Chapter 198

◈ Chapter 198:

Berylomszelalos was a fairly average kobold. Or atleast, that's what she had considered herself. Then had come one morning when she had awoken in her little hand made tent to find that she was a little taller and a lot stronger than any of those in her clan. She had evolved, and for a reason she couldn't grasp no matter how she racked her memory for a potential cause.

She had preened in the envious gazes of her clan mates of course, dominated those who used to bully her, and bedded any male or female she liked, sometimes multiple at the same time. Admittedly it might have gone to her head a little.

She had eaten well too, now able to hunt better than any other kobold. She'd become the hunt leader and she had gone out hunting for rival goblins to catch and eat with the rest of her little clan, stalking through the small places of the immense dungeon under Florens.

They had found and fought a group of hapless goblins, a group out on a mission to catch and eat kobolds themselves. But the goblins of course lacked something they had. Her. The battle had gone their way pretty quickly and they had crushed their opponents, largely thanks to her evolution. Being so much stronger meant that regular sized gobbos didn't stand a chance!

They had stumbled free from the cave where they'd fought drunk on their success and ready to feast when they had been set upon by a band of levelers. They'd slaughtered her comrades in an instant. She had blinked once and then they were all dead, leaving only her alive, frozen in shock.

A drake with sandy scales had stood before her, a great snake behind him. He had taken her by the throat, lifting her into the air. She had struggled, but for all she was stronger than other kobolds, against a leveler she may as well have been a helpless hatchling. Even putting all her might behind her punches the drake hadn't felt it, her claws slipping off his scales like nothing, his arm unmoving as a column of steel.

Her pride in her new found strength had evaporated in that moment. She had been so foolish, her evolution was a bitter joke, a farce. How could any evolution fight this?

Barely glancing at her, he had tossed her bodily into a bag like a root vegetable and tied it off.

She knew she had then been thrown in some kind of carriage along with what felt like many other bags each containing a monster.

The carriage had rumbled off and then so many voices, the sounds of so many levelers, the sounds of so much monster fear. It was one of the most anxiety inducing experiences of her life, hours and hours verging on outright panic.

More noises, then being roughly unloaded, tossed to the ground, the sounds of monsters complaining about bruises, and then they were being moved.

She'd found herself being emptied from the bag into a small wire cage, so small she could only crouch, surrounded on all sides by other monsters in similar cages.

Then they had been left alone. They had spoken, there, in the dark, as time passed in the ruins. No one knew what was happening. Slavers were the best guess of most. Berylomszelalos wondered what that would be like, maybe life as a slave would be a bit less dangerous than the dungeon, maybe it wouldn't be that bad. But a hobgoblin girl with a scattering of scales on her body had said different. She had said that they were all going to be killed in this dark place.

She hadn't believed her, or rather she hadn't wanted to. And then when they were herded from the cages she had watched as the crazed hobgoblin had rushed up to a leveler, begging to be saved, before being kicked over and crushed to death by a freaking enormous centaur.

Then she knew it was real. The levelers here didn't care for them as slaves, or for any use, they were detritus to them.

That had been outlined very clearly, when the levelers had caused a stampede and she'd found herself crushed under foot, and then later when she'd been chased into the fighting pit. Charnel pit being the more accurate word in her opinion. She had been utterly certain she would die there, injured as she was.

But now she was here, alive somehow, one of around a hundred monsters who still lived after the butchery, the remainder of the 'buffet'.

The sounds of moaning in pain, quiet weeping, and the occasional scream filled the large and very dark rectangular chamber they had been left in. Most of the enchanted lights seemed to be broken leaving the place cast in a shadowy gloom. Small monsters sat dotted around on cold stone, clutching injuries, curled up small, or in some cases dead, their injuries proven mortal. These ones lay so still as pools of blood slowly inched larger around them.

She felt at her blue scaled arm, her broken arm, at her injuries. She winced at the touch. Bad. She turned her head and spat on a cut on her shoulder.

She'd begun rubbing the spit into her injury when a fanged goblin approached her and sat down on her haunches nearby, arms wrapped around knees. She watched her carefully.

"Hey. What are you doing?"

"One of the benefits of my evolution. Lets me close wounds easy and improve healing," she muttered. Who was this goblin?

The fanged goblin looked between the kobold and a bad cut on her own arm. She seemed to seriously consider something.

"You can ask, if you want."

"What, to give me some of your spit?"

"Aren't goblins supposed to like dirtiness."

"I think I would prefer dirt over what comes out of your mouth."

"So go rub some dirt on it."

The fanged goblin made a face.

"I'm not rubbing dirt on it. Some gobbos think that helps, but I don't."

The goblin winced as she brushed fingers over the weeping cut on her arm.

Berylomszelalos rolled her eyes. "Look, just come over here and let me spit on you."

"I'm not letting you spit on me! Ahhnff!" she drew in breath through her teeth as movement caused her pain.

"Are you sure about that? That's a bad wound, could get infected. I've seen goblins die with cuts like that, cuts I've caused."

The goblin seemed extremely reluctant but then after a moment of hesitation shuffled forward cautiously.

Berylomszelalos watched her come close and tongued the second gland in her mouth. One gland caused healing, the other was a slow acting poison, both were part of her evolution. The kobolds who had beaten and abused her before she had evolved had gotten the latter. They hadn't died gentle.

She glanced over the goblin. There wasn't really anything worth stealing from this one, but she was hungry.

…Why had this goblin approached anyway? Was she stupid? Was this a trap?

Could she really just be asking for healing?

Well, that was a kind of benefit to the goblin of itself, maybe it really was just that.

Her tongue rubbed against the poison gland as she considered whether to kill her or not.

In the end though, the fanged goblin just didn't seem like a threat, and maybe she could guilt her into doing something useful later.

Her tongue moved over to the healing gland.

"Now just hold out your hand for me."

The goblin hesitantly did so, holding out a hand in front of her.

The kobold made sounds of collecting spit in her mouth.

"Do you really have to make those sounds?" muttered the fanged goblin darkly.

"It helps build the saliva up."

This did not seem to please the goblin to hear, but she kept her hand in place and after some time building up enough phlegm she spat.

The goblin jerked her hand out of the way at the last moment with a cry as she noticed something emerge below her.

A black haired head rose up from the ground between Berylomszelalos's legs, the blob of spit landing next to it.

The head frowned as more goblin emerged seemingly directly from the ground.

"What the hell?!" said the new goblin.

Berylomszelalos blinked. This new goblin standing before her was larger than a normal goblin but a little shorter than the fanged goblin. She was bizarrely clean for a goblin and had a horn on her head. She was also very pregnant, although if she felt the weight of such a pregnancy even slightly she didn't show it as she moved with natural ease.

"Uh, sorry?"

"I'm here to help you and the first thing you do is spit on me!?"

"Uhm…"

"Well maybe I won't help you, maybe I'll just leave you all to get eaten."

The new goblin started to walk away.

"N-no, hangon!"

The new goblin paused.

"It was an accident, I didn't know… and… and who are you again exactly?"

"Hmmm. Fine. And I'm with that one, that one monster."

"That one?"

"You know, you passed by his cage before dropping down into the pit."

The fanged goblin jerked around hearing that, her face going pale.

"W-Wait, what the hell did you mean by eaten? You don't mean the levelers do you, you mean that… fucking thing!"

"Yes."

"...Oh." said the fanged goblin, her voice quavering with fear.

"It's very simple. You do what I say and follow my instructions and you get to live and then you all live together in my monster town."

"...In your what now?" said Berylomszelalos feeling like she was rapidly losing control of the conservation.

"My monster town. It's what you are all going to live in I've decided. And by the way, there will be no betraying me because you're afraid of wolfy this time. You don't get a choice. Either live in my monster town or be eaten."

Berylomszelalos licked her lip as she considered this. "You say some strange things. That wolf monster is fucking intimidating, I've seen it, up close, but… there's too many levelers here, it's just a monster, and monsters can't beat levelers, they are just better. It will die just like us, and whatever you are on about won't matter at all."

The fanged goblin coughed lightly into her fist.

"You, uh, didn't happen to see any empty cages when they took you down to the big pen from the ruins? Big cages, full of blood?"

"Yes?"

"I'm not saying that monster could do something… but those cages, you know... had.. monsters in them. Big monsters. Monsters that I'm sure cause the levelers lots of problems. Especially the panthara."

