Chapter 5: A Return to an Explanation

Chapter 5:
A Return to an Explanation

 

“INCINERATE THEM with Fireball?” Lapis suggested.

“Not with those numbers,” Koltz said. “It would take out less than a thimble-full. I could try, but I don’t recommend it.”

“Block them with Earth Wall?”

“Covering the whole passage? Maybe—but that still leaves the number problem. It wouldn’t hold for long. Buy time at best.”

Tucked under Loren’s arms, Koltz and Lapis debated how to deal with the army of goblins. Thus far, it was a largely one-note exchange: Lapis presented some idea, and Koltz explained why it wouldn’t work, rinse and repeat. Loren was starting to worry.

“What about Firestorm?”

“I have the incantation under my belt, yes, but I can

barely squeeze out two a day. Would that be enough against this many?”

Lapis glanced back, powerless and anxious. “Probably not.”

The goblins got no closer, but they didn’t fall back either. Anyone who tried to count the horde would soon give up. Even a non-specialist like Loren could tell the swarm would take more than one or two blasts of magic to deal with.

“Although, to be able to use Firestorm… You’re quite a capable magician, Mr. Koltz.”

“I’m more impressed by how well-versed you are in magic, Ms. Lapis.”

They exchanged a private smile from around Loren’s torso. Loren groaned and raised his eyes ceiling-ward. “Look, I’m glad you’re getting along. But if you don’t come up with an answer quick, we’re all goblin chow.”

“Oh, I believe Ms. Nym and myself are destined to be chowed upon in rather a different way.” Lapis replied.

Loren nearly choked—how could she joke about that?! But Koltz responded first.

“I’m not so sure about that. Seems likely they ate that thief, doesn’t it?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to be the mother of a goblin, but I don’t exactly like the idea of being the meal of a goblin either.”

Her words, absent a shred of dread, made Loren queasy. It isn’t like she’s not aware of the threat. Or does she really not think this is a crisis?

“This might be bad,” Nym cut in. “I’m just about…”

Of the party members left running, Nym had the least stamina, and she seemed about to throw in the towel. Though Loren was strong, he already had two passengers and couldn’t feasibly take another. For argument’s sake, yes, he had the space if Nym clung to his back, but a third body would drain his stamina all the more quickly.

Of all people, Chuck interceded first. “You’re not done! Get on my back.”

“I’m sorry—worst case, I’ll be in your debt.”

“Wow, you’re really feeling it, huh?!”

Nym’s acquiescence shocked Loren, but it downright panicked Chuck. How were they going to get out of this? He had to do something.

“I have an idea,” Loren called out to the rest. “It’s not great, but it’s better than nothing.”

It was a little crazy—so what? If they didn’t try something real and concrete soon, they’d banter until they died, and that future wasn’t far off. Loren sped up a bit until he was shoulder to shoulder with Ritz.

“Do you remember the route we took?” he asked Ritz.

“I—no, Chuck should.”

The thief nodded, confirming his leader’s words.

“Then can we get back to the hole the goblins fell down from?” Loren asked.

“Can’t retrace our steps, but we doubled back a few times already, so it ain’t far,” said Chuck.

Loren grimaced. If they’d already looped around a few times in their blind dash, they’d wasted valuable time, energy, and legwork. In this state, they hadn’t had the leisure to even realize it until now, let alone plan a real escape.

“Get us back to the hatch,” Loren called to Chuck.

“The hell you wanna do there?!”

The hatch raining goblins was no more than a detestable hellhole to Ritz and Chuck; they couldn’t imagine what Loren meant to gain by returning there.

“It’s already spit up so many goblins,” he said. “It must have run dry by now.”

“What about it?”

“They can drop down in a wave—but they can’t climb up the same way.”

Goblins couldn’t fly. You didn’t have to be an adventurer to know that. And as long as goblins couldn’t fly, they would have to climb stairs or ladders to get up to the next floor. When they fell, they could run down their prey without regard for their own casualties. But if they wanted to chase the party up a ladder like the one Lapis had brought down, they couldn’t rely on the same number-based strategy. They would have to scrabble up one or two at a time, at best.

“They won’t be able to crush us with numbers.”

“S-sure, but they’re not that dumb. They’re not gonna wait for us to climb, right? It’s over once they grab us,” Ritz pointed out.

