Chapter 314: Chapter 2.32

In a relatively dark forest, a few hours off the main road, I laid on the ground covered by moss. Hannah was right next to me, peeking over a roof of a big tree towards a clearing quite a few metres away.

“That´s really small.” I whispered and grabbed my chin. The village was truly tiny, both in claimed land, and in the size of the houses which were quite shabby. Most of it wasn’t even built out of wood, but rather by animal furs supported with whatever the demons could find in the forest.

The inhabitants themselves weren’t better off in any way. They wore lumps at best, and at worst, nothing. Surprisingly though, this fact wasn’t what disgusted me the most. These goblins were simply too ugly for my part.

They were small like a child, but their skin was wrinkled and green, taking all the childish innocence they could possibly have away from then. Their ears were also a bit pointed, just like that of an elf. But elven eyes were much better to look at, especially because they weren’t hairy at all.

The goblins were scooting around a dead deer in the middle of the camp, skinning it while screaming animalistic about their successful hunt. And much like that animal, they seem to have forgotten how to secure their camp as none of the around hundred goblins even bothered to guard their home which was surrounded by around a hundred soldiers in leather armour.

“Okay Hannah, what´s the plan?” I asked while ducking after one of the goblins possibly saw me.

“They are already encircled and because you wanted some of them captured, we decided to let a few of them alive at the end.” It was true that I needed to have a friendly chat with them, but I did want to capture the healthy ones, not those left alive which were possibly either too young to fight, or too old. A bit disgruntled, I peeked over the root and looked at an approaching goblin who showed me his crocked teeth as he saw me.

“I´ll try to lure in a few of the stronger ones.” I whispered and stood up from the ground, scratching my cheek in awkwardness. I intend to play the weak girl, but that wasn’t exactly necessary as he didn’t even warn his comrades or anything. So much for my plans.

“Español? Cómo estás?” I asked to make myself more of a target which he only replied to with a language I certainly didn´t know.

“Guru guru! Grrr, grrr!” What was this? The language of pigeons?

“Guru?” My pigeonish was a bit rusty, but at least a few others noticed me and used their tiny, tiny legs to scoot after the first one who spotted me. He obviously had a lead as he was only a few metres away from me at this point, while I stepped backwards slowly while nodding towards Hannah who hid behind the wide tree.

Sadly, the sun didn´t just rob my strength, but also made me incredibly sluggish which was why I slid down the slope we used to hide ourselves behind rather clumsily. And then …

I fell over a root.

Seriously, can you imagine the eternal queen falling over a root while she runs away from a few goblins? Such a shame. Cursing, I luckily landed on my hands, only dirtying my knees and gloves which was already enough for me as the ground was quite wet.

“Merde! ¡Cómo odio esta mierda! ¡Que te cocines en el purgatorio!“ Angrily, I rubbed my hands to get the dirt off the gloves which didn’t work that well. I didn’t even bother with the goblin behind me but was already searching for a way to get the dirt off my black gloves which didn’t include smearing it on the only attire I had.

Electricity crackled behind me and animalistic screams erupted as I picked up a leaf to rub it between my hands. My gloves felt quite wet on my skin, thanks to something I must have touched. “Dziękuję Ci. Nienawidzę tego.” I growled angrily and got rid of my gloves at last as I was incapable of cleaning them. It still felt as if something was on my skin, but it was way better than before, probably also thanks to all the death spreading in the goblin village.

Still, I was a bit frustrated as I started to like these gloves somewhat and turned around to look at the goblin lying face down in front of my feet.  His back was a bit charred from the electricity that must have hit him, but he was still alive.

“You know, I really wanted you to stay alive, but you are the reason my gloves are trash now. Thank you.” I mentioned casually, placed my heel on his neck and used my whole weight to press down on it. Surprisingly, his neck snapped and I immediately felt death spreading beneath my foot as well.

Giggling a bit, I climbed the slope again while making sure I had steady footing. The screams were still resounding in the village, but already quieted down a bit. I only stopped near the large tree where a few goblins laid on the ground, seemingly paralyzed and in quite a lot of pain. With my right foot, I rolled one of them over to stare at his eyes, which showed me a wide range of emotions. From fear to anger, everything was there. I honestly didn´t expect that.

“Guru?” I asked, placing my heel on his hand to crush it with my weight. At once, I could see his emotions turning into terror, which immediately bought a smile onto my face. “I´m so glad that you aren’t a complete animal yet.”

The way they lived in the forest wasn´t that different from an animal after all, if one ignored the makeshift houses and crude tools they were able to use. But their emotions showed that they indeed must have an intelligent ancestor. Giving him my sweetest smile once more, I turned around to look at the mercenaries as they rounded up the rest of the goblins in the centre of the clearing and either bashed them unconscious or killed them right away, depending on their resistance.

