Raine dropped down immediately, as did Kayden and Edgar. Cecily was slower to respond, so Raine grabbed her arm and pulled her down.

“Ow, you didn’t have to—”

Two wooden spears flew overhead and hit a tree behind them. Raine took Cecily’s arming cap out of her hands and put it on her head.

“Next time, don’t take it off,” Raine said.

“Y-Yeah,” she said.

Another spear came their way. It was headed for Edgar.

“Shit!” he said. He raised his shield to protect his face. The spear slammed into his shield and fell to the ground.

“You alright?” Raine asked.

“Yeah.” Edgar massaged the arm that had held the shield.

Ahead of them, Ava drew her sword and snapped her fingers. Two metal spheres in front of her turned into spears that she grabbed and threw at the goblins running at them.

There were nine goblins. Most wore cheap-looking iron helmets, and some had dirty, worn-out gambesons that looked one size too big. They held crude wooden spears and beat-up swords in their hands.

One of Ava’s spears missed its target narrowly, but another hit a goblin in the stomach. The monster stopped and bent over, groaning. It was winded.

“Hey, someone keep Myu from running off,” Ava said, drawing her sword. “The goblins want her for lunch. And keep an eye out for another attack from the opposite side.”

Kayden was closest to Myu, so he grabbed her reins and tried to keep her calm. He used his shield to protect Myu and himself.

Edgar pulled a javelin out of his quiver and flung it at a goblin. It hit the creature’s shoulder, and the goblin shrieked it pain but continued forward. It pulled the javelin out of its shoulder, and blood poured out of the wound. The goblin hurled the javelin back at Edgar. “Holy shit.”

The javelin was flying at him. He hurriedly dodged it.

The goblins reached them moments later. Ava strode forward and swung her sword at one of them. It blocked her blow with its sword, putting their blades in an X. Ava raised her sword’s hilt, making an opening for a thrust. She stabbed the goblin’s neck. The monster fell to its knees, clutching its throat.

That looked far too easy. The entire exchange took less than two seconds. Raine didn’t know whether to cheer or shudder.

Screw it, I can’t just stay here watching. He threw his hatchet at the goblin Ava’s spear had winded. The hatchet missed the goblin’s head and instead sank into its shoulder.

Good enough. Raine picked up his spear and took off its sheath. Heart pumping, he headed straight for the wounded goblin.

“Edgar, I’m going forward,” he said. “Don’t hit me by mistake.”

“I’m not a fucking idiot,” Edgar said, pulling another javelin out of his quiver.

Raine held his spear and shield in front of him as he approached the goblin. He didn’t know if he was holding them correctly, since this was the first time he was using them together, but the shield covered most of his upper body and the pointy end of his spear faced the goblin. That seemed about right.

The goblin recovered from its winded state while he approached. It shouted at him, probably in an attempt to intimidate him.

Fuck you too. Raine took a deep breath and thought about how easily Ava had killed the first goblin. He stared at the monster in front of him, and his grip on his spear and shield tightened. We were just clearing the path, asshole. Your shitty spear could have killed one of us.

With the hatchet still lodged in its shoulder, the goblin leapt forward and thrust its wooden spear at Raine’s face. He took a quick step back, and the spear merely poked his shield.

He advanced and thrust his spear at the goblin’s chest. It sidestepped the blow. Raine’s eyes widened in surprise at its quickness. Shit, Ava. You made it look too easy.

The goblin swung its spear at Raine like it was a hammer. Raine quickly raised his shield. When the spear smacked it, his arm went numb. He ignored that and quickly thrust his spear at the goblin’s face. The monster tilted its head down, and the spear hit its helmet.

But the impact made the monster step back in a daze. Raine took the chance to bash its head with his shield. The goblin lost its footing and fell to the ground.

Raine thrust his spear into its chest. It let out a cry of pain and grabbed his spear with both hands to try to pull it out. Raine stomped on its arm and stabbed it in the chest again. Then it was dead.

He didn’t waste time celebrating the victory. He quickly looked around to see how his teammates were doing.

June dealt a finishing blow to a sword-wielding goblin. Two others lay dead nearby, one of them with a javelin stuck in its chest.

Cecily swung her sword at the back of a goblin fighting Edgar. Her blade didn’t penetrate its gambeson, but the goblin cried out in pain from the force of the blow. Edgar took the opportunity to stab the goblin’s neck with his javelin.