Loren had seen Ritz climb the ladder before. At his sluggish pace, it was basically a guarantee that the goblins would latch onto him and drag him down before he got far.

“We can buy some time with magic,” Loren countered. “Burn their front line with Firestorm, then stall the ones behind with Earth Wall.”

If they only erected a wall to stop an army with such forward momentum, it would crumble nigh instantaneously. First, they needed to kill that momentum, then they could block the path. Sure, it wouldn’t hold the monsters off forever, but it would give them time to act.

“I see. That’s within my capabilities.” Koltz beat a hand against his chest. He seemed to have concluded Loren’s plan was sound.

Even so, Ritz’s face remained uneasy. “But I can’t imagine even that holding back numbers like these,” he said.

“We just have to get to the upper floor before the wall breaks,” said Loren. “Even if worse comes to worst and you don’t make it in time before it does, this is my plan. I’ll be the last one up. Guard your backs.”

“Are you serious? You know there are way too many of those things for you to do anything about them, right?”

“It’s not like I’ll be facing them all at once. I just have to take care of the ones that get through the Firestorm and Earth Wall.” Loren grinned. “But hey, you better climb fast so I don’t have to.”

Ritz thought for a moment, then gave the order. “Chuck, lead us back to the hole.”

“On it.”

“Koltz, prepare to cast—you know what to do.”

“Leave it to me.”

“When we get there, Chuck, you go first. Then help everyone who climbs up after. But I’m the party leader. I’ll take the rear,” Ritz declared.

Loren shook his head. “You’re too slow. The goblins’ll have your ass before you’re halfway up. From what I saw last time, the rear’s not your strong suit.”

“But I’m…”

“I can probably scale the ladder right quick, as long as I get support from up top. Right person in the right place, they say. That’s all there is to it, really.”

Ritz had already exposed his graceless ladder climbing. On the other hand, Loren had shown his dexterity when he caught Koltz. It was clear as day which of them belonged at the rear if they wanted to live, and Ritz could no longer argue.

“I may be a new hand at this adventurer stuff, but I was a mercenary before. I’ve taken rear guard enough times to grow sick of it. Just leave it to me.”

“Sorry. It’s in your hands.”

Ritz nodded briefly, still running. Loren nodded back to say, Don’t mind it.

“We’re almost at the hole!” Chuck called anxiously. “You’d better pray it’s fresh out of goblins!”

If it was still pouring goblins, they’d be stuck between the new wave and the one pursuing them. Their chances of survival would be practically nil. However, that would also mean the ruins housed a truly unimaginable number of the creatures, which Loren simply didn’t think realistic. Hoped, anyway.

In the lead, Chuck spotted the hatch in the ceiling, left wide open. “It’s clear!”

“Good! We’re not out of luck just yet! Get climbing!”

Chuck slickly clambered up with all the speed of his sprint. A little behind him, Ritz readied his shield and sword, getting into a defensive formation in front of it. Nym slipped past and began climbing after Chuck.

“The magic, old man!”

“Let it swirl before mine eyes, o crimson flames, ye storm and burst. Firestorm.”

Koltz unleashed his magic on Loren’s command. Eddying flames suddenly manifested from the nothingness of the floor and rose to swallow the goblins leading the charge. They blazed with an intensity that scorched the high ceiling, spanning the expanse of the passage, impossible to avoid. The spell swallowed a considerable number of goblins, whose shrieks filled the passage alongside the roar of the raging inferno.

“Rise for me, o wall of dirt. Earth Wall.”

The heat wave from the fire, the screams, and the stench of burnt goblins—all these were sealed away by an earthen wall.

“Now’s your chance! Climb!”

Once released from Loren’s arm, Lapis grabbed the ladder. She scampered up at a speed that rivaled Chuck’s. In contrast, Koltz had just used two spells. Somewhat unsteady on his feet, he shambled up even more slowly than last time.

“Hey, hurry…” Ritz urged.

“Don’t rush him,” Loren said. “We don’t want him to fall.”

If Koltz slipped, Loren would have to save him again. Worst-case scenario, he wouldn’t make it in time, and the magician would hit the ground, thereafter injured and likely immobile. With that in mind, even if Koltz took more time, they had less to worry about if he went slow and steady.

