So, I think I Just might have a problem on my hands here.

 

Just imagine: You are a member of a race of lawless beings who can rapidly gain strength if you capture and breed human women, when all of a sudden, a woman wants to be bred comes along and lets you. When she gives birth to your first child, you learn that she can complete a full pregnancy cycle and get pregnant again in under a week, and that the children she produces are (I’m assuming) stronger than regular goblins.

 

Now, if you were a goblin in this situation, would you ever let her leave? Because I’m basically the greatest asset a clan of goblins could ever want.

 

Chances are, probably not.

 

What about the elder? Didn’t she agree to let me go afterwards?

 

Well, I don’t know if I can trust her, and not only in just a betrayal sense. I don’t know if I can trust what she said about goblins always obeying hobgoblins.

 

If she doesn’t betray my trust, I still have a suspicion that the goblin won’t listen to her, and just capture me anyway.

 

And if she does, well, the goblins will still behave the same, and I don’t really have to worry about a frail old woman catching me, so it's just about the same.

 

Basically, no matter what I do, as soon as I give birth the whole village will want to tie me up and never let me leave. Even if I use Gehenna manipulation, I still need to be able to walk through the mist, which won’t be possible if I’m tied up.

 

So, what can I do?

 

Well, I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

 

1- Because I don’t show pregnancy as much as a human would and goblin children are small, the goblins don’t know I'm even pregnant yet even though I’m over halfway done. 

 

Womb status: v Pregnant ~ 1 days until birth

 

That was only for the first few days though, today, my belly seems to be noticeably large. 

I’ve spent the whole day so far in the elder’s hut making a long baggy shirt that hides my belly with the material that my breasts lift up. I don’t particularly like it, but I don’t need to. I only need it until I escape.

Toeless doesn’t seem to be allowed in the Elder’s hut while she isn’t around, so he hasn’t found out yet.

 

2- I can put goblins to sleep by fully draining them. I can use this to get past guards without causing a ruckus.

 

3- I can delay the birth using my spirit until the time is right.

So, using these, I see two possible routes of escape.

 

The first takes place during the daytime when the Elder is out picking herbs. First, I need to drain all the guards unconscious. If I get them to gangbang me all at once, draining them fully would just raise the alarm. I need to then give birth and put my second daughter in the nursery somehow without being caught, then I grab Dawn and run.

 

This plan has a few problems. Namely, I still could run into a goblin after leaving the village, and I’m not as stealthy in the daytime.

 

The second plan would take place at night, and is the one I’m going to attempt, so now I’ve just been preparing.

 

I’ve made a sling to carry Dawn in, and every night I’ve been visiting all the guards one by one, so they’ve come to expect it. 

My leveling up has slowed down a bit, probably because goblins pose no challenge, but I have grown slightly over the past few days.

 

Trainee Rogue has increased to (+1)

Lesser Primordial Succubus has risen to (+3), >skill available

V Skill available

Active

Forced rejuvenation

Target’s Cohesion is forcibly converted into spirit. Only effective on targets near 0 spirit.

Spirit       Contact

 

I don’t know if I even want this. I could get more spirit out of one person this way, but it would injure their soul, and potentially even kill them.

If I get caught escaping and get used as a breeding slave, having this skill wouldn’t be much different than simply draining the goblins unconscious for another escape window. Plus, if it end up killing one and don’t escape afterwards, they might start treating me even worse.

I think I’ll just sit on the points for now, something more immediately useful might come along.

I stretch backwards in the hobgoblin sized chair before I push it back and walk over to dawn.

The little creature still hasn’t made a sound since she was born, and seems to be growing at a rapid pace. She still can't quite crawl yet, but will now follow me around the room with her eyes as I make clothing.

Her horns have sprouted from the soft lumps that were on her head at first, and appear to be rather different than my own. I can’t tell what shape they’re going to be yet, but they seem to grow at a different angle than my own and are a light tan rather than my unreflective black.

She reaches out to me with a tiny hand, and holds me in a deathgrip as soon as I move to pick her up.

Mother

Her message seems less demanding than usual, so she probably just desires my company.

Dawn

Don’t worry my little Dawn, You won’t have to stay here much longer.

“Mother” Mother

I say the word slowly, and send the message simultaneously to her through her link, gesturing to myself with my hand.

“Dawn” Dawn

I repeat the process with her name.

“Mother” Mother

“Dawn” Dawn

The infant somehow looks incredibly bored with my lessons, her eyes half closed and her mouth curled into a slight frown.

“Don’t look at me that way, this is for your own good. You won’t enjoy being mute once you’ve grown.”

She rolls her eyes at me

…

Excuse me?

...

The infant, who isn’t even a week old yet, just rolled her eyes at me.

…

I can already picture the exact kind of person this child will become.

“Whoa there young lady. Who exactly taught you how to do that?”

She pouts and does it again, this time in a way that’s somehow ruder than before.

“Hey, don’t get all sassy with me. Did you learn that from Deer Catcher?”

The goblin trapper was a frequent sight for Dawn, who eyed him suspiciously every time he came by on an errand for the Elder.

“You shouldn’t be learning things from the goblins aside from Elder. They aren't exactly the picture of good behaviour. Now, can you say something please? It would make me very happy.”

She yawns widely in a way that appears to be both genuine fatigue as well as a way to mock me

Tired

My attention shifts to the voices outside. 

Today’s bonfire sounds like it’s winding down, meaning the night watch will be shifting with the day watch. Since my plan will be taking place at night, they’re the guards that need to be used to my activities if I want a decent chance at escape.

I lay Dawn in her furs for what I hope will be one of the last times.

“New shirt? I thought you might get cold in the one we made. How is the little one?” The Elder’s voice rings out from behind, startling me slightly.

“Ah- Still as quiet as ever. Not a sound since she was born.”

As she walks slowly over from the entrance to the room to dawn’s cradle, I glance down to make sure my belly isn’t showing.

The Elder gazes down at Dawn, who glares back in a much less friendlier way. She doesn’t seem to mind though.

“You don’t really talk much about yourself and Dawn. How did you end up naked in goblin occupied lands anyway? Where is her father?”

My mind starts spinning, trying to think of a possible mundane explanation to how I first appeared.

I could say that I had an incident with a mage, and got teleported somewhere far away.

No, that's not a good idea. I know little of the wonder world here, so I could easily say something that makes no sense.

Meaning…

The correct answer here is to say nothing at all.

“That, uhh… isn’t something I would like to talk about.” I say, wearing a mask of slight distress.

The old woman gasps with a distraught look on her

“Oh my, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry.”

HaHA. Question successfully dodged.

I bid the Elder goodnight as she prepares for her own slumber, ready to leave for my rounds of the guards.

 

///////

 

Lesser Primordial Succubus has risen to (+4) > skill available

Lust Aura has risen to 6 - effects slightly increased 

Clothing can easily be displaced when having sex with it still on, so I had spent the whole night on my hands and knees to make sure that my belly wouldn’t be visible if my shirt somehow came off.

All in all, there are 15 night guards I need to worry about, and if I screw up on even one of them and the alarm sounds, all the sleeping goblins will wake and come running. 

If I get captured, either trying to leave, or because the goblins find out my true nature, it may be years before I get another chance to escape. The sound of it doesn’t quite feel comparable to the time I spent in Hel, so I would probably be able to wait it out.

But that’s not the main reason I’m escaping anyway. 

I’m worried for Dawn’s sake. I don’t want my daughter to grow up as a prisoner.

I watch the sun rises over the goblin’s village for what I hope will be the last time.

I need to start my preparations.

 

In the case I do successfully escape, I need a destination. Asking about the nearest human settlement directly would be incredibly suspect, so I need to find out about it in a more indirect way.

“You mentioned that you were the only hobgoblin here, but you weren’t even born in the valley. Did you found the village?”

Elder seems happy to talk about the past of the village rather than her own.

“Sort of, it was me and an older hob. I found him clanless and living by the waterfall here. He didn’t really want any company, but he was the first other member of my kind that I had met, so I was pretty stubborn about staying.walk”

“And the rest of the village?” I ask.

“Other clanless, mostly exiles. It's pretty common for most hobs to just get rid of goblins who make a mistake or just do something they don’t approve of. They’ll just get exiled if they’re lucky, but depending on the hobgoblin, I’ve heard that everything from castration to cannibalism awaits those who don’t fall in line.”

Wow. Hobgoblins are brutal.

Apart from Elder of course.

“It can’t be their nature that makes them cluel, right? You seem perfectly fine.”

She sighs.

“It usually happens if a hobgoblin is raised the same way as, and alongside regular goblins. They grow 4 times as slowly, so their childhood friends will be granted the privileges of adulthood long before they will. Most hobgoblins will view this as unfair, because they’re superior to goblins in almost every way, yet not granted the same freedoms as quickly. When they eventually do grow up, they often become incredibly controlling over goblins as some sort of revenge. It doesn’t help that most of their old friends will be dead or elderly by that point.”

Her words contain no anger, but are soft and firm with pity. She hasn’t experienced any of this herself, but instead must have learned of it from the clanless who joined the village. She must have known each and every one of them personally.

“Are there any clans with enough hobgoblins that this isn’t a problem?”

“The valley here exists on a spectrum for hobgoblin numbers. The clans further downstream have enough to give the children a proper upbringing, while the ones farther inland have only one: the leader. Between the two is where all the chaos happens.”

I could continue to ask questions, but I think I’ve already learned enough.

There’s a higher concentration of hobgoblins downstream, and hobgoblins have human mothers. 

So for me to find humans, I need only follow the flow of the river.