"You girls have been very good the past week." Huckabee told the only two children in the bandit camp. "Very brave."

It wasn't a pleasant time, the culling, with the influx of rookie adventurers in the forest they had to give up many luxuries to stay undetected. But Letta and Cobaline persevered, they were even helping out the community by peeling carrots.

"I want to be free." Letta said matter-of-factly in response to the compliment.

Huckabee gave Denise an awkward look, she gave an awkward look back. As Cobaline's mother she had been asked to take care of the orphan they'd saved from the goblins, but Letta herself saw it as captivity.

Not unfairly either, there were places she could be brought to, but Harkness, their boss, feared that she would betray the existence and location of the bandit camp to the adventurer's guild were she to enter civilized society again. So she was kept with the outlaws.

"My mom too..." Letta said slowly, staring at her carrot, her voice devoid of hope.

"Aha, yeah..." Huckabee scratched the back of his head. "So, uh... until that time, we do have a little reward for you two."

"Really!?" Cobaline's eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, further exacerbating the contrast with the morose Letta.

"Won't you spoil them too much?" Denise smiled.

"That's my right as an uncle, isn't it?" He grinned, digging two candies out of his pocket. "I had to pull a lot of strings to get these."

"Woooow!" Cobaline eagerly grabbed one of the shiny objects and unwrapped the colorful wrapping paper. The inside wasn't as colorful as the wrapper, but it wasn't for looking at, she quickly popped it in her mouth. "Mm-mm." Such delicatessen were rare for her.

Letta just held up her hand for him to drop the candy in. Before too long ago, she had near unlimited access to all the different kinds of sweets in the region, they were just some pleading with her parents away. She stared at the thing. "Mom used to give me candy..."

Huckabee pursed his lips to suppress a sigh. Of course he felt sympathy for the girl, but her one-note personality did get grating after a while.

He tried to think of something comforting to say, when a sharp whistle came from the other side of the camp. "Alarm!" Dee added to her own signal, to make it clearer.

Huckabee tripped over his own feet hurrying away with his weapon.

"Oh no..." Denise muttered. "Adventurers."

Cobaline shrank back, but Letta's eyes widened, she had never learned to fear adventurers.

-

"Where were you?" Dee stood with her hands on her hips amidst half a dozen corpses when Huckabee arrived.

"I was... Denise..." He awkwardly pointed towards the far end of the camp as if there was something to blame there.

"It's a good thing the boss was here, or I would have died!" She sighed.

Huckabee looked around to see Harkness half in shadow between the trees. She had always been adept at hiding, probably part of her training in a knight family. She said nothing.

"Did you get hurt?" He asked Dee.

"A bit." She showed a gash on her face. "Emotionally too."

"Huh?"

"Dee objected to the execution." Harkness spoke.

"They were just kids." Dee sighed.

"They surrendered, huh?" Huckabee brought up carefully. "But what can you do? Keep them in a cage until we're all citizens?"

"They were kids though." She repeated. Rookie adventurers were usually young boys and girls trying to make some pocket change helping their community, it hardly felt heroic mowing them down to keep their camp a secret.

"Hey, are you all right?" He approached her, but she crossed her arms and turned away from him. "I know it sucks that they had to die, just because they wandered into our camp, but-"

"No." Dee interrupted. "They were seeking us out."

"What!?" The bandit boss jumped in and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Dee, what are you saying?"

"They didn't stumble in here unprepared, okay? They were in formation, they knew there was a base here, just not that there'd be a knight defending it."

Huckabee was stunned. "How- Did Fyro really-"

"No." Harkness answered. "If my cousin had betrayed us it would be royal soldiers. Some rogue or ranger must have scouted us out, and reported a bandit camp to the guild."

Huckabee grabbed his hair and walked in a circle. "Is that it? Are we done for? I mean the more adventurers we fend off, the more they'll send, right?"

"I... must confer with the thieves' guild." Harkness paced off with long steps, leaving Dee and Huckabee to stare at each other uncomfortably.

