MBGSP - Chpt 54 thru 57

Here we go, goblin fans! It's not just iron in the bog, the dangerous wetlands hold something even more precious. This update takes the advance all the way up through the weekend on Royal Road, so sink your teeth in to a little bonus prior to the free version catching up.

Chapter 54 - Icky Slicky

It was actually somewhat marvelous, the way the boglins used their tesla wasp rods to zap the croc-knockers that came too close. A few of them still got potshots that killed 2 of our escorts and 1 of the throne-bearers, causing King Ringo to almost fly out of his chair in a most unkinglike way. But the king of the bog was clearly more willing to expend his tribemates than I wanted to be.

My scrapper laughed his head off the whole way, being carried between three of the much-smaller boglins. The boglin tribe didn’t have any hobgoblins (hob-boglins?) so far as I could tell. It made sense, since I hadn’t unlocked my second variant goblin until, what was it, 50 or so goblins? And the boglin king seemed to have a count somewhere in the mid 30’s or 40 max. I also learned that he’d been king longer than I had, about a year. But he didn’t have the benefit of an Earth engineer’s understanding to jump-start his tribe’s technology the way I did. It didn’t help that the swamp simply had resources he would have no idea how to harness, while lacking the basic resources he needed to make those advanced resources useful to him.

Rava had dealt him a poor hand, for a king. It was a miracle Ringo had even kept his tribe alive in such a hostile environment. He may have been paranoid, vain, and self-important, but he was also modestly successful in the face of an incredible challenge. I really did want to help these guys, if I could. King Ringo’s goblins, with King Ringo in or out of the picture, deserved a fair shot at securing their future in Lanclova.

Much like the boglin king’s fish crown, I smelled it before I saw it: The sweet-sour tang of petroleum fumes bubbling up through the swamp water. It wasn’t crude oil, either. The slick rainbow sheen of film that spread out over the surface of the water was thinner and more pale than unrefined crude oil. This was something else—but unmistakably a hydrocarbon (or this world’s equivalent). My heart began to race. I had kept the food bag from the night before, and I skimmed it across the surface with trembling fingers, careful not to get it on me.

“For my fur,” I said to the boglins guarding me. This seemed to placate them as I re-tied the skin to my belt.

Ringo leaned down from his chair. “I’ve brought you to the fur-sheen spring. Now, tell me how it can bring the flame to my tribe without lightning!”

“Do you see how the bubbles rise, o’ king?” I asked, pointing to the gasses filtering up from the underwater well. Methane or natural gas would be my best bet—what would normally be burned off as a matter of course. “They contain a strange, invisible miasma that burns like a tree touched by lightning, if you can set them to spark. It’s actually what we’re smelling, right now. But it rises in the air once the bubble bursts, so we have to trap it with this device.” I held up the glider.

The scrapper looked at me, confused. He knew well what the glider actually was. This part was risky. As I continued speaking, I held up two fingers, and then tilted my head subtly toward the oil-slick. “If we collect the miasma from above the spring, we can take it back to the village and use it to make fire. With fire, we can make clay and ceramic—like the knife.”  I made a fist, as though I was gripping the knife. Then flicked my eyes back toward the scrapper and opened it, in the forest-goblin hand-sign for an explosion. The scrapper looked confused for a moment, but then he put things together. His expression grew serious, and he offered the slightest of nods. Even trying to be subtle, the advisor noticed the exchange that passed between us, and the tiny boglin’s eyes narrowed. George was a sharp one. I just hoped my scrapper picked up on the instructions, as well.

King Ringo was getting excited. He rubbed his hands together. “It was here, under our noses, the whole time. Oh, yes, King Apollo. You’re doing me a great service.”

The advisor climbed up the goblin throne-bearers, and then the throne itself to whisper in Ringo’s ear. The king’s eyes narrowed, and he regained his composure enough to remember that he was supposed to be suspicious of me.

“And I suppose you’d like to collect it yourself, hmm?”

“Oh, no, o’ King Ringo,” I said. I raised the folded glider above my head. “The fumes must be gathered from as high as possible for the best potency. It should be your majesty himself, atop his tall chair, that does the gathering.”

“As if I’d be foolish enough to fall for that!” snarled Ringo. “Invisible miasma? Fire boiling up from the bottom of the bog? He pointed at two of his goblins. “This is clearly dangerous work. You and you, carry King Apollo over the spring. Make sure he collects as much as possible.”