“I get it,” Ritz said, tense, “but that wall won’t hold long.”

While Koltz’s spell combo had temporarily halted the goblins, they could already hear weapons beating against the wall in an attempt to break it down.

“What’s up with them?” muttered Loren. “The spell only lasted a moment, but you saw the flames. It should still be hot as hell back there.”

The floor and the walls should have maintained the heat. Loren had assumed the goblins wouldn’t dare walk on it, at least for a while. As far as he’d seen, the vast majority of them were barefoot; stepping on freshly seared floors would scorch their soles.

And yet, in a matter of moments, the goblins were pushing against the wall again.

“That settles it—there’s something wrong with them,” Ritz grimaced. “Goblins got no respect and no guts. I’ve never heard of them getting this persistent.”

Ritz looked ready to meet their foes, but he had paled. He clearly didn’t know what to make of these monsters. The unknown unsettled even a silver-rank adventurer.

“You can think about it later. Just focus on getting away,” said Loren. “All right, your turn.”

Koltz’s desperate efforts had paid off. He was being dragged up the last stretch by Nym and Chuck. Though he hesitated for a moment, Ritz sheathed his sword and began to climb as fast as he could. Unfortunately, that wasn’t very.

Loren prayed he made it up before the goblins broke through, but his wishes went unanswered. Before Ritz had even reached the ladder’s midpoint, a crack lanced down the earthen surface of the wall.

“Looks like I’ve got no choice,” Loren muttered. Lucky for him, the passageway was both wide and tall enough to swing his sword to his satisfaction.

Bit by bit, the crack grew deeper and longer. As Loren listened to the beating against the wall, he reached his right hand behind his back, capturing the hilt of his blade. He undid the cloth wrapping and drew it from his back. Gripping the bottom end of the hilt with his left palm, he took his stance.

It was as if the world had been waiting for him to finish. The wall finally reached its breaking point, and with one last massive crack, it gave way. A horde of ghastly burned and blackened goblins surged forward like water through a burst dam. Their war cries echoed as they fell on Loren.

However, though the wall was breached, it wasn’t entirely broken. The goblins poured through a single gap. For the most part, the wall held.

That means I can still buy time if I do this right. Loren psyched himself up as he lunged. A horizontal swipe with his greatsword split two goblins at the waist.

As the return slash took another life, he realized something was off. The floor beneath his feet was too clean. So many goblins had fallen from the ceiling—the collision with the ground and their fellow goblins should have killed a number right where he was now standing. In which case, he should have been fighting on a sea of goblin corpses. Yet while bloodstains dotted the ground here and there, the bodies that had left them were nowhere in evidence.

Now, Loren wasn’t too knowledgeable about monsters, but he had heard of a goblin’s vile diet. They were well-known to eat anything that could fit in their mouths. Did they start eating their own? he wondered. That still didn’t explain the total lack of any remains.

It’s one odd thing after another today, Loren mused as he continued to skillfully manipulate his tremendous sword with two hands. The shields and shortswords of lone goblins provided no resistance against its sheer mass and the momentum. The shields split all too easily, the swords shattered in a heartbeat, and as defenseless goblin bodies were turned to blood-spewing lumps of flesh, Loren shouted to Ritz without looking back. “Are you up yet?!”

“S-sorry!”

Ritz’s panicked voice warranted an ever-so-slight glance. He was only a little over halfway up the ladder, slowly struggling as he went.

It’s gonna take some time before he reaches the top. Loren embraced an emotion close to resignation as he offhandedly kicked away a goblin diving at his feet. He plunged the tip of his blade into its corpse. “Can anyone pull him?!” he called.

Ritz wasn’t yet within arm’s reach of the party at the top, but Loren asked anyway. The rupture in the wall was widening right before his eyes—the number of goblins slipping through it increasing in turn.

Loren narrowed his eyes, appraising the width of the gap. I’m good. For now, anyway.

He swung his sword again. The blade reverberated with every ugly sensation—tearing flesh, snapping bone. As he retreated so he wouldn’t trip on the bodies piling before him, the bad news reached him from overhead.

“Mr. Loren!” cried Lapis, “We have movement up here again! Mr. Chuck and Ms. Nym can deal with it for now, but we think there’s a number of them!”