【Hi-yah!】Xandra is getting better with the tonfas, just now she single-handedly took care of a goblin that had jumped at us from a hole in the ground.

【Huh?】Dave turns around to see the dying goblin.

【Aren't you supposed to warn us about ambushes?】I say indignantly.

【Sorry, I... didn't see it.】

【Well it's dead, I got it.】Xandra boasts, mimicking her fighting moves in the air.

【My, my.】Angela comes close to the creature.【It looks like this one was wearing some sort of camouflage.】

When I look closer I can agree that the monster had a bunch of leaves packed against its body, making it stand out less on the forest floor.

【If this is supposed to be the guard, it's not very impressive,】Theresa complains,【I had hoped to get to do something myself.】

【We'll get a good fight when we challenge the orc lord.】I reassure her.【Orcs are rank D.】

【From what I can tell, the base is beyond this hill. Look, smoke.】David says.【I think they're snuggled right against the stone of the sea cliffs.】

【Snuggled?】Xandra snickers.

【Yes, snuggled against it, that way, they don't have to worry about attackers coming from the east.】David doesn't seem to get what she finds so funny about his word use.

【Then after we pass this hill we'll be fighting possibly a hundred goblins, and an orc.】I sum up.【Is that... a good idea?】

【It is if we win.】Theresa grins.

【Yeah Rudy, come on, adventurers take risks you know.】Xandra says.

【Let's get in proper formation at least.】David moves back behind Theresa and Xandra, and readies his short bow. 【Let's get moving.】

-

We approach the top of the hill and... this is bad! This is bad right?! It doesn't make sense for mob characters to doing something heroic.

We'll be slain and our deaths will show the real heroes how important the dungeon is. Oh, what am I saying? Adventurers die every day, I bet we won't even be mentioned!

This is bad, this is really... there are barely more than a dozen goblins on the open field in front of the dungeon entrance.

They have created a border from chopped down logs and a little fort from planks, but otherwise they had no strong defenses.

I sigh in relief, 【it's not that bad then,】as Xandra and Theresa race downhill to jump over the logs and charge at them.【Raaaah!】

Right then Theresa is hit in the stomach by an arrow, she doubles over and drops her saber, but she stays on her feet.

【What is-?】David stops halfway the hill to fire at where the arrow came from, the wooden fort, but the goblins don't flinch when he just misses them and lay another arrow on the longbow they're holding horizontally like a ballista.

Xandra and Theresa step back to retreat when more enemy fire rains around them. There's another archer on the roof, and several of the ground goblins are pelting them with slings.

The goblins are coming up the hill after them, two holding shields to block David's arrows, the rest using spears and clubs.

【Angela, come.】I grab her by the hand,【we need a healer there.】

【No!" She pulls me back and drags me behind the top of the hill, out of sight in the treeline.

【What are you-】

【Not again..." Only now do I see the panicked look in her face.【Not again, I can't-】

【Calm down Angie! Breathe. Breathe." I hold her shoulders as she sinks to the ground.

【Not again, I can't take another time!】

Angela is in no state to fight. She's been putting up a brave face, especially when we were killing them, but now that it seems like we're losing, her time with the goblins has caught up with her.

I dare a peek at the battlefield, it seems like Xandra and the others have been totally overrun. How is this possible? Goblins are rank F monsters!

-

But I think I understand. Shields, spears, bows, this is equipment much stronger than the kind of goblin you'd chase off your farm. Under a dark lord that can make them weapons, goblins become an army.

David is unconscious, but Xandra isn't. Three goblins are sitting on her to stop her from getting up, these ones are different, more clothed.

They wouldn't, not here!

I almost run after her to attack them myself. But they're just tying her up with some sort of primitive rope.

I can't see how Theresa is, but with the shot to her stomach, she can't be in very good condition.

They're taking them towards the cave.

I have to think of a way to save them. But the more I think, the less possible it seems.

