Chương 4: Pest Control

Goblin ears went for three copper obols apiece back at the Dunkelhollow guild hall. Kohnrad had turned in enough to know what a full sack bought: a week of ale and a bed without lice. He'd been running extermination quests since he was a young man. He was twenty-eight now. The math never changed much, except for the fact that they used to buy nine days. Inflation.

The quest was days old, posted by a farmer on the frontier who'd found goblin tracks in her root fields and put a crossbow bolt through one of the thieves. It was just a normal Class F extermination: low risk, low reward, suitable for a party of four ranked E or below. Kohnrad's party was ranked D across the board. Decently overqualified. That was fine. Overqualified meant no surprises. He'd cleared this exact hillside twice before. He expected more of the same, so he did not expect to get lost on the way there.

But they did. The four of them, adventurers, stood out in the Kerzenwachs forest, confused. The landmarks were there: a split boulder and a stream cutting through a ravine, but the space between them had changed: boulders and stones where there'd been open ground. A bare rock face partly collapsed, the scree stacking into something that looked deliberate before the moss grew over it.

"Someone's been landscaping," Teresa said. She was crouched near a thicket, a crossbow across her knee. Thirty years old, quiet, a tracker and marksman. In this day and age, crossbows were the weapon of choice for most every archer. Apart from a few specialized mage subclasses, bows had been relegated to being quaint or even just ceremonial.

"Goblins don't really do that."

"Goblins don't build walls either." She pointed. Through the brush: a low barrier of sharpened logs, camouflaged under moss and packed dirt. The stream fed into a dark hole in the hillside in its center mass. A drapery of ivy hung just above the water's surface. One would walk right past it if they didn't know to look. Kohnrad stared. There'd been nothing like this here last time.

"Maybe it got wiped out and repopulated and somebody else moved in. Bandits?" Dennis offered. Twenty years old, an axe too heavy for his skill with it.

"You don't leave enough and it takes years to bounce back." He said it like a fisherman talking about catch limits. Kohnrad didn't disagree. He'd said the same himself. Goblins were a renewable resource if you managed the harvest.

"Could be empty," Kohnrad said and drew his sword anyway.

"Vironia, light." The fourth and last member, their party sorceress, conjured a flame in her palm. Guild-trained, twenty-two, this was her first extermination. She'd taken it because the better quests were gone and she needed the money to get out of Dunkelhollow. Nobody ever got out of Dunkelhollow. This place had a way of keeping you in it, one way or another. It was like there was a curse on it. But she didn't know that. Kohnrad had seen it before.

Families who want to head northwest to the city who ran out of money because of a sudden expense. Dreamers who talked about travel every day until the day came and they got sick and bed-ridden. It wasn't like there was a physical barrier. He'd been in and out of Dunkelhollow plenty of times. But he always came back and he thought that, because it knew he would, it let him. It didn't surprise him, though, that a sorceress thought goblins were beneath her, what with all her schooling and education.

Kohnrad found that amusing. Rookies always thought that they were too good for goblins or mush-mushes. They all wanted to be the archdioceses or some grand court mage. He himself was content to do nothing but hunt goblins, giant rats, and zombies until the day he could retire. Who in their right mind would want to go after a dragon or an ogre? Less was more. Teresa found the gap in the palisade: narrow and angled, forcing a sideways squeeze. The ground beyond it was swept clean. Goblins didn't sweep.

"Maybe there really are bandits?" she suggested in a whisper. No response. They went in single file. The swordsman Kohnrad was first, the archer Teresa behind him loaded, the sorceress Vironia in the middle, and the fighter Dennis at the rear. The air was wrong inside, but not in a bad way. It didn't stink. Rather, there was the smell of smoke and cooked meat. Something herbal. That was more unsettling than anything else. That means something else really was inside of this cave, something civilized.

"Kohnrad," Teresa said.

"I see it." The walls had been worked: jagged edges filed flat. Tool marks. The tunnel split ways. Kohnrad raised a fist. The party stopped. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen. But there was just nothing.

"Maybe this place really is dead," suggested the younger man, looking around at the empty hollow.

"Yeah. That's why I smell food. Idiot," whispered the archer at him, annoyed. Kohnrad shushed them and nodded his head.