“Goblins again?! Just how much do these little bastards love this godforsaken place?!” Loren once more swung his sword in irritation. Its trail left even more fresh corpses in its wake, dampening the floor with blood. He retreated another step from the remains. “Ritz! You there yet?!”

“Just a little longer!”

“I can hold out, but it sounds like trouble up there! Take too much time, and there’ll be nowhere left to go!”

“I know! Dammit! Why am I so slow?!” Ritz cursed, desperation in his voice.

They’ll have to manage on their own, thought Loren. He switched gears to concentrate solely on the enemies before him.

The wall continued to break even as they spoke, more goblins squirming through by the second. Soon, Loren wouldn’t be able to take them out quickly enough to suppress the flood. As it was, he could barely manage to keep them from the ladder. For now, he had their attention, but once there were too many, that strategy would fall through.

Impatience set in, bit by bit.

Despite this, Loren’s rational mind noted some of the goblins doing something he could only call damn strange.

The goblins scrabbled through the wall seething with rage, no other thought in their head but murder. Yet the minute one of them spied a dead comrade, it was as if they suddenly forgot he existed. They would drop the weapon in their hands and immediately set about gathering up whatever bodies they saw. What’s more, once this goblin could carry no more, they scampered off. Never once did they look back at Loren.

He had no way of knowing what would make a goblin act like that, but the strange behavior at least guaranteed he never had more than a certain number of the little buggers to deal with. No matter how bizarre he found the tic, it wasn’t like he’d come equipped with encyclopedic knowledge of goblin behavior. It certainly wasn’t like he could ask them what the hell they were up to.

So while their actions baffled, they had also created an opportunity—one he wouldn’t waste. The theory didn’t matter. As long as he kept a certain number of corpses scattered about, a proportion of the goblins would inevitably drop everything to carry them off. He could use this.

He found a rhythm. The goblins who zeroed in on him never stopped to collect corpses. If he prioritized killing them, the collector goblins would get to work clearing them off, and as a result, he could manage the tide a bit. It wasn’t as if he could tell one goblin from another, but he slowly learned to detect the collectors. They had a certain air. He carefully picked them out and avoided killing them, where he could; they had another use.

Finally, finally, Ritz had reached the upper rungs. When he placed his hands on the rim of the hole, Koltz and Lapis pulled him up.

“Please hurry, Mr. Ritz,” Lapis implored. “Mr. Chuck can’t hold them all back.”

“You have to pick up the pace, Ritz,” called Koltz. “It looks like it’s not just goblins anymore.”

“What? You mean we’ve finally run into something else?” Ritz called.

“No, that’s…it’s gone from goblin to goblin-esque, perhaps.”

“What’s that supposed to—Chuck! Dammit! Chuck’s in trouble!” Ritz suddenly screamed, still only halfway out. In his frantic attempt to kick off the last rung, his foot missed its mark—he would have been on a crash course straight down if Lapis and Koltz hadn’t grabbed him, leaving him flailing his legs in the air.

How sloppy, Loren sighed. But he was needed up top, and there wasn’t a second to waste. “Good grief, why does this crap keep happening to me?!”

For the first time that day, Loren shifted his technique. He had thus far managed with no more than the strength of his arms, but now he twisted his whole body to channel the entirety of his might. He had already been smashing goblins with single swings, but once his hips were thrown into the mix, his blows grew sharper, faster.

The goblins that took these hits weren’t simply cleaved in two. They were turned into blasts of flesh and blood, their pulverized corpses becoming projectiles to take out the ones outside of Loren’s reach.

He had cleared his surroundings in one fell swoop and was sprinting to the ladder before the goblins up top reached the gap again. As he made his way up, he struck the ladder beneath his feet, destroying it so none could follow. He cleared the length faster than any of the others, hopping up onto the upper floor without assistance.

There, he swiftly scanned the area, sword at the ready. The first thing he saw was Chuck, propped up against the wall and bleeding from his head. Then, he saw Ritz, protecting Chuck with sword and shield, and Nym struggling against someone—or something—pinning her down.

“The hell’s that?!”

The fiends before him could only be goblins. Loren couldn’t describe them in any other terms. They looked like goblins, plain and simple. However, a goblin was supposed to be green and the size of a child. These creatures were closer to black and even taller than Ritz, who was a well-built man in his own right.

