Two days later, we were in a room with an empty treasure chest after evading Irisa again. The gaudy-looking thing was a source of much discomfort for Tilde. Her tirade about the overall design and color scheme lasted well over fifteen minutes, with her biggest hatred lying in the shade of yellow used for the trim. One would usually need [Lockpicking] to crack it open, but it was also possible to break it at the risk of destroying what was inside. 

I suppose I was in a somewhat better mood. My Wrath was set to 0, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t experience discomfort or uneasiness, though. Perhaps I wanted to remain in this dungeon because I had fears of Bellerophon. There wasn’t an office in Ria, but Tilde had told me some rumors of how they hang suspected chimera by their feet and skin them alive to see if they heal with biomass. This wasn’t necessary because they had items to detect titles relating to Chimerism. [Status Cloak] took care of that. 

I asked Sekh how she was holding up. She gripped a shield procured from a dead goblin and swallowed some water from a canteen. The stone and spider weapon I made for her broke yesterday, so she was using Irisa’s mace for the time being. 

“I’m fine. Rough situations aren’t exactly unheard of, and I’ve lived my fair share of them. Do—” 

“GET OFF HER, YOU BASTARD!!!!” 

Sekh and I exchanged looks after someone shouted at the top of their lungs. The sound reverberated throughout the mines. “If you find someone attacking someone else, think of it like a free meal,” Tilde said. She stood on my head before jumping to the top of my backpack. We went off running. The screaming came from a room I’d been to. According to the map, five people and a gang of goblins were in there. 

“FUCKING GOBLINS! GET OFF OF HER!! HEY, DON’T LEAVE US!! GET BACK HERE!! JARED?! SWIMBA?! COME BACK—” 

Sekh and I dashed around a corner, veering close to the ramp that led to the bottom floor. At the end of this long path, A group of three nearly skittered across the rocky, uneven ground as they frantically ran for their lives. The one in front, a Deerfolk with glasses, had thick tears crawling down his face. Sekh and I ignored them, slowing down when we came to the target room. I took up position and peeked in.  

That Catfolk from before—the one with a grudge against goblins— was being forced to watch a pair of green bastards take his Dogfolk friend from the front and back. A third was thrusting from below, monopolizing her three holes. Chax wasn’t faring any better. The goblin slamming its hips into him had scratched the Catfolk’s lower back with its black, diseased nails. There were two in front of him that were taking turns trying to suffocate him with their inflamed cocks. He grunted from a source of anger and desperation while staring at his catatonic friend, whose eyes were nearly lifeless. 

Dark blood and semen oozed endlessly from her crotch as the goblins snarled and laughed. 

Half a second after witnessing this, Sekh rushed in. She trusted me not to hit her. My bullets rang true and produced four corpses. Sekh brutalized the ones assaulting Ginnie while I ran in and dispatched the two sharing Chax’s mouth. The accuracy was impeccable, and bodies dropped in rhythm. One managed to run to a shield. I used [Piercing Thrust] to break through, and I was rewarded with its death groans.  

It’s a good thing I reloaded while running. 

“GRRAAAHHHH!!!!” Chax grabbed a spear and stabbed the one who destroyed his innocence, piercing the monster’s stomach with so many holes I thought it was about to deflate. He ignored Ginnie in his rage. Sekh used a cloth we had taken from Martin’s bag to give her something to cover herself with, but she reacted with blind panic and thrashed around. 

Eventually, Chax ran out of steam and descended from yelling to mourning it all. His anguished wails as he held the unconscious Ginnie were louder than his cries for help.  

---

“Hmm…” I stared at Chax as he got dressed; a solemn cloud danced across his reddened eyes. After clipping the belt around his pants and putting on his ruined undershirt, he returned to Ginnie’s side and held her hand. Sekh and I were like invisible strangers, even though we sat a foot or so away.  

“I’m going to kill those sons of bitches,” he growled, tearfully touching his friend’s face with a rag to clean it. “They left us alone to save their hides… Didn’t care that Ginnie… That we were going to suffer so much. They knew the fate awaiting the prisoners of goblins… Why did they leave us? Why abandon us?” He turned to me like he wanted me to respond, but I remained silent. 

Revenge was my ultimate goal, and I could certainly understand his desire to kill those traitors. 

Chax started to speak about Ginnie, proclaiming that he always liked her. It appeared he and her were from the same village, and they hid in a chest when a nest of goblins attacked. He had to watch them violate her, enduring the pain while shielding Ginnie’s eyes and ears. “Is this revenge on me for having killed so many? For torturing them? For doing to them what they did to mom? For cutting off their heads with a rusty knife? Ginnie…” 

“I…” a quiet, hoarse voice said.  

