“How dare you vandalize our fields again! I’m gonna kill you this time!”

  The humans, eyes red with rage, were closing in on Gobta.

  So he sprinted at full speed. It’d be bad for him, probably, if he let himself get caught. He could only imagine it, since he hadn’t been captured yet, but none of his friends had ever come back alive from such an encounter, so all Gobta could do was imagine the terrifying results.

  He could’ve just kept his hands off the fields and gardens, of course. But Gobta and the other goblins didn’t quite grasp the concept of agriculture. All they saw was an open field with lots of fruits and vegetables growing in it. It was human territory, and they knew from experience that getting found would lead to a chase, but nothing could overcome their hunger.

  So Gobta escaped down a narrow trail beaten into the earth by the local creatures, chewing the sweet flesh of a melon the whole way. The trail was barely visible at all, the sort of thing only a small goblin could successfully navigate. There would be no entry for the larger humans, who could only stop at a distance and lob insults at him instead.

  He breathed a sigh of relief at his good thinking. Finding an escape route’s a basic move, it is! he thought.

  Upon arriving back at the village, Gobta found a group of the older goblin elders gathered around and discussing something. They were joined by a few kobold merchants who were in town.

  “As I told you, these are too valuable for us to be able to trade elsewhere…”

  “But that means this magical equipment will simply go to waste. Are you sure you can offer nothing for them?”

  “If they were somewhat smaller, we would be able to wield them ourselves, but…”

  “Hmm. I see. Indeed, these are too large for us to handle, either.”

  Eavesdropping as he passed by, Gobta figured they were trying to sell some magical something-or-others to the kobolds. Human equipment, barring shortswords and daggers, was too large for goblins.

  Armor, too, was out of the question. Clothing made out of things like hard leather could be taken apart and used in piecemeal fashion, but metallic pieces were too much to work with. None of the goblins had that kind of knowledge.

  Magic items were a big unknown. Even touching them, they feared, would break them and make them worthless. If not even the kobolds wanted them, it was a classic case of pearls before swine.

  “How about this, then?” one kobold suggested to the goblins as they scratched their heads. “If you are willing to travel to the Dwarven Kingdom, they should be able to take these items from you. They would be willing to accept it as payment for dwarven hardware and the like, and they will gladly deliver your purchases to you as well. It will be a fair distance from here, mind…but as long as you travel upstream along the river, it is impossible to lose your way.”

  This led to a clamor among the assembled goblin elders. “The Dwarven Kingdom?!” one bellowed. “That is an impossible distance! I have only heard rumors of that foreign land!”

  “How long would it take to travel to such a distant place?”

  “Yes! And who would embark on the journey? Our young are our most valuable workers; we cannot afford to spare a single one!”

  Nothin’ I need to worry about! Gobta thought as he blithely ambled by, paying little attention to the seemingly never-ending bickering.

  Fate had different plans.

  “Hold on,” the village elder said, stopping him. “You look like you have little occupying your time. Could I ask a favor?”

  Gobta immediately froze. Something told him this favor wouldn’t be much to his liking.

  “Look at this knife,” the elder continued. “Don’t you think it’s a wonderful piece? If you do this favor for us, I’ll be happy to give it to you!”

  The gleam of the blade was more than enough to grab Gobta’s attention.

  “Say what you will, sir! I’ll handle whatever you need!” he blurted, immediately forgetting his earlier sense of foreboding. But perhaps that was unavoidable. The silvery gleam on this knife was the product of the magic imbued inside. It immediately robbed Gobta of the ability to engage in critical thought. His mouth had moved before his brain did.

  Ah!

  But it was already too late.

  “You will, then? You will travel to the Dwarven Kingdom for us?”

  “Huh? Me?!”

  “May we count on you for this?”

  Now the elders surrounded Gobta, identical smiles on their faces. The sight of their stern eyes above their upturned lips forced Gobta to nod meekly in response.

