Pov: Briar

I've felt more patient in recent times. Now that I think about it, I've been walking for days. No, my sense of time isn't skewed like it usually is, I see time like a human would. I've been walking for what a human would perceive as days, and I'm not even bored of it. As a test, I decided to stand still for as long as I could. I got fed up of waiting and decided it was pointless after 9 hours. It didn't seem weird to me until I remembered that most humans would get fed up after a few minutes. The long and short of it is that I'm much more patient now. Using telekinesis to fly, I've nearly made it out of the forest. Except I just spotted a goblin's nest.

Orrian told me a lot about goblins, and from what I can tell, they're more like the ones from *Soblin Glayer* than anything else. That is to say, they are weak individually but together they catch, murder, and eat people and animals. Even some of the best adventurers can be taken out by traps and ambushes they make. The main difference is that they don't attempt to... procreate with human females. Apparently there's not a single monster species capable of cross breeding with humans, which is a good thing. Instead they murder and eat the human, or elven or beastkin, females after tormenting them Exact same with men. Goblins are little bitches, you know? 4 years before I learned to talk 8 elves, 6 men and 2 female, were captured and killed by goblins. Orrian went full rage mode and obliterated the goblins through sheer number of elves. 50 magic using elves against 150 magic-less goblins? It wasn't a fight. Orrian and the others bombed the cave to oblivion from a range after determining the captured elves were long dead. 

Through "Clairvoyance" and "Vibration sensing," I've found there are 62 goblins and 12 humanoids in this cave. The humans appear unconscious and mostly uninjured, though one is missing an arm. 2 are beastkin. Goblins have a "good" habit of leaving their victims alive for a while so that more adventurers might come and get trapped. The humanoids are asleep, but even if they were awake, they couldn't use magic to escape. This is because they are near a partially mithril pillar. Mithral can store magic power, though not that much. It gets the magic power by stealing it from nearby people. You can resist this, but you need a trait to do so. The pillar they are tied too has a band of mithril surrounding it, about a centimeter thick and 4 centimeters wide. It should be enough to store about 500 mana, though that's a rough estimate based off the mithril objects I've seen in the past. Basic math says that 500 is only enough to contain 12 average people with about 20 or so mana regen per day for 25 days, but the transfer is actually incredibly inefficient. Only 20% of the mana actually goes through, the rest is turned into heat. That means it'll last for 125 days, and they can just periodically empty it of mana anyway. Even right now, the mithril seems to be a nice and toasty 80 degrees or so.

I suppose I should get to helping. Through "Plant manipulation" I made it so my body's height can be easily changed by moving around some more or less detachable parts. I can make myself shorter or taller in under a minute! So now I'm the height of a goblin. I also look like a goblin. So I've just waltzed into the camp. The goblins didn't spare me a second thought. Their ugly, bumpy green skin makes them incredibly repulsive. They wear simple clothes around their torsos for warmth and a little protection. They have animal skins wrapped around their feet and ankles to serve as footwear. They have bloodstains on their clothes, either from people or animals.

The cave has a narrow entrance which opens into a large room. There's a Y shaped intersection. Going left will take me to the storage room with the stolen weapons and people, but the entrance is hidden with fake rocks a goblin made using magic. The difference between fake and real rocks is that fake rocks are lighter, weaker, and dissipate over time. Some goblins are capable of using magic, but they have little mana and get some pretty random skills, like making fake rock walls. It's actually quite useful though, since you can hide things. The right path goes straight, takes 2 turns, and then has an intersection that's hard to notice, since both paths are behind you. Just like the first episode of *Soblin Glayer,* this is a trap. The goblins ambush you from both directions. On top of this, there are also goblins hiding outside who sound the alarms AFTER you go in, then come after you so that no matter what path you take you have goblins on your back. Of course, I don't need to worry about any of this since I look like a goblin. I still need to get through the wall though. As far as I can tell, they'd usually have the wall goblin open it temporarily, specifically in such a way that it could be easily fixed with minimal mana usage. In other words I need to get something worth putting in the storage room. Conveniently, I have a stick. Through the use of magic, I made the stick look like a rather valuable sword. One of the goblins near me looked at it closely and walked over to the fake wall, taking a goblin-sized chunk of it and putting it to the side. He gestured for me to follow.

Here in this passage were 16 goblin children. Not yet mature enough to fight, they were hidden away in the storage room. There were 3 goblin caretakers and 14 guards. The only really concerning things were the 2 hobgoblins. They stood twice as tall as the normal goblins, making them over 210 centimeters.¹That's about 7 feet for my American friends. I'm also an American, but I use metric since the math gets complicated fast if I don't. I'm not quite sure what the condition to force "Relatively transcendent" to activate is, and I don't particularly want to find out. To be on the safe side, I'll assume that if most of the fibers in my body are severed it'll activate. I doubt they could do that with brute force or even weapons, but I only have so much mana to retaliate with. Getting lit on fire would also be troublesome, and apparently hobgoblins tend to have some magic. It's interesting to note that the hobgoblins are not the same species as goblins, or even related. They look nothing alike. The hobs have lighter green skin. It's clearer too, with less imperfections. They nearly look like humans, if it weren't for the looks on their faces and the fact they're way to big. They've no intelligence at all. They're dumber than goblins, more like animals. Still scary though, since they could crush a watermelon between two fingers.

I put the stick on the pile of other valuable weapons and then stood with the guards. The wall magic goblin gave me a strange look. I suppose he was expecting me to come out with him. That would make sense. It didn't matter though; he left and closed the wall behind him. Goblins are pretty stupid, no? I shouldn't insult them. That would also be an insult to all of the people they've managed to kill. If they were stupid, they all would've died by now. Speaking of goblins dying, I suppose it's time to enact my plan.

POV: Captured beastkin boy

I'm awake. This is a terrible place to be awake, but I'm awake nonetheless. Maybe I should go back to sleep? As much as I'd love to, that might be an even worse idea than staying awake. Perhaps I should pretend to still be asleep? No, that wouldn't serve any purpose. My hands are tied behind my back. I can't move them. My legs are tied to the legs of the human sitting next to me, though he's asleep. It seems about a dozen of us are tied to this metal pillar and each other. Using magic is impossible, since the pillar is partially made of mithril, one of the materials capable of storing mana.  We're right next to a pile of weapons, many of which I recognize. The sword belonging to my friend Carl, armour Jean was so proud of, and the now bloodied arrows that Veronica would hunt with. One of the goblins standing in the entrance hallway looked over to see me awake. A lot of the other goblins noticed, chuckled, and looked away, but this one looked at me knowingly. He's thinking. More than a goblin should be able to. Then he raised his fingers, snapped, and the weapons in the weapon pile were all suddenly lodged in the skulls and hearts of the goblins next to him.