==

Zoll sat atop his throne of carved rock, the crest of his lordship – two tusks stacked atop each other – etched into the smooth rock and studded with lightstone crystals to shine upon a symbol that none knew anymore in this age.

The royal robes wrapped around his muscled green skin and mail armor waved as if drawn up by some wind, but here, in the innermost layer of the dungeon, there should not have been any such draft.

Winding tendrils of root-like light trickled up from the base of his throne, running up the length of stone and attaching to his body, letting him connect with the dungeon and see the strange monstrosity wreaking havoc upon his realm.

Realm?

Zoll felt his fingers grip into the armrests of his throne.

This was no true realm. Just a poor shade of what he once had.

Once, a thousand years ago, Thoktal stood in this realm, this realm that the humans desecrated by naming 'Terra' in their own tongue as if they and the races that joined the Common Body owned it.

Thoktal was the kingdom of the goblins, the many skinned people as they were once known.

Its people proudly bore skins that changed shades to suit the diverse weathers of the far flung reaches in their land: A symbol of their ever expanding territory that covered frozen wastes, deserts, and forests.

Yet now, though the many-skinned people were still called goblins, that term had fallen from noble consideration into a word that evoked disgust and weakness among all.

But could Zoll truly blame them?

Once, there were no bloodlines lesser than the hobgoblins.

Now, there were heavily degenerated, dirt-eating, dirt-crawling goblins that were small and insignificant. A degeneration that arose from the extermination of higher goblin bloodlines, forcing them to turn into small creatures that hid in the dark like rats.

All this, because Thoktal would not join the Common Body.

Zoll gnashed his teeth and lost himself in reminiscence, into the past he still lived in.

The goblins had fought with the gods and all other races against the dragons first in the Draconomachy, and then again when the titans arose from the World Dungeons in the titanomachy.

But once the gods had established their supremacy, they rewarded the goblins with but one single ultimatum: join the Common Body or perish.

Thoktal refused. The king and all thirty lords, Zoll included, had been unanimously agreed on maintaining pride in their supremacy.

Thoktal fell.

Zoll still remembered hiding in his keep, in this very same throne room, as his forces outside broke against the might of Hwara, the great earth goddess. He remembered the sensation of falling as his keep fell into a great fissure in the earth, and then, when the earth closed back around him, the sensation of sleep.

A sleep he thought had been the end, but not so.

A long slumber. One where he relived the endless cycle of battle and defeat against the goddess.

And in the end of that dream, a voice.

A gentle, soothing voice. But its message was anything but: kill the humans on Terra. Kill the gods.

Zoll was more than happy to oblige.

Thus, he had awoken.

A center piece to this small realm, this dungeon, the throne room of his keep still somehow preserved against the movement of space and the passage of time.

Thus, he acted on his vengeance. Vengeance that had festered for centuries of nightmares.

But how ridiculous it was, thought Zoll as he saw the monstrosity moving so easily past the first layer.

How ridiculous it was, this whole ordeal.

What could Zoll do against the might of the gods? Against the Common Body kingdoms and empires that had had a millennium to gain strength?

What could he do when he called upon his kin and found only the most degenerate of bloodlines coming to his aid? Once, he commanded ten thousand strong, now, he could barely muster over a hundred goblins to his side for none even knew of his name.

Thoktal was gone, erased from history, and all her children scattered among the realms as glorified pests that had lost their culture and ways.

What could he do with that?

Still, Zoll could never let go of his vengeance. It had been etched into him for so very long, and once, there was a time when he had a more level head, but all he wanted to do now was hurt and kill.

Terrorize the humans. Burn their civilization down. Because that was what the voice had told him, and he knew not why, but he had to, for he knew at some deep level that if he disobeyed that voice, this second chance at life would be ripped from him.

He was a phantom. An ancient relic torn from time by a higher force. At any given moment, that higher force could toss him away and let him rot where he was supposed to.

And now, Zoll had all his forces wiped out by an adventuring party, and his throne room itself would come under attack against this…thing.

He would die here without ever even having stepped a foot in a human settlement.

Without ever even having killed one human life to pay for the endless misery they and the Common Body had inflicted upon his own.

Should he stop here?

Zoll's breathing stilled, some measure of his old calm returning to him. There were still women and children of the hob bloodline still here. They could scatter and renew themselves.

The degenerates, he did not care of.

Kill the humans. Kill the gods.

The voice.

Zoll's eyes opened up, their red pupils straining as blood vessels flowered out into the whites of his eyes.

No, he had to do everything he could to kill them all. And though he did not know if this monstrosity was of the Common Body, he knew that the daemon with it was, and that alone was enough for him to act and use everything he had at his disposal.

The women, the children, he would use them all. No matter what it would take, no matter the desperation or cowardice.

Zoll grabbed his greatsword from the side of his throne, his fingers clasping over two tusk shards jutting out from its pommel. At the touch, the hum and glow of blue magical energy arose around the tusks.

And when the monster and daemon inevitably came here, Zoll would fight them too to the last breath. To death and the beyond.

==

The Collector found itself warped to a smaller area than before.

A single room, not a mass of tunnels and paths like before. Circular in design and one hundred meters in diameter. Strong stench of tinkering civilization. An even, tiled stone floor.

Walls that rose thirty meters high and carved with visages of crowned goblins. On the ceiling, lightstone crystal formations shaped into a circle with two tusks within emanated light that perfectly emulated the sun.

At the center of this room, precisely fifty meters away, a green skinned, red eyed goblin stood atop a throne. Behind it, on the other end, a sizable pond swirled with rainbow colored waters.

This, the Collector could perceive as the warp gate with every single psionic tether converging their lengths into that single space.

"So, you've arrived, monster," said the goblin.

The Collector briefly analyzed the goblin specimen.

Sensing the specimen with mana infused into the Collector's ocular systems indicated that the flow of mana in this area swirled around the specimen.

This was the singularity point, the 'boss' of this dungeon.

Attempting to gauge the amount of mana the goblin could utilize was difficult for it seemed that so long as it was in this space, by the throne in particular, its magical energy was enhanced and constantly replenished at staggering rates.

But the goblin itself was unremarkable physically.

Roughly of the same size and build as a champion, though less trained as a fighter. There were no signs of physical battle upon its body. No scars. No wearing and tearing. Even the way it breathed and moved was less efficient than the red-skinned goblin champion.

In terms of equipment, the goblin did not seem overwhelmingly armed as the four-star adventurer had been.

Rings of metal linked together to form defensive garments lined its chest and legs, and though they hummed with magical energy, they did not possess nearly the same output as the weapons from the four-star adventurer.

A headpiece, a crown, of gold and jewels sat atop its head, but it did not possess any magical signature.

Red robes wreathed its body, and these seemed woven more for ceremonial display than combat purpose, but a distinctive lack of heat surrounding them indicated heat-resistant properties of some sort, likely magically enhanced.

Would potentially render pyrocatalytic glands less effective.

The weapon at its side, a chunk of sharpened metal, a 'sword' almost as large the goblin itself, possessed a formidable amount of magical energy seething within it comparable to or even exceeding that possessed by the weapons of the four-star adventurer.

"Daemonic monster that dares to trespass upon my throne-," began the goblin.

The Collector wasted no time before engaging its muscles and blasting off with {Dash}, attempting to disable this creature while it wasted time babbling away.