Chương 37: Chapter 34

Broken gear, torn armor, and pieces of her chainmail had been removed... Some links have been outright broken off; this was the general observation of the chief of the things Sobelle dropped at his doorstep while she remained at his chest, weeping so hard that it attracted the attention of all the other villagers.

"Come on in Sobelle, we'll find a way to get your gear fixed up." If one ignored the fact that this girl just lost her items— the combined price of which was more expensive than some of the local houses—then they'd have to think about the future and how the hiding greenskins would have an easier time attacking the village now that Sobelle lost her best items. This wasn't just a matter of a young girl being done wrong by her own family, but also the large risk the village was put through by doing so.

Without Sobelle going out into the forest everyday killing Goblins, the greenskin army would grow and train several generations of goblins that could potentially outmatch the men. Not just in physical strength, everyone knew that was impossible, but in skill and cunning. Goblins were notoriously adaptive and could learn how to fight with tools really quickly, they had a strange adeptness when it came to using their environment during a scuffle as well.

"They broke everything! Even the bronze spear." Sobelle wiped her reddened eyes and hiccuped. She tried to talk again, to explain what he already knew about the situation but failed to.

"I-I hate them so much. Everything about them, from how they talk to me and how they treated me even when my father is around—""Sobelle." The chief went to his knees and rubbed the young girl's back; an action that only made the crying worse.

"We can always repair your weapons, and your gear can easily be made. Just give the workers a few days and your items will be back in their best shape." He needed to comfort her enough that she didn't give up on hunting greenskins.

"Just calm down and think this through, it's important for you to... Stop crying. Okay? You need to be strong."

"But my items—""Can be fixed." He repeated for the second time.

"Understood? You need to calm down."

"R-right. My items can be fixed." Sobelle was still crying but it had lessened considerably. She tried to talk but coughed instead, this went on for a second or two before she calmed down enough that her weeping had stopped.

"I need to calm down, right." Sobelle inhaled, the chief was right. She didn't need to cry so much. What she lost could always be repaired and what she needed to worry about now were the repercussions of what she did to her family. Especially Dorsh. Her brother's face had been bashed heavily, and the culprit was none other than Sobelle herself. Hurting someone in the village usually had consequences, and with how bad she beat him?

It was only a matter of time before someone came with the guards to start questioning Sobelle about her violent attitude.

'I need to find a way to stop them from taking me to the gates.' She'd get stoned by everyone if she were to ever let herself be taken and with how frustrated they were of her recently, Sobelle feared that she might just lose her life during the stoning. This could not happen, and so she needed to find a way to pin the blame on her family instead of herself. But how would she do that? Sobelle went into deep thought as she considered the answers to her problem.

She focused on it so much that she hadn't noticed when the chief came up to her and handed her a bowl of food as well as bread. Sobelle stared at the offered food with mixed feelings. On one hand, the chief had given her something and it would be rude if she refused, but on the other hand, she did not feel like eating right now as she felt that any food that entered her stomach would be violently puked out. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

'It's one thing to be rude, and it's another to puke on the chief's floor with what he gave me.'

"I'm not hungry." This was her decision in the end, as she risked ruining her image in the chief's eyes if she were to ever empty her stomach in his house.

"Thank you."

"I'll put this here anyway." The chief placed the bowl next to the bread and left for the kitchen. Sobelle watched him go, her thoughts running as fast as a bolt of lightning. Before she could go back to thinking about the possibility of her being stoned to death, someone knocked heavily on the door. Since she did not wish for the chief to take the blame for her, Sobelle ran for the door and opened it to see a man she commonly saw working with her father.

Another village guard, and someone who, just like Saltor, enforced the rules and kept the village's peace. Sobelle had ruined that peace, and there were countless witnesses who saw her do it. And worse still, most of them hated her enough to make her truly look cruel and claim that she had started everything. Punishment seemed inevitable until Sobelle's skill activated and she managed to read everyone's feelings with [Vibe Check].

The skill did not give her a concrete grasp on the thoughts of those around her but it gave her a feeling of sorts, and she was able to use that to know that very few people actually wanted her punished. The guard was among them. Not because they pitied her, no, that would be too easy. They were scared. Of what? Why the goblins of course.

Everyone acted bold and rational and spoke about how if they were in Sobelle's shoes, they would have killed every single greenskin on their own but that was nothing more than bravado. They had deluded themselves into saying that they could do the things she did but did not internally believe it. Or in other words, they coped with their feelings of uselessness and spite against Sobelle by claiming otherwise. Quite literally, they denied their own feelings of weakness.

Sobelle would be impressed with how much they hated her if her life wasn't under threat. But it was, so she moved with confidence and walked straight to her brother, the same one that she punched several times already. Her eldest brother, Larud, was here and he tried to stop Sobelle's advance but she easily weaved past him and punched his face.

Dorsh started crying and everyone moved to stop her but Sobelle was already under the effects of [Flow State] and she made one of the best decisions she could make at that very moment: she shoved her eldest brother aside and screamed at him.

"You tried to defend him?!" Sobelle's heart raced, she had never done this before and she feared that failure would come to her at any moment now.

"Do you have any idea how much peril he put the entire village through?!"

"Peril—" her brother had tried to argue but another shove from Sobelle stopped that pretty easily. She would not let him speak over her and convince everyone of her faults without doing it herself first.

"The Goblins are still out there!" She screamed to remind everyone just what kind of purpose she held within their community.

"What do you think happens if they come back here while I don't have my spear or any of my gear?"

"Why we defend ourselves, of course." Creyla cut in and Sobelle hoped she would. The woman was confident in her cause so she probably thinks that her belief that everyone would be ready to defend themselves when the greenskins come back was right. It wasn't. Everyone was still scared: for one, the women that Sobelle used as bait were still terrified of the goblins and two, the men who came with her to the camp saw the state of the two women the goblins kidnapped and were scared the same would happen to their wives.

All Sobelle needed to do was to call her bluff.

"Then do it." Sobelle hid her smirk when Creyla suddenly flinched. She turned to her brother, "grab a weapon, go out there, and start hunting greenskins to prevent their numbers from increasing any further."

"He wouldn't do that—" Rell, her brother's wife and the mother of their two children, stopped when Sobelle turned to her.

"So it's you, then? How about you go out and forage? You don't have to kill goblins like I do." Sobelle moved on and pointed to the wife of one of the men who came to the camp with her.

"How about her? She could go out and forage—""She won't do that!" The man stood in front of his wife protectively.

"And I won't go out to hunt goblins either, getting diseases from one of those things is not going to be the death of me." Everyone paled at the reminder of just how dangerous a Goblin encounter is. The diseases were the main reason why no one dared to hit them, and an adeptness over the spear was the only way to prevent it.

"Then die." Sobelle walked to the gates. She needed to burn away her frustration and she'd do it by finishing the routine the Gods gave her.

"I won't be able to do any of that, and I won't be able to kill a Pudge the next time it comes here too, all thanks to a few people who thought that my weapons were toys."