Chương 13: Chapter 11: Think, Gideon, Think!

He stood there, bucket in hand, and stared at the glowing letters until they stopped stinging. Then he just shrugged.

"My name won't keep me alive," he thought.

"Food, Skills, power, allies. Those will." If the System wanted to call him Grub, he would just have to make Grub mean something. He would turn the insult into something better. He sighed once and went back to work. When he had finally scooped until the bucket was heavy with foul weight, his arms ached and his lower back screamed. The pile behind him was still enormous, barely changed in the grand sense, but one bucket was one bucket and he was not going to win by staring at the mountain of filth.

As he heaved the bucket upright, someone nearby made an exaggerated retching sound. Another goblin laughed and pointed.

"Look at him," she jeered.

"Grub likes it."

"Grub was born for the shit," another called, voice echoing off stone, followed closely by a chorus of laughter. He didn't look up at them. He hefted the bucket and turned toward the entrance of the cave. When he got close, the guards at the cave mouth stepped in, weapons raised. He froze.

"And where do you think you are going, little Grub?" one of the guards sneered, spear tip hovering inches from Gideon's chest.

"Barely with us for a few hours and already running?" The other scoffed, feigning shock.

"So ungrateful." Before they could push it further, Dravak's voice cut through the cave.

"Enough." The hobgoblin rose from a rough carved stone seat that sat upon a raised stone platform in the center of the cavern, and walked toward them. He looked Gideon up and down, eyes lingering on the bucket.

"Where are you going with that bucket, Grub?" he asked, with only a faint hint of amusement tinging his voice.

"Out," Gideon said. He kept his voice calm.

"I need to dump this somewhere. Preferably not next to your wounded." Dravak regarded him in silence for a heartbeat, then nodded once.

"I will walk with the slave," he said to the guards. They exchanged a glance, then nodded, lowered their weapons, and retook their guard positions outside. One muttered something under his breath that earned a short bark of laughter from the other. Gideon paid it no mind, just moved through the cave mouth, bucket in hand. Dravak fell into step behind him. Outside, the air was cooler and noticeably cleaner.

Gideon took a long breath through his nose and almost groaned at the simple relief of the clean forest smells returning.

"Is there a stream or river nearby?" he asked Dravak. Dravak nodded and pointed wordlessly up a slight incline on the other side of a clearing. Gideon climbed the small hill, the ground rising slowly under his feet. Dravak followed, silent and watching. At the top, the land flattened out. Ahead, a narrow stream ran past, water rushing clear and fast. It wasn't particularly large, only two or three feet deep in the center, but it was enough for his purpose. Beyond the stream lay the forest.

He took a moment to look around, his analytical brain kicking in. The cavern was built into a small mountain, its opening right at the base. A small flat area above it served as a great lookout point, if the guard posted there was any indication. The small hill he'd climbed to reach the stream in front of the cave meant that any enemy would have to approach from the sides below or crest the ridge and come down into a funnel. You couldn't just stand at the top and shoot straight into the cave. The angle was wrong.

Anyone trying to descend would be exposed, forced into a natural choke point where archers inside and above the cave would have easy shots.

"Good defensive position," he thought.

"Whoever chose this place knew what they were doing." He removed the filthy furs from his hands and tossed them aside, then tipped the bucket over to let the filth spill into the stream. The current grabbed it and carried it away, thinning and dispersing it with ease. When it was empty, he plunged the bucket into the water and scrubbed the inside with sand until it was reasonably clean. Then he washed his hands, rubbing grit into his palms until the slime came away.

He shuddered as the shit that caked his hands was washed away downstream.

"Don't worry," he told himself.

"This is the cost of survival. For now." Only then did he deal with his makeshift gloves. He carefully picked them up off the ground where they lay and dunked them too, scrubbing them against stone until the worst of the filth loosened and washed away. They would never be clean again, not truly, but he couldn't afford to throw away the only barrier he had between his skin and that corner of the cavern. He wrung them out as best he could and draped them over a rock to drip while he finished rinsing the bucket.

Behind him, Dravak finally spoke.

"Why?" Gideon kept his eyes on the water as he continued to scrub.

"Because I want to live," he said.