“Mr. Loren, Ms. Nym needs help!” Lapis called.

“What about your magic, old man?!” Loren snapped.

“Fresh out!” Koltz despaired. “I won’t even be able to use elementary spells for a while!”

One of these huge mock-goblins had collapsed, smoldering in the direction Koltz pointed. He had managed to take one out, but he had run out of magic in doing so.

“More importantly, Ms. Nym!”

Right. Only so much assessing you could do before you had to act. Loren kicked off the floor, hurtling toward this mock-goblin that scrabbled for Nym despite the dagger she had driven through its arm. He drove his boot into its face.

He had learned this kick could snap the neck of an ordinary goblin. However, this creature barely flinched, and once it had regained itself, it let out a low, intimidating growl. Loren ignored this, hammering his greatsword into the back of its neck.

“You gotta be kidding me!”

His blade, which had so easily smashed through the goblins below, juddered against the mock-goblin’s hard skin—and the layer of muscles underneath. It broke the surface but stopped short of the bone.

Reddish-black blood gushed from the injury, staining Nym beneath, but the creature paid its wound no mind. It reached out to grab Loren, the sword still dug into it.

Loren pressed down on the handle to hold it back. Not one to let such an opportunity slip past, Nym pulled out the dagger she’d skewered into its arm and stabbed the monster’s eye while its attention was on Loren.

Evidently, its toughness didn’t extend to its eyeballs. The mock-goblin let out an anguished scream, clawing at the dagger with both hands as it fell backward. In those seconds, Nym slipped out from under it.

Loren yanked out his sword, then slammed the blade into its throat with a mighty yell. Once again, he felt unimaginable resistance from its skin and muscle. But Loren expected it this time. His blade tore through flesh, reached solid bone, and tore through that too. From there, the slash joined the gash at the back of its neck. That took off the mock-goblin’s head in a fountain of blood.

“You okay, Nym?!”

“I’m fine. Chuck and Ritz are not.”

As he looked over, Loren witnessed Ritz’s longsword sliding through a mock-goblin’s arm and embedding itself deep into its flank. He thought that would be the end of it, yet the beast moved as if its lethal wounds meant nothing at all, grabbing Ritz by the head.

“Hands off me, you damn dirty goblin!”

Even a goblin no larger than a child boasted considerable strength. When one grew taller than an adult, it was hard to imagine just how much force it packed into its arms—though it was easy enough to picture what conclusion awaited if it used all that strength to grip a head.

Ritz twisted his sword, thrashing to get away, but he couldn’t escape the mock-goblin’s firm grip. His body creaked and jarred as the mock-goblin’s grip tightened like a vice. His foe would bleed out, but at this rate, it wouldn’t go down alone.

“D-dammit! I’m gonna—”

Ritz had no option other than to be crushed, and he would have been, if Loren hadn’t rushed forward.

While Ritz had the mock-goblin’s attention, Loren had built up speed and centrifugal force with his blade, and he hammered all this into the base of its skull, taking its head.

Blood gushed from the cross-section. Its body twitched with its loss, after which it fell to its knees, powerless, and folded against the wall.

“You okay?”

“You saved me there. I was nearly squeezed out like a worn rag.”

“Glad to hear it. What about Chuck?”

“I ain’t dead yet.” While Chuck was bleeding profusely from the head, he seemed fine enough.

According to him, they’d just dealt with normal goblins at first, when suddenly those bizarre iterations had joined in. While Koltz had roasted one with his magic, the hard skin of a second had defied Nym’s arrows. It had powered straight through her storm of arrows and tackled her. When Chuck tried to save her, he’d been sent flying by a third, which was when Ritz jumped in.

“I’m sorry, Chuck,” Nym said meekly. “It’s my fault.” She was so dispirited that her ears drooped.

Chuck turned away. “You’re creeping me out. That sweet act don’t suit you—so just drop it and treat my wounds, all right?” He prodded his head wound with his index finger.

Nym nodded and got to work.

Leaving the two of them to their own devices, Loren called out to Lapis, who was crouched over the two headless mock-goblins. “Did you figure something out?”

“I can speculate. But if those speculations are accurate, then we’ve wandered into quite a loathsome place.”