The two boglins looked at each other and reluctantly handed their spears off and one climbed onto the other’s shoulders.

“King Ringo,” I said. “At least let me use my scrapper for this. He’s quite strong, and taller than a boglin.”

Ringo’s advisor hissed. “Absolutely not. In fact, keep him back. Spears!”

The other boglins leveled their spears at the scrapper, who stayed at the edge of the sheen with his hands up in placation. But he winked at me.

“Very well,” I said. I clambered onto the shoulders of the boglin, which teetered precariously. “Alright, take us in.”

The bottom boglin started forward, slow and steady, causing us to lumber toward the gas bubbles.

System, do the boglins also have blast resistance?

<If you want me to tell you this is a good idea, I’m not going to.>

The three-man tower teetered and almost toppled. I couldn’t help thinking that all we needed was a trench-coat to get into an R-rated movie, and had to fight back a laugh, lest the king’s advisor find it suspicious. Ugh. Keep it together, Chris. If I took a dunk in the oil, this plan would go a decidedly different direction.

We managed to make it directly over the spring. I unfurled the glider and held it overhead, angling it, and trying not to let the breeze catch it and torque us over.

“It’s working! Is it working? It’s working!” said King Ringo, leaning so far forward that the goblins on the back legs of his throne were lifted completely out of the bog, swinging their legs in the air.

I nodded to the scrapper. He gave a series of indecipherable, but very conspicuous hand-signals, which the boglin next to him noticed. The boglin turned and squawked in alarm to the King’s advisor, but as soon as he did, the scrapper punched him in the side of the head.

Scrapper surprise attacks were incredibly effective. The boglin skipped across the surface of the water, leaving his spear spinning mid-air. The scrapper grabbed it, held it up, and threw it directly at the bottom boglin in our tower.

I barely had time to widen my eyes in surprise as the spear took him in the chest, and the shock traveled both down, and up the three of us. Every muscle in my body tensed with pain—but it wasn’t as bad as when I’d been hit directly.

“Betrayal!” Bellowed Ringo. “Kill them! Kill them!”

I had meant for him to tap the oil slick with the prongs of the wasp to ignite the surface. I don’t know what mad goblin logic made him want to throw a spear at a goblin I was literally riding on. But then, if they were predictable, they wouldn’t be goblins. Of course the tower collapsed. And of course I started falling toward the oil. My plan was about to go up in flames.

Then the arcing electricity from the tesla wasp skipped across the surface of the oil slick. And the water beneath me turned into a roiling ball of fire. My plan really did go up in flames, because my plan was to go up in flames.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Basic icky-slicky combusting.>

The two boglins that had carried me were incinerated. I felt a little bad about that. The rest of them recoiled from the spreading fire. But the gout of resulting hot air hit the underside of my deployed personal glider, and I managed to hold on despite the weakness from getting tasered by bug-sticks and despite getting the fur singed off the lower half of my body.

<Your tribe has decreased to 138 members.>

The blast had still been enough to kill me. At least, it felt like it. I was scorched, and the heat was akin to dancing into the mouth of the forced air kiln. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, and I’d been to a test firing of NuEarth’s 32-nozzle rocket motor that liquefied the concrete pad.

The glider bucked and jerked from the turbulent, rising air. I was climbing so fast I thought my arms might pop out of their sockets from the acceleration. My blades kicked helplessly in the air.

I looked back down at the spreading field of fire and the retreating boglins. I’d killed at least 8 of them, but they were now closing in on the scrapper.

As they reached him, he looked up and gave me one last salute before he was driven down by spears—ones tipped not with wasps, but with sharp ceramic points stolen from our own wagons.

<Your tribe has decreased to 137 members.>

I hated that it was necessary. Hated how effective it was, and how easily justified, and how willing the goblins were to throw their lives away for creatures like me or Ringo. They would take me to the moon, yes. But I would give them a reason to live for me—not just a biological imperative. I looked away, searching for King Ringo. I found him splashing in the water, his throne-bearers having ditched the chair in an effort to distance themselves from the fire. I locked eyes with him and shouted down over the roar of the fire.

“I’ve kept my side of the bargain, Ringo! That’s how you make fire in the swamp! And this is how you flyyyyyyy!”

“Beeeeeetttrraaaaayyyaaaaalll!”

