Chương 7: Debt Collectors

The Dunkelhollow Adventurers' Guild occupied a former tannery. The smell had outlasted the tanner. Varran Ghost, the guild's senior clerk, had worked there nearly two decades now and no longer noticed it. It was either an adaptation or just brain damage. It didn't really matter which. The posting board covered the back wall, a slatted grid where quest slips were pinned by category and rank.

Jobs clustered in the lower left corner, most hand-written by the locals and some frontiersmen who couldn't write their own names to begin with. Dunkelhollow had a thousand souls trapped in it, give or take some outflux. Most of them were very simple people. The daily-certified slip Varran was looking at had been there too long. QUEST ID: TH-4471 Class: F.

Extermination (Goblin) Posted: 29 days ago Status: Active Assigned: Kohnrad von Vaevald (D), Teresa Schlosser (D), Dennis Halber (D), Vironia Sonneman (D) Twenty-nine days. The standard grace period was thirty. After that the quest triggered a review, and review meant paperwork. The clerk pulled Kohnrad's file. Twelve years of registered quests, most processed by himself, actually. The guild had one apprentice clerk, but she was mostly relegated to sitting in the archive instead of learning how to do his job.

It's not that he was afraid of competition, but it was really just to make her life worse. Kohnrad von Vaevald filed completion reports on time, collected bounties without dispute, and renewed his membership before the late fee kicked in. He had never once missed a check-in. Even allowing for travel, spoilage, and the general incompetence of most adventuring parties, he should have reported back within a week. Goblins were a low-level nuisance. Varran looked at the file. He looked at the posting board.

He looked at the file again. If they didn't report in by tomorrow, someone would be sent to confirm whether the target was dead, the party had moved on, or if a third factor had occurred. The guild didn't send rescue parties for any group this low in rank. What it would send, though, was a retrieval assessment team. That would consist of one or two C-ranked professionals tasked with finding the bodies and identifying the cause of failure. It seemed unnecessary. Goblins?

Goblins killed children at most, stray farm animals that was about it. The thought of goblins killing an F or even an E-tier party was nonsensical at best. But the fact remained that something was off. Varran filled out the retrieval assessment authorization, stamped it with the guild seal, and pinned it to the board. One night early. He'd break protocol, a tiny bit. If only because he appreciated how orderly Kohnrad had always done his paperwork. One professional favor for another.

In his years, he'd processed eleven retrieval assessments. Most came back with a simple explanation: abandoned quests, parties who'd gotten lost, and one memorable case of public drunkenness. Only one failed quest had ever come back with nothing. No bodies, no signs, no explanation. That one still bothered him. The church had sent a priest, oddly, but nothing ever came of it as far as he knew. Of course, Varran knew better than to dig into that specific matter. It was… personal. As for Kohnrad, he was reliable.

Reliable people didn't go quiet for no reason and he had no reason to suspect that he had gotten involved with that other business. He'd better get ahead of whatever this was going to be. Varran filed the authorization, noted the date in his ledger, and quietly had a copy of the file marked to be sent up toward the big city. By the second hour of the morning, a woman named Halvi Durst had taken the slip from the board. By the fourth hour, she had assembled a partner.

By the evening, they had departed Dunkelhollow with a full kit and a map marked with the last known location of Kohnrad von Vaevald's party. Halvi was thirty-five, ranked C, six years into running retrieval assessments for the guild. She was a professional whose almost unnatural ability to leave before a situation turned sour suited the work. She carried a short spear and buckler, wore boiled leather over chain, and had the lean, weathered look of someone who spent more nights in forests than in beds.

Her partner, Oliver, also ranked C, was a ranger who could track a crow through a storm. He'd taken the job because it paid flat regardless of outcome, and he needed coin for a personal debt. They moved fast. They didn't talk much. They didn't need to. Both had done this before, and the work was the same every time: find the site, get the layout of the situation, confirm the outcome, and report. The guild wanted facts. She didn't expect trouble. These jobs were always quiet.

