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After action report," Kandon stated, in a private meeting room near the command center. It had been two hours since the end of Omega city, and Mark was without his Greater Ring of No-Wealth, and his webweave was fully broken. His spellbreaker sequencer was dead and gone, too. Eliot had delivered another ring and another sequencer to Mark, in the meeting room, which Mark thanked him for. Mark would have to wait to get home to put a new suit on, though. For now, his adamantium worked well enough.

Mark, Isoko, Eliot, Sally, the archmages, Lee, Yoro, and many others were there. Kandon continued, "The mithrilkinetic mithril blooded goblin is in the custody of the empire. Team Blackvein is thanked for bringing that to our attention. Everyone who participated in that capture is getting a million goldleaf, with Mark, Isoko, and Derek getting 10 million." The rubber goblin and the, ahem, Glorious Goblin, both got away. We're not sure what happened to them. We're figuring it out.

They probably went to the main goblin city in the north. Plans are being made to tackle that location in the coming days. There will be no sudden-attacks on that place by anyone here, thank you." We expect that the scattered goblins around the settlement will be no match for local wildlife, but I'll have some crack teams responding to any goblin gatherings that look dangerous, or capable of restarting a city. Now that the major surrounding goblin villages are gone, we don't want them growing back."

There are a few private concerns we have regarding the actions of certain individuals. Those concerns will be taken up privately." Other than that, the four major settlements of goblins are gone, and fire elementals are being seeded into those conflagrations. Those places will thus burn for days, spawning ash elementals and various other localized issues, and goblins will die to those monsters and ourselves, as needed. Please see me if you want to be a part of those teams.

Rates for goblin clearing quests are already posted on the boards." That's all." Mark expected to get chewed out. What happened was that Aurora invited him to another room, privately. Aurora closed the door, and then she said, "We're going to stand here for a minute and pretend that I'm giving you a talking-to, but I'm fine with what happened today. A bit reckless, but not that bad. You almost died, though, and Isoko absolutely would have died if you died. You do understand that, right?"

Mark felt like death had touched his shoulder.

"… Yeah."" Okay." Aurora nodded and leaned against the wall.

"We can just stand here in silence for another minute, then." That minute was unbearable. Mark got out of there, eyes down, vowing never to underestimate goblins ever again. Soon Mark and his team were walking down the road, headed home. Derek was with them, looking happy. It was only mid-afternoon. The first thing Mark did was to tell Derek, "I'm really sorry I didn't protect you."" Oh! Dude!" Derek said, "Don't worry about that. I'm getting 10 million goldleaf! I'm good. And I knew I was gonna die a lot…"

He looked to Isoko, Mark, and especially Eliot, and saw that none of them were okay. Derek decided that he was done for the day. He waved, the only one here who wasn't feeling worried, and said, "I'll catch you all later!" And then Derek vanished, dispelling himself to escape the situation. Mark didn't blame the guy for that. Isoko said, "So I almost died. I need to get Wind Shaper. I'm going to go study on that. What is everyone else doing?" Sally said, "Guarding Eliot." Mark and Isoko both paused at that.

Eliot answered, "I… freaked out, some." He shook his head.

"Let's pretend I never freaked out at all." Sally was solid. Eliot was fragile. Mark worried about that, but… he left it alone, for now. Because he was asked to leave it alone. Isoko did not want to leave it alone. She asked, "What happened?"" There was a Tinkerer goblin," Eliot said, sighing.

"Don't think he showed at all, or at least I never found him. Half of the missiles I sent turned around and I had to explode them mid-air. Minor freakout. No big deal." Sally said, "It might have been a speedster tinkerer, too. Flitting between missiles and rewiring them. Eliot only caught ghosts on camera." This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it." Might have been another Seer goblin," Eliot said, "Like what we thought the Glory Goblin was, at first."

Isoko said, "That fucking goblin terrified me— Holy fuck, Mark. You took an archmage-level laser-particle-whatever beam… Gods. That was scary, too." Mark said, "I expected a certain level of fight... and we got a lot more than that…" Mark stopped walking forward.

"I need to talk to Lola and the Inquisitors about what I did back there." The group stopped, too. Isoko and Sally had concerns in a lot of ways. Eliot said, "You going now?" Mark nodded.