Chapter 55 - Swamped

The glider carried me up and up, over the burning well-spring. I kept hold as I climbed in altitude, still in pain from the burning and explosion. The sounds, sights, and smells of the swamp faded away and I was just left with the sound of air rushing past. I’d come by air, and I was leaving by air—albeit this time I’d done so by burning myself immediately in some sort of weird reverse-icarus situation. Would someone eventually write mythology about me? Perhaps Earth and Rava would share Apollo.

With the problems of the swamp below me, I got my bearings and got the glider pointed southeast, where a dot in the sky soon resolved into a glider. It spotted me and angled my way, flying close enough that the goblin inside could recognize me—at which point it turned and ignited its booster back toward the bluff. Huh. So, Sally had been launching them with a rocket pod for speedy return. Smart.

From the air, it was easy to spot the finished tower on the jutting peninsula a few hundred meters back from the water’s edge. I passed over croc-knockers basking on the beach, glaring down. Now I knew their secret. All I had to do was find one of the tesla wasp nests, and we’d have a method of deterring the crocs long enough to get iron. And now I knew there was oil—or the next best thing—in the bog. All the parts for internal combustion were within reach. We could have a working prototype in a matter of weeks if the igni were worth their chooms at metalurgy. Yes, the bog was still dangerous. Yes, we’d lose goblins along the way.

Hadfield had finished the tower and started a sprawling network of tree platforms connected by rough rope bridges, effectively turning the tower into a small village worth of elevated terrain. Defensive emplacements lined the towers and I saw two turtle shells from the large carnivorous beasts being used to collect rainwater—one for drinking, and one for bathing. Though I imagine the goblins would forget which was which with alarming regularity.

The goblins on lookout spotted my glider coming in and raised a ruckus, shouting and jumping and pointing me out to their companions on the ground. Quite a few goblins worked on tasks down there, including a kiln being worked by a larger goblin in a ceramic mask with a stack of ceramic plates and helmets next to him, and a huge basket of charcoal nearby. It seemed like extra goblins had been brought in to aid the man—er, goblin hunt.

I angled toward the tower, where they’d apparently bagged another night haunt and put a new totem up. Bringing the glider in, I flared off for a landing. Before I could hit the wood and stone top of the structure, goblins flooded out the opening and packed tightly on the platform, such that there was nowhere to land but on my tribe and tilted the top of the tower to a worrying degree. It created a huge tangled mess as I fell among them, and they equal parts tried to catch me, loft me up like crowdsurfing a metal concert, and embrace me.

I lost the glider in the kerfuffle, and then the whole gaggle of goblins rolled, surging toward me—which then had the effect of spilling a good portion of us over the side and onto the ground in a blue, furry cascade of screaming, panicked goblins. Thank goodness for fall damage immunity, because we just ended up a pile on the floor of the bog, a tangle of flailing limbs and gnawing teeth. Until a pair of strong hands thrust through the pile and wrapped around my leg remnants, hauling me out.

Even up-side down, I recognized the two hobbies. “Chuck, Armstrong!”

“Good to see ye, king,” said Armstrong, rotating me upright.

Chuck just looked somewhere between relieved and constipated. Fair, considering what I’d put my lieutenants through. I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Not your fault. You can’t be everywhere, and I made a stupid, rash decision that cost this tribe too much. I won’t put myself at risk of being isolated again.”

Chuck relaxed and looked away. “I just want to see us reach Raphina, boss. We can’t do it without you.”

Someone must have been cutting onions because my eyes started to sting. I cleared my throat. “Armstrong! Put me down!” I ordered.

He placed me gently back on the ground.

“Armstrong, I am officially making you captain of my guard. Where I go, you go. If I try to go somewhere stupid, you have the authority to prevent me from doing so until I have time to get my head right.”

Armstrong froze as a glazed look passed across his face.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Secretive Servants.>

<Goblins assigned to your personal Secretive Servants can ignore your direct commands under certain circumstances.>

What circumstances?

<Secret ones.>

Haw haw, System. Very funny. I sighed. Oh well. Armstrong shook himself out of his stupor and flexed his prodigious biceps. “I won’t let you down, King! Consider me your shadow.”

I opened up the tribe hierarchy window and assigned a few goblins underneath him.

“As for you, Chuck,” I said.

The hobgoblin perked up as I continued. “From now on, in my absence, you have my authority. I want to know that if I’m not around, the tribe is in good hands: yours.”

Chuck scowled. “Boss-man, if you’re not around, I’m having the entire tribe out looking until I can drag you back.”

