The madman had spent two days hunting goblins, those worthless whelps costed absolutely nothing but he still had to do it if he wanted to make the money for the trip. He counted the measly five silvers in his hands, tears threatening to come out of his eyes. He really hadn’t considered how much he had to spend these days. He blamed everything on the goblins, those damn demons had taken most of the money out of his pocket. He’d gotten caught up in their little demands bit by bit and bought them each a shortsword and nice clothes. They’d each even asked for a cloak like him, after a half-hour of begging and persuading he convinced them not to run out of house and home.

The goblins ran around the room, playing some weird game of tag where instead of touching they had to tackle each other to the ground to be “it”. Only Fifth didn’t seem to play, watching over them with a bored look in his eyes. First tripped second to get away from fourth, giggling as he jumped up the bed and on top of Derb’s armored head. He was light enough to not bother him so he just let him do it. Yeah right. “Get off me, you brat,” Derb grumbled as he grabbed him by a leg and tossed him at a wall. He didn’t bother looking as he heard the crash and a pained cry. He stood up and went towards his pack, once again rechecking and rearranging all the supplies he had. He still needed food but he was set on water and other supplies, something he already knew considering he’d impatiently check it every day.

He wondered whether he should take action, he needed them to know who was the boss. He heard the goblins squeal and laugh behind him and assumed someone caught up to First. He was proven right as he saw Second run past him, First right behind. He stopped what he was doing and stood up, clapping his hands. “Everyone line up, we’re having a meeting!” He shouted, making sure to sound angry. They all scurried to line up in front of him, Third even doing a salute. He was unsure how he knew that. “All of you have been acting a bit too comfortable living under my house… room. Um, the place doesn’t matter, what does is the fact that all of you have cost me way more than I expected.”

Second raised his hand, “The swords were your idea, we only wanted the clothes.” Derb silently ordered Second to hit himself on the head, earning him a betrayed look. “I’m getting to that, and you have to wait for me to call on you before you talk.” The goblin nodded, sulking and no longer willing to talk, which made him a bit guilty. The guilt didn’t stop him from acting tough, though. “We’ll be hunting goblins again today, emphasis on we.” The goblins all gasped, except for Fifth who grinned maliciously. Derb made sure to keep an eye on him for later. “Yes, I’ll have you going against your own people, but don’t worry, I’ll be there to keep you alive.” The anxiety didn’t seem to leave them with just that, but he didn’t care.

“We’ll head out now, maybe after this, you’ll understand the price of money.” He went to the door but then realized, of course they didn’t know the value of money, they’ve never had a need for it before. He looked back at the stressed goblins and thought of a plan to really motivate them. “Maybe I should mention, any goblins you kill will be yours and yours only. That means the gold as well, so do me proud.” All five of them looked at him in shock, before cheering and chattering in an accent he couldn’t understand. He unsummoned them before they became too wild and set out on the hunt, another bounty another dollar.

A few hours later they were back in the forest, Searching for a wandering group of goblins ambush. He’d already tried to look for another outpost yesterday but after coming up with nothing he guessed that he wiped out all the camps in the first two days. He thanked the lucky gods above that goblins were a mana infestation rather than an animal who needed to breed. The fact that they required so little mana in the air to spawn meant there would always be some in this type of place.

He wanted his goblins to face off against these groups, just to test out their capabilities more than anything. They weren’t as civilized as the ones he found in the camps, they wore little clothes and had rocks instead of makeshift weapons, but even then he assumed they’d be a proper match for his summons. He closed his book on rituals and took roll call again. All six of them, both him and the goblin, were riding Mist while in the forest. Second sat behind him while third and fifth stood precociously on the large shoulder spikes on Mist’s front. Fourth was riding the neck while First… Was sitting on Derbs shoulder, an arm around Derb’s head for stability.