I'm not strong enough to defeat them and we're not rich enough to commission a rescue quest from the adventurer's guild, but perhaps...

【Angie.】I say, she doesn't seem to acknowledge me.【Angie, stay here, I'm going to save them, Angie, can you hear me?】

She looks at me, I can see she's crying.

【I'm a rogue, I'm going to sneak in and help them sneak out. But when they're back, they're going to need healing. Can you stay here and wait for us?】

Angela wipes away her tears and nods, still not saying anything.

【Well then... there I go.】I start walking to move around the wooden log border.

What am I thinking? I'm just a mob character, doing heroic things is definitely wrong! Oh well, it can't be helped.

Over the course of the past days, as the newborn grew up, the two tribes had established a certain routine.

-

First there were the cave goblins, led by the two elders, Scratch and Quiet. They coordinated their youngers, setting the schedule and chores every morning, Quiet also taking care of their evening meals.

They had a main body of ten warriors, Second, Kicker, Biter, and Fat being the older ones among those, giving guidance to Fyro, Abel, Mac, George, Linus and Benjamin, who were arbitrarily considered adults now. Though Linus now had deformed legs, preventing him from doing much, and Benjamin still avoided doing anything. This group was occupied with defending the territory and keeping and eye on the visitors during the day, and some household chores and trap-setting in the evening.

The newborn were still learning, although they were fully grown, they were still considered junior members.

Haruto, the oldest, had clung to Barbara the most, and had claimed a spot in the foyer to practice his needlework.

Yuto wanted to fight, and hung out with Kicker and Biter when they patrolled the perimeter. He had even procured a shield for himself, just like Abel always carried.

Sota and Yuki showed promise in the different avenues of tinkering. Sota becoming Second's apprentice and crafting and repairing tools with him, Yuki having learned about metals from George and helping him rebuild the forge.

Hayato was an apprentice trap setter, mostly looking on as his elders furnished the pit traps, transported the slimes, and positioned the rope, and actively helping when it came to trapping animals.

This left Haruki as the new Linus, not really an expert at any specific thing, but assigned to different roles as he was needed.

-

Then there were the river goblins, led by Strong, though Bread seemed to have some influence over him as an adviser. As it turned out, Bread and Strong were brothers of the same litter.

Scratch had devised for Strong to be given access to the cave and its amenities, when the others weren't. It was all part of Scratch's 'grand strategy', that his family just wasn't smart enough to grasp, so why bother explaining.

Coming in and out of the cave so often, Strong took over some speech patterns of the cave goblins and a wider vocabulary.

Every night, the river goblins would go out, beyond the territory of the cave goblins, to scavenge for food. There were roughly a dozen of them left, and they had picked up the habit of packing themselves with leaves for camouflage. Second had encouraged this habit and dug certain hide-y holes for them to crawl in spending the day outside. If they kept perfectly still, they could be mistaken for mounds of compost.

-

Lastly, there were the women. Barbara and Brittany were still slaves of Drool's progeny, but they were allowed a certain degree of freedom.

Barbara stayed near the foyer, taking care of her children and keeping herself busy with small chores and homemaking, such as making candles and repairing clothes.

She was happy for Linus to be so unshaken by his new disability, keeping his lust for life and energy, but she was disturbed by the regular appearances of Strong. He reminded her of everything she hated about goblins, the years of trauma and disgust. Strong was a gross little creature, gaunt and sickly with yellow teeth, he kept leering at her with a lecherous look on his face. The contrast brought out the relative charm of her captors, they looked hardly different from human children.

Brittany was just released from her cell and free to roam around. Scratch had ingrained a sense of helplessness in her, and even now had had her feet shackled with twine to stop her from taking large steps. She was still in the habit of begging for her every bodily need. Scratch had told Barbara to only speak to the other woman in commands, but that was a rule she regularly broke. Barbara would comfort Brittany, telling her it would get easier at least once a day.