“What do you mean?” he asked dubiously. She’d been so happy at the prospect of exploring these ruins before that he’d never expected such words to leave her mouth.

But Lapis didn’t answer. She instead turned to Ritz, who was busy cracking his neck and rubbing his head where he had been grabbed. “Mr. Ritz, I want to go confirm something.”

“Do you need us to go with you?”

“Not really. However, it ought to align with your mission of investigating these ruins. Additionally, something quite terrible might happen if we don’t render this place dormant, and fast.”

What will you do? she implied with a tilt of her head.

The eyes Ritz sent Loren begged him to weigh in, but Loren just shrugged: Don’t ask me.

“For the time being, we should get well away from here,” said Lapis. “If we dawdle, I expect the next attack isn’t far away.”

At this, Ritz went to check Chuck’s condition. While his head wound had been treated, he wasn’t doing great. He frequently shook his head in an attempt to regain his focus, but it didn’t seem to be doing the trick.

“Do you want me to use a blessing?” Lapis asked.

Chuck shook his head again. “Save it. The potion’s starting to kick in. Just a bit tipsy ’cause I took one to the head.”

“Blows to the head can be quite dangerous. I recommend seeing a doctor once you get back to town.”

“Oh, sure. If we get back in one piece, that is.”

“You think you can move?” Ritz asked cautiously.

Chuck bared his teeth at his leader’s fretting. “Enough stupid questions. I’ll move as soon as you order me to.”

“You shouldn’t push yourself,” said Nym. She was clearly just as worried about him, and his strong front didn’t help.

“Just took a good knock.” Chuck gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “No worries. I can move just fine.”

“That makes me the bigger problem. I’m all out of magic. You can’t count on me to fight anymore,” Koltz said, sounding terribly apologetic.

However, no one in Ritz’s party was about to chastise him for his actions. They knew what would have happened if he had been late to cast that last spell—if he hadn’t taken out one of the goblins that couldn’t be goblins. The goodwill they held for him meant none would ever consider him a burden.

“Don’t blame yourself,” said Ritz. “All right, if we’re all good, then we should get moving. More goblins might be on the way, and I don’t know if we’ll survive another go with those big ones.”

Ritz had made the call. Chuck borrowed Nym’s shoulder to stand, and while slow, the party made their way from the site of battle.

At the lead were Loren and Lapis. No one disagreed. Loren had managed to slay two monsters that gave even a silver-rank party a tough time; granted, he had essentially taken both of them by surprise. Meanwhile, Lapis seemed to know something about the ruins.

“What even were those things? Their skin and flesh were hard, their bones even more so. That’s not normal. Were they another evolved form?” Loren asked Lapis, gazing down at the edge of the blade he now kept drawn. The sword had taken them out, but the nicks it had sustained from this encounter were terribly deep.

From the start, Loren had essentially used this blade as a blunt weapon he never expected to cut things with. Its edge was barely even honed. Yet just now it had chipped like any more typical sword, precisely where the blade had come in contact with the mock-goblin’s spine.

“Perhaps they were close to hobgoblins, at least in terms of size, but they were probably just normal goblins grown to an abnormal degree. No, I’m sure of it.” As they walked the corridors, Lapis seemed to have a clear direction in mind. It was as if she truly did know the layout of the ruins, and while she remained wary, her steps were certain. “In the first place, a hobgoblin could never have taken that blow from you and survived. Why, I’d wager you could even have decapitated an ogre with that strike. Am I wrong?”

“No clue, I’ve never fought one. Then what were they?”

“Have you noticed anything else, Mr. Loren?” Lapis said, which wasn’t an answer but another question.

Loren frowned; something had indeed been bothering him. “The goblins below were collecting the corpses of their fallen. Didn’t look like they were saving them to eat. There something wrong with the goblins in here?”

“Very perceptive of you. The goblins here are definitely abnormal.”

Lapis wasn’t walking particularly fast. Perhaps inevitable, considering the needs of Chuck and Koltz, but Loren didn’t know when the next goblin would appear, and her pace had him on edge.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had no iota of doubt that the next thing they encountered would be a goblin. Sure enough, from the nest to the ruins, the only things they’d ever come across were goblins. But that still didn’t make them a guarantee. Assumptions like that ruin your ability to react to the unexpected, he cautioned himself.