I huffed. “I don’t doubt it. Even if you lost half the tribe pulling me out of the fire—er, metaphorically speaking, of course.”

We both glanced down at my singed fur and both elected to ignore it. But really, it was the logical choice. Chuck was mobile between gliders and cliffords. He could be places I wasn’t, and had good judgment—for a goblin, of course. Which was somewhere between the judgment of a toddler and a golden retriever given explicit instructions not to eat the bacon left on the table.

“Anyway, if croc-knockers are the only obstacle between us, it’s not going to stop you much longer. Grab your wranglers. We’ve got bugs to catch. But first, I want to meet our new variant.”

Chuck left to wrangle his wranglers—who I noticed were not on mounts. He must have figured out that whatever that strange swamp spirit was, it was taking all our cliffords. I walked toward the kiln, glancing up at the signal balloon currently being lofted with a goblin holding a flag—a yellow one, this time. They must have expanded the semaphore codes while I was gone, too. I had no desire to learn what the yellow flag was dyed with.

Working the kiln was a porcine brute of a goblin with a fleshy pot-belly protruding from beneath his blue, furry chest. His thick sausage-fingers wrapped around a hooked pole that he looped around the front access for the kiln.

“You must be the new ignis taskmaster,” I said.

The ignis tipped his mask to me with his offhand, which rather than a skull-mask was one of the ceramic plates fitted to a leather hood with a small slit for his eyes and bulbous nose. “Aye, boss. Ya’ll had some strange notions on how to work this thing. I smoothed ‘em out for you.”

“Oh, you got the ceramic parts to fail less?”

He swung open the hatch and pulled out a rack, much to my amazement, a rack of what looked like pork ribs.

“Well, yeah, that too, s’pose. The clay should go further now. Stronger plates, less exploding when you put it in cold.” he set the rack down. “But that can wait. Reckon you must be hungry after being stuck in that bog. Javeline rib while you spin your tale of how you got back to us?”

“I think we’re going to get along just fine, Prometheus.”

“Call me Promo,” he said, scraping salt onto the rack of ribs. “Now what’s this iron stuff these boys been telling me yer on about?”

Chapter 56 - Shocking Development

Before we could get the iron, we still had to grow our own shock sticks from eggs. Raiding a nest for larval tesla wasps meant finding a nest—and that’s where the trouble began.

Luckily, Chuck and I had found one on our first recon to the bog, and we knew that general location. From that jumping-off point, it was a matter of spotting one of the wasps and following it back to its hidden home in a mound of peat drifting on the surface of the bog. There weren’t any crocs in the area, and I had to assume it was because you could hear the faint hiss and pop of electricity in the nest from the dozens or hundreds of wasps hidden within.

Unfortunately, the crocs stayed away because the wasps seemed like the only thing in the bog grumpier than they were. The wasps were quick to attack the first goblin I sent out to verify the nest’s exact location, and he’d been stung a half-dozen times by the time the hobbies pulled him, half-paralyzed, out of the water. He recovered quick enough, but it would be easy for a goblin to drown if it was stung in a way that they couldn’t keep their head above the surface.

“How you want to approach this, boss?” asked Chuck. He crouched on the shore, lobber slung over his shoulder. He stroked his chin. “Poppers?”

“Risks destroying the larva,” I said. I considered. King Ringo had thought he was being much smarter than me when he’d bragged about how they collected the wasps. But really, he’d given away his secret sauce. “The boglins came at them from under the surface.”

“Well that’s all fine to say,” said Chuck, “but I don’t breathe mud.”

It was a fair point. The boglins were clearly a sub-species of goblin specifically adapted to semi-aquatic environments. I had to assume they either had primitive gills or at least the ability to stay underwater for longer than a forest goblin. I went back on the edge of the shore and rooted around until I found some reeds, pulling the stems out and shaking out the interior until I had a hollow tube. I handed it over. “Try this.”

Chuck looked down dubiously. “Done this in your old world, yeah?”

“No, but I saw it in a cartoon, once.”

My wrangler boss raised a fuzzy eyebrow. But he sighed and lowered himself into the water until he was fully submerged, except for the hollow reed just breaking the surface. It bobbed up and down, and I heard the subtle, hollow hiss of his breathing.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Sticky-wet-breather.>

Thank you, clever fox. Insight flashed across the eyes of the rest of the goblins present, and in true goblin fashion, a few moments later they were all scrambling to find reeds of their own to try it out.