  It was said that the average goblin’s life span was no more than a fifth of a human’s. Their lineage could be traced back to the ancient fairy-affiliated races, allegedly, but given their current degenerate monster selves, it was a tenuous link at best. Even the longest-lived were lucky to see their twentieth birthday, and most racked up only a decade or so before shuffling off. The age of three, when goblins were ready for reproductive activity, was seen as the start of their adulthood, with full maturity at age five.

  They were not very strong creatures, and as a result, their species made up the difference through explosive numbers of offspring. Relatively few survived to adulthood, however, making the cruelty of nature all the more obvious. Only about half of all goblin children reached full maturity, and of those, less than half ever saw that fifth birthday.

  It was simply the lot they were given, and considering these short lives, goblins did not have the habit of acquiring language skills. They could speak words, yes, but this was done strictly to communicate their intentions to each other and nothing more. There was no concept of gaining knowledge and imparting it to the next generation, nor any habit of stockpiling resources to improve their living conditions.

  This was exactly why the goblins saw no use for magical items apart from selling them in exchange for their daily needs, along with any decent armor they could get their grubby paws on.

  The lack of intelligence among even the elders meant that they truly had no idea what a journey to the Dwarven Kingdom would entail. The round-trip would take several months—a hefty part of a goblin’s life span—and he would have to risk everything he held dear. Yet nobody in the goblin village considered it to be a terribly important mission. To the elders and other mature adults, they were simply taking a rough-sounding assignment and giving it to a child with nothing better to do. They held no ill will toward him—nor, really, the arithmetic skills needed to appreciate the scope of this quest. It was just how it was.

  And so, with only a few moments of hesitation, Gobta’s journey to the Dwarven Kingdom was set in stone.

  Why is everyone so mean? Gobta whined to himself.

  He had a valid point. He was a goblin child, still not fully grown, and they were strapping a load the size of a mountain on his back and sending him off on some grand quest. He had heard from the kobolds that it’d be a two-month walk by itself, but with all this baggage? It was hard even putting one foot in front of the other.

  But no point complaining about it. Gobta started to think. Then he had an idea.

  Why don’t I put all this junk in a box and pull it behind me?

  This, unfortunately, didn’t work. The box refused to move. Gobta scratched his head some more. Then he remembered the really big box he saw once, near a human settlement, with a horse pulling it around.

  Oh yeah, that one had some round things on it, didn’t it…?

  What he was remembering was a cart, and the “round things” were wheels, although he didn’t have the words for them in his vocabulary. So Gobta foraged around for something that would work in their place. What he found was a pair of abandoned circular shields.

  This oughta do it!

  Things proceeded commendably quickly from there. He took a straight club, then used his shiny new magical knife to whittle it down to size. Then he put a couple of holes in the box with his belongings and ran the stick through the both of them. He jammed the twin shields onto both ends of this makeshift axle and bound them in place with some handy vines he’d found. A couple extra pieces of wood for handles, and voilà—an instant pull-wagon.

  With a few rags piled on top to keep things from falling off—and a few more from the village to keep warm in the evenings—he was set. The elder was kind enough to provide some food and water, too.

  So Gobta left the village. Long, sentimental good-byes were never really the goblins’ style anyway.

  I’m hungry…

  A week later, Gobta was staggering forward in a state of near-total exhaustion. The food on his wagon, which he’d sort of assumed would last him the rest of his life, had disappeared by day five. There was still some water left, but not much, probably.

  The wagon, meanwhile, kept getting stuck on tree roots and such, sapping Gobta’s strength. Traversing on foot with his energy running low, Gobta and his journey were in jeopardy. He had now walked for two days without any food.

  As his steps grew increasingly unsteady, Gobta struggled to pull his wagon along, but…

  I can’t…

  He plopped down at the base of a large tree on the side of the path. In an amazing stroke of luck, the moment he settled down, he spotted a mushroom sprouting up from the ground. If he had examined it for a little longer, he probably would have noticed its tremendously poisonous-looking color, but the hunger was starting to cloud his vision.