"If your people keep sleeping next to a pile of their own shit, more of them will get sick. If they die, you are weaker. If I haul it away, they might live, and you are stronger. The stronger the tribe, the better chance I will survive too." Dravak was quiet for a time. When he finally spoke again, there was a hint of something in his voice.

"Practical, aren't you? A slave, counting his captors as a shield. You are a strange one, Grub." Gideon shrugged, gathered the damp scraps of hide, and tied them back around his palms and fingers.

"All that I care about is surviving," he said simply. Then, he filled the bucket with clean water and followed Dravak back to the cave. Inside, the other goblins kept their distance while Dravak was present. Their eyes tracked the two of them, but no voices rose in jeer or laughter. Only when Dravak returned to his stone seat did the whispers creep back in, the cruel chuckles echoing faintly off the cavern walls.

As Gideon passed near the main hearth, where Throk was sitting and eating with a small group of Warriors, Throk hocked and spit. It hit the stone near his ankle and slid in a thin line.

"The filthy slave plays with shit," one of the Warriors hissed. The group laughed at that. Gideon ignored them. He'd heard cruelty before, and he had learned young that reacting only fed it. Besides, their opinion didn't outweigh reality. Here, he had food. Here, he had fire, a roof over his head, and bodies between him and the jaws of the forest. He shuddered as his thoughts turned to the fox once again.

If the price of this new, safer existence was hauling shit in buckets and swallowing his pride, he would pay it gladly. The pile in the corner was still there, still huge, still reeking. One trip hadn't even made a dent worth talking about. That was fine. The important part was that he had started. Now for the next part. He carried the bucket of clean water to where several wounded goblins lay in a rough cluster against one wall. He knelt beside one whose forearm was bound in a filthy rag.

Darkened blood and yellow pus seeped around the edges. The smell of rot was stronger here. The goblin stared at him, eyes narrowing, but didn't make an attempt to move away.

"I'm going to clean this," he said quietly.

"You can hit me if you don't like it." The goblin snorted, then made a sharp swatting motion with his good hand. The slap caught Gideon across the knuckles, more insult than injury, but it made his fingers sting where the skin was already raw.

"Get off," the goblin growled, teeth bared. Gideon blinked once, then leaned back out of reach. He didn't argue. He simply nodded once, then looked past him to the next wounded goblin in the cluster, one with a wrapped calf and a feverish sheen to her eyes. Before he could move, a voice called from deeper in the cavern, loud enough to carry.

"Don't waste time on them," someone barked.

"The weak ones die. The strong survive." Another voice followed with a rough laugh.

"Let them rot. There is always more work." He hesitated with the bucket in his hands. For half a heartbeat he wondered if this was the moment someone would drag him away, if the tribe would decide he was overstepping. His eyes flicked toward Dravak's platform without him meaning to, and he caught the Chief staring. Dravak had been watching him. The hobgoblin's posture didn't change, but his gaze shifted, slow and deliberate, toward the goblins who had shouted.

The cavern quieted slowly as others noticed where his attention landed. He didn't raise his voice, but when he spoke, it carried.

"Let him," Dravak said. His eyes remained cold.

"The slave is working. Willingly. I have no problem with that." A couple goblins muttered anyway, but they were quieter now, the sound more like irritation than defiance. One grumbled something that sounded like a curse and then went back to what she was doing. Gideon exhaled, slow and careful, and turned back to the wounded goblin laying before him.

"I'm going to clean this," he said again, voice low.

"It will help you. If you attack me, I am going to move on and let you die." The goblin's eyes narrowed, but she didn't take a swing at him. She didn't look grateful either. She simply stayed still, jaw clenched, as if deciding that enduring the indignity was less trouble than fighting it.

"Fine," the goblin eventually said. Gideon knelt and began loosening the bandage. The wound beneath was ugly, an angry red gash ringed with swelling. Old dried blood crusted around it. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. He dunked the filthy rag in the bucket, wrung it out, and began gently wiping away the worst of the mess. The goblin hissed and snarled, teeth bared, and her hand jerked as if to swat him away.

The motion stopped halfway, as if she remembered just in time that she'd agreed to what Gideon was doing.

"Yeah, yeah I know," he muttered to the goblin as he kept cleaning the wound.

"It hurts. Try almost getting eaten by a fox. We all have problems." The goblin paused, and gave him a confused look.