He wanted to teach them the feeling of dread that came from knowing anything could jump out at them in this forest while they were hunting, but instead it felt like a school field trip. Where he was the underpaid teacher. “Are we almost there? I thought we were getting money.” First asked, tapping Derb on his head like he was a damn call bell. He grabbed First by his leg with a trembling hand, deciding not to crush it after a couple intense seconds of calming thoughts. “Connor is looking for a group we can handle. We’ve only been here for 10 minutes so have some patience.” First threw his head back in disappointment and groaned, almost falling off in the process.

Second spoke up behind him. “How much money are we going to make? I want enough to buy many things.” Derb contemplated telling them, before realizing it might ruin their motivation. “It depends on the number of goblins we find, ok? Don’t worry, those filthy… uh, goblins are known for their numbers.” He caught their sad looks at him inadvertently calling them filthy, guilt seeding inside of him. “Hey, uh. I didn’t mean tha-” Before he could continue the awkward apology Connor crashed to the side of him, looking a bit overcooked.

He jumped off to help his friend, throwing half the goblins off in the process. “Shit, Connor, what happened!?” The incubus looked at him with half-closed eyes, pointing to the place he flew from. “Ogres… strong ogres.” Derb was shocked, ogres were much stronger than the trolls he fought before, and needed a large mana concentration to match. He was supposed to believe that there was not just one, but multiple in the area? “Ok, Connor. Thanks for warning me, go back for now.” He unsummoned the incubus and stood up, looking at his goblins. Should he also unsummon them, dying wouldn’t be too big of a problem, what he feared was them actually taking down an ogre and asking to keep the rewards.

It was 14 silver per ogre, enough to get him out of here without breaking his back. He decided to check how many there were before he decided to take everything for himself. “Come on, you five! I found a better group of prey. If you do well then you’ll be rich!” The goblins cheered as they hopped on the horse, Derb quickly doing the same. They galloped forward, the goblins taking the time to talk about what they’d buy. An alarming amount said they wanted to buy poison, which made him a bit uneasy.

It didn’t take long before they found the group. He’d expected more than one but finding six ogres made him almost cry out in excitement. That was more than a hundred silver!! “Get ready, you guys! I’m summoning everyone right now.” He summoned Jack and Connor, the incubus still looking too weak to fight. He carried him and set him on the horse, making sure to order Mist to take it easier on him. “Don’t use any magic that will get you noticed, we need your support but don’t push yourself.” He told him, before turning around and ordering all the goblins to line up. “Don’t worry about actually being effective, just survive.”

Derb grabbed his sword and leaped into one of the trees, slowly stalking the group. He knew better than to take them on without an advantage. Best case scenario some would run away, the worst-case scenario would mean he’d be outnumbered and hurt. He carefully moved amongst the trees, making sure not to land on any branches that’d make a noise. The group seemed bored, as if they were looking for anything to do. They were just lying around, not minding the area around them. One even seemed to be sleeping, which was absolutely unnecessary for demons. It made sense, there shouldn’t have been any natural predators in an area with as little mana as this place.

He decided it was a good time to strike. He ordered his goblins to make noise a couple dozen feet away from the ogres and it worked exactly as he planned. Three of the ogres walked over to the noise, which was good for him but extremely bad for his summons. ‘Jack, protect the goblins with your life.’ He ordered Connor to do the same before jumping off the tree and activating the boar spell. With a greatsword infused with dark mana and the oh-so-powerful rule of gravity, he lodged his sword halfway into the neck of the only one standing. With how resilient he heard they were he started to reach for a dagger in his belt to finish it off, unneeded as the ogre silently fell, gargling blood.

He ripped the sword out of its neck, snapping back to the other two behind him. Only one seemed to have noticed, luckily. The other was still asleep, wholly unaware of the carnage happening before him. He circled the ogre, watching as it picked up a tree trunk bigger than him, the branches removed to make a rather terrifying-looking trunk. The ogre swung it with great enthusiasm, the sound of it crashing into the dirt enough to wake up the second one. Derb hopped over the club, trying to get a cheeky swing at its shoulder.