Though both women were able to carry litters at the time, Scratch ruled against it, he wanted to more closely control the population numbers. But eventually, it'd be his call.

-

That dynamic was tested with the introduction of two new captives.

The river goblins fought with a bestial ferocity when defending themselves, two had died in the battle with the latest adventuring party to attack them.

In the classic goblin arithmetic, this was perfectly acceptable. The loss in numbers was far less than the gain from two new brood-mothers.

The fellowship dragged the protesting captives inside to show off to Scratch and Strong.

-

"What are you doing? You're not allowed in the cave, you know that."

"Scratch." Second said in a grave tone. "They brought women."

"I can see that. Look at that one, she's bleeding over everything. Who's gonna clean that up?"

One of the river goblins looked expectingly at Strong, who was laying on the ground, gnawing on a bone. "Was us that got 'em."

"Naw!" Yuto stormed past them, holding a blooded arrow. "I got her, me! It's our catch!"

"Kicker and Fyro grabbed the little one." Abel added. "Without them it would have just been more fighting until she died."

"First!" The river goblin shouted. "Us fought first."

The entrance of the cave erupted in shouting and pushing. The youngest of the women captured was still conscious and almost managed to roll away in the tumult, but Fyro sat down on her again.

Scratch massaged his temples, then he turned to Strong. "Are you allowing this behavior?"

Strong threw his bone to the ground. He wasn't about to let his privileged position go away by threatening the peace, so he had to use his leadership role to stop the conflict.

He stood up tall. "EVERYBODY QUIET!!" And his flock fell silent.

"Very good Strong, good lungs. Yuto, you shut up too." Scratch said in a much softer tone, bringing the excitement in the room way down. "Now then..." He took a deep breath. "Nobody gives a crap about your daytime hookup! Get these bodies the hell out of my living room! You can keep them! Git!" He shooed them away with his hands while shouting.

Yuto still protested, "But... I was the one-"

"You want to fuck? Here's Brittany." Scratch pointed at the girl in the corner of the room. "Go fuck her whenever you like."

Brittany gave a slight yelp and pulled in her knees.

Yuto looked at her uncomfortably, he knew her too well. And besides, it wasn't about getting to breed, it was about the principle of the thing. "But don't you think we deserve-"

"You deserve nothing. We're not taking in another bitch, no matter how hard you worked for it. That goes for all of you." He looked around the room, recent participants in the battle and workers from deeper in the tunnel had come in to watch him rant. "Put your energy in getting what you need, not what you 'deserve'. Never again talk to me about deserving anything, that's toxic, it'll make you angry when you need to be cunning, and it'll make you complacent when you need to be ambitious. Somebody clean this up." He fell back onto the furs.

-

When Yuto left the cave to go back to the tower, he was briefly stopped by Second.

"Don't listen to Scratch too much, cause we need him, but we don't need to BE him, you understand, right?"

Yuto nodded hesitantly, he wasn't sure if he did.

"Good." Second responded. "Get back to the tower, tonight we're having a music night."

"Madam second-in-command?"

A clergyman stuck his head in Marie's small office. It was a closet with a desk in it, filled with trinkets to remind her of better times, adventuring. The biggest of these paraphenalia was an enormous magical shield adorning the entire back wall.

"Father Raymond. What are you doing here?" The guild official took off her reading glasses to look at the graying man before her.

"If I could just have another word on the will of Benesant..."

"Father, you know that such matters belong with the guildmaster. You should see him, not me."

"Ah, you see, I did, but... he referred me to you. So you see..."

"Ugh." She put her elbows on her desk and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Of course he did. Very well."

"Yes... it's about the matter at the cliffs. Three divine revelations in just over a week, urging the forces of good to strike-"

"Not this again. Father, we have a bounty on the orc lord, that's all we can do. Unless the church is willing to contribute to the reward, we can't-"

"No. That's the thing, my acolytes all have corresponding reports. Benesants asks for the head of a goblin."

"Does she deny the dark lord is an orc?"