  Ooh, a mushroom! I could fight for three years with this!

  He lunged at the mushroom, wolfing it down raw without much of a second thought.

  Yet again, though, Gobta’s sheer luck saved the day. The particular type of mushroom he chose was dangerously poisonous, but only if heat was applied to it—grilling, boiling, whatever. The juices of its meat would then transform into a lethal compound, something Gobta had no idea about as he inadvertently chose the safest way to enjoy it.

  Having a full stomach did wonders for Gobta’s spirits. He filled his leather skin from a pool of water inside a cavity in the tree, then decided to take a rest, not too interested in traveling any farther that day.

  His wagon was set to break apart at any moment, but luckily there were some useful vines nearby he used to lash it back together, as well as some handy sap from the tree to fill in the assorted holes and crevices that had appeared. The bark from the tree did wonders to patch up the largest breaks in the box, too.

  With that vital work complete, Gobta slept the rest of the night, relieving his fatigue. He woke up the next morning, surprisingly chipper considering how yesterday had gone, and began foraging, picking up some edible-looking nuts and wild strawberries—and spotting some more of the mushrooms from the previous day.

  “I’ve never seen such a dangerous-looking mushroom!” he exclaimed to himself. “Not even I could eat something like that.” So he left them behind, picking a duller-looking mushroom to take along in his pocket. Given all the brightly colored, poisonous-looking mushrooms in the area, he figured (in his hazy memory) that this must’ve been the one he’d eaten.

  Man, was I lucky to find this winner among all the poison ones!

  So he foraged around a little more before deciding to set off. It was still before morning, and he didn’t have the foresight to stockpile food a little more before departing—so instead he slowed down, searching for more edibles along the way.

  A month after he departed his home village, Gobta finally arrived at the large river he was told to look out for. The flowing water was beautiful and almost totally transparent. The occasional glints of sunlight he spotted within must have been fish, he reasoned.

  It appeared calm on the surface, probably because it was so wide he couldn’t even see the other side, but just a little below, the current looked as if it would give even a decent swimmer a run for their money.

  The sheer size of the river made Gobta’s eyes widen in surprise. He was familiar with creeks and the like, and he loved playing in them, but this was a whole other level of grandness. He had seen nothing like it before. The sight was unimaginable, and it was little wonder that it amazed him.

  “Hyaaahhhh! This is so great!!” he shouted. The sight of the flowing water never got old to him. He sat there the entire day, just watching it go by, until night fell.

  The next morning, fully satisfied at the view he had taken in, Gobta set off early. Only when he was about to start walking did he notice an important issue.

  “Huh? They said to follow my left hand once I reached the river,” he whispered, not expecting an answer. “But if I turn around, it’s going in the opposite direction…?”

  He was right. He knew he had put a mark on his left hand so he’d remember which one it was when it came time to tackle that important issue. The only problem: It turned out his left hand would point in different directions whenever he moved. Follow his left hand where? That was the hard part.

  In the end, he decided to pick up a tree branch he found at the side of the river, let it fall to the ground, and travel the way it pointed. The fact that it wound up facing the correct way was another testament to Gobta’s astounding luck. He followed the branch’s lead, not doubting it for a moment, and the trip went problem-free from there.

  Just when the journey was starting to bore him a little with its simplicity, Gobta saw some shallows in the river up ahead. It was a watering hole for the forest animals nearby, although none of them seemed to be fighting each other. They were avoiding confrontation at this spot—a sort of instinctual, unwritten law of nature, perhaps. Carnivore and herbivore were here together, one of the few places in the wild world where you’d ever see it.

  That rule, however, was reserved for the animal kingdom. Humans and monsters didn’t adhere to it. Neither did Gobta. What’s more, since most monsters that hunted animals tended to be nocturnal, the animals lowered their guards when it was still light out.