I had to imagine it was a similar situation back at the bog tower camp, and a wave of disappointment at Village Apollo, who were landlocked. I put a hand on Armstrong’s shoulder before he could rush off.

“We’re not going with them,” I said.

“We’re not?”

I shook my head. “I need to get used to exposing myself to dangerous situations less. The wranglers are animal handling experts. Let them do what they do best.”

The captain of my guard looked noticeably relieved. “Glad your ‘ead’s on right, King. Meanin’ no offense.”

“None taken,” I said. “Besides, I’ve seen how capable our goblins are without my direct hand controlling things. We’ll let them cook. This time.

I turned around at a pop and snap, and a thrashing splashing noise. It was just in time to see one of the hobbies cough into his tube, and the big, black bulbous form of a tesla wasp that had crawled down his snorkel erupting backwards out the other end. It arced through the air, prongs out, wings buzzing furiously, until it landed squarely in the backside of a goblin on the shore still getting his own reed sorted.

The unfortunate receiving goblin squawked, then went completely rigid as the electric sting from the wasp sent a jolt coursing through every muscle in his little, blue body. He fell over, fur smoking.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Basic bug blastics>

<Your tribe has decreased to 136 members>

Every reed currently sticking out of the water stopped moving momentarily.

“That’s horrifying,” I said.

“Erm, King? Can we go?” asked Armstrong.

I looked at the hulking hobgoblin wringing his hands and staring in the direction of the tesla wasp nest.

“Armstrong,” I chided. “Are you afraid of bugs?”

“Just the ones what sting or bite,” the big goblin confided. “Can’t sneak attack a bug.”

Aww. I actually found that somewhat endearing. “Don’t worry, big guy. Let’s head back.”

“I’m still the strongest goblin in Tribe Apollo, you know,” he muttered.

“I know,” I said, patting his arm. “I saw you take on a javeline 5 levels higher by yourself.”

The hobgoblin walked a little straighter, at that—confidence restored. This king thing wasn’t so bad sometimes, even when it was closer to being a camp counselor for a rowdy group of pre-teens.

We made our way back to the camp, where there was something of a commotion. It didn’t take long to figure out why, when I found the boglin advisor George and six boglin bodyguards held at spearpoint by two-dozen forest goblins.

I pushed my way through the crowd, angling spear points out of the way. “Stop, stop!” I shouted over the clamor. I spotted a couple singed spots of fur, I’m guessing where the boglins had been forced to employ the shock spears. Promo stood with his big hooked pole, ready to crack heads. Hadfield glared from around the noblin’s potbelly, a patch of blackened fur still sizzling. I moved up next to them.

“Woah, woah! Cool your jets, what’s going on?”

“Found ‘em sneakin’ up to the camp, boss,” said Hadfield, rubbing his singed spot. “Probably wot to steal more supplies.”

“Lies!” said the boglin advisor. “This is a diplomatic delegation, and attacking it is an act of war!” he pointed at me. “We’re here to see King Apollo!”

I crossed my arms. “What for?”

The advisor had a few singed spots himself from the debacle with the hydrocarbon spring. It was safe to say we were all a little burned out for the day. He broke eye contact and looked away. “The great King Ringo sent me. He recognizes the cunning of the claw-legged king, Apollo, and admits you are his near equal in intellect. Worthy of your crown of lame dry bones—”

That was the wrong thing to say, as a wave of fury rolled through the Apollo goblins present.

“Hey, hey, hey!” I shouted, regaining control of the situation before Ringo lost 7 members of his tribe. Once things calmed down, I stepped into the circle so that I was face to face with the advisor. “I recommend not trashing the crown. It was their first gift to me as their king. Get to the point.”

The advisor cleared his throat again—or at least I thought he did, until he hawked up a fishbone that had apparently been lodged in his throat. He fished it out of his mouth and discarded it. “The tribe has tasted cooked fish for the first time, and it resulted in a spawning bonus that greatly benefit Tribe Ringo. Ergo, the great King Ringo would like to officially open relations with Tribe Apollo and exchange more secrets of goblin technology, and hopefully some of whatever it is we’re smelling in that smoke stack.”

He leaned forward. “And just between you and me, cooked fish tastes waaay better.”

I didn’t need Ringo. I didn’t need his tribe, I didn’t need his tricks, and I didn’t need his suspicion. I’d gotten tesla wasp taming and liquid fuels from him, which would, in turn, give me internal combustion and the power to fly over his silly little swamp village.

