slower than a glacier moving across the continent. The goblin was not at all pleased at being held against its will and forced to teach us its language, but it also didn’t seem to be in any rush to die. And there was no doubt in my mind that the goblin knew its life was literally on the line. If it took too long to respond or was just being uncooperative, I pressed my dagger to its belly just a little more. Never enough to draw blood, but enough to make the thing spit more curses at me.
Mahini was quick to grow impatient as well. If it wasn’t the goblin snarling at me, it was her insisting that I was wasting time. There was no sun in the mines, and I hadn’t seen any sort of clock in this world that could tell time, so I had no idea how long I actually sat on the goblin as I slowly learned its language.
The first attempt must have lasted for several hours, and I had barely scratched the surface of the language. I had a vocabulary of about ten words, and I couldn’t use any of them in a complete sentence.
Good thing I had all the time in the world to master the art of goblinese.
Chime.
The second round lasted just as long as the first, and although I didn’t learn proper sentence structure, I could at least articulate that my dagger was going to spill goblin blood if the little bastard didn’t cooperate. I won myself another thirty words to my vocabulary bank.
Chime.
I quickly lost count of how many times I respawned and interrogated the storage goblin. There was no reason to half-ass my learning with my powers, and if it meant I could mock the lead goblin in his own language, that was all the incentive I needed.
“Human as fluent as goblin,” the storage goblin snarled after a thousand or so tries. “How learn?”
“Goblin teach human,” I replied with a grin. “Many times human return to learn.”
“Not!” it cried as it struggled beneath me. “Goblin not see human before! Human lies!”
“Human is God of Time,” I growled right back, and the goblin froze and stared at me wide-eyed. “Human unstoppable.”
The little goblin begged for its life, and I almost felt guilty as I jabbed my dagger up into its lungs. It hadn’t been the most patient teacher in the world, but the little guy had taught me so much.
Too bad he never even knew it.
“You can speak their language?” Mahini asked as we backtracked to the door.
“Human beautiful,” I said in the goblin-tongue with a grin. “Male say words female not know.”
Mahini just tilted her head and looked even more confused.
“I said you are beautiful,” I laughed in our shared language. Her cheeks burned a delightful shade of red. “I can flirt with you, and you’ll never know what I say.”
“Honestly…” she muttered. “You are so strange, Great One.”
“You like it,” I snickered.
“Yes…” she pursed her lips. “You have saved me dozens of times, you are clever, you are… nice. I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but I am thankful.”
I wanted to tell her that she’d tried to save my life hundreds of times as well, but she didn’t have those memories, and I didn’t feel like explaining everything to her right now.
I felt like killing the goblin king.
“Let’s do this,” I said as I nodded toward the throne room. “The king is sitting on a throne with two bigger ones, two shamans, and a few little guys. You take out the smaller ones, and protect my flanks, and I’ll take out the two big assholes and then the shamans. Then we’ll kill the king.”
“I will do as you say, Great One.” The black-haired warrior threw her weight against the door when we returned to the intersection, and I summoned my power to create a new save point. Then I joined Mahini at the door.
This time, I could understand what the lead goblin said to us. “Humans come to die?”
“Humans come to kill,” I replied and swung my blades around.
All of the goblins turned their beady little eyes on me, and the leader sat up rigid in his throne.
“How human speak?” it demanded. “Human too stupid!”
“Wow, sticks and stones much?” I asked in my own language before switching back to goblin-tongue. “Male smart. Learn goblin speak. Humans kill goblins.”
I gave Mahini a jerky nod and lunged to the right at the nearest berserker. My little speech was a perfect distraction, and before the brute could lift a finger to defend itself, I lopped its head off with my feather sword. Then I dodged a slash from the second berserker and tripped the
sword goblin as it came in with its blade flashing.
The ice shaman hurled an ice ball at me as it had a dozen times before, and I easily leaned my head out of the way. The crossbow goblin fired at me as I expected, and I swatted the bolt out of the air like a fly with my dagger. The berserker tried the same overhead blow that had killed me once before, but I managed to sidestep and knock the sword goblin into its path.
The crunch of the smaller goblin’s bones sounded like a gunshot.
I danced around the remaining berserker and sliced the hands off the crossbow goblin with my feather sword. As it opened its mouth to wail in pain, I drove my dagger through the back of its throat, lifted its impaled body, and tossed it at the shaman. The feather-covered asshold stumbled under the weight of the body I’d tossed, and he crashed to the floor with a scream of surprise.
The berserker came up on my right, and I ducked down low enough to touch my forehead against the ground. His massive blade passed harmlessly over my body, and as it staggered off balance, I brought my dagger up under its ribcage. The blow cut his stomach open from nutsack to ribs, and he screamed something bloodcurdling into my face with his dying breath.
“Goblin breath bad,” I taunted in the goblin tongue. The beast wheezed again, and I yanked my dagger out of his falling body. “Goblin dead.”
I pounced on the shaman as soon as the berserker dropped to the ground, and with a flick of my wrist, its head rolled across the floor spilling black sludge everywhere. Then I raced to the opposite side of the room, leaped onto the other shaman, and drove both of my blades through the top of its head as I landed.
It took me a minute to free my blades again, but Mahini had already gotten rid of the rest of the foot-goblins. All that remained was the leader.
I was expecting the leader to be a spectacular fighter. Why else would it be the leader of all the goblins? I waited for it to bellow in rage, to leap from the throne, and come at me with some epic moves I had never seen before.