Retrieval was the silent secret ticket to adventuring, in her eyes. No messy fights or traps. You just walked in, looked at a place for a minute and wrote down if you saw a body or not. Goblin exterminations were the dullest work the guild offered next to collecting slime droplets, and Kohnrad had been overqualified for it. Whatever had happened to his party, it seemed unlikely to concern a professional of his rank. If she had to guess, his party probably had enough of being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere.

They probably found some loot in an empty goblin warren, didn't want to report it, and took their chance to make it in a real city somewhere else. Probably Weltbaumshaven to the northwest, if she had to guess. The next morning, in the Warren, the numbers had changed. Matthew had been watching the fungal output decline for days, a slow, unmistakable decay. Their energy sources were running out. The sorceress had a little bit left in her, but the elf was just about dry.

It was the same graph he'd seen when a product line was dying: the numbers going down, the projections getting worse, and no amount of synergy initiatives could change the slope. Matthew stood in front of the fungal patch and looked at the captive elf inside of the hole. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. This was a business, after all, and sometimes, business was ruthless. You had to be cutthroat to make it in his old world and in this one.

Matthew reached up, touching the webbing over her face. The fungus didn't react to him touching it. He pulled a few pieces of it away, listening to the wet pops as it came free from where it had latched onto her and into her. Her eyes, bleeding, looked at Matthew. He looked at her. He hadn't known what to expect. Hatred, maybe. Fear. Animal desperation. She had been in there for weeks now, just… stewing. What he saw was worse. She was tired. Maybe she had slept; maybe she hadn't.

Maybe she had been awake for days now, fighting and crying until nothing was left. Maybe she hadn't. He didn't know what it was like to be 'on the inside'. He didn't really want to either. The mana counter ticked. There wasn't much left to her. She would be dead and empty within the hour. Matthew could let the fungus finish. It would take what was left and move on. The ledger would update. The line would disappear. The number would adjust. That would be the end of that. Or he could end it differently.

He'd been a middle manager long enough to know when to cut his losses, but he'd also sat through enough post-layoff HR seminars to know that 'human capital' was a disgusting phrase for a reason. He stood there a long time. The warren moved around him, goblins passing through on their way to tasks, Nicole organizing a supply rotation near the entrance, and Jacob heading to the rat farm with a basket of scraps. Matthew reached into the fungal lattice and pulled.

The roots resisted, not sentient nor capable of objection. It was just a biological thing. The roots peeled back from Teresa's body like bark strips from a log. Her skin came away in patches where the roots had bonded to it, and the small, deep punctures where the feeding tendrils had entered her wrists, ankles, and the vein at her throat wept fluid. Her blood and a thick, milky sludge of fungal spores and water. She made no sound. The roots retracted fully.

The archer's body, held upright by the lattice, fell forward onto the stone. She didn't catch herself. She couldn't have. Her arms and legs were atrophied, the muscle wasted by a month of immobility and sustained drain, and the parts he wasn't bracing hit the floor with the gracelessness of a corpse. Matthew knelt. She weighed almost nothing. He could feel the bones through her ice-cold skin. She wasn't going to recover. The fungus had taken too much.

Her mana was gone, her body running on the last reserves of an already failed system. Her organs were useless mulch, her blood poisoned. He wasn't even sure if there was anything of 'her' left in her brain at this stage or if she was just a root-woven mush inside and out. He laid the elf on the stone floor, away from the patch, in the open air by the fire, where the light reached her generously. He didn't restrain her. There was nothing to restrain.

She couldn't have walked, crawled, or lifted a hand to save her own life. The elf just looked at him, staring. For a moment, she was still there. Then, even if her eyes were open, there was nobody behind them any longer.

"Tandaradei," said a voice, firmly. Nicole was looking at him, together with a few of the other goblins. They seemed displeased about the elf being freed, about being here in the warren. A sea of eyes watched him from the shadows. Dead or not, they didn't understand. His hand over her face, Matthew closed the elf's eyes.