"Nevermind," Gideon said, and he continued carefully wiping at the goblin's torn leg. When the wound looked as clean as he could reasonably make it, he rinsed the rag again and wrapped it back around the leg, this time more snugly, trying to cover as much exposed skin as possible while still leaving space for air. A soft chime echoed in his head. The water in the bucket was reddish brown now, no longer clean enough for him to use.

He stood and moved away from the wounded goblin before looking at the notification pulsing gently in the corner of his vision. He opened it with a thought. [New Skill Acquired: First Aid - Level 1] He focused and read the description when it popped up. First Aid (Level 1): You can clean and bind simple wounds, stopping bleeding and reducing infection risk. Restores a small amount of Health over time. Ineffective on severe injuries. He grinned despite the stench of the cavern.

"Not bad," he murmured to himself and headed back toward the cave mouth. A goblin nearby clicked his tongue and crinkled his nose as he passed.

"Stinking slave," he muttered, not even loudly, just enough to make a couple of others snicker. Gideon didn't even look over his shoulder. He told the guards he just wanted to throw the water out outside, and after a quick glance towards Dravak and a nod from the Chief, they let him pass. He threw the dirty water into the dirt and grass outside, then headed back towards the waste pile. He set the bucket down and adjusted the damp scraps of hide on his hands again, tightening the knots so they wouldn't slip.

Then, he bent down and began to scoop, again. Before long, he'd filled the bucket again. It wasn't the whole pile, not even close, but it was enough to make the bucket heavy, enough to make him gag as he worked. With the refilled bucket in hand, he headed back toward the exit. The guards shifted as he approached, but Dravak's voice carried across the cavern before they could block him.

"Go with him. If he runs, cut him down." Gideon glanced once toward Dravak and saw him still sitting on his stone seat, forearms resting on his knees, watching him thoughtfully. Dravak flicked his gaze from Gideon to the wounded goblin he'd just treated, over to the still massive pile of waste in the corner, then back again. One hand went to his chin, fingers rubbing along an old scar there.

"You heard him, Grub," one of the guards grumbled, giving him the stink eye.

"Come on. Move." Gideon nodded and stepped past him out of the cavern. With that, the next few hours blurred into a steady rhythm of work. Carry the bucket to the stream. Dump it. Wash it. Fill it. Return. Clean a wound. Dump the water outside. Fill it again at the waste pile. Repeat. Trip after trip, the pile shrank like a wound that wouldn't stop bleeding until enough pressure was applied.

Each time he dumped another bucket full of goblin shit, the corner looked a little less like an impossible mountain and a little more like something he could actually finish. Between hauls, he cleaned what wounds he could. Not all of the wounded goblins let him. One of them snapped and lunged when Gideon reached for his bandage, trying to bite his wrist. He jerked back just in time, felt teeth scrape against hide and air, and stared at him for a heartbeat.

"Fine," he'd said flatly. He rose and moved on without another word. Another swung weakly at his shoulder with a clenched fist, caught him more with knuckles than force, and then spat a curse that made the nearby goblins laugh. Gideon only shrugged and stepped around him, choosing a different wounded goblin whose eyes followed him with wary calculation instead of pure hate. His new First Aid Skill helped him more than he expected.

It guided his eyes to the worst injuries first, nudged his hands to press a little harder here, loosen his grip there. It whispered, in quiet ways, which wounds were only messy and which ones smelled of deeper trouble. Combined with the knowledge he carried from his high school first aid courses, he found that he was quite effective. After the 5th goblin whose wound he had treated was taken care of, he heard a soft chime echo in his mind. He grinned as he opened the notification. [Congratulations! First Aid has reached Level 2.] Some goblins hissed and cursed at him when the cleaning stung. A few watched him with wary confusion. One, an older goblin with a missing ear and a gash along his ribs, grunted after Gideon finished binding him.

"You didn't make it worse," he muttered.

"That's something." Gideon only shrugged and moved on to the next task. That was probably as close to "Thank you" as he would get. By the time the day was done and the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, the rhythm of the day had become a grind. His shoulders burned. His hands were raw from cold water and rough cloth. His stomach rolled every time he stepped close to the corner, but he kept going anyway.