But I was a scientist, not a monster. And ultimately, neither was Ringo. The boglins were just a less resourceful tribe with fewer cards delt to them that they had the ability to utilize. He was right when he said this world was unkind to goblins. I didn’t want them to get wiped out if a group of humans or elves or whatever decided to cut through the swamp instead of going around to to the west. More to the point, I wanted advance warning if such a group came gunning for my tribe from that direction. Besides, two goblin kings could progress faster than one by sharing branches of the goblin tech tree. Though, I had no doubt Ringo’s suspicious nature would scrutinize such exchanges for any hint of imagined betrayal. I just had to hope future exchanges were less caustic than the trade for shock sticks and oil fire had been.

“Very well,” I said. “Let it be known that Tribe Apollo recognizes Tribe Ringo as friends and allies under Raphina’s watchful eye,” I said, pointing up at the late afternoon moon just starting to illuminate from the sinking sun.

The gathered goblins of Tribe Apollo cheered and rushed to greet the boglins, who squawked in shock at suddenly being thrust into the air. I found myself caught up as well, thrust onto the top of the crowd and bounced across the hands of dozens of goblins.

“What is this? Betrayal!” shouted Ringo’s envoy. I just laughed. “I demand you return me to Daytona at once!”

I stopped, chill running down my spine. “What did you say?”

“I said unhand me!”

“No, about Daytona.”

The goblins let George down and he dusted himself off. “Daytona Island, the domain of King Ringo.”

Ringo…

I had thought it a funny coincidence that the swamp king had named himself after one of the Beatles. Hell, I thought myself clever by naming his advisor George. Great joke. Har har. But… what if the joke was actually on me? I never even stopped to consider the possibility…

“George… is King Ringo… from Earth?”

The advisor’s ear twitched. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, sniffing. “I’ve never even heard of a world called Earth. And if I had, my king would certainly not be from it.”

Huh. The whole time I’d interacted with him, I had thought Ringo was a brain-addled, paranoid swamp creature native to Rava. Could he just be from Florida?

It… actually made a disturbing amount of sense.

Chapter 57 - Harvest 2: Electric Bogaloo

<Your tribe has decreased to 154 members.>

<2 hobgoblin scrappers have been added to your tribe.>

<1 hobgoblin wrangler has been added to your tribe.>

<Your tribe has increased to 168 members>

<Your tribe is consuming more food than it produces by 2.2 chooms per day. Your tribe will begin starving in 12 days.>

“Harvest teams, go!” I said.

All across the bank of the water, goblins began to wade out in teams of three. I would have liked to be on the front line. I wasn’t comfortable standing with the reserves in the back line.

It had taken a few days for the harvested larvae to grow into wasps capable of producing enough voltage to arc between their prongs. A few days also to stew over the fact that the boglin king of the swamp was very likely Florida Man reincarnated as a goblin, somehow—almost a full year before I was. Why? The System had been utterly silent on the matter.

He’d refused all requests to meet again. Which seemed fair, since, you know, I’d tried to set him on fire and all. But I couldn’t afford to stop trying to make contact again. But it wasn’t my top priority. We were pushing back into the swamp and this time we weren’t leaving without the iron. I held my heavy slinger at the ready, braced on the back of another goblin. Through the slit in my ceramic faceplate, I scanned the waterline, looking for signs our harvesters had been noticed.

The scrappers were in position ready to give the signal, but there was always a chance one of the aquatic reptiles could slip our cordon and make it into the teams. So far so good, as the goblins waded through the water probing for iron nodules in the peat. I started seeing them pull ore from the peat and put it in their harvesting baskets. They were a blur of manic productivity, just like every other pursuit they tackled. With single-minded fixation, they scoured the peat bog for any trace of iron in an uneven line.

Several minutes passed, and the sun even drew behind Raphina’s closed eye. A few of the especially industrious teams hauled ore-laden baskets back to swap for fresh ones, bolstered by the stone-sloth totem’s resistance to movement impedance. I began to wonder if we’d even have a croc-knocker attack—not that that was a bad thing. But… after I’d gone to all the trouble of getting captured by Ringo and having other goblins do the dirty work to steal larva from the tesla wasp nest, it almost seemed a waste. A perverse part of me wanted to see how effective our counter-croc measures would be.