"That... I do not know. But she's very insistent on the death of a particular goblin."

Marie leaned back. "As you can see, we've got a lot on our plate at the moment. It pains me greatly to dismiss the warnings of the goddess of light herself, but we simply cannot afford to deal with this threat at the moment."

It happened more often. Annoyances that could be dealt with be rank E or F adventurers would multiply into rank D small disasters and eventually rank C catastrophes before anybody paid attention to them. Simply because there weren't enough adventurers of the appropriate rank around during the first stages. Then again, it was hardly the end of the world, that's what heroes were for.

-

"Marie!" Boris barged in, almost knocking over the hapless clergyman. "More adventurers dead downriver. It's a free-for-all down there, total chaos."

She buried her head in her hands.

"Chaos and strife!" Father Raymond proclaimed. "Right where the goddess said it would be. It must be the work of that goblin, perhaps it's the goblin king, or some other demon that-"

"I don't think so." Boris handed a piece of paper to the second-in-command. "Somebody is handing out bounties for adventurers. There was an eye-witness report from some casual culling participants."

"Yes, I heard about that, did anything come of it?"

"Somebody found the base this week. Dozens of bandits, some of them with battle magic. It's basically occupied territory."

"So the dark army is bandits? The world memories showed goblins."

Boris shrugged. "So what do we do? A bigger bounty? Send a pigeon to the duke?"

"No. This requires immediate action. The guild staff consists of adventurers, still. I'll deal with this personally."

"You mean you're-"

"I am." She stood up and lifted the large shiny shield from the wall. "I'm going exterminating."

The humanoids gave Gubok a wide berth. They had learned to avoid him when he was agitated.

"Kubar!" He shouted over the abandoned tents and long cold campfires. "Anybody! Come face me. Cowards!"

The old camp had suddenly and abruptly been abandoned. Orcs were nomadic, but they didn't leave behind their possessions when moving to a new location.

"Cowards!" Gubok was angry at how angry he was. He had planned to personally kill his old battle brothers when he met them, now that it seemed they had died already he should be happy, or at least apathetic. "Serves you right." He grunted under his breath as he sank to the ground.

Ragar, Kubar, the mystics, everybody he had ever known. Dead. Suddenly he felt very alone.

"Food." "Food." The greenskins around him were overturning every stone and tent trying to find anything edible. He had greatly stimulated their multiplication, there were countless, it had gotten to the point that finding enough to feed everybody every day was becoming hard, and many were going hungry.

He was a bit peckish himself. The mission towards the old camp hadn't done much to help stave off starvation for his minions, but what was the point of having them if he couldn't use them for his own purposes?

"The first to get me a decent bite doesn't get eaten." He announced, but none of them felt it applied to him and all ignored his demand. So he simply grabbed one by the throat.

It struggled pathetically in his grip. He let it go. 'Noids were unappetizing.

-

In their endless scavenging the goblins threw around a card.

"Hey, what's that? Gimme that." He took it from them. It was one of those pictures the world generated of meaningful events and creatures. "A remembrance image?"

He looked at it. As usual, the top was taking up by random squiggles, but underneath was a depiction of that very camp, months ago. The remembrance image showed the past.

Gubok didn't at all like what he saw. The weakest among the orcs, those tasked with maintaining the camp while the warriors were out, were being hacked apart by tall humanoids. Humans. They were using magic.

"Filthy creatures!" Suddenly filled with energy he jumped to his feet. "We're setting out! This what we'll do, we kill these humans and get back Kubar's shard. Then I'll be the new champion of bloodshed."

"Is that food?" One of the goblins asked him.

"We'll take their food too." He said dismissively. "After we wipe all of them out."

He knew exactly where to find these humans.

Vanguard Class

The vanguard class is a support role, although at low levels vanguards can make efficient solo adventurers, high ranking vanguards rely on their teammates to do damage while they block it.

Adventurers registered as vanguards have access to tower shields and other heavy armor from the guild shