1.37 ...Is a Dead goblin

Robb’s left hand felt at one his hidden dagger, while his right tightly gripped his throwing spear. As it seemed, his call to turn around had not fallen on deaf ears.

From his view at the end of the column, Robb could see each member tense, subconsciously tightening their holds over their weapons, or drawing new ones altogether, all manner of daggers making their way into the hands of the mages as they carefully eyed the walls around them.

“Whaddya mean?” Donny’s place at the front meant that his question was half shouted backwards, his eyes staying forward as he tilted his head back to ask.

Robb sighed. “I think I see a trap, though I’m sure half the tunnel knows we’re here after that yell.” Donny had the good grace to apologize, to the Robb’s chagrin. ‘Can you please just shut up man?’

At that point, both Joe and Amanda were looking in his direction, distracted from their constant vigilance towards the front. Robb shook his head, holding a finger to his lips. Gesturing with a hand to the side tunnel, he started to slink towards the smaller, darker opening.

Amanda gave him a confused look, but Joseph nodded almost immediately. “Eyes FRONT. Keep a lookout for anything by that totem” His voice came out juust a little too loud. Definitely audible enough to reach the waiting ears of any ambushers.

At least, that’s what Robb hoped as he kept close to the left wall. The smaller offshoot tunnel did not extend far into the wall before turning left, in the same direction as the main passage.

He didn’t turn the corner immediately however. Robb drew his hidden daggers, setting his throwing weapon on the ground. It wouldn’t do him any good here.

With no light in the branch tunnel, not even his steel daggers would be glinting. ‘Time to rip the band-aid off then.’ Robb turned the corner with all possible speed, his daggers reaching out in front of him for a target.

What he saw nearly forced a scream from his normally controlled mouth. Yellow, hateful eyes met his shocked brown gaze.

He had expected goblins, small and pathetic individual fighters, not at all intimidating in their base form. Instead, Robb beheld the gaze of a face altogether too large. It seemed to loom, pointed teeth curled into a feral grin, even as both of Robb’s knives punctured whatever vital organs such a putrid creature could possess.

Only when it fell did Robb confirm that, yes, it was a goblin. And second, he noted that no, that was not the only one. The tunnel was too dark for a true headcount, but Robb’s heart fell as several pairs of sickly yellow lights graced his eyes.

“AMBUSH! MOE, GET OVER HERE AND LIGHT THEM UP!” The time for stealth was over, and Robb made what was, in his mind, the only viable decision. Fight a bunch of the tiny fuckers in the dark, in a cramped tiny tunnel? Absolutely not.

As Robb scrambled backwards and back out into the main passage, the mage helping to bring up the party’s rear fired a [Magic Missile] into the darkness. A yelp, and then confused scrambling as the remaining fiends rushed over two corpses into the relative light of the main passage.

“[Magic Missile], [Magic Missile], [Magic Missile]. Robb could see the man slowing down as his mana expenditure became too much to continue spamming long range spells. But he had given Robb time.

Turning back to the entrance Robb’s first blow saw a dagger pierce clean into a goblin’s neck. The second green monster too stupid to retreat back into the tunnel received a punch straight to the face, then a dagger blow to the stomach to finish the job.

Still they came, not at all as cowardly as Robb had been led to believe. His knives gutted one, then another, until yells of alarm drew part of his attention.

“INCOMING!” The voice was Donny’s, and from the corner of his eye Robb could see their tank bracing for impact. When none came, he moved his shield to the side, just in time to see goblins stream past his unguarded flanks.

They were caught by Joe as they ran towards the group’s back line, made to suffer for even looking at the mages, as the man’s shortsword mained one, and as a kick from the archer knocked the second one out.

Not to be outdone, Robb re-entered the side tunnel, stabbing one goblin after another. The little monsters were no longer smiling, their jagged teeth no longer contorted in that disturbing upwards arc.

Rounding the corner, Robb once again stabbed out, and once again his dagger met flesh. Remaining wary of fighting in the enclosed space however, he repeated his initial retreat from the tunnel, and waited expectantly for the green menace to pour out once more.

Nothing came. And for several moments, the branching tunnel was silent as Robb watched the opening, tensed.

In an almost perfect mirror of Robb’s original move, a goblin thrust out with what looked like a rusted dagger, just as it rounded the corner. Seemingly, it had expected Robb to be there, creeping back to attack again.

The goblin, as its dagger met nothing but disappointing air, swung its dagger around frantically, A [Magic Missle] to the skull ended its wretched existence.

Just as quickly as they came, the goblins faded back into the tunnels, their eyes still shining a dull yellow.

“Good fight people, can we keep going?” Quick on the uptake, Joe went about making sure everyone’s equipment was still usable.