"Don't be ridiculous, that's absurd. That thing can't fight—"

The ground suddenly shook, dust falling from the ceiling in streamers. A snake's hiss of pain echoed down the stone corridors, becoming louder, bouncing around the chamber they were being kept in.

The new goblin stepped forward and crouched down in front of Berylomszelalos.

She reached out a hand and took hold of her hand.

"What is your name?"

"I'm known as Berylomszelalos amongst my clan... My old clan."

"Beryllo— Berylolomza— Bery—" said the new goblin struggling to pronounce her name.

Berylomszelalos rolled her eyes. Non-kobolds were always so bad with simple kobold names.

"If it's easier to say you can shorten in to just Beryl—"

"Blueberry, I'll call you Blueberry."

Blueberry gave the goblin a hard look and considered spitting poison in her eye. That was absolutely not her name.

"My name is Opal, and I promise you, if you don't let me keep you safe, you will die. If not from my wolfy, then from the levelers. The only way you can possibly have any kind of future where you are alive and not extremely very dead is by joining my monster town."

The kobold stared at her. Monster town? Why did she keep saying those words as if they meant something? What the hell was this goblin talking about?!

"Being in this town thing… would keep me safe from that wolf thing? And the levelers?" said the fanged goblin slowly. The ground shook and she swallowed dryly.

Opal turned to her.

"Yeah. You want to live don't you?"

A scream of serpentine agony echoed through the halls once more, several monsters rose to their feet, panic in their eyes.

"I- I do."

"Good, then help me persuade the others. I'm the boss."

"I- I can tell them what I saw, that thing killed so many panthara, I think."

"Back me up with that."

Blueberry rose to her feet, wincing in pain. Her leg was still bad, and her spit wasn't able to help with that kind of internal injury. She could tell this new goblin was about to cause trouble and wanted to be ready to escape if possible.

Opal strode to the front of a chamber where a statue of a leveler had been carelessly half formed into the wall. She climbed upon the pedestal base and raised her arms.

"Listen to me!"

Heads turned, but most didn't notice.

"Listen to me or you are all going to die down here!"

That caught some looks. Mostly of contempt.

"You think? This was always going to happen from the moment we were picked out of the dungeon like grubs from a patch of dirt," muttered a male hobgoblin.

"The levelers are one thing, but you felt that shake didn't you? You hear the hiss? There's more going on here than you know. I'm sure all of you saw there was a monster, a monster you wouldn't even go near despite running for your lives. The wolf in the cage."

"She's right," said the fanged goblin stepping forward. "That monster isn't like other monsters. The levelers don't know what they dragged up from the dungeon, they don't understand, it makes panthara look safe. Fucking gods knows how deep they had to go to find that thing, but… well, I wouldn't be surprised if it put up a fight. Maybe we could escape while the levelers are dealing with it?"

Opal scowled.

"No, you can't escape, there's nowhere to go, apart from the surface, where there are way more levelers."

"You're not saying much to give me hope here," muttered the male hob.

"You're not supposed to hope, you're supposed to be afraid. Your only way to survive is with me and the wolf."

The room rumbled as bits of dust and stone drizzled from the fracturing ceiling. The monsters looked up at it, worried.

Blueberry thought this goblin was clearly quite mad..

She was shocked then, when the fanged goblin and the harpy stepped forward.

"She's uh, probably right,'' said the fanged one.

"This place is going to come down sooner or later. I guess there's no harm in following her for now," said the harpy.

"Great" said Opal, grinning widely. "Then all of you follow me."

She turned and strode toward the exit where a surprised looking guard was looking down at her as she approached.

She paused as she noticed no one had followed her.

"Well? Come on!"

"Uh, there's a guard literally standing right there…"

Opal set her lips in the line and then… dropped through the floor.

Blueberry blinked as the goblin simply vanished, like she had stepped off a cliff and fallen into the ground.

A scream came from the end of the room and the guard fell to all fours, his white robes becoming patchy with red around his ankles.

Opal stepped up beside him and took hold of his hair in one hand. She pulled his head back, exposing his throat.

He grabbed for her but she drew what appeared to be a black harpy talon across his throat, a cascade of blood flowed from the cut. Blueberry was familiar with knife wounds having killed her fair share of monsters, but hers had always been shallow cuts. This cut however looked like it went half way through the leveler's neck with ease, half decapitating him.

He collapsed to the ground gurgling.

The monsters stared at the dying leveler.

"You will be coming with me, by carrot or stick. I'm sure when the rest of the guards come back they will be really pleased to find their guard friend dead and a lot of monsters standing around like idiots. They totally won't kill you all in revenge at all."

"You crazy gobbo lunatic!" spat the hob. "You're just gonna get us killed all the faster."

"I'm leaving. Follow me if you want to live."

And then she left, stepping from the chamber out of sight.

Blueberry looked at the now deathly still guard, and then around at the shocked monsters.

The fanged goblin and the harpy were the first to go, rushing forward one after the other, the many wings of the harpy flapping around her.

Blueberry licked her lip. It was just a small feeling, that leveler had tripped when she was about to be stabbed at the top of the fighting pit, and then a hole in the ground to hide in where there shouldn't have been one. Stupid really, but she still found herself limping forward. It wasn't like there were any other options left for her in this death hole anyway.

She passed by the dead guard and heard footsteps following behind her, many footsteps, even those injured, limping along like herself.

The ones who could walk properly soon overtook her limping gait and the corridor became packed with small monsters from wall to wall.

She sped up and struggled to the front as the ground rumbled. Opal was there along with the harpy and fanged goblin. They were talking.

She pushed free from the crowd as the crowd made their complaints known.

"Well? Where in the abyss are you taking us?!"

"Get us out of here!"

"You're going to get me killed!"

Opal turned to the packed in monsters.

"We can't leave, we need to catch a leveler."

"Wh-what? What are you talking about?!"

"My plan, I've been thinking about it the whole time during the-"

The ceiling behind her collapsed with an earth shattering BOOM! and a solid wall of sandy yellow scales cut off the corridor ahead, a wall of sandy yellow scales that filled the corridor from floor to ceiling.

It writhed and twisted and Opal and the others backed up warily, a serpentine scream came from outside, so loud that the monsters flinched.

There... was something wrong with the snake, the scaled walls were shifting, pulling inwards, and then it was thrashing past, and more could be seen of the scales. Craters and wrinkles. It was strange, like there wasn't enough snake body inside for the scales to properly wrap around, like the snake was vanishing from the inside bit by bit.

The snake shot past in a wall of scales, sliding from the stonework that fell down around it, collapsing as its body was removed.

Blueberry shuddered. Something was happening in this terrible place that she didn't understand.

As the snake removed itself the ceiling collapsed entirely blocking off the passage. The huddle of monsters backed up further, returning to a fork in the hall.

This time they took the other path hoping for better luck.

They actually made some distance this time, wandering through the long and gloomy corridors, lights flickering and failing even as they passed, moreso when the ground quaked. At one point Opal held up an arm and they came to a halt as a dozen panicked levelers fled past them, all of them dressed up in expensive looking clothing.

But then they were alone again and able to continue on. That is until one more leveler turned the corner in the hall they were walking down. This leveler was far bigger than any other and to Blueberry's surprise she recognised him, although he had changed significantly since she had last seen him.

The centaur was in a bad way, missing an arm and covered in poorly healed injuries with puckered scarring across his chest. He looked extremely agitated too and he was breathing hard, his body covered in beaded sweat.

His eyes fell on Opal standing at the front of the crowd of monsters.

"The sheep girl's little shit of a monster. What a pleasant coincidence," growled the centaur.

Opal tilted her head. "You lost to wolfy you know."

The centaur scowled. "Thanks to its little tricks, I realise that now, it was doing something beneath the sands, those snakes, or something else, doesn't matter. If it hadn't been cheating I would never have lost to it."

Opal held up the black talon.

"Do you recognise what this is made of?"

The centaur's gaze focused on the black thing and his eyebrows rose, recalling the material.

"Has this all been a trick from the start? Are you all working for this damned Abattoir?" he bellowed, taking a step forward, hoof stamping down on stone.

"No. And you should know, wolfy was holding back on you."