The swing was poorly timed so the ogre just moved out of the way, picking up the club and crashing it down on him. The speed was next to nothing so Derb was able to quickly move out of the way, instead going for the groggy ogre who had just started to wake up. He ran forward and pierced the sword into its belly, hearing a pained growl come from its throat. He could feel the energy sap into him, relieving him of the slight fatigue he had. It tried swiping at him with its hands, slow enough for him to remove the sword and fall back.

The other ogre had finally caught up to them, and it swung directly at Derb, who was next to the legs of the giant ogre. As expected, once Derb got out of the way the club didn’t stop, snapping the wounded ogre’s leg in half. It screamed in agony and grabbed the club trying to pull it away from the other ogre in anger. Derb took advantage of the chaos and activated his snake eyes, aiming along the muscle lining of the shoulders to cleanly slice off the shoulder of the standing ogre. It was a smoother cut than he thought, the force enough for him to keep going. With a continued backswing, he brought the sword to his back and spun, slicing one of it’s feet off it with a low swing.

It toppled with a low cry on its hands and knees, the club ripped from its hand by the other ogre. Derb jumped onto its back and lopped off the head before it could get its balance back. Unfortunately being on its back made him topple over when the ogre fell down, one of its giant arms toppling on top of him. He had to let go of the sword to get off him, the awkward angle making it hard to move. He wasn’t trapped for long though, as the other ogre brought the club down on Derb’s body.

There was no place to go this time, he put his head under the dead ogre’s arm and activated the boar spell. With a sickening crunch, the club came down on him, crushing his entire body and ripping the air out of his lungs. He moaned as the club slowly rose, luckily the ogre corpse had taken most of the force, the swing awkward and clumsy. He kicked off the arm and dove behind a tree, hiding from it to take a breather. His legs were weak and shaky, the club strike wasn’t strong but it was still enough to get him to this state. Terrifying.

He looked back to see the final ogre toppled on top of the dead one, breathing slowly and raspily. Its eyes were closed and scrunched up in agony, waiting for death. Derb grinned when he noticed the rot in its stomach, the dark mana slowly stealing life from it. He walked forward carefully, taking his dropped sword in hand. The ogre didn’t seem to notice him so he just went to its side and prepared his sword executioner style. A quick swing and the head was lopped off. He felt the surge of energy enter him, enough to make him feel better. He quickly picked up the heads of each ogre and ran to a tree, hanging them from a branch by their hair.

He promised to take care of them later and ran back to his team, unsure if they finished fighting the other ogres. He heard the noise of struggling nearby and he rushed forward, if any of the goblins died he’d feel bad about it, even if they could just come back. He jumped past the foliage and made it to the trees, jumping from one to one until he found the group… Connor was lying on the horse lazily just like he always did, while Jack was nowhere to be seen. The group of goblins were screaming and crying while fighting each other, assumedly fighting for the ogre corpses. First was the only trying to hack off the head of one of the ogres with the shortsword, it wasn’t effective.

He leaped down and surveyed the situation in shock, one of the ogres was burned to death while another was full of bruises and disfigurations, obviously from both Connor and Jack. The other, the one First was trying to decapitate, seemed to have died of blood loss, though. Its wrists and ankles were cut from different angles repeatedly, and its stomach was full of stabs and cuts. Did the weak goblins actually do something? “Good job, you three! This is amazing, I can’t believe you actually managed to kill one. You each get 4 silver for that.”

The four that were fighting all turned their heads to him in shock, before untangling themselves from each other and running to the ogre in glee. They each took a sword and stabbed at the neck, trying to help First decapitate it. He smiled at the camaraderie, noticing that they were all dirty and covered in blood. He wondered just how terrifying the battle was for them, they towered him already and he was twice their size. He knew the ogre only cost 13 silver but he felt they deserved the extra cash. It wasn’t like him to be stingy, after all. He went to the other two ogres, sword in hand. He had to bleed them out before he stored them away, it’d be messy to bring the heads back normally.