Ava used a tissue to wipe the blood off her sword. Four goblins lay dead on the ground in front of her, three of them with heads cleanly severed from their bodies. She sheathed her blade and looked around.

“That went well,” she said. “No one’s dead. No one’s injured either, right?”

“All good,” Kayden said. The rest were fine as well.

Ugh, done. Raine plopped onto the grass and let out a sigh of relief. The tension in his body left him.

“I thought this job wasn’t going to be that dangerous,” he said.

“Yeah well, welcome to the New World,” she said. “Shit happens here.”

“It was very odd, though,” June said. “We’re only on the Molotov Path. Has the Expansion already started?”

“Either that or we have dogshit luck,” Ava said. “But probably the former.”

“If the Expansion has started, our pay is going to rise,” June told the rest. “But the danger will also increase. We’ll run into goblins on almost every other request.”

“How big of an increase are we talking about?” Cecily asked.

“The Expansion is fucking dangerous,” Ava said. “Demand for hunters will go way up. Supply will go down. Our pay will double, maybe triple.”

“Okay, but what’s the Expansion?” Kayden asked.

“It’s when monster populations fucking explode,” Ava said. “Some other shit happens too, like forests growing at a faster pace.”

“It’s also supposedly when demons come marching over from the northwest every few centuries,” Raine said.

“Yup. Where’d you learn that?” June asked.

“Some random book in the library.”

“Well, goblins exist. Magic exists,” Kayden said. “Why can’t demons exist?”

“Exactly,” Raine said.

June smiled wryly. “Anyway, we should get a decent bonus for killing these goblins,” she said, walking to Myu. She pulled a strange, square stone out of a bag on Myu’s saddle. June strode to where most of the dead goblins were and snapped her fingers. The stone emitted a soft blue light for a few moments.

“What was that all about?” Cecily asked.

“It’s called a hunter’s eye,” June said, lifting the stone. “Think of it as a magic camera.”

“It’s our main tool for proving we’ve actually done shit,” Ava said. “It’s essential for any hunter.”

Edgar went around picking up his javelins and cleaning them. Ava grabbed the most valuable objects from the dead goblins, which was usually their swords.

“So what do we do with the bodies?” Kayden asked, walking up to one of the dead goblins. “Put their heads on spikes to make other goblins stay away?”

“Ha, the Shields founders tried that way back,” Ava said. “It didn’t work. It just made the elites angry as fuck. What we actually do with the bodies is just bury them so they don’t rot in the open.”

A good distance from the path, June used magic to dig a large pit in the ground. The effort exhausted her. Edgar and Kayden dumped the goblins’ bodies into the pit, but she was too tired to cover it up with magic. Ava snapped her fingers and made two shovels. She and Raine used them to throw dirt back into the pit while Kayden, Edgar, and Cecily pushed the log off the path. June kept a lookout for more goblins.

I almost feel bad for them, Raine thought as he shoveled dirt onto the dead goblins. He sighed lightly. I really should go to translation after this month is up.

“You’re feeling bad for them, aren’t you?” Ava asked. She shoveled more dirt into the pit. “Don’t do that. We just kept them from attacking merchants on their way to Iurisia. We kept them from burning a village. We kept them from joining a siege on a town.”

“I know,” Raine sighed. He’d read enough to know goblins had been attacking humans for centuries. “It just feels...wrong. Somehow.”

“Yeah, I felt that way before,” Ava said, patting his shoulder. “You’ll change your mind the day you witness firsthand what they do when they win.” She paused with a frown. “Actually, scratch that. Let’s hope that day never comes.”

They continued covering the pit after that. When they were done, they patted the dirt flat. Their shovels then vanished slowly like they were disintegrating.

The team then headed back toward Rialis City.

. . . .

Max couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. His eyes went back and forth between the dead goblin in front of him and the spear in its chest, his spear.

Oh my god. He took a deep breath. And then another. And another.

“Max. Hey, Max. Max!”

Max jumped and turned around.

“Y-Yeah?” Max asked.

“You alright?” Lukas asked, patting his shoulder.

“I’m...I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“Okay, just sit down on that rock and take a few deep breaths. I think that’ll do you some good.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that.” Max headed for the rock, which was just a few steps away, and sat on it. He took a few more deep breaths and looked around. All of his teammates were alive.

