[Slimy Slime] Chapter 62: An Absolutely Terrible Day

Grack was not having a good day. He sat upon his throne, a proper throne, and sat with his massively fat body. The day had not started well, nor the last, or the one before that or that. The reason was utterly simple.

Grack was terrified.

Grack had not come this far by being incautious. If there was a threat? End it. From afar. With a horde of goblins. If there was a potential problem? Eat it. Eat it immediately. Don’t give it time or room to grow.

He was severely regretting that he had become too lax with that last one. There were nearly 100,000 goblins underneath him. An impressive amount. The wolf forest was good to him, allowing his members to eat the meat of countless wolves to sustain themselves. They seemed more plentiful than goblins at times.

It wasn’t as if they all lived in one city, although Grack did live in a city, there were dozens and dozens of towns and even more small settlements or random goblins just walking around out there. It wasn’t like he kept track of all of them. Even ordering the last 20,000 had required a lot of work, effort, and personally having all the goblins come to him. Luckily, he’d had many, many years to practice his [Goblin Rulership] skill. The only problem was… the smarter the goblins, the less useful it was. It couldn’t command a Tier 2 goblin at all. He had been hoping to rise to King and upgrade it but… then this new calamity had happened.

More than anything, he wish he’d eaten Krrrgg. But her body… his lust would be the end of him, it seemed.

“Report!” He barked out, the moment Hirik, the intelligent goblin he had raised up, walked in. He’d sent him to follow their horde and observe. Even for Grack… that had been a ton of bodies. Even just sending them had taxed him more than he’d expected and been more than a little horrifying. He’d seen so many creatures… even he might fall if they all wore him down over time and they were only Tier 1! His mouth practically salivated with greed at becoming a King and having an army of Tier 2’s… sadly it was absolutely nothing compared to his complete and utter terror.

A [Dungeon Core] was ingrained knowledge in every single monster. You didn’t learn about it, you knew about it. And for damn good reason.

Hirik bowed low, practically prostrating himself, and quickly began to speak.

“Chief… the army ran into the walls of a city.”

“Are they overrun? How many troops have they lost? Do we have the [Dungeon Core]?”

He knew the answer to that last part, he’d have felt it, but there was always a possibility Hirik would try to keep it for himself. He would die for that and Grack’s gaze was piercing, nervous, and paranoid.

“Chief… the city… the horde attacked for three days. Goblins threw stones and spears down, a sudden bulge on the wall happened, allowing much better spears to stab out and… and a dozen ghostly hands punched out, breaking multiple gobins with every hit, killing dozens in seconds.”

Grack nearly had a heart attack. A ghost?! The one who owned the [Dungeon Core] was a ghost?! Grack began to pale, as the words began to make sense in his ears. Dozens killed every second? Grack swallowed thickly.

“After three days, it seemed like they would be able to go on forever my chief. They never stopped, never slowed down, roaming through like each were horrible specters of death themselves. The walls and the goblins were nearly useless but those hands…” Hirik shivered. Even recalling them now, it felt like he’d been watching a horde of spirits tear through mortals like they were paper. And then… recalling what he’d seen…

“Chief… something happened after three days. The hands… the hands… there was no longer a dozen. In an instant, hundreds of hands filled the ground and sky, crushing the entirety of the Goblin Horde, and the ground, and the trees. It was… I’ve never such devastation.” Hirik said in awe. Normally he’d talk less, try to hide his intelligence more but… the scene had just been too shocking. Almost as much as the next one.

“After that… a… an infernal machine seemed to appear in a spark of blue. It is massive, nearly a third the size of the city, and more than enough for any goblins rushing forward. And they did chief, they rushed into that dark abyss… and none of them returned. No bodies, no gore, no piles spilling out. Even now, more run inside and are never heard from again. It’s like they, they simply ceased to exist!”

Hirik was well and truly terrified of what he had seen. He thought, having hung around Grack and his power, he’d seen more than most. He had realized he was an insect under a rock, a frog in a wall, compared to the real world and real power. He could not imagine Grack winning against that.

As for Grack himself?

“Prepare the Goblins. All of them. As many as you can.” Grack said, his tone more serious than Hirik had ever heard.

Hirik tried to contain his outburst but his emotions won over him.

“What?! We’re sending more?!” Hirik asked, eyes wide. Already, there were still tons of goblins going down into that abyss. But the idea of sending so many to their death… even for Hirik who had nearly no morality… nearly was not none. The extinction of all the goblins he knew was… suddenly very hard to stomach.

“Are you crazy?! NO! Prepare them immediately, we are leaving! We must flee immediatly!”