He had started the day as a joke, a slave with an insult for a name, but as he kept working, the insults lessened somewhat, as the tribe began muttering about the slave that wouldn't stop, the slave who was working willingly. It made them uneasy, and Gideon was glad for the reprieve, however temporary.

When he finally set the bucket back where he had found it and straightened, his back ached and his hands stung, and the corner that had once been a massive reeking mound was, at last, scraped down to something more manageable. Even now, his hands still smelled faintly of goblin shit. He grimaced and hoped it wouldn't last for too long. He'd scrubbed them so many times his skin felt raw and tight, but the stink clung to him like a bad memory.

He'd finish the rest tomorrow, then scrub the stone clean of the last traces. He'd force the habit of not dumping their shit on a pile near where they slept into the tribe one bucket at a time, or die trying. However, right now, he was exhausted. That was for later. He walked back to the cage on rubbery legs.

A guard unlocked it and swung the door open, giving him a strange look as he passed inside, as if unsure how to categorize a slave who volunteered to haul waste and who spent time tending to those the tribe considered weak. Gideon knew that what he was planning to do now would earn him even more strange looks, but, before he could sit and convince himself to skip it, he forced himself to start. He rolled his shoulders, slow and controlled, working out the knots.

He pulled one arm across his chest until the muscles tugged, then switched sides. He clasped his hands and stretched them forward, fingers splayed, trying to ease the tightness in his forearms. He bent into a careful crouch and straightened again, testing his legs, forcing blood to move. A couple of the goblins near the bars stared like he'd just grown a second head. Then the jeers started anew.

"Look," one snickered.

"Grub is dancing for us."

"Will you teach me, slave?" another mocked, making a loose imitation of the motion with exaggerated wobbling arms. Gideon once again ignored them. He finished the stretches slower than he wanted because his body was protesting, but he continued all the way through because he had made the choice to stay limber, and he would stick with it. If it helped him recover faster, great. If it gave him the extra flexibility or an extra second of reaction time that kept him alive, even better.

When he was done, he sank down in the shadows at the back of the cage, back against the rough bars, and closed his eyes. Noise from the tribe washed over him. The crackling fire, mixing with the children's shouts. Barked orders. Muttered conversations. His body hurt, but in a clean way. He was work sore, not fox teeth sore. The name Grub was still burned in his vision from when he had called up his Status that morning. It sat there where Gideon had once been, stamped over his existence. His old life was gone.

This was the final reality check. He figured he would have to start thinking of himself as Grub instead of Gideon sooner rather than later. But not yet. He still clung stubbornly to his old identity. His parents, back on Earth, were grieving a son who would never come home. Max was somewhere out there, alive, probably fighting as stubbornly as he always had. Gideon, the human, the rich kid from Madison who had gone to Berkeley, had died in a gas station parking lot. What remained was this.

A goblin slave, named after a shit-eating insect, enslaved in a filthy cavern. He opened his eyes and stared into the dim, letting the reality settle. He lowered his head and whispered into the stale air, making a promise to the only person who needed to hear it.

"I will survive," he said.

"Whatever it takes." He repeated it two more times to himself, like a mantra. Gideon leaned back against the rough bars and waited until the ache in his shoulders dulled to something manageable.

"Alright. Think. I need a plan." He didn't intend to remain a slave. Not forever. It was good enough for now, though. Survival came first, always, but survival as something barely better than livestock wasn't what he wanted. He wanted, no, he needed freedom. And to get it, he needed leverage, the kind that would one day open the cage door for him permanently.

"So how do I get leverage to earn my freedom?" If he wanted leverage later, real leverage, he needed trust." Or at the very least, the Chief's trust." The easiest way to build that trust was obvious. Make the tribe stronger. Make the Chief's life easier.

"Make myself useful enough that killing me feels like snapping a tool they still need." The idea was simple in his mind. And in truth, strengthening this tribe served more than one purpose. If the tribe collapsed, he collapsed with it. A weak tribe meant starvation, predators, and infighting. A stronger tribe meant shelter, fire, and spears pointed outward instead of inward. If the Ironfang thrived, so did he. For now, he was content with survival.

"Freedom will come later. Play the long game. Don't rush. Don't overplay my hand." Freedom. Just thinking about the word hurt. He could survive as a slave, technically. But the idea of years spent asking permission to step outside, of living locked in a cage at the whims of others, made something deep inside him revolt. He had grown up in a world where autonomy was assumed. Now he had to calculate a path toward earning what he had always taken for granted. If he was honest with himself, he was angry.