“Ginnie?!” Chax exclaimed. He cradled her head and gently dabbed her arid tongue with a wet cloth. 

“It hurts, Chax...” Her eyes faintly opened, and I knew she had lost the will to live. “My first time... I wanted you to have it... I wanted to share it with you... I’m defiled... I’m dirty...” 

“Don’t talk like that!” he exclaimed. The salty water leaking from his eyes splattered against Ginnie’s cheeks. 

“The larvae... I don’t want to die to it... Chax, you must kill me...” 

I thought back to what Tilde and Sekh told me. Goblins were parasitic. Their sperm was a milky substance filled with hundreds of microscopic larvae. They attach to a person’s insides to steal their nutrients. After about a month, they combine, evolve, and burst free, eventually creating another goblin. They didn’t discriminate against gender. 

“No! Don’t say that!” Chax responded. His shaky voice was unsteady. “We can get it out of us! Please, don’t speak like that!” 

In a frail voice, Ginnie revealed a bombshell about the betrayal. Swimba—one of their party members—confessed to her a few weeks ago. She refused his affection. A few days later, she overheard him drunkenly talking to another party member about stealing a brooch Ginnie received from Chax’s mother before she died. She didn’t put much heart into it because she didn’t want to believe it. “I should have said something, Chax...” It was hard to understand her between the crying and whispered voices. “This is my fault... They’re going to take our money... We can’t...afford...to...” 

“It doesn’t matter! I can get the money to get these things out of us! Trust me, Ginnie! I’ll work myself to the bones—” 

Using the last of her strength, Ginnie reached up just very slightly and pressed her lips to Chax. “We...both know...we can’t get enough...for both of us...in a month... Chax... Please... I can’t...live with myself...like this...” 

“Then I’ll die too!” 

“You can’t--” 

“Life isn’t worth living if you’re not in it. I can’t go a day without you. We can die together, and we can enter the afterlife together.” 

Trembling all over like an uncontrollable mess, Ginnie used the last of her strength to nod once more. She moved her hands from her chest and winced, preparing for the incoming strike that would surely kill her.  

Chax’s teeth chattered as his eyes darted to a nearby dagger. Water flooded his eyes while screams left his mouth. He held it up high, both hands quivering. “AAHHHHHHHHHHHHH--” 

Bang! 

A sharp gunshot later, the would-be killer was left with a broken blade. For a quick moment, pure anger flashed through his sharp eyes while Ginnie yelped in pain when she suddenly jerked and leaned up.  

"What the hell are you doing?!” barked Chax. His knuckles were white from how hard he gripped the broken dagger. “Just leave us alone!” A shattered weapon was still capable of ending a life, so I wasted no time in forcefully stealing it away from him by grabbing his wrist and lightly bending it back. He cursed me, of course. So did Ginnie, but I didn’t care. 

“I’m going to die! One way or another, I refuse to let this thing live inside me!” The Dogfolk’s eyes glanced at the shimmering glint of the dagger’s broken fragment lying right nearby. I saw it when she did it and leapt for it, but she was closer and faster. 

“STOP!!!” I shouted, thrusting my hand in front of her neck as the fragment pierced my hand and drew blood. Pain was there, but it was inconsequential because it wasn’t fatal. The warm crimson dripped down my palm and onto her bare skin. She locked eyes with me, and I gripped the weapon while using my other hand to gently pry Ginnie’s fingers off it. From my peripherals, I saw Sekh carrying a scowl on her face, but she simmered off when I shook my head. She was mad because she hated seeing me injured, but I had to do this. Something inside me told me to do this. 

“This isn’t right, and you know it.” After removing the metal from my hand, Sekh handed me a red vial collected from Martin’s goons and told me to drink it. Tilde whispered it was a potion, so I downed it in a sip. After ten seconds, nothing happened, so I used my biomass to heal, using the restorative drink as a proxy. Still, I had a cut on my dark gray hand, so I used my backpack as a proxy to retrieve a cloth, which I ripped and tore and wrapped around my palm to hide the exposed skin.  

 All the while, Chax and Ginnie were nearly fuming. Emotions were already running high, and what I said pushed them over the limit. The two verbally ganged up on me, exclaiming they had nothing. Their village was ravaged by goblins, and very few survived. Chax and Ginnie being two of them. They roamed the land for five years, stealing and fighting to survive. Until they met Swimba and his two friends. They took Chax and Ginnie in and cared for them while becoming their allies in a brutal, violent world.  

But then that was nothing but an illusion since they were betrayed by those same three friends they thought they could trust. Such betrayal, mind you, that ended with a group of goblins forcefully inseminating them with their larvae. Without even a single bronze coin to their name, it would take months to afford treatment for just one of them, but that would be too late since they had about 30 days left before death was certain.  

“There’s no future for us... Not here, not there, not anywhere. Life doesn’t want us to live...and we feel the same. Everything's gone wrong since mom died,” Chax whispered. He clutched his stomach and sat beside Ginnie after grabbing her hand. She echoed his statement in a weak voice, citing that they had nothing left to live for other than each other, but now that wasn’t even the case. She pleaded with her big, teary eyes and asked me to kill them. 

It feels like my stomach’s churning itself into a knot. This whole situation rubs me the wrong way. 

“Death or not, the larvae will feed on your corpses. Is that what you want? A pair of goblins resulting from choosing the coward’s way?” 

“COWARD?! What do you know about it? You’re just a pampered High Elf born with a silver spoon in her mouth! You don’t know the pain we went through! The anguish within our hearts! The pain of watching your mother get torn apart in front of you! The shame of being playthings for these ugly, disgusting goblins! Shut your mouth!” Anger also flowed through Ginnie, and she let me have it. 

During her tirade, I remained silent and just stared at her. As her hatred came to a fiery conclusion, it finally ‘clicked’ for her. “You—your eyes... You do know what it’s like, don’t you... Staring up and seeing the disgusting lust looking down...” 

I nodded, barely enough to send a single strand of hair past my eyes. Sekh began to say something, but she became quiet when I held up my hand. “Why haven’t you given up? How can you keep going? What about the...pain...? I don’t understand how you can live with—” 

“Revenge... Revenge for everything they inflicted on me... Revenge for being sacrificed and abandoned... That is what keeps me going... A revenge for desire prevents me from turning my weapon on myself and ending it all. It’s all I think about, and it’s my flame,” I answered Chax’s whispered, pained question with the truth.  

“Ginnie… I’m...scared... I don’t know what to do...” 

“Don’t die before getting your revenge. Don’t die before finding that strength you harbor to push on. I did not say it was going to be easy,” I said. “Finding the will to face each new day that graces you after experiencing...this? That’s the part that seems insurmountable. I’ve been at the base of the mountain before. Sometimes I still wonder if I’m going to reach the top. It’s a never-ending ascent with perils placed everywhere.” 

Chax shared a look with Ginnie. I knew adrenaline was the only reason they were acting like this... Once it wore off, the realization and pain would set in again. It would be worse this time. Way worse. Extremely worse. It’ll feel as if the world’s about to collapse around them... As if the world had its sick claws jabbed into their lives purely for sick pleasure to ruin them. 

They can’t give up. They need to fight... I need to fight... We need to fight... 

“You have each other, and that’s more than what I had. The people who wronged you? Fuck them over. Get your revenge. Take back your brooch. Don’t let them shit on you.”  

Silence consumed the room as Chax and Ginnie tried to come to terms with their feelings. The former helped the latter get dressed in the remnants of her torn clothing, then ripped his shirt to help fill in the gaps in Ginnie’s outfit to keep her decent.  

Hmm... Narrowing my eyes, I used [Analysis] on them because something was bugging me. The skill confirmed that they suffered from goblin larvae insemination—amongst other injuries/ It was in stage 1 out of 30, which I presumed meant days, so that was the limit. But the larvae’s location was also transmitted to me. For Chax, it was right near his left kidney, and Ginnie’s was inside her womb. 

But that was it. Even if I knew where they were, it wasn’t like I could perform surgery on them, right? I wasn’t trained. The most I could do was cut my way in, burn the little bastards, and try to cauterize the incision. Blood loss was a real concern. Their HP bars were less than 30%, and in their current state?  

Death was watching with one foot in the door. 

I wonder... Recalling what Tilde said about how [Hermes Trismegistus] worked like a muscle, I put that to the test and used [Analysis] forty times as rapidly as possible. I was concentrating, but I still saw Tilde when she confusingly flew in front of my eyes. She tilted her head and blinked, then grinned when she figured out what I was up to. Sekh looked worried, and so did Chax and Ginnie, who almost seemed afraid at my piercing stare... 

But something happened... 

There was a voice I couldn’t hear... One that I couldn’t understand or perceive, but I knew it was there. And then there it was... A pale, microscopic blue dot no bigger than the tip of a pin. “Do you two trust me to get the larvae out of you?” I suddenly asked. 

“What? You can do that?!” 

“I have an eye skill that permits me to see maladies within the body,” I replied, telling a white lie while pointing out where the parasites were latched on. Sekh told me we had 4 potions left, while not strong, were better than nothing, and a few bundles of clean cloth we could tear for bandages.  

“Master, we have two canteens left,” said Tilde. I told her that was fine. We would use them since I was planning on leaving after this. Chax and Ginnie still seemed hesitant on why I would help them, and frankly? I didn’t know myself. If they died, that was free SP. 

And maybe I wanted to do that.  

Maybe I desired that. 

If I came across their corpses, I wouldn’t give two fucks before slurping them down my gullet. But seeing them go out without a fight? To let the ones who fucked them over get away without revenge? 

That pissed me off. They had the fight within them. They had the desire. But most importantly... 

Looking at them reminded me of myself...  

Perhaps that was all the reason I needed? 

Both were taken back when Yaekira’s daggers appeared from nowhere. Chax had questions, but he shut his mouth after I ordered him to lie on his stomach. Ginnie folded her hands across her heart while I washed the dirt and blood from the operating area. Sekh sat near me with two potions and cloths cut into square bandages. Tilde was in a serious mood, and she acted like an overseer of the whole arrangement. Following her advice, Sekh sterilized my tools with her nocturnal flames, then we waited until the blades were faintly red. Having them too hot would, according to Tilde, lead to necrosis of the surrounding tissue. She wasn’t sure if the potions could heal that damage since they were weak. 

No wonder the one I drank didn’t fix my hand. But what can it do against what I’m about to do? 

“There’s always a chance of death,” I warned them. “As soon as I’m done, I’ll force two potions down your throat. Sekh’s in charge of putting pressure on the wound and wrapping it. It’s going to hurt like hell. There’s no way it wouldn’t, but are you ready?” I held the daggers together with both tips less than a quarter inch above the skin. Chax nodded, his voice garbled because of the folded cloth we put in his mouth to bite down on. The last thing I wanted was for him to bite his tongue and drown in his blood. 

Ginnie whispered her love, and I began when Sekh did her best to keep Chax from struggling too much. 

The moment the knives’ tips pierced bare skin. It sizzled like a fatty steak on a ripping hot cast-iron pan. My chimeric nature nearly savored the smell of sweet, succulent meat wafting through my nostrils. 

“AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!” 

Chax’s bounded screams brought me out of a gluttonous dream. Ginnie cried, whimpering her companion’s name while Sekh kept a stern face. She was stronger than the Catfolk, so it was no trouble keeping him down while I pressed deeper until the tips were searing the hell out of the larvae. I had [Analysis] running every half-second to keep a close track of his vitals. Chax’s HP drained dangerously close to 0, his screaming never once stopping. The moment goblin larvae insemination vanished from his list of ailments, I quickly stashed the daggers. Sekh acted immediately and used the cloths she set aside to put pressure on his wound while I forced two potions down his mouth after removing his gag. He fought hard, even going so far as to clock me across the jaw, but I didn’t hold it against him.  

“Chax... Please...” Ginnie wept. He was still writhing in pain after we did his aftercare, but his throat ran so red and raw it could no longer produce any sound. [Analysis] indicated he suffered burns to his kidneys, but I didn’t think it was fatal because the potions were slowly working to fix what I damaged. 

“it’s your turn,” I said, turning to Ginnie. “Don’t worry, he’s passed out. I didn’t burn his internals as much as I thought, but while he won’t die, he’s gonna feel it for months to come. As for you? Tilde told me you...might lose the ability to have children. The larvae’s in your womb, so...” 

“I...understand... Please, help me, Ms. High Elf... Please...” Ginnie pulled up her shirt and slightly lowered her pants and panties, then laid down and bit on the gag Chax had used. Her big eyes quivered like a tree in a hurricane.  

With [Analysis] at the ready, I tried to ignore her other wounds and focused on her HP and goblin larvae insemination. Sekh heated the daggers once more, and it wasn’t long before there was another agonizing wail haunting the Mines of Gamor. 

“And... it’s done...” I whispered, slumping against the wall. I wiped my sweaty face and held Sekh’s and Tilde’s hands while we waited for them to wake up. Within my vision, I had two [Analysis] windows open to monitor my patients’ health.