A bit happy about witnessing such a gory scene, I strolled towards Hannah who investigated one of these makeshift houses and waved me over. I immediately strolled over to her, curious about what I may find. She pulled the fur to the side as I was nearby, revealing two very naked, very pregnant human woman, bound by their wrists and gagged with a bit of whatever was left of their attire.

Before they even caught a glimpse of me with their pleading eyes, I already turned around and strolled away from them. Hannah immediately let the cloth fall once more and ran up to me but didn’t say anything until I sat down onto a nearby stump and stared at the goblins who were getting bound with ropes.

“Well, that explains a few things.” I mumbled while looking at the soldiers.

“Huh?” Hannah said, quite surprised that I wasn’t admonishing her in any way. It was true that I didn´t want these woman to see me, but I doubted Hannah was at fault.

“It is quite unlikely that multiple humans got turned into the same demonic race at the same time in roughly the same area. That …” I pointed towards the hut where the woman were in. “ … explains how these races could reproduce in their early days.”

“You have never heard of … that?” Hannah asked with a raised eyebrow. True, I did know lots of stuff, but all my knowledge came from books.

“This isn’t something anyone would write down in a book, is it? Anyways, how do you deal with them usually?” I asked while I noticed how Marc split off the rest of the troops heading towards us.

“We free them. Do you have something else in mind?” Hannah mentioned and looked at the hut.

“Put them out of their misery. Without anyone noticing if possible.” I said dryly and Hannah stood up immediately. She strolled towards the hut, but before she could even come close to it, Marc changed his course and peeked behind the fur.

“Hannah.” I shook my head in annoyance and clicked my tongue. I knew that Marc would make a scene once he found out what we did, thus making getting rid of them the worst choice by far. “Let him deal with them.” That´s right, he was going to take the lead of the mercenaries anyway, so he could take upon the burden of helping them. I must have stared at Marc a little bit too much as he went over to us shortly after giving out a few orders.

“There are captives.” He told Hannah, without looking at me at all as if I was the third wheel or so.

“What are you doing then? Go save them.” I said cheerfully.

“We are already doing that … princess, your knees are dirty.” He said while eying the dirt on my attire.

“I need all goblins bound to the surrounding trees. You may leave afterwards.” I obviously ignored his question as answering it was … troubling.

“You are married?” He said as he saw my royal shiny ring for the first time. I exhaled a bit bored as I already told him I was the first Queen.

“Yeah, we usually live happily together in the elven forest with three kids and his parents. My husbands’ name is Bob Bobonius, he butchers pigeons for work. My kids are called Bobo, Bothersome and Boondoggle. One of them aspires to follow his father´s footsteps while my other two kids are training to become professionals at answering unnecessary and boring questions.” I said dryly and shot him a deathly glare.

“He must be so lucky to have you.” Was I that bad of a wife? Surely not. I never heard any complaints from the king after all.

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“So much that he isn’t even aware of his luck. Marc, do what she asked from you.” Hannah said and nodded towards the captured goblins. Reluctantly, he nodded and went back to his soldiers to order them around or whatever a good commander was supposed to do. Fifteen minutes of sitting on the tree stump later, the mercenaries indeed managed to bind every goblin to a tree and left shortly afterwards. Only Hannah and Marc remained behind which wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but whatever.

“Marc, if you would be so kind to hand your knife over.” I asked while extending my hand towards him. Reluctantly, he handed me an old but still sharp knife and I strolled towards the nearest goblin who was throwing himself against his bindings. I knelt down in front of the goblin and looked at its face as he attempted to take a bite out of me.

“I don’t taste that good.” I said and poked his arm with the knife. Red blood flowed out of the wound, just like a human one would. After I pulled the knife out of the wound though and ignored its howling for a second, I licked the blade and immediately spat it out again. It tasted so incredibly foul that animal blood was a delicatesse in comparison. “Does anyone know what species they originated from?”

“They first appeared in the south of the Kingdom and spread over the whole continent like the plague. They aren’t strong, but they make up for it with insane reproduction.”

“It is still fascinating that the mana sickness can create new races within seconds. That the goblins follow an r-selection strategy while their ancestry isn´t … how old do they get?” Those who reproduce faster usually die faster.

“How should we know?” Marc asked.

“Don’t tell me nobody ever researched these things.” I said indignantly. Maybe it was a bit unfair to ask Hannah and Marc these questions as it really wasn’t in their field of expertise.

“You are the bookworm.” Hannah noted.

“True … but I had better things to read than the biology of the common goblin. Who do you think is the oldest one of the bunch?” I asked and looked around.

“Possibly the one who has grey hair.” Marc noted and pointed towards one who had a deep cut in his leg. Every bit of his hair was grey and the wrinkled skin was truly a bit more wrinkly than the one of his neighbours.

“Humans can get grey hair with twenty … but I see your logic.” I commented and strolled towards him. Weakly, the goblin looked at me with a hint of wisdom in his eyes. He knew what was about to come, which made things fairly easy for me.

