eurekapd Chapter 41 - World War Clay
Chapter 41 - World War Clay
Chapter 41 - World War ClayI’d consulted the bestiary on the desert monsters Rufus claimed were so dangerous, and it said that some of them could get up as high as level 40 or 50. There were even in the area that were in the high 60’s. Plus some sort of ancient skyborne predator that didn’t leave witnesses, but was presumed to be somewhere in the 90’s. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said I could take a thousand goblins into the desert and I’d lose a thousand goblins. But I had to wonder how Rufus and the ifrit were able to travel the region safely, and what prevented these monsters from destroying the artificer city.
Eventually, we would have to face monsters like that. And the majority of the fighting force would be Goblins. Goblins, as the System was often quick to remind me with floating numbers superimposed on my vision, were perpetually level 1. The Rava creature at the ultimate disadvantage individually, incapable of speech, and completely unable to pull in the same direction. Until I arrived. The first stone sloth we’d killed had been a happy accident, and it had still killed a third of my tribe at the time. For the second, we’d had to rig a minefield of bomb-fruits, and even trying to avoid conflict all-together, we’d lost the entirety of our bomb-fruit stock and a half-dozen goblins—albeit, technically entirely to friendly fire.
As a tribe, we were iterating. The goblins were adapting. They were constantly developing to respond to greater and greater threats. And so was I. When I’d arrived on Rava, I spent most of the early days flailing like a newborn. But I was learning how to effectively apply what resources I had, and my lieutenants had given me new confidence in the ability for the entire system to function. And it didn’t function because of the taskmasters. It functioned because at the lowest common denominator, the common, non-variant goblin, was still at least as competent as the average government worker. Hell, if my local DMV had been staffed entirely by goblins (maybe taskmaster in the back office), my license might not have had my name misspelled as , the wrong street address, and a picture of the senior citizen from the booth next to me.
It might have been nibbled a bit at the corners, though.
You might think to yourself that the people running the local licensing office aren’t the same ones responsible for overseeing the projects going at NASA, and by extension, their sometimes private-sector space partners like NuEarth. You’d be wrong. It’s the same people. Only, they’re in charge of engineers and scientists instead of fax machines and decade-old web cameras. Really, I wasn’t even re-inventing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I was just relocating it..
The longest, most arduous part of this expedition wasn’t creating the tools, or the mobile bluff, or the wagons. It was simply manufacturing enough cordage to make a net capable of holding such a large stone-sloth.
Each of the slingers angled their crossbows up and fired. The net sprung up from where we’d laid it out near the rockets. The launched slinger anchors drew the net taut against the wooden stakes holding it in the ground, and then draped it over the bulk of the sloth. It roared in confusion, pulling against the net.
“Stakers!”
The slinger goblins on the other side of the sloth dropped their bows and unslung mallets from their backs. They ran up and placed more wooden stakes on the far-side of the net, hammering them down into the ground to secure the trap. We’d done it.
Shouts of alarm drew my attention, and I thought the straining sloth-bear might be strong enough to rip through the net. But what I saw was something else entirely. Several of the goblins had spotted forms in the trees across the river: a squad of javeline maulers, watching us with their thick arms crossed.
“Stay focused!” I shouted. “Stage 4. Finish the job!”
I picked up one of the discarded slingers as the phalanx fanned out. I held it low, crooked in the corner of my arm as I made my way to the near side of the riverbank across from the armored maulers. Behind me, the stone-sloth roared as the goblins pressed in from all sides and delivered death from a thousand cuts to the restrained monster.
The javeline prodded each other and pointed to my prosthetic legs. The largest among them, a level 18–nearly strong enough to challenge the stone-sloth in his own right—stepped forward with his heavy spear and pointed it at me.
“You are talking goblin, yes? You make big fire and wooden bird and ride dog? Do not die?”
“That’s right,” I shouted back. “I’m the talking goblin. Who are you?”
“I am Hrott, brother of Rotte.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Did you come to take my tongue and my ears, too?”
Hrott thumped the butt of his spear into the turf. “I am a taker only of , little goblin. prince of Habber men make demand you come. So, you come talk man prince.”
A few goblins ran to join me, spears in hand that were tipped in blood. A glance behind told me the fight was reaching its end, and the clay deposit was as good as ours. The goblins at my side hooted, squawked, and hissed at the javeline, jumping up and down. A few pointed their own slingers.
I put on my best deep-southern drawl. “So what yer sayin’ is, ya’ll are with the gov’ment?”
“What you say, little talk-goblin?”
I leveled the slinger. “Folk ‘round these parts don’t care fer gov’ment types. Ya’ll need to be movin’ on.”
“I not understand small goblin voice. Speak you me clear.”
“This clear enough for you?” I asked as I pulled the trigger on my slinger. The jar shot out, arcing over to the other side of the bank, where it fell short. It was not a precision instrument, after all. But it made a nice little and covered the trio in mud. Hrott shied back, and then roared in rage and what must have been profanities in his native language. One of the others leveled a crossbow at me, but Hrott pushed it down. Not only did he want me alive, but he probably knew from Rotte that the System kept me from dying anyway. A few other goblins let loose with rocks from their slingers, and one even threw his spear, which fell woefully short and splashed into the river. The spearman’s compatriots rained blows on him by way of admonishment.
“This is being mistake, little talk-goblin! We will bleed you and then crush you.”
I yanked the crank on the slinger to reset the sled and held out my hand, palm up. Another goblin dropped a new popper into it, and I fit it to the slinger and brought my sights up. “My only mistake was missing your head, javellero. And I’m not in the habit of repeating my mistakes.”
The boar-dwarf growled within his helmet. But the goblins had finished off the stone-sloth and were starting to bring more of their own slingers over. Maybe taunting them was an error. But the sensation of Rotte’s spear punching through my chest was still fresh in my memory, called to the surface with a visceral, sharp phantom. The most efficient way to wipe out Tribe Apollo would be to capture me again and then stab me 130 times until I was the only one left. For the sake of the tribe, I couldn’t put myself in position to be captured by javelines again. And I would have to be a damn fool to give my well-being over to the care of these cruel brutes.
If this human prince wanted me, he could come out here and talk to me himself.