Grack didn’t hold back his words, hearing what he had from Hirik, he was in a cold sweat that was already drenching his fat body. The very idea of fighting ghosts, ghosts that could blot out the sky, that could easily handle tens of thousands of goblins… only one thought was on Grack’s mind. He must run away. Quickly, as fast as possible.

He would flee deeper into the forest, near the boundary into the dark forest. He may even need to cross inside… but better that than fighting a ghost with a [Dungeon Core].

Grack had always been a coward. And what do you do when you meet an enemy you can’t beat? You run away.

*****

I was having an absolutely terrible day. This one in particular. It had been two weeks. Two weeks. That was how long it had taken for all the goblins to finally stop mindlessly coming around into the damn thresher. The mood had been happy two weeks ago… and then the goblins didn’t stop. They just kept coming and coming and coming. Some would arrive practically dead, clearly physically exhausted and dying from it. Others would literally die on their feet, dehydration causing them to fall over and be stomped to death. Some looked completely starved.

And yet still they came, not a thought in their minds. Watching them all, remembering the three days of fighting… imagining if they were a real enemy, one with imagination, thoughts, plans, strategies… even if they were just a ‘real’ horde that could do a little more than run into certain death… it weighed on everyone. Not just me, I could see it in everyone’s faces. With every day that passed, everyone imagined trying to fight the literal army that was dying right outside the walls.

I’d never seen so many creatures in my life. Not even on earth. Not all at once. Especially not all directed to kill me. There are moments that change you forever, that seep into your mind and break you down a little. Seeing this was one of those times for me. It was as if I was being given a show, a little ‘this is what an army would look like’ pop up. It was…

Daunting.

Sobering.

Horrifying.

They just never stopped. All of the hearts were given out to my citizens to feast on and I learned another difference between [Crown] and others. They couldn’t store stats past a certain point. Krrrgg, the Goblite, all of my citizens, they were basically maxed on their stats for their Generation. I have absolutely no idea how many hearts had been eaten, but so many had been in the goblin village at one point that things had become more than a little… macabre.

I imagined for a brief moment if we didn’t have walls. We would have died. There were so many little small things that would have instantly killed us. It was stupid and comical that this was how we survived, because the enemy was stupid and mind controlled, and we’d just built a meat grinder for them to run into.

Today was awful because it had finally stopped. That was no relief. Now it felt like I was waiting for an explosion. Like something was bound to happen, to ruin everything. In short… my anxiety was through the roof!

“King Slime, you are going to become a statue at this rate if you just keep staring out.” Sandra said.

“How can I do anything else?! This feels… way too easy!”

“It’s only easy because you prepared and fought and we managed to build the… Machine.”

We had begun to label that particular bit of evil simply as The Machine. It was being torn and destroyed the moment this was all over. However the idea behind it would, horrifyingly and sadly, be worked on. Goblins and armies meant hordes. This one had been stupid but having a massive machine funnel… that could be very useful, especially if the design was worked on further. Even for farming, it would work great. Still… I could see the weight that had begun to press down on Sandra’s shoulders.

She had literally killed thousands. Maybe more. It was a weight I didn’t know how to help with and Michael could only do his best. If it wasn’t for her daughter, and being reminded every single day exactly what that horde would have done to her, she would be far worse off.

Still…

“And what if I don’t prepare as well next time? What if the chief actually develops a brain and unleashes a horde that doesn’t just mindlessly run in a straight line? Well, we can build… ugh… more machines but what if they just stop and figure out a way to go around? Or dig under? Or go over? We are alive almost because of luck… and that could change in an instant! How am I suppose to rest like this?”

I was very, very stressed out right now. Krrrgg had even offered some more… relaxation, but I just wasn’t in the mood.

I was staring out where the front of the machine was, but I was keeping an eye on my surroundings. Two weeks wasn’t a super long time but it wasn’t short either. I was still recovering, which was horrifying, but I could barely summon a few more hands right now. More than two was completely off the table though. What I had worked on was my perception and worked hard on it. I had landed on a good mantra.

‘I can see all around me.’

‘I can see all around me.’

‘I can see all around me.’

With a dedicated idea of a sphere of perception. It was… a work in progress. But it let me see a little further to the sides than a normal human at the moment.

That was why I saw the lone goblin. That and the dungeon [Hob-Goblins] doing their job of ringing the towers.

That single goblin froze, standing there, but he didn’t flee. He simply stood there and… began to call out. He was too far to hear but… this didn’t seem like any regular goblin.

I looked to Sandra, who was looking back bewildered.

“Maybe… a… negotiation?” Sandra said, her own words stunning her. Me as well.

I had never considered that I might actually be able to talk to the Goblin Chief. I had no idea diplomacy was even on the table! No matter what this goblin said, it would probably be fascinating.

******

“HE RAN AWAY?!”

Well… I’d not been wrong.