“Purgat'ry, closeth thy gates f'r this po'r goblin in front of me.  Don’t alloweth that gent escapeth mine own grasp until i alloweth wend. Soul Chain.” I whispered in front of the goblin and grinned as I finished. A puddle of black tar formed beneath him, seemingly flowing out of cracks in the ground. Black tendrils rose up from it, latching unto his body and seeping into it within a few seconds.

The goblin, still unaffected only looked at me as I stood up again and held the knife right before his right eye. Slowly, I pushed the tip of the knife into his eye while enjoying the screams he was giving me. They were truly animalistic and inhumane but still quite pleasuring to hear nonetheless. Especially his struggles were great, as he decided to impale his head onto the knife as his death apparently came too slowly for him.

“I am so happy this race exists!” I said as I pushed the head of the corpse to the side and looked at the soul which had the exact form as the corpse. It just glowed in a gentle blue, but otherwise, it was the completely same person.

“… are you insane?” Marc asked as I smeared the blood onto the dead goblin who was still hold up by the ropes securing him to the tree.

“No? I´m a very stable genius? It is just that I have finally found a race that will always be smaller than me, no matter how old they get!” I exclaimed and danced around happily. Truly, this endeavour here was perfect so far.

“I see … and how do you know that he won´t grow anymore?” Marc asked while looking at me and the corpse alternately.

“He´s dead … dummy.” I said and began to cut through the ropes which didn’t work out too well. Only as Hannah cut through them with her sword did the corpse fall down completely, fully revealing the soul of the goblin, at least for me. “He is … six years old.” I concluded after eyeing every inch intensely and looking at every place where the soul seemed to be slightly damaged and couldn’t fix itself alone. Using that, I could roughly gauge the time a soul has spent outside of purgatory.

“What are you looking at?” Hannah asked out of curiosity.

“His soul …” I mumbled absentmindedly and gripped the knife tightly once more. I looked around, immediately found my next victim and walked towards her. Mercilessly, I pushed the knife through her eyes without giving a damn about how funny it would be to torture her. A few seconds afterwards, I looked down onto the corpse and frowned slightly. “Has anyone seen a younger goblin here?” I asked shortly afterwards.

“There were a few babies in that hut.” Marc said while making it very obvious what he thought about my question as he looked at me with utter disgust.

“I need fire.” I said and waved towards the soul still standing there very dead, without any hint of life in his eyes. I could wake him up out of his deep slumber, but sadly it wouldn’t change anything. I would still be incapable of communicating with him as I simply didn’t knew his language. And thus, black tendrils shot out of the black tar, winding themselves around his wrists, ankles and shoulders and pulled him to where he belonged shortly afterwards. As fast as it came, the black tar left this world together with him as if it was never there in the first place.

A few minutes later, I held a burning torch in hand and threw it inside the hut which I confirmed was filled with young goblins. I was watching the whole time as it burned down and listened to their cries alone, as Hannah found it a bit too distasteful and Marc couldn’t stand it either. Both agreed that it had to be done anyway, but neither wanted to witness it and thus excused themselves into the forest, leaving me with the bound goblins alone.

I found no issue with their decision, in particular because I didn’t want either of them to see my crazy grin as death was spreading around me. Well, after I confirmed I had zero issues with murdering their younglings, I visited every other goblin and cut them open one after another.

I wasn’t interested in anything in particular. I just wanted to know how their organs changed … and I obviously wanted to murder them. What I found out was quite interesting though. Not everything shrank down to size, some things even vanished altogether. None of them had an appendix, their liver was horribly deformed and their brains were incredibly small for their head size while their eyes and ears looked almost comically enlarged. Their lung was also quite weird as the left lung wrapped around the heart completely while the right was nearly gone. Otherwise though, I couldn’t find anything else, probably because I wasn’t a biologist. I just had a little interest in organs and blood.

As I finished I looked around the clearing and just wanted to walk away as I stopped.

“Hannah?” I screamed through the forest as loud as I could.

“I´m here!” She shouted back from my right, a few hundred metre into the forest. Luckily I didn’t stroll absentmindedly away from everyone … that would have been awkward. I immediately walked over to her, taking care not to fall down in the mud. “And? What did you learn?”

“Goblins aren’t graced with the gifts of life … I didn’t feel even remotely bad as I burned down that hut … which means this race isn’t a favourite of Irminsul.” I commented.

“I wonder why.” She said ironically.

“Yeah … me too.” I mumbled. I thought that all gods decided together that it was alright if a few mutated races popped up on this planet. In accordance with that decision, Irminsul must have given these races life as well, but not as much as the others. What that actually meant for these races was beyond my knowledge … but at least I could slaughter them indiscriminately because of that.

“Do you have their left ears?” Did I miss anything? Was there anything magical with their ears?

“What?” I asked a bit confused.

“… never mind.” She said and turned around to walk back to the others with me.

 

 

 

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