"No, it was cheating, obviously. And now with the loss of my arm I need something else to get an edge and to claim its death as mine." He looked down at the crowd of small monsters. "Fortunately I am on the very precipice of levelling up, and I can just feel that it's going to give me a Skill of worth as I haven't gotten anything truly good in such a long time. I am overdue, and as the gods will it this is the perfect moment to acquire a way to end this sham."

Blueberry blanched at his words. She didn't have to guess to know that this was a powerful leveler. She glanced over her shoulder. If they ran now, there would be a panic. A crush. She would be crushed once again underfoot by panicking monsters. They didn't stand a chance. They would be slaughtered, packed in here, leaving nothing but a corridor of dead and a river of blood.

The centaur reached with his remaining arm for the saddle full of spears on his back, glancing back to see as he did.

"Put up a struggle for me, would you? You lot are so pitiful I don't know if you will be quite enough to level me up and I—"

Blueberry caught a flicker of motion out the corner of her eye and turned in time to see Opal fall through the floor.

There was a cry of pain and her head snapped around to see a flash of green and a spray of blood come from the rear of the centaur. The centaur twisted to stab back along his body with his newly acquired spear, as though he thought he was fending off an attack from behind.

Opal fell from the ceiling by his front like a lead weight dropped out of the sky, that is, extremely fast. She came down just behind his turned shoulder with the harpy talon raised and to Blueberry's astonishment it cut all the way through, his flesh parting around the dark thing as though desperate not to touch it.

With a meaty thump his arm hit the stone as the goblin passed through the floor and his spear clattered away. The expression on the centaur's face was of pure bewilderment.

But not for long, as the goblin girl continued to fall from the ceiling from different spots, weapon raised, and wherever she put the talon the centaur simply split open. Even when the centaur tried to move to avoid her she accounted for it and came down just within reach to still lacerate and slash.

Blueberry could tell that the evolution that this goblin possessed was utterly terrifying in an enclosed space, the only real defence being to strike her as she fell. But the centaur had no arms and so nothing to strike her with. He was helpless before her.

In just a moment all of his legs had been lacerated, tendons disconnected and cut apart and muscles slashed, sometimes a leg cut entirely through. The centaur collapsed to the floor. It was startling in its suddenness, so quickly had the centaur been dismantled, and Blueberry found herself disbelieving of what she had just seen. A monster did this? Just a goblin?

The centaur's eyes were wide open now, the whites showing, darting around, looking for where the next attack would come.

Opal instead popped up on the pedestal of a nearby statue, arresting her motion with a vertical rise from the stone and then landing smoothly. She eased down to sitting, legs dangling over the edge, and eyeballed the centaur now lying on the ground, arms gone, legs paralysed or dismembered.

"Do you remember that hobgobbo? The one as you were coming into the Abattoir?"

The centaur looked up at her from where he lay on the ground.

"Wh-what?— This— I don't know what I did to your master, but— there's been some kind of misunderstanding here! P-Please, if you could just take a message to her I'm sure there is something we can—!"

"You stepped on her."

"What are you talking about?!"

"You stepped on her and killed her."

"Th-That one? The sheep ordered this just for that?"

Opal scowled and glanced over at the worried huddle of monsters.

"Kill him. If he lives then he could tell others of us."

The monsters boggled at her. Kill this centaur? This leveler? Them?

Blueberry was beginning to think that following this goblin had been a serious mistake.

She was half considering trying to sneak away then and there when the fanged goblin suddenly rushed forward, darting around the centaur's body before she bit down into his flank with her fangs. A small trickle of blood ran down his side as she eagerly drank as though desperately thirsty. The centaur thrashed, jerking around like a limbless worm and trying to throw her off, but she stayed and kept biting.

Seeing the goblin's surprising success others started to cautiously approach. The harpy, lashing out with her talons, lacerating his lower half. He cried out in pain as flesh was peeled away. The harpy seemed to take satisfaction in it, but maybe that was just her being a harpy.

The cry was like a signal to attack, the cry of a vulnerable prey, and the monsters swarmed on instinct. This centaur was something that needed to be killed before it could fight back, before it could injure them.

In moments there were monsters crowding over his lower half, cutting and biting and clawing into his sides, ripping him apart, hundreds of clawed hands tearing him apart bit by bit while still alive.

He screamed and screamed and screamed.

Opal watched.