*CREAK*
Ethan could only think one thing before everything went to another level of hell in a handbasket.
'Oh no.'
The floor began to sink down in the middle, at first it was an imperceptible tilt accompanied by the groan of the wood. Then there was a slight jerk as something gave way and this was finally followed by the entire goremound giving way.
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!"
"KIIIIII!"
"YAAAAA!"
Numerous shouts and high pitched squeals sounded out from the Goblins as in slow motion they all remained in the air for a moment of a moment before following Ethan and the floor downwards, the distance was only around 6 feet but there were other things to take note of than the height of the fall.
What had happened was that over time the water and blood of the gore mound had waterlogged the wooden floor. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem however more than ten years ago the flooring was replaced but never treated- the price you pay for trying to save money by hiring a handyman to replace your flooring instead of a professional. Over years of liquids falling on the boards and slowly rotting, the weight of the now tens of bodies (not including Ethan and the Goblins) plus the juices and a little bit of actual damage due to Ethan's subconsciously spreading roots, everything came together to have caused the floor to give way entirely in an almost circular ring right in the center of Ethan's apartment.
As the Goblins landed, one was impaled on one of Ethan's snapped femurs, the bone going right through the top of his mouth and into his brain, taking the light right out of its eyes.
'Holy shit.'
One Goblin was crushed and killed by the desk that tumbled into the hole afterwards, another Goblin was also crushed but unfortunately wasn't killed, it was alive but definitely had become a paraplegic as it rolled around shrieking.
'That's so fucked.'
A couch in the apartment below had caused a metal pipe to snap and break through the floor, pointing upwards at a dangerous angle, as one of the unlucky few meat hauling Goblins fell and was skewered from ass to head, Ethan couldn't help but feel Vlad the Impaler would've been proud, the Goblin unfortunately did not die instantly as the pipe didn't reach the brain so it was stuck whimpering and flailing around on the pipe as the remains of the water within the pipe gurgled out of its mouth with a red tint due to the water pressure.
'Scariest water fountain award goes to me.'
The already smashed fish tank, sitting atop a chest of drawers, also fell in and luckily the drawers missed hitting anything, the tank however with it's three unbroken sides tumbled down and smashed atop the wooden drawers firing shards across the space, taking out two Goblins instantly and injuring another who had landed on top of another Goblin. The shards just barely missed Ethan due to his small size. He felt a metaphorical cold sweat run down his back knowing if he'd been even an inch taller he would've been cut or killed as he thought back to the pizza shaped shard that flew right over his head.
The final piece of furniture that followed the floor was his desk chair, which fell after the rest of the furniture because of its shape. This piece of furniture did affect Ethan. As it dropped and fell one of the wheels flew off and clocked him right in the nose.
"AGH! FUCKER! OW! SHIT!"
Bleeding from his nose was a sort of thick white sap and after Ethan had finished cursing to take some of the pain away, he looked around at his surroundings, the sound of liquid running from his now tilted angle. Ethan could hear the blood flowing off the platform in the room and on to the previously clean apartment floor.
'Shit, what if this happens again?!'
Looking around the apartment he saw the decorative taste of the previous occupant was rather peppy. It was decorated with a pastel blue and pink theme like you might see in a baby's bedroom and it was definitely more refreshing than the dirty gray-ish walls in his own apartment. On the walls there were pictures of flowers and grassy meadows, it was honestly hard to compare this to his own experience living in this building. It almost felt like he'd gone to another building in a more expensive part of town. It wasn't that the apartment was bigger, it just felt more fresh and new.
The apartment door was similarly smashed as his door was upstairs and as he was examining things from his slightly elevated vantage point on his ragged gore filled platform several of the meat hauling Goblins came into view in the corridor outside, dragging something Ethan had never seen before. As Ethan looked at the strange hairy humanoid with the head of a boar the Goblins were also similarly surprised and became confused trying to equate the fact their nest was on the third floor now instead of the fourth, maybe they just remembered wrong. Shrugging it off the Goblins started trying to bring the fat hairy boar man in through the door but were having difficulty until one of the three Goblin's faces lit up like he'd just had a eureka moment. He lifted his broken fire axe that had only half the handle and started cutting the boar man into pieces to fit him through the hole in the door.
'I'm pretty sure that's a Japanese Orc. It's basically a pig man but with brown skin and fuzz all over it, no signs of any weapons or anything but those tusks are nasty and it's probably quite strong too, maybe Goblins are more capable in fights than I thought.'
Ethan was beginning to respect the combat strength of the Goblins which was a mistake. Goblins aren't strong and are almost at the bottom of the food chain in the new world but they make up for that lack of individual ability with swarm tactics. The boar man had actually taken over twenty-three Goblins to down, it would've taken half that number if Ethan hadn't made them less aggressive with his first spore strain. All that remained of those twenty were these six. On top of that he only had some four protectors that had survived of the original ten or so he had before the floor had collapsed.
Things were not looking good for his Goblin pawns.
'Maybe some other meat haulers are still out there, they'll be back later.'
As he thought this the arms and head of the Jorc had been taken off and thrown into the room now the goblins were trying to pull the rest in but the frame was too wide for the doorway so resorted to cutting the belly into chunks and tossing them inside, sometimes a protector Goblin would grab it from the air and chew on it like it was bubblegum.
Coincidentally the Jorc head had landed further up the tilted platform Ethan was on and it had rolled down towards him, stopped at the entangled roots where the Fly eggs were, it was facing him and lying at an angle like someone lying sideways on a pillow. Thankfully the eyes were closed, Ethan didn't want the unnerving head staring at him all day, every day.
There was a muffled explosion coming from outside, somewhere in the city and Ethan felt it sounded a bit far away until he remembered his open window was now a floor above, he looked around to see all the windows in this apartment were closed.
'Aaaand there goes my ability to spread spores on my own, I am now entirely reliant on the Goblins to spread any spores I make. That's really risky.'
Becoming more and more worried about his inability to spread his spores, Ethan made his biggest mistake yet, he attempted to use [Create Spores] in a panicked state of mind on his Goblins and his imagination kept picturing terrible scenarios of what would happen if he couldn't get this to work.
The spores appeared on his head but unlike his previous spores, these ones were black and red. They looked dangerous, like bad news to anyone who saw it.
"More spores my minions! Come and spread them!"
As before, the remaining mobile Protector Goblins came over and infected themselves and what happened next would be the reason that New York City and much of the Eastern United States would become uninhabitable for years to come and cause the deaths of over 90% of the inhabitants in the affected areas, eventually causing Ethan to be labelled as Pure Evil and an Enemy to all of Humanity when it was accidentally discovered he was responsible.
Of the four Protector Goblins, three died. This was the first thing that surprised Ethan.
'Yeah definitely gets harder to add more infections, the death rate gets higher eve-'
Ethan's thoughts were stopped as he looked at the surviving Goblin with his mouth agape, watching as it began to change in ways he hadn't planned.
The Goblin began to shudder but remained standing, its eyes rolled up in its head as the skin colour of the Goblin changed and grew darker. The size of the Goblin grew to twice its normal size and the frame also grew wider by just as much. Small red nubs appeared in random places on its body and grew outwards turning into vicious looking spikes made out of bone or horn. The spikes also sprouted from its head making it look like an imp or some type of devil creature, by this point the entire body had turned various shades of black, gray and brown. The hands of the Goblin grew spores, identical to the ones on Ethan's cap but far less abundant, looking like they weren't meant to be there but that the hand had wiped something unintentionally. The claws on the Goblins larger hands looked like black sickles with a black glint when the light reflected off them.
The Goblin, if it could still be called that, towered over Ethan as the eyes fell back from rolling and began to look around. Their sclera turned black like being dyed with ink and combined with the already yellow eyes of the Goblin, it was safe to say Ethan might've pissed himself if he could.
'It's going to fucking kill me, I've gone and fucking done it now.'
The demonic looking beast looked at Ethan for a few moments with no intelligence in its eyes before it roared a wheezy roar showing off it's now black and red mouth that looked like an inverted durian fruit.
The Meat Goblins all began to shriek and tried to run away, the doorway clogged with a combination of half a Jorc corpse and the four of them trying to get out at the same time, complete with elbows and biting.
The creature turned around and leapt towards them. As soon as it was in range it began to furiously shred all of them with its claws. After a few swings and now more movement, it turned around to the still alive but injured or dying Goblins and did the same to them. Lasty it looked at the corpses and began to swipe the corpses. It only hit each corpse once before moving on to the next.
To Ethan's relief after the Corpses it just meandered around the room, chewing on bits of gore with dead eyes like a machine.
Then a truly hellish thing happened. The Goblin corpses from the door, that still had heads, began to twitch and shudder, they changed similarly to the first but their changes weren't so drastic. Their changes only consisted of colour changes and some short red spikes all over the body. The Goblins eventually settled down since they were still jammed in the door and began to chew on the Jorc corpse below them.
Next the previously injured or immobile Goblins also changed and their changes were as profound. The Goblin that had it's legs crushed just decided to start clawing itself around and stuffing its face with bits of Gore within reach. The Goblin that was skewered on the pipe kept trying to reach the meat but stopped.
Finally the corpses changed; this was objectively more interesting because a fair number of the corpses weren't Goblins. The corpses all changed but the way they did so was different. First they changed to match the same colours as the others and even sprouted red spikes all over their bodies but their eyes remained white as if they were blind and instead of eating from the Gore all those who had the limbs just stood up and stayed there motionlessly.
From outside the apartment through the wedged Goblins Ethan could hear the grunts and shouts of the last Meat Goblins from the nest trying to bring more meat up the stairs, but he wasn't the only one who heard it, all the creatures in the apartment heard this and began to shriek as one in the same monotone mid-high pitch before bolting at the door like it wasn't there, the wedged Goblins squirmed but couldn't break out. The Corpses ran towards the door and just smashed into it, scrambling their clawed fingers over the door and gnawing it with their spiked black teeth, marking it badly and they surely would've gotten through eventually if the monster that used to be the Protector Goblin didn't also run towards the door. It smashed a good number of them into paste doing so but did break the door down.
Ethan watched as the beast left the apartment followed by the screeching of the Goblins on the stairs, several of them running and watched the infected 'things' he had made left to chase, even the legless Goblin dragged itself towards the door and after a minute or two Ethan watched it leave the apartment before hearing it tumble down the stairs.
'Oh my fucking god, they're Zombies! I made Monster Zombies!'
In absolute shock Ethan just sat there, numb. He could feel them, out there, running around. He couldn't point out their exact locations but he could feel them and he could also feel every time there was another one. It was like they were connected to him somehow and he was connected to them. It wasn't an exchange of thoughts or feelings, it was more like a signal saying "I'm this way" and a sense of a general direction. Every time another connection appeared he felt the signal get stronger but he wasn't sure what this meant. He could only rely on the feeling he got from his instincts that this was a good thing, even though Ethan knew that for everyone but him, those 'things' were anything but good.