Upset that he was in the situation he was. He wanted to be free now. But…

"Not today," he told himself.

"Survival comes first. Everything else can wait." So what actually moved the needle? He had started the day with the simplest problems because the simplest problems were the easiest to solve. He looked through the cage bars again, and what he saw made him shudder involuntarily. Waste. Infection. The smell of rot clinging to stone and fur alike. It was disgusting. Primitive. Also glaringly obvious, once you forced yourself to look at it without flinching. It was also an opportunity for him.

In a place where no one else saw danger, basic competence would look like magic.

"Keep solving the problems they don't even realize are problems. The shit pile and cleaning the wounds are two such problems. What else is there?" His gaze shifted across the cage to the other slaves. They were huddled together in the opposite corner, bruised, beaten, and resentful. Their eyes were dulled by the daily rhythm of orders and punishment they found themselves in. Could they be turned? Could they be convinced that working willingly and avoiding daily beatings was their best path to survival?

He studied them for a long moment.

"No. Not easily. Not yet." They weren't going to rally behind speeches about cooperation. If he started talking at them about "working willingly," they would only hear "kneel harder and lick the master's boot." They'd already chosen resistance, and paid for it in blood. He considered it a while longer, then let the idea go.

"Later," he decided." When I actually have something concrete to offer them." Right now, he didn't have a clear path forward with them, not one that didn't risk one of them deciding he was a problem worth killing. So he shifted his focus elsewhere. The sick goblins. He replayed what he had seen during the day. Shallow breathing. Fever-bright eyes. Coughs that rattled in narrow chests." That's a problem I can actually fix. Maybe." The thought made a small smile ghost his lips.

On Earth, treating the sickness in the tribe would have been easy. There were clinics and pharmacies full of antibiotics and fever reducers. Clean, sterile environments. The miracles of modern medicine, based on knowledge built up over millennia. But he had none of that here.

"So what do I actually have?" He racked his brain and forced himself to inventory his reality. He had access to clean water, if he kept hauling it. Fire to boil it. And the forest outside the cave. He thought back to school, to papers he had written on ancient civilizations and early empires. Those societies had survived sickness without modern medicine. Not always well, but not blindly either.

"No leeches. No bloodletting. I'm not 'balancing humors' or any of that nonsense." He had the benefit of two thousand years of hindsight that those civilizations lacked. Herbs had worked for them. Teas had worked. Poultices. Cold compresses. Simple antiseptics drawn from bark, roots, and leaves. Not superstition or miracles. Just trial and error refined over centuries. Things that the forest might reasonably contain.

"The forest is the supply cabinet. Now I just need to figure out how to get access to it." And that brought his thoughts around to the real gatekeeper of this plan of his. Chief Dravak. The Chief had watched him all day as he hauled filth out of the cave and washed and rewrapped wounds. He hadn't mocked him. He hadn't stopped him either. He had simply observed with that thoughtful, measuring look. That mattered. Most of the goblins seemed content to act first and think later.

Dravak didn't seem to do either impulsively. He watched. He waited. He evaluated.

"That's good for me. An intelligent leader means predictable decisions. It means he'll weigh cost against benefit." If Dravak had been a brute, Gideon would likely already be dead for overstepping. Instead, he'd been allowed to work. So the path forward was clear, albeit not easy. It would take a willingness to work hard and a lot of patience. Luckily for him, Gideon had both of those things in abundance. He would keep improving conditions in the cavern. Keep reducing infection and sickness.

Make visible gains and quietly tie those gains to his presence in the cavern. And when the time finally came to ask for access to the forest, it wouldn't sound like a slave begging permission. It would sound like an investment in something that had already proven its worth. He let the structure of his plan settle into place in his mind. Strengthen the tribe. Increase his value. Reduce unnecessary losses. Expand his usefulness beyond waste and bandages. Everything else could build from that foundation.

He exhaled slowly, letting the tension ease out of his shoulders. It wasn't heroic or dramatic. And most of all, it wouldn't be quick. But it was a path forward. And for now, that was enough for Gideon. He curled up on his thin furs and let the day's exhaustion pull him under.