Thank God. Max breathed a sigh of relief.

“Hold still for a second,” Jared said to Weslyn. She had a deep gash on her right arm. He snapped his fingers, and a small glowing orb appeared in front of his hand. Weslyn’s wound closed rapidly.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Next time, keeping your fucking gambeson on,” Jared sighed.

“I will. For sure.”

“Good. Anyone else injured?” Everyone was fine, at least physically. “Let’s head back to New Annapolis now. Chop, chop. We’ve got no time to lose.”

Max closed his eyes. Okay, time to go back now. Let’s just calm down and get the fuck out of here.

He took one last deep breath and stood up.

. . . .

“Are we already in the Expansion?” Blake asked, massaging his temples. It was supposed to start around July 9th, so Hopkins had scrambled to prepare over the last month. But it seemed the Expansion was upon them even earlier than expected.

“I believe so, but I can’t say for sure,” Yai sighed. “Our Lord has been silent over the last week.”

“It’s pretty clear we’re in it,” Wang Yan said. “We should delay the cinnamon sale to Karlis.”

“We can just have Kaiser’s team accompany the caravan,” Blake said.

“Kaiser should remain in Rialis,” Aerisa said. “This Expansion is going to be unusual.”

“How so?”

“She should have worded that differently,” Yai said. “This Expansion will probably be unlike the others in recent years. Our estimates of the Expansions’ beginnings have been off before, but not by this much. It must have begun over a week ago for so many goblins to appear now.”

“Is it possibly...” Blake started. He stopped himself, thinking his words would sound ridiculous.

“Not the Demon Lord,” Yai said. “We would know. The most likely scenarios are that the gods have weakened, a dark god has grown stronger, or a Demon Baron moved the Expansion forward with an artifact.”

“All scenarios sound rather awful,” Blake said.

“The first is less awful than the rest. It’s possible the gods have weakened simply because they’ve blessed more newcomers than before. In that case, the Expansion will be just like any other.”

“If a dark god has gained power, this Expansion will be worse than any you’ve seen before,” Aerisa said calmly. “In that case, we’ll see demons in this Expansion, and the next Demon Lord will arise in the next few years.”

“What about the third scenario?” Wang Yan asked with a frown.

“The Expansion would become less like a barrage of attacks on random towns and villages and more like an invasion by another country,” Yai said.

“Shit,” Wang Yan said. “And when will we know what’s actually happening?”

“If monsters start disappearing and gathering in one place, we have a Demon Baron on our hands,” Aerisa said. “If the Expansion is as messy and chaotic as usual, the gods have just been weakened from blessings. If we regularly see ridiculous events like 100 elite goblins leaving the Irin Forest to attack Orinbeck, the next decade will be written large in history books. A Demon Lord is coming.”

“That’s very unlikely,” Yai said. “But still, you should begin coordinating with Shields and Xiyashi. We need more hunters here. If a Demon Baron marches on Rialis, Hopkins won’t be able to keep it from ruin without help.”

“Urgh, Shields,” Wang Yan said. “But I see your point.”

They spoke for a while longer. Then Yai and Aerisa left.

Wang Yan poured herself a cup of black coffee from the pot on the table.

“Fuck,” she said. “I was on my way to becoming a billionaire this year, Blake. A billion dollars.”

“I know,” Blake said. “But let’s focus on more important things first.”

Wang Yan sighed and downed her entire cup of coffee. “Yeah.”

He pushed aside the papers on his desk and grabbed a blank sheet of king’s parchment to write a letter to Quinn Curtis. Blake hoped Quinn and the Roundtables weren’t too bitter about Hopkins stealing candidates from Shields.

It was a moronic idea, he thought, shaking his head. It had been Wang Yan’s.

“Quinn, this is Blake,” he wrote. “I’m writing to you to ask for”

His hand stopped as soon as he saw text appear on the paper below his pen.

“This is Quinn.”

That was fast, Blake thought. He must have been about to write to me.

“I’m aware of the situation regarding the Expansion, Blake. However, I can’t send aid to Rialis at this time. I sincerely apologize. We’re requesting help ourselves from Iurisia. There are dragons in Equitia.”

Blake blinked. What?