"Mercy makes us different than animals," he explained. A few grumbles. Goblins couldn't get that. After all, mercy had never been shown to them. It was a foreign concept in their brutal lives. And something like a merciful death was especially alien to them. If goblin society was going to advance, he needed to be at the forefront of that change. He needed to guide them to a new system, a better one. DUNGEON STATUS Mana: 164 / 1, 000 INCOME / EXPENSES (PER HOUR) Passive: +1 Parasitic Drain: +5. 5 Rat Farm: +0.

8/hr Rabbit Farm: +1. 2/hr Upkeep: -0. 5 Goblins: -3 Net Result: +5 Mana per Hour The tracking team reached the hillside at mid-morning. The forest was quiet. Undergrowth was trampled in places. Oliver, walking ahead with his head down, reading the ground. Halvi looked at the hillside, the rocky slope, the thicket of undergrowth, and the moss-covered embankment that looked natural and wasn't.

"Oliver."

"I see it." They stood in the trees, forty meters from the stream, studying the construction: sharpened logs, covered in moss and packed soil, a deliberate fortification angled to deflect attention from the gap. She unslung her short spear and checked her buckler. They settled in to watch. Through the trees, in the late morning light, the embankment was still. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound. Suddenly, the ground gave way an inch. Halvi's foot sank in, and she caught herself on a branch.

She looked, staring down at the face of an elven woman buried in a shallow grave they were standing right on top of. She screamed and quickly covered her mouth, only a peep escaping. She and her partner exchanged glances, making an assessment. Both of them seemed to agree that they needed to go back. This was enough. Quietly, they rose. Oliver ducked back down the incline, looking back behind himself at Halvi.

"Highwaymen?" she whispered, getting shushed. Halvi looked behind herself.

"Maybe some stragglers from the war?" she asked.

"Let's h—" Something reached down from above, from in the trees, something large and lanky. It wrapped its hands around her head and mouth and yanked. A second later, she vanished into the trees, her voice fading into the rustle as her boots kicked at the canopy that swallowed her. The short spear fell to the ground. Oliver didn't dawdle for a second. The ranger bolted without hesitation, running as fast as he could.

Something chased after him, the trees bending and the boughs breaking as it crashed through the underbrush. He ran as fast as he could, listening to the sound of a stampede growing louder and louder. And then, it stopped. It was like he had crossed a magical line, and whatever was after him couldn't keep going. Panting for breath, he looked for a second and then decided to keep running. The guild had to hear about this right away. This was bad. They needed to send in a high-level team immediately.

There was something out here. In his panic, he didn't see the rough patch of leaves that was out of place. He stepped into them, falling through a simple mesh covering and into a hole filled with wooden spikes. Matthew exhaled in relief, standing at the edge of his territory. That was close. The scout had almost made it out. His goblins came out from hiding, looking into the hole. One of them signaled for him. The second outsider was dead. He nodded and let them handle it from there. A voice, muffled.

Bound with a crude rope and head covered in a leather sack. Matthew knelt down, looking at the adventurer who was being restrained by two of his hunters.

"Hi there, nice to meet you," he said, inspecting her.

"I'm Matthew. Goblin King. Goblin Core Incorporated." He held out his hand for a second out of reflex for her to shake, only realising the futility of it right after that. He slicked his hand back through his hair.

"The company name's still a work in progress." He had to laugh at himself for that.

"Ah, right. Well. We have a lot to discuss," he said, clapping his hands together once so that he had something to do with his palms after all.

"Shall we?" Gesturing for the guards to leave to their tasks, the goblin king hoisted the prisoner over his shoulder, carrying the struggling weight back to the dungeon. He finally had a live one to question. He needed information about the world. Impressively, a boot kicked the back of his head. She was flexible. But it wasn't enough force to do much.

"Now now, let's not be rude. We're both professionals," he said, adjusting the position of the ballast he was carrying as he and a few others went back to the cave. Behind him, the sounds of work and toil as the goblins prepared tonight's dinner.