Hours had passed in the tunnels, during which Cody had fought six more goblins. It was still unsettling seeing the monsters appear, but it was getting a little bit easier with each fight. 

 

Although he was winning, it came at a cost. Cody was bleeding. It seemed like his invulnerability only extended to syringes at urgent care clinics, because since he entered the tunnels he'd been bitten, scratched, sliced, and stabbed. 

 

He had also lost the little stone knife in the very next fight. While stabbing the goblin through the stomach, Cody had used so much force that the knife, and his hand along with it, completely passed through the goblin's belly and shattered when it violently slammed into the stone wall behind. 

 

Luckily, the fourth goblin had a steel dagger. Unluckily, the goblin managed to stab him in the leg before Cody could finish him off. He struck it with a hammer fist to the top of the head that sent the goblin's skull directly to the floor, obliterating everything in between. 

 

Cody used the dagger to cut his sweatshirt into strips and wrapped up all his wounds as best he could. It helped that he wasn't bleeding too much, but it was one of the contributing factors to his exhaustion. After his wounds were tended, he used the remaining cloth to wrap up his fists. 

 

 

His clothes were quickly becoming rags, and everything was heavily soiled from sweat, grime, and blood.

 

He didn't know how long it had been. Hours, maybe? He was tired and needed to rest, but he didn't dare try to sleep in this place. So, he pushed on.

 

The fighting was intense; he didn't have much experience before today, and it was a steep learning curve. 

 

When Cody wasn't battling with goblins, he continued to explore the tunnels looking for an exit. Every time he came upon a dead end, he was forced to back track to another intersection and try a different path.

 

Between the marks he kept scratching in the tunnel walls and the corpses left behind, Cody had managed to keep from getting turned around too much in the network of tunnels.

 

It didn’t take many bloody goblin corpses to realize that their saliva, sweat, and especially blood, glowed brightly. Cody couldn't tell which substance coated the walls, and he didn’t want to know. 

 

What he did know is that he could use some of the blood as ink. So, Cody began to draw notes on the tunnel floors to help differentiate tunnels and identify dead ends and looped routes. After what seemed like days in the dark tunnels, Cody discovered that there was only one route left that he hadn't explored.

 

Fatigue began to wash over him and every step became harder. He wanted to rest badly. His intense thirst was overwhelming; his tongue felt like a dry stick in his mouth, and his head was beginning to feel fuzzy. 

 

He almost didn’t notice the way the tunnel began to change. 

 

The tunnel began to widen out, and as the walls became more distant, the tunnel became more dim. Cody realized, through his stupor, that he had almost become a human lantern. He chuckled stupidly to himself as he continued to shamble down the widening tunnel. 

 

The tunnel ceiling had risen up so far that it was lost in the darkness, and the walls suddenly cut sharply away to either side. 

 

Cody found himself staring into a cavernous room. Even in the darkness, he could see several of the goblins laying in heaps on one side of the cave. Due to the faint glowing lines on their skin, he could see their bodies rise and fall as they slept.

 

 

His eyes felt like they were grating in their sockets as they swept the room to make sure he didn't miss one of the little monsters. 

 

His heart almost skipped a beat as he saw a solitary goblin kneeling in the center of the room. He nearly missed it because it's skin was almost totally black and none of the glowing streaks shown through. However, even at this distance, he could tell that this one was easily as large as Cody himself.

 

So far, all of the fighting had been one on one in narrow tunnels. Cody had the advantage due to his size but more so from his newfound strength and durability. He could stab with his dagger, or punch a hole through a skull, or even punt one thirty feet down the tunnel with a tremendous kick, which had been the unfortunate fate of goblin #5.

 

His first thought had been to silently kill the sleeping goblins as quickly as possible, but that went out the window with the addition of the large goblin in the center. As Cody began to consider his next move, he idly shifted his weight and a stone crunched under his boot. 

 

The large goblin's head whipped around to stare directly at him. Unlike the goblins Cody had faced so far, this one's eyes were glowing intensely, almost pure white. It had prominent lower fangs, like tusks, extending out of its lips, and rivulets of glowing liquid were running from its mouth down the length of its body to the floor.

 

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGGG

 

A low guttural howl echoed from the cave walls, and the responding shrieks from Cody's side told him without looking that he was about to be in a desperate struggle against all four of these monsters at once.