"See you all at home." He turned around and said, "Quark? Please send Lola a text that I'd like to meet her at Inquisitor's Hall." - - Under the protective magics of the Hall, in a side room, Mark sat down with Lola. He couldn't really read her, due to the anti-Union and anti-Spying magics in the Hall, but he could read her face well enough. She was concerned. Mark was concerned, too. Mark ignored the near-death experiences he had had, though. He focused on what could happen, in the future.

Mark began with, "It was so easy to start a goblin civil war. Too easy." Lola said, "Anarchy and Civilization is a strong one. I was almost surprised that you stumbled into it like you did, but I'm not that surprised. You're always ahead of the curve, but you stopped experimenting with Unions for a little while there. Why is that?" Mark had no real answer.

"I didn't need anything else?" And then he said, "I never faced an unkillable thing before, and if I did, it was always with partners on the kaiju squad. Aurora came out if something was truly dangerous— And that reminds me that I need to know how to kill unkillable elemental kaiju, because… Well. I need to know. Today worked out sort of how I expected it to, but… goblins are goblins. They are people. They can do strong things…" His voice trailed away. Lola nodded.

"Let us first focus on new Unions, and what happened in the goblin villages. Regarding Anarchy and Civilization and goblin civil wars: it's easy enough to start a civil war among any thinking, cooperative species. Not just goblins, but humans, too. AIs, too, if you really want a horrific mess on your hands." Mark felt like his eyes had been opened just a bit more.

"Would it work with Hive Mind monsters?"" Absolutely," Lola said, "Any cooperative-based species is highly vulnerable to this particular Union. The scale of Anarchy/Civilization working versus not-working varies. If you ever go up against a colony monster, like ants or bees, then Anarchy/Civilization might not work at all, or it might work very well. A better Union in that case is Anarchy/ Cooperation, due to monsters not really having a cohesive sense of 'civilization'. But they can certainly be 'cooperative'."

Mark suddenly asked, "It didn't work with Goofy at all until it did? I think it worked because I talked him into going against his people, but… I'm not sure why it didn't work at first? It worked on everyone else."" Goofy was above it all, in Power and demeanor, and he was more than a bit delusional. With most people, you can do Anarchy and Civilization and let the ensuing churn of violence drag everyone into the fight, but sometimes you need to personally drag some people into the war.

That is what your talk accomplished with Goofy." Mark asked, "It works based on the easiest-to-influence first, and then it builds up steam until everyone is involved?"" Correct," Lola said.

"Isoko will eventually get Anarchy/Civilization, if she keeps on her current path, because High Inquisitors of Freyala need to be able to dismantle cultist groups all on their own. This particular Union is highly useful against groups of violent offenders, to make them fight each other instead of us. Groups like goblins, which are just a bunch of people all living together and usually at odds with each other, can go as far as to murder each other when subjected to enough Anarchy."

Mark took that in, and then asked, "Do you know how I could have killed Goofy?" Lola said, "I have no idea. I'm researching it now and will have an answer for you soon. We think it was a body-hopping soul parasite goblin with some sort of manifesting ego kind of power."

"… Fuck. Okay…" Mark asked, "How do you kill the unkillable, generally? Like elementals, in such. I mostly know how but… Are there esoteric methods I just don't know about?" Lola began, "Killing the unkillable is usually a matter of changing the base nature of something into something else. Unkillable fire kaiju? Douse it with water. Unkillable water kaiju? Turn it to steam.

This does not always work, and water elementals are the hardest to kill because water elementals can exist in all forms, but one of the best ways to kill water elementals is to do a Union of Pressure, and adjust the elemental's internal structure. If you go low enough pressure with a kaiju, then it should start to boil away. But also, if you increase the pressure, then it will get hotter and might start to steam away. Either solution works. Both take a while."

These tactics have big issues, though, because you need to either subject yourself to high pressure or low pressure, because you're still part of the Union. I would not recommend this against a kaiju because I am absolutely sure that you will knock yourself out through a massive pressure differential…" Mark listened to the lesson Lola gave, and most of it he knew already and it didn't help with Goofy, but he could try out a Union of Pressure on a water elemental the next time he was out there.

He was probably going back out there to re-sand the goblin villages, to keep them fully burned. Sooner than that, though, he needed to go back to Mage Society and learn Aethercall, and to do an Aethercall Union of Understanding. At least he'd be able to ask Rekaro and others about Goofy during that Understanding party, to see what they had to say. But there were not enough hours in the day for all that Mark needed to do.