"Left." Suddenly, something small and fast shot across the tunnel ahead, too coordinated for a rat, and vanished into a side passage. Dennis lunged after it.

"Wait!" shouted the older man. He didn't. He charged down the left tunnel, and Kohnrad swore and followed after him. The trip vine caught Dennis's ankle at the narrowest point. A log wedged in the ceiling, studded with sharpened stone, swung down like a pendulum and hit him in the shoulder with the sound of a branch breaking. He spun into the wall and dropped. His axe skittered into the dark. Kohnrad dragged him back by the collar.

"I said wait, idiot!" he barked at him.

"I'm fine," said Dennis, wincing.

"Should've hit your head. It would've bounced right back," sighed Kohnrad.

"Something's wrong," said the archer, her eyes on the walls, the drawings.

"Vote three on bandits here too," said the sorceress.

"Goblins don't set traps. It could also be a necromancer?"

"Farmer's report said she had goblins," replied Kohnrad, regrouping again with the others.

"Nothing about no undead." Dennis stood back up.

"No, I saw one. A goblin," argued Dennis, catching his wind as he slowly rolled out his shoulder. He swore but seemed content that it wasn't broken.

"Ran that way." But Kohnrad had already reached the same conclusion as the others. Something had changed this place and whatever it was, surely it wasn't a goblin. Movement behind them. The right-hand passage, the one they hadn't taken, now had something in it. Two shapes, fast, came and shot out past the entrance and into the forest. Teresa fired. Missed. The bolt stuck in the inside of the palisade with a loud thwang. The shapes split, diverging high and low. They slid past her into a small, passageway tunnel.

"Those were definitely goblins," said the archer, loading a fresh bolt into her crossbow.

"Okay. Light it up!" Kohnrad shouted, annoyed. He wanted to see what they were dealing with. The sorceress' hand began to glow. An ember formed, then a flame. Vironia hurled fire down the distance. It caught a cluster of dried roots and lit the chamber long enough for Kohnrad to see a goblin flat against the ceiling, lean and dense, far bigger than standard, watching him with something he'd never seen on a goblin's face.

"The hell…?" Calculation. It dropped. As they were distracted by the one ahead, a goblin with the name 'Janet' strung to its neck hit the ground behind Dennis, having crawled across a vine rope strung along the ceiling, and moved before he could turn. Her knife found the one gap in his armor, behind the knee, below the thigh guard, and was gone up the wall before Teresa could aim. Dennis screamed. His hamstring was severed. He wasn't getting up.

"Teresa, watch the walls!" Teresa tried to shoot the escaping goblin with her crossbow, but a rock hit her and she stumbled. Two more shapes appeared at the tunnel's end, throwing stones in sequence. One clipped her wrist. Another hit her temple. Every time she raised the crossbow, another stone found her. They were suppressing her. Teresa swore, struggling to shield her face and reload the crossbow at the same time. What the hell was going on in here? Vironia was backing toward the junction, flame guttering.

"I can't see them, Kohnrad!" Whatever this was, he was wise enough to want no part in it.

"Hold your fire. Everyone, back!" he yelled, starting to organize the tactical withdrawal, ten meters back to the entrance.

"Out. Everyone back out." Something darted past them. The inexperienced sorceress shrieked and panicked. She launched a spell. The fireball went wide, blasted the ceiling, and brought down burning rubble. A second spell, thrown blind down the right passage, lit the silhouette of two large goblins, pressed flat against the wall for half a second before detonating uselessly against the stone down the way.

"Vironia, back!" called the swordsman, already pulling Dennis along and out. Whatever was happening in here, he knew better than to stay inside in the midst of it. They'd get out of this cave and pull back to the guild for a report and some reinforcements. There was something wrong with these goblins. They were too smart. As the group walked back as a unit, step by step toward the entrance, Teresa was firing one bolt after the other into the moving shadows, and the sorceress was flinging flames into the darkness.

The cave was teeming with movement, but nothing was showing itself.

"Vironia, over there!" shouted the archer, reloading as a long shadow swooped past a lingering fire. Panicked and full of adrenaline, having seen drawn blood for the first time, the sorceress threw another flame. She poured everything into it and sent it down the tunnel as hard as she could, flung into the dark. It flew. A blast. Kohnrad saw it hit a tree, of all things, all the way at the end of the cave, deep in the undergrowth, all the way at the end.