 

Cody's body felt stiff, and he was horribly tired. Instead of becoming a hero, I'm going to die... 

 

The large goblin began running toward him with one arm awkwardly dragging behind him like dead weight. But, the smaller goblins were beating him to the punch. Cody turned too late and felt a blade cut into the top of his shoulder and strike the bone.

 

The injury knocked him off balance, and he narrowly avoided a second small goblin who was reaching for his throat by using his elbow to knock the goblin to the side. The third goblin was setting up to leap at him when Cody made the split-second decision to throw his dagger.

 

He threw the dagger, but whether the balance of the weapon was wrong or the technique, the hilt struck the goblin in the center of its chest.

 

Luckily, it didn’t matter. The force of the throw created a sickening crunch as the chest of the goblin caved inward.

 

Like a switch had been turned on inside him, Cody’s confidence ballooned. Each time he used his new power, it was like remembering what happened all over again. He still wasn’t used to his abilities and was gauging the outcomes based on what old Cody was capable of.

 

Grabbing the upper arm of the goblin that had cut him, Cody felt its bone crack. He whipped the body around and sent it sailing into the cave wall. It crumpled at the base, its body contorted into a mess of unnatural angles.

 

Hearing a nauseatingly wet cracking noise, Cody quickly pivoted on his heels. The large goblin had cleaved the last of the small goblins in half with an enormous sword it had been dragging. The goblin had a crazed look in its wide eyes and continued making squeals and screams as it charged at Cody.

 

The goblin was quicker than he anticipated and he couldn't escape the reach of the long sword sweeping towards him. 

 

 

The sword was longer than the goblin was tall, and it used the weight of the weapon to do most of the work. By whipping the huge sword over its head in long arcs, it let the blade fall hard on the target. A tried and tested technique, the big goblin had seen it effective time and time again. Dozens of enemies had fallen before the monstrous blade.

 

Cody raised his arms up to protect his skull as the blade came down. 

 

Kuhk!

 

The blade bit deeply into his arms, cutting flesh and beginning to cleave bone. Red blood splattered Cody’s face and began running down his arms.

 

Cody finally wavered. As his enemy bore down its weight on the blade, he was forced to take a knee. 

 

The face of the goblin was leering down at him from above, its teeth were clenched so hard that Cody could hear creaking, and its glowing saliva was dripping from its lips. It was witnessing the final moments of it’s prey’s life, as it had done countless times before. It would feast on its flesh afterwards and became stronger still. 

 

Things began to blur. He could see the metallic gleam of the sword reflecting the glowing pools of goblin blood, and he could feel his own warm blood running down his arms and torso. He vaguely registered the lightening of his arms as the sword was raised again. 

 

Exhausted, beaten, and bloodied, Cody felt like he had reached his limit. It felt like he had climbed a mountain, and just when he could see the summit ahead, a rockslide was sweeping him off the mountain. 

 

But moments before the rockslide was about to wash Cody over the side of the proverbial cliff, he barely held on.

 

The sword was beginning it’s final descent, the killing blow.

 

Cody launched himself at the goblin, his shoulder slamming into the monster’s legs and knocking them both to the ground in a tangled mess. A loud clang sounded through the cavern as the goblin lost it’s hold on the sword and it fell to the ground.

 

The goblin was quicker to its feet and was already scrambling to retrieve the weapon. Cody pulled himself up and pursued the creature. The sword was too heavy for the goblin to use with any kind of agility, and Cody banked on that handicap. 

 

As the goblin began to swing the sword at a charging Cody, it was already too late.

 

Cody let out a feral roar as he grabbed the goblin by the neck, and lifted him as high as he could before slamming him into the stove floor with as much strength as he had remaining.

 

CCCCRRRRAAAACCCCKKKK

 

The force of the blow cratered the stone below the goblin's body. The creature's flesh split and burst, spilling blood, guts, and entrails onto the floor and began to fill the bottom of the crater.

 

An audible hiss filled Cody's ears and fresh air rushed in from down the tunnel, swirling wildly around the chamber. 

 

He crawled off of the ruined corpse of the goblin and collapsed on the floor beside it. I explored it all, I'm... done.

 

As he lay on the cold stone, Cody finally succumbed to the exhaustion.