A low whistle sounded out in the bog, which was the scrapper signal that one of the big brutes had been sighted heading our way. I tightened my grip on the heavy slinger and sighted down the lathes.

The goblins in the bog continued to work—if more wary, now with a tighter grip on their shock sticks and slingers. I couldn’t blame them. Croc-knockers had killed over a dozen goblins in as many minutes last time we tried to harvest iron. The only loss we’d managed to inflict on them had been when I’d sliced off the tongue of the biggest one. Maybe it had bled out after that? Psh, I should be so lucky.

I kept my eyes on the waterline—which was why I was the first to spot a dark shadow climbing toward the surface and shout a warning to the teams.

One of the harvesters turned just in time to see one of the extendable tongues breach the water and slam into his ceramic armor mask, sending chips and shards everywhere, but leaving the goblin himself alive. The knocker disappeared back underwater, and the beast broached a moment later, full of fire and ferocity. It spotted my gleaming, white crown and diverted toward me.

“I’ve got this one,” I shouted. “Get clear!”

The nearby harvest teams dove to the side, pulling the downed goblin away with them as I released the tension on my slinger. A round, clay ball launched forward with an angry buzzing. The hollow sphere exploded against the hide of the croc-knocker, and a half-dozen angry tesla wasps spilled out, keying in on the largest target in the area to express their outrage.

The croc roared as the wasps stung it. I hadn’t been content to simply put larva into the split poles to make shock spears. I had a whole arsenal of bio-electric based weaponry, now. Several other goblins launched wasp-tipped bolts from their own slingers in a wave of buzzing, popping artillery.

“Reload!” I called. Armstrong came up from behind me and started working the crank on the heavy slinger.  “Wranglers up!”

Our bog wranglers pushed forward, insulated from the wasps with ceramic and leather armor from the waist up. Thin as it was, it wouldn’t do much to deter the crocs. But the hobgoblins were able to enter the swarm of stinging electric wasps without being shocked into paralysis. They had their own spears—some with shock tips, and some with ceramic spearheads. We were going to kill this thing if we could. But, if not, we’d at least put the fear of Apollo into it.

Another low whistle sounded from the right side. Armstrong slapped another bug bomb into my sled just in time for the big one to burst out of the water. The alpha had come. When it roared, I could even see its severed tongue where I’d taken its knocker as a trophy. Well, I had something to trade for it, and no doubt. I swiveled the the heavy slinger on my goblin pintle mount and let fly with my second bug bomb.

I’d made them by sealing clay half-spheres with large enough holes so the larva wouldn’t suffocate, but not big enough for the adult wasps to escape. The anti-croc bombs were a few steps up, technologically, from the simple shock sticks employed by Ringo’s guards. But the principle was still the same: apply shock to croc.

Even without the iron knocker, the alpha was plenty dangerous with its powerful jaws and rending talons. On earth it was probably the size of a large cayman, not even a true alligator. But to goblins? It might as well have been a T-rex for all the chance we had against it without technology.

I could tell the alpha was caught off guard when the sphere smashed into its side, releasing 6 more of the tesla wasps that proceeded to shock the big bastard of a croc as it bellowed its rage at us.

“Reload!” I called. Down the line from me, one of the slingers exploded in the gunner’s hands, releasing its payload of wasps on the slinger team instead of the croc. But all the standard slingers with the specialized shock bolts had already sighted in the alpha and were pelting it with stinging darts.

With a final, hateful look, the alpha disappeared back below the water.

The goblins cheered, and not just because they’d chased off the alpha. The first croc was caught between a pair of sticky trappers with one loop around its jaws, and another around its rear leg as wranglers and goblins pulled at the poles. Unable to move, and unable to open its mouth, the other guards closed in and began to finish the job with their ceramic spear points. Even the harvesters lost track of their goal and leapt in with their ceramic bogging knifes to help finish off the beast with the held of the night haunt totem buff. I held off on firing my next bomb.

In the grand scheme of things, the croc itself wasn’t one of the bigger ones. In fact, it was only level 19, lower than the stone sloth alpha we’d killed. But it was the first one, and the tribe would be eating good tonight. Plus, it had a hunk of iron ore in its mouth the size of a fist. What was that worth? A knife? Two? 1/4th of a crank case?

The goblins finished hauling the croc back onto the shore as I did mental math, trying to figure out the value of each one between the food and the iron they harbored in their mouths.

I whistled for attention and got the group back on task. There was still work to be done.