“These ruins will only ever produce goblins,” Lapis said, as if she were reading his mind. “Probably.”

“What?”

These were supposed to be ruins of the ancient kingdom. Loren didn’t understand why that meant the monsters infesting them would be goblins and only goblins. It wasn’t as if he was hoping to meet one of those outrageously powerful guardians, but completely denying the possibility didn’t sit right with him.

“Mr. Loren, are you aware of pharmaceutics and alchemy?”

All of a sudden, Lapis changed the topic. He didn’t see how this was related to their conversation. But seeing as the one bringing it up was a demon, there was probably some meaning to it. At least, that’s what he hoped, so he played along. “I know what the words mean. Never knew anyone who practiced them, though.”

“Just the meaning is enough. Do you know what particular animal such experts use to test their theories?”

Once again, Loren failed to comprehend the intent of her question, and he was momentarily at a loss for words. Then he got it. “Last I heard, it was rats. They use ’em to test new medicines and whatnot.”

“Correct. Now are you aware of the reason rats are used?”

He didn’t. Frankly, he knew barely anything about the topic at all. “You think they covered that in mercenary training?”

“No, I suppose it’s just a useless bit of trivia to you. The reason they use rats is mainly because the rat estrous cycle is so short; they mature quickly and produce many offspring at once. Doesn’t this remind you of a certain other beast?”

A beast that could breed with anything and near immediately reached adulthood. One whose population multiplied at an absurd rate. In the short span of time since they’d entered the cave, Loren felt he had seen more of them than he would have liked to see in his entire life.

“You don’t mean goblins?”

“Precisely. Not only are they extremely easy to breed, they’re economical, and no one would question the ethics of experimenting on them. What’s more, they’re humanoid, more or less. Can you think of any other entity more suited to being a lab rat? I didn’t think so.”

Lapis placed extra emphasis on this question, though Loren didn’t understand what she was trying to emphasize. For the time being, he zeroed in on a word that had piqued his curiosity. “They’re economical?”

“Because you can feed them anything. Leftovers, corpses, anything. By the records, a city of the ancient kingdom once tried tossing goblins in the city dump and consequently reduced waste production by eighty percent. Isn’t that incredible?”

“I guess that’s economical…in a way?”

“As a bonus, the ancients saw goblins as no more troublesome than dust; they didn’t think they posed a threat no matter how many there were. And with all the selective breeding they conducted in their experiments, they produced quite a few different types at the time.”

Different types of goblins. Like the ones he’d fought just a moment ago? If those weren’t evolved forms, like hobgoblins, then it wasn’t hard to tie them back to Lapis’s tale.

“Thanks to these activities, a reasonable number of the ancient kingdom ruins we’ve unearthed thus far have turned out to be goblin farms. This place, however, is even worse than that.” Lapis paused to let that sink in.

Loren had been all but ready to suggest the term “goblin farm” when she got the drop on him. What could possibly be worse than that?

“This isn’t just a breeding ground,” Lapis said as she rounded the next corner.

As she did, two goblins suddenly appeared, having been concealed by the bend.

Loren readied his sword at this surprise attack, but Lapis continued forward without care. She grabbed the goblin’s heads as if plucking flowers by the side of the road. It didn’t seem as if she put any particular power into the movement, and yet, while the goblins’ bodies remained facing forward, she twisted their heads all the way around, tearing them off.

As the snap of broken spines echoed, Lapis retrieved a handkerchief from the pocket of her vestments. She dipped it in a bottle of what seemed to be perfume, then wiped the goblin grime off her hands while simultaneously unleashing two off-handed front kicks that launched their bodies a dozen feet away.

She didn’t even glance at the silent husks as she continued on. This chain of movements had been far too natural. However, as she had done it right after a corner, only Loren had managed to see it.

“You… I never knew you had it in you,” he muttered. If you could do that, you should have done it from the start, he considered saying.

But if the other members of the party learned Lapis was versed in close combat, it would endanger her claim to priesthood. Most people who called themselves priests couldn’t twist off a goblin’s head with their bare hands.

“Well, I expect no less from myself,” Lapis sniffed. “Getting back on track, this isn’t just a breeding ground. It also serves as one, but it seems this place primarily carried out modification, enhancement, and refinement.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“To put it simply, this is a laboratory that aimed to strengthen goblins while keeping them as goblins per se. Of all the goblins chasing us, don’t you think it’s strange that we never spotted a single evolved form?”

Evolved forms were rare in and of themselves, but it wouldn’t have been strange for one or two to pop up, given the hordes they’d met. Actually, it was downright bizarre that they hadn’t seen any at all.

“The goblins produced here were probably modified such that they couldn’t produce evolved forms. You see, if the researchers wanted to enhance specifically goblins, hobgoblins and goblin magicians wouldn’t be of any interest, and they might even contaminate the experiment.”

Well, that tracked, but even if the research subjects were goblins, Loren couldn’t help but grimace at the ancient kingdom’s attitude toward experimenting on living beings. All things given, the mindless murderous intent with which the goblin wave pursued intruders was most likely one of these modifications. An order that had been imprinted on them. This farm’s ever-growing goblin population was an built-in security system of sorts.

“These people didn’t mind if they grew bigger, though?”

The ones he’d fought just now couldn’t possibly be called “goblins,” not really. Lapis could explain it away all she wanted, but Loren couldn’t bring himself to accept it.

“Even if they grow, a goblin is just a goblin.”

“What about the ones we met first? They probably got out of the ruin through the crack, and they had a goblin magician with them.”

“I presume the modifications only occur within the interior of these ruins. They could evolve because they escaped. Yes, I’m sure of it.”

Lapis’s tone seemed to say, Can’t you at least understand that much? But Loren didn’t understand, and he didn’t want to understand either.

“Whatever the case, that is what I make of this facility,” she said. “I believe it was dormant, but it was reactivated somehow. Perhaps someone did so intentionally, or perhaps simply undoing the seal automatically started it back up. I don’t know.”

“So why was that thief’s body just destroyed? And why are they collecting corpses?”

“The goblins didn’t take that woman because there would have been no point in doing so. If this facility is like the other goblin farms, it has a special synthesis area where new goblins are produced. The corpses, on the other hand, are presumably the materials from which they make new varieties. How environmentally friendly, to reuse all their trash!”

“And why will there be trouble if we don’t shut it down?” Loren asked. Lapis had said as much before, and he still didn’t know what she meant by it.

“That large, black variety was an improved version of a goblin,” Lapis continued as if she didn’t regard the matter as anything particularly serious. “It must have been produced in this facility. The problem lies in how it acts.”

“What about it?”

“The goblins here don’t need broodmares. And yet, that goblin assaulted Ms. Nym, specifically”

It took Loren a moment to catch up, but the moment he did, he turned pale.

“Ah, there you go. It assaulted a woman without need. In other words, it had an interest in assaulting a woman for purposes other than reproduction.”

Fundamentally, animals mated in order to produce offspring. That was largely the same for monsters, and while goblins additionally used it as an outlet for their sadism, they only initiated the practice in the name of reproduction. But if they had no need of women to reproduce… Loren knew of only one species in the world who engaged in such vile behavior for the sake of it.

“As such, we must conclude there has now been some human mixed into the new varieties. Most likely the people from the party Mr. Ritz was competing with.”

“Can you still call those goblins?!”

“Why, yes. Of course they are. At the very least, you wouldn’t call a goblin a half-goblin simply because it was born from a human mother. Therefore, a goblin with human traces is still a goblin.”

Loren’s head hurt as he tried to wrap his brain around this. Ultimately, he gave up on trying to understand. All he really needed to get was that these ruins had been made to breed goblins, they were still active, and a portion of the goblins now had traces of human intelligence.

“The problem I’m referring to is that this was, once, a facility that strengthened and enhanced goblins. And the goblins here have now gained a unique new intelligence as well as learning capabilities.”

“You mean…”

“Once the bodies of those larger mock-goblins have been collected, this facility will use their data to produce even stronger varieties. Should that process repeat enough times… If a goblin, which is well known to be as tenacious as a dragon, were to accumulate knowledge, experience, and skills to back up its monstrous instincts, what do you think would happen? That is why I said we had to shut this place down.”

That all said, Lapis didn’t seem all that bothered as she described a future Loren didn’t even want to think about. It was as if she thought it largely someone else’s business.