Chapter Sixty-Eight - A Dormitory for Goblins

Chapter Sixty-Eight - A Dormitory for Goblins The next room was more of the same... sort of. Becky and I went around the pillar and into the next alcove, where we found another deep passage moving away from the central room. There were walls in place made of draped cloth hanging off wooden poles, the bottoms stained where countless goblin hands had shoved them aside. I moved the curtains out of the way with the tip of my sword and snuck forwards, Becky walking in casually behind me. The space was... a dormitory? Or something like it. There were beds stacked one atop the other, all makeshift, all rather small. Goblin runts looked up as we came in, some of them in the middle of a hasty meal or caught mid spar. I did a quick and probably inaccurate head-count. Thirty goblins. But unlike the last room, where there had been a few larger goblins and that one shaman, these were all runts. Some were smaller, even, than the average, and it didn't look like there was much by means of weaponry around. Still, thirty of them. One of the nearest goblins hissed and leapt at me, but I swiped my sword and almost took off his head. "Gross," I said. "Yeah, they're nasty lil things," Becky said. "Good exp tho!" I was pretty sure it didn't work like that, but whatever. The goblins came in at us, only some stopping to grab anything that might pass as a weapon, usually a chair or some utensils. There wasn't space or time for finesse. I just started hacking and slashing, trying to kill the goblins as quickly and efficiently as possible. It helped that these were a little weaker than the norm. Eventually, I fell into a rhythm. Step in, kick, hop back out of the way of a swing, stab. Then lunge, and slash. The goblins didn't have any real endurance, they were easier to kill than those kobolds I'd first fought, and they were just as naked in most cases. Becky was having her own fun to the side, being a lot more aggressive than I was. It worked out. She pushed in, and when the goblins turned to circle around behind her, I'd take them out. In short order, the room was cleared. "That... ah, that was easier," I said. I was a bit winded, but unhurt. "Tsk, you saw that, but ouch," Becky said. She had a fork stuck in her forearm, an old two-tine sort that looked decently sharp. "How long did you say infections took to set in?" "A few hours," I said. "Hmm... I should clean this anyway." "It won't matter," I said. "You don't know that," she replied, and I blinked. "I rather think I do?" She shook her head. "You don't know if it's only your perception of time that goes back, or if you're hopping heads in the multiverse, or if you're spinning out countless new realities with each loop. For all I know, this me is the real me and will always be the real me." I stared at her. "That wasn't something I'd actually considered." "You don't need to consider it, just read a book from someone who has." "You read books?" I asked. She scoffed. "No. I'm a streaming and chill sort. But you do, I bet. Ohhh, is your non-secret identity related to books?" "No," I said. "I bet you're like... a hot librarian. That's your day-job." "I don't think 'hot' librarian is a job," I said. "Looks like there's a room at the end, again." There was a small doorway in the far wall. When we opened it, it led into another sleeping space, only this one had fewer beds and was empty. Empty save for some detritus on the floor, and a chest. "Ohh!" Becky said as she darted over. She kicked the box open, then blinked at the contents. "A tooth?" She pulled it out. A tooth on a necklace. "Could be enchanted, we should be care--" She put it on, then looked down at it. "Does it match my fit?" she asked. "No," I said honestly. "Too primal. Primal isn't punk, even if punk is primal." "Oh my god," Becky gasped. She pointed at me. "Hot record store clerk." "Also no," I said. "Are there even still record stores around?" Becky didn't seem to be curling over in horrific pain, so whatever magic was inlaid into that necklace, if any, didn't seem immediately dangerous. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. I figured there was no harm in letting her keep it. Heck, I didn't care to keep all of the loot in that last loop either, not unless it was something particularly good. We took a two minute break, then left the alcove and moved onto the next, the last one on the right side of the main chamber. This one had a doorway, and a wall for that doorway to be set into. The construction was solid, still a bit makeshift, but noticeably higher quality than just about anything else we'd come across. Becky kicked the door in with her clunky boots and stomped in, then stopped. Inside were only a dozen goblins, but unlike the previous alcove, where they were all runts, there were bigger, more muscular, and each and every one had armour on. One of them, at the rear, was a massive specimen of a goblin, with a hammer and reforged plate-mail covering much of his body. He had an apron over his front, filled with old smithing tools. I glanced around quickly, taking in the space. It was a forge. There were blocks of metal to serve as anvils and simple hammers, as well as unfinished armours and buckets filled with arrows and more filled with crude weapons. "Wow," Becky said. "So, is this the elite squad?" The goblin in charge roaded, picking up a hammer and pointing it at her. "Guess so!" Becky said. I prepared myself for a tough fight, but Becky opened it up with a massive electrical surge, bolts of electricity jumping off of her and connecting to anything metallic around the room. That meant all of the goblins, but some struck random bits and bobs, and a small bolt jumped to my sword before I could tap it to the floor to ground it. The shock ran up my arm and made my entire body tense up. A flash of a memory, of a much younger me accidentally plugging something into a wall socket wrong and touching a prong, surfaced, and I gasped as the shock passed. The goblin, in the centre of the space Becky was aiming for, fared a lot worse. They squealed and cursed in their feral tongue, and one simply slumped to the ground, then nearest, who took the brunt of the attack destined for some of the goblins behind. "Let's dance, bitches!" Becky punched the nearest-still standing goblin in the face, and that prompted me to move. Just in case, I pulled out my revolver. I didn't want to have to use it at all, if I could avoid it, but there was a chance that I might not have a choice. I'd seen a round ping off armour in the previous loop, so I figured my best bet was going to be to aim at something fleshy if the opportunity came up. I moved over, stabbed a goblin in the eye with a quick jab that I would probably have missed last loop, then ducked back as one of the others swung at me with a clever. This fight was a lot more hairy. I couldn't just swing wildly and hope for the best, the goblins were bigger, tougher, seemed to know what they were doing, and moved with a bit more confidence and less wild abandon. Becky still ploughed through four of them in a matter of seconds and I decided to fall into more of a support role, cutting at exposed limbs, kicking heavy bodies back when I could, and at one point smashing my shoulder into a goblin to send it crashing into another. The fight ended... maybe two minutes after it began. The forge was left a mess, bodies on the ground, blood sprayed all over, but none of it was ours, which I supposed was what mattered. "That was... tiring," I said. "Good thing they're weak and slow, huh?" Becky asked with a sharp grin. They... were. They had the movement speed of an average person, for the most part, but I suspected that they were a fair bit weaker overall. "The entire portal is all about numbers," I said. "Yeah. You said there was a bad breach?" "Some dozen dead," I replied. Becky worked her jaw, then looked around. "Lot more than a dozen monsters in here. But yeah, I can see it. Some nanas and kids out there. They'd get taken down by one of these for sure." She kicked one of the goblins in the side, boot making a metal clank at the impact. "Come on, let's see if there's anything worth grabbing, then we can see if there's anything in the next set of alcoves." ***