  What a chance! My first meat in ages!

  Gobta’s eyes began twinkling as he watched the creatures. Large, slow animals enjoyed the feeling of water on their backs; nimbler predators took a drink and quickly left the premises. There were even smaller birds and hares and such, drinking on the far edges to avoid the others.

  His eyes swam as he took in all the options. Then he found a wild hare—a slower-looking one, fat and juicy to his eyes. The perfect size for someone like Gobta. Anything larger would’ve been too dangerous.

  Approaching his target, Gobta stopped after a short distance and carefully observed his surroundings.

  All right. So far, so good.

  He grinned to himself, slowly closing in as he gathered a few stones from the ground. In a moment, he was within what he felt was comfortable throwing range. His stealth skills, honed by a long career of raiding vegetable gardens, paid off for him.

  “Yah!”

  Brimming with confidence, Gobta launched a stone at the hare. His unerring aim gave him a clean hit, and the animal fell into the watering hole. The others around it immediately darted off. Gobta didn’t care. He was already salivating by the time he picked up the body.

  Then, a problem occurred.

  “Grooooooooar!!”

  With a mighty wail, a magical beast appeared from between the trees. It was standing majestically atop a small cliff, and slowly its eyes turned toward Gobta.

  This was a blade tiger, the so-called king of this dense forest. It enjoyed a rank of B, pretty well ensuring that an F-ranked goblin stood no chance.

  This beast was here for the animals around the watering hole, just like Gobta was—but thanks to Gobta taking action first, all the animals had scattered, leaving the blade tiger with nothing. Nothing, that is, except Gobta himself. And his catch, of course, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough to sate this monster.

  “Gehh! Are you after me?!”

  The blade tiger leaped from its perch, unfazed by the height of the cliff, and landed in front of Gobta without a sound. It made him flinch, but his instincts told him that running was pointless.

  As it was, there was no escaping a fate that ended in the tiger’s maw. What should he do?

  Gobta thought as hard as he could. Then…

  If this is how it is, I’ll have to struggle as much as I can!

  Steeling himself, Gobta readied himself against the blade tiger. There weren’t many options at his disposal. His left hand still had a stone in it, but against a blade tiger, that wouldn’t accomplish much.

  Maybe that would work…

  He suddenly recalled the knife given to him before his departure. Maybe it could wound the creature? And maybe, if he was lucky, that’d buy him enough time to escape. Once he made that conclusion, there was no time to waste. There was nothing else at his disposal, so he decided to believe in his chances and keep resisting until the end.

  First, Gobta lobbed the stone. The knife was his real ticket out of here, but if the tiger dodged it, he was dead. So he used the stone first to distract the beast. The blade tiger easily leaped out of its way, and Gobta, anticipating where his adversary would land, removed the knife from his pocket and prepared to hurl it toward—

  Um, this is a mushroom…?

  It took a few moments for him to realize that it was no knife he was about to throw at the blade tiger. But he was already in motion, unable to stop, and away the mushroom went. He was kind of planning to eat that later. The one dull-colored mushroom he could find in a grove full of poisonous ones. He’d meant it for a snack and then promptly forgotten about it.

  But then something beyond Gobta’s imagination took place. It turned out that this mushroom was a rare poisonous type, one containing spores that were loaded with lethal venom. Gobta had been walking around with that in his pocket the whole time, and then he’d thrown it at a magical beast.

  The blade tiger glanced at the mushroom hurtling toward its face, then opened its mouth. It used its Voice Cannon skill in an attempt to vaporize it—which proved to be a mistake. The pulverized mushroom immediately released all its spores, which floated on the breeze and landed all over the tiger’s body. It fell to the ground, twitching, racked from head to toe with pain; the spores had entered its eyes, ears, and mouth and were relentlessly punishing its senses.

 

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