The group went about fixing their gear, adjusting whatever arms and armor they had. Robb scraped and wiped goblin blood off of his daggers. The residue was black, and as one of his blows had punctured an artery, the ensuing blood spurt rendered the handles slippery and near unusable.

With a cloth, Robb wiped off the remaining residue, a thin, oily layer remained however, and he kept cloth on both handles. ‘Hopefully, it’ll still work.’

“HELL yeah! Let’s go!” Donny’s clash of shield and mace sent reverberations all throughout the tunnel. “Uh, sorry.” The ensuing glares forced the overenthusiastic tank into a sheepish smile.

A taunting howl came from somewhere down the tunnel, followed by shrieks of “IEIEIEIEIEEIIEIEIEEIIEEI” and the sound of rusted weapons clang clang clanging together. An invitation to go deeper.

“How are our mages doing? Moe? Jess?” The former nodded back at him, but the latter still stood, shellshocked from the earlier engagement. “Jess, we’ll need your debuffs. Get your head in the game, alright?”

Donny raised a finger, “so uh, we are going, right?”

The archer nodded, and Robb found himself agreeing with the man. “We can’t give them a chance to fortify or escape this place. Exterminating them now is the best choice we have, now that they know we’re here.”

#####

The march resumed without fanfare or much more preparation. Other groups had not been sent to this location yet, and the tunnels they traversed had none of the telltale signs of battle.

The lack of strays worried Robb, almost as much as the goblin emulating his moves had. These goblins were not only organized, but they had the ability to learn from their foes. That opened up… an avenue of possibilities that Robb didn’t want to think about.

But as the group continued to broach the main passage, and more branching tunnels were found, declared empty, and left behind, he couldn’t get his mind off the fact that this might just be an elaborate trap for humanity itself. An elaborate ‘tutorial’, with unending tides of beasts and monsters, all capable of learning and adapting from their previous defeats.

Robb’s mind was torn from the subject as the first traps were found, however. A simple pitfall trap. A crude, small hole with short, wooden stakes protruding from its base. Enough to kill a goblin, perhaps, but an inconvenience at best for the humans it was meant to catch.

The party sidestepped the trap, dodged a pile of rocks meant to rain down from overhead, and proceed onwards and forwards. “I don’t like that they’re smart enough for these traps. Aren’t goblins introductory mobs? Why are they so hard to kill here?”

Donny’s voice, quieter than usual, was still audible down the length of the tunnel. How did Robb know that? Well, because of the jeering cries of the goblins further down. That their party was being shadowed by the little green fuckers forced Robb’s vigilance to be up at an almost constant interval.

The group reached a crossroads, and the first signs of combat could be seen on the walls, along the path, and in just about every crevice, nook, and cranny of the area.

What remained of goblin corpses littered this larger, cavernous area that led to two large, branching paths. No weapons were left on the ground, but a dozen green bodies and their associated… parts were spread about, some in the middle of the path, others laid to rest against the walls. Only goblins, as far as Robb could see.

The corpses all had large gash wounds, save for a select few in a particular part of the area. Two or three had seemingly had their brains bashed in, the blunt force trauma having cracked their skulls, and leaving large indentations where the blows had connected.

What had once been a single path, now branched out into two, distinctly different tunnels. The left, Robb noted, was headed upwards, making it impossible to gauge what might be at its end, as it levelled off as one entered. The right seemed like a pit to hell itself though, descending into god knows what, too darkly obscured to see anything of value.

“Left or right?” Joe once again posed the question everyone else was musing on.

Donny shrugged from up front, “flip a coin?”

“IEIEIEEIEIEIEIIEIE”

“OH SHIT!”

A large group of goblins came pouring out of the upward sloping, left tunnel. Armed with crudely made spears and the same rusty daggers Robb had observed prior, they rushed the party’s tank, seemingly having learned their lesson about disregarding frontliners.

Donny’s first mace swing caved in the head of one goblin, while another trying to get around his large shield found itself stunned, the victim of a video game-esque shield bash. “COME AT ME YOU BASTARDS, [Armor]!”

The goblins who had managed to get cheeky blows in, found their weapons bouncing off the tall man's armor, even as their crude weapons should have found gaps in Donny’s plate. Sparks flew, and Donny’s rampage downed another three before the monsters beat their hasty retreat.

“MINE!” Moe raced past the party’s frontline. “[Magic Missile], [Magic Missile]”. Holes appeared in several of the fleeing goblin’s backs, black blood founting from their new wounds.

“Right.” Robb made his decision. The rest of his group looked questioningly at their rogue. “They might be trying to bait us to the left, with how unappealing the right tunnel looks. We should head to the right.”

With a nod of affirmation, the group took Robb’s advice, descending into the darker, gloomier, and deadlier right tunnel.

#####

Elsewhere…

Harold looked at the rock, uncomprehending. “You’re level WHAT?!?”