A branch swollen with something pale and membranous caught fire all at once. He had vaguely remembered it being here back then but had only filed it away as a curiosity. The sound it made wasn't wood burning. It was a scream. The tree writhed. They were almost back outside. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. His plan had been working until now. Matthew felt it as a wire pulled taut from his chest to the base of his skull and then set alight as the tree screamed.

He could hear it, feel it. It shook his bones and his teeth, like a banshee was howling in his ears. He dropped to his knees. The dungeon status stuttered across his vision in broken fragments, a system trying to load through static. CRITICAL DAMAGE SUSTAINED! The [Dryad Tree] is the central manufacturing node of your dungeon. If it is destroyed, your species and other monsters will lose the capability to be spawned entirely within your warren! Protect it at all costs! The pod branch was burning.

Inside the membrane, the half-formed thing that wasn't a person yet, wasn't even a name yet, just mana shaped into the idea of a goblin, was gone. Cooked before it lived. He felt the branch dying as if his own arm were going numb. Every goblin in the warren staggered with it. Rick's eyes went glassy against a tunnel wall. The coordinated defense broke for a few seconds as if they had all been struck by an unseen psychic attack. The tree was connected to all of them. If the tree was hurt, they were hurt.

Some sort of roar shook the entire cave.

"I told you there were goblins!" shouted Dennis, desperately moving back and away on his bleeding leg. Teresa fired several bolts, a few of the goblins slumping over and flying back as they were struck. They were quick and agile, using the cave to their advantage, but for some reason, many of them had stopped moving after the last spell's impact. It was like the shockwave had confused them. Suddenly, the cave shook, rumbling. A quake. Something large thundered their way.

The sorceress saw it arrive through the smoke, a tower of muscle and eyes like hot copper, and her hands came up before he reached her.

"THE HELL IS THAT?!" she shouted, a spell already prepared. The fireball hit the monster square in the chest, flames lashing as it exploded around the giant goblin. Its skin blackened. But it just rushed through the fire. Its hand, still burning, closed around her throat, and the flame went out because she couldn't cast anymore. She clawed at its arm, but it didn't let go.

"Vironia!" shouted the swordsman, trying to stage a charge, but he was cut off by a swarm of goblins who came out of the shadows at him with spears. That would have never been a problem before, but these goblins were different. They were larger, smarter, and formed a line that continually pushed back and around at him. They were an evolution of some kind.

"I take it back! That's not a fucking goblin!" screamed the wounded young man, working on hobbling away by himself now. He made it to the palisade and started to crawl out through the gap.

"Make up your mind!" yelled Kohnrad at him, swinging his sword to bat away a spear. Teresa lifted her crossbow, aiming to take the shot at the monster that had their sorceress in its grip. She lined it up, ready to pull the trigger. Thwunk. The archer stopped, looking down. A bolt was stuck in her abdomen, not deeply. There wasn't much force behind it. But there was enough to break her tunic and skin. Gasping a wet exhalation, she looked up.

A goblin was standing there in the distance with a crude, primitive bow, having fired a pilfered bolt back at her.

'Nicole' was etched onto the bark around its neck. The sorceress was fighting as Matthew carried the ferally screaming invader a few more steps to the fungal patch and pressed her into it. But with one hand around her neck and one holding both of her wrists together, she couldn't do much. Fire sprayed from her in all directions, hitting nothing but the cave walls like a literal fire hose that had been released by its handlers. Magic was real in this world. Matthew had just learned as much.

A part of him wanted to keep her whole, to study her, to question her. What if she could teach his people to use magic? But the tribe would never allow it, even against his will. She hurt the sacred tree. The roots were already reaching before he got there, tasting the crackle of mana coming off her like heat off a forge. The first tendril touched her ankle and sank straight through skin. She made a sound that wasn't immediately identifiable as a continuation of her screams. It was worse.

More roots came, faster now, coiling her wrists and her waist, finding the vein at her wrist and pushing in. She arched silently, and the feeding began, pulling from her. The flames at her fingers trickled down and died out as the sorceress' inner power was rerouted before it could leave her hands. The dungeon filled itself with mana. He didn't even have time to set her down. The fungus stole her.

Larger tendrils lashed out, wrapping around her ankles, wrists, and neck and ripping her from his grip like a ruthless scavenger stealing a kill from a hunter. Her back and head slammed against the stones with force, a loud crack in the air. The lattice spread across her jaw and her cheeks, sealing over the sounds she was still making until only her eyes were left and then they weren't. A white lump was stuck to the cave, a person. Now it just squirmed and made noises.

DUNGEON STATUS Mana: 88 / 1, 000 INCOME / EXPENSES (PER HOUR) Passive: +1 Parasitic Drain: +11 Upkeep: -0. 5 Goblins: -2. 3 Net Result: +9. 2 Mana per Hour Nine point two mana an hour. A feast. Matthew was sure that the fungus would ration her days, skimming the surface and letting her recover before feeding again. His last company had never understood that you couldn't run a top performer at full capacity forever without burnout. Somehow, mold did. Behind him, in the tunnels, the fighting was still going on.

Dennis crawled out back into the outside world. One of the two goblins who had escaped the warren leapt down from above, found the strip of neck between his gorget and helmet, and opened his throat. He didn't make another sound. Slowly, his body lurched as it was pulled back into the darkness. Goblin hunters were herding the survivors toward the chamber. Their exit had been cut off. Kohnrad moved in good order, covering Teresa while she reloaded on the move.

"Teresa, they're boxing us in—""I see them."

"Behind you!" A hunter with the nametag Rick came in low, at ankle height, and tackled her, knocking her leg out beneath her. She went down. Kevin pinned her sword arm before she could reach the crossbow. She was strong and experienced, and it didn't matter; the goblins kept coming out of cracks and crevices like water through a broken dam, flooding over her.

"Teresa!"

"Kohnrad!" Grabbing her by the legs, they dragged her away as she cried out in terror and clawed out of the chamber. As they dragged her toward the central chamber, Matthew's foot landed on her ribs, and he studied her for a second as she tried to fight her way out in vain. An elf.

"Let me go! LET ME GO!" She had long ears like his goblins did, but they were finer, longer, and softer than the sharp, short points goblins had. She looked different from the humans, refined and more elegant in stature. Her eyes were larger, her frame gaunter. Interesting. So there were other species in this world besides humans and goblins. This was good to know. He needed to know everything he could about the competition.

"Are there any more of you outside?" asked Matthew.

"Wh-what? You can talk?!" she yelled, looking up at him. She screamed again. It didn't look like he'd get any answers. But his territorial sense told him that it was just these four. Lifting his foot, Matthew nodded his head to the side of the room, and then the goblins, swinging her by the arms and legs, heaved her onto the fungus. She tumbled against it, rolling and trying to get up to run again, the bolt in her stomach tearing muscle as it shifted.

The mold latched around the elf's ankles and dragged her away into a deeper, long shaft hole in the cave wall that it had filled on all sides. It was less eager than with the sorceress, but it took her as well. Matthew didn't like watching, but he did. It was all rather morbid, actually. He felt terrible for them. These were people with hopes and aspirations. Maybe they had families, maybe they had love. But he also felt terrible for his people, who were killed by them.

Once again, he could smell goblin blood in the air. They shouldn't have come here. They came to kill his tribe. So, morbid or not, at that point, this became a strict business matter. Matthew understood that, watching as the fungus webbed the hole she was trapped inside of closed. It was like this entire world was just built on the farming of suffering. What a horrible place to be reincarnated into. Kohnrad was the last one standing when he understood it. The worked tunnels. The traps. The coordination.

This wasn't a goblin warren. It was an operation. There was something here, something stronger and smarter. He'd heard the rumors, heard the stories. But out of all the thousands of goblin warrens in the world, what were the odds that it would happen in his lifetime? In the one warren he frequented? It should have been impossible. He spent his career avoiding high-tier monsters, and now he'd walked right into one's house. A goblin king.

A pair of glowing eyes looked at him from the darkness, filled with muffled voices. The thing rising beside a blue cocoon was burned black across the chest, bleeding from a dozen places, and stood there, approaching. A decade as an adventurer, and Kohnrad had never faced anything that made him feel like a problem someone else had already solved. The thing stood across from him.

"What the hell are you?!" asked the swordsman, really just for himself. But it spoke, which is what surprised him the most.

"Regional head of operations," replied the heavy voice, the cave rumbling. Goblins darted and scattered along the shadowed walls as it spoke to him. He didn't understand what that meant.

"Stand down. Surrender. You know things I want to understand," it said.

"We can work out a deal, you and I. A mutually beneficial arrangement. Nobody else has to die today." He didn't know what sort of demon this was, but he was confident there was no bargain of any kind that would get him and his people out of here. But its guard was down. He had a shot. Kohnrad charged. A blow took his knee out from the side, a spear from something skulking in the shadows. The goblins swarmed.

Twenty-some creatures who had spent their whole lives as prey were finally on the other side of the equation. He took one with him, but the weight of numbers pulled him under. The last thing he saw was the cave ceiling and small, sure hands taking him apart. The chamber stank. He hated the way it smelled here when dead things were inside. Matthew took stock because this had been one hell of a bad shift. The kind that would have triggered a mandatory all-hands meeting and a memo about 'leveraging adversity.'

Dead: Kevin, level five, and weeks of training gone with him. And the lovely Diane, caught under falling debris from the explosion while carrying the newborn. Someone had pulled the infant free before the fire reached it. Nicole was already cradling it in the corner. Wounded: Janet, hand crushed under a boot in the final scuffle, would never hold a knife again even if the bones heal straight. Rick had a bolt lodged in his shoulder. Three others were maimed.

Nothing fatal, but nothing that would let them work tomorrow either. The tree had one dead branch and one dead unborn goblin inside the dripping wound. Then, slowly, as the dungeon fed, his wounds started to heal. DUNGEON STATUS Mana: 91 / 1, 000 INCOME / EXPENSES (PER HOUR) Passive: +1 Parasitic Drain: +14 Upkeep: -0. 5 Goblins: -2. 8 Net Result: +11. 7 Mana per Hour The upkeep value for his population had dropped, and Matthew understood something rather pragmatic about the system. Dead goblins cost nothing.

But wounded ones cost the same as healthy ones but could do less. They would be a drain on the system until recovered. They were unproductive workers. In his old life, a death on the job meant investigations, insurance reviews, and mandatory counseling. Here it meant less overhead. Grim. Somewhere, an actuary was weeping and didn't know why. But the mana per hour was the best income he'd ever seen. The sorceress alone was a high-octane asset. A high-yield engine of productivity as long as the fungus kept her alive.

He didn't know how long that would be. Days, maybe a week. Then she'd be empty, and they'd need another one. How common were magic-users in this world? Could he even get another one? Maybe he should 'free' her from the fungus every now and then, just to let her recover for a while so he can re-feed her to it again. He set it aside as a problem for later and moved to the next item. In his old job, 'problems for later' was a drawer that filled up quietly until something inside it became an emergency.

Here, the emergencies didn't wait to be discovered. They came looking for you. The goblins were already stripping the bodies of the other two. Nicole was directing it without being told, the rescued infant slung securely across her back, weapons in one pile, armor sorted by type. Some random trinkets. Then, a crossbow. An axe. A sword: good steel, well-kept, a professional's blade. Nicole dragged it across the floor, nearly as long as she was, and held it up to him with both arms shaking. He tested the balance.

A good weapon. Better than anything they had. Then, he handed it back.

"Give it to Rick. He's training the new hunters now. You take the crossbow. That was a good shot you took with the bow," he praised. Although he didn't fail to notice that the bolt she used to shoot the invading crossbowwoman was the very same one that killed John. Nicole was truly a ruthless little witch. Her ears lifted slightly. That was as good as a grin from anyone else. She dragged it off toward the hunters' bunk, steel scraping stone. Instead, Matthew took the axe. It felt better in his hands.

He turned to the map scratched on the wall. Four outsiders had come into his warren. None were walking back out. Whoever had sent them, a town, a guild, or whatever force controlled this area, would notice. They would send more. The farmer had started this, presumably. He was clever enough to piece such a matter together. How many more were coming and when and with what? It was a standard stakeholder analysis: identify the threat, assess its resources, and identify leverage points.

Preferably before they kicked in your door again. He needed to expand. The muffled screaming behind him finally stopped, the fungus clogging its victims' throats. Matthew sighed in relief, finding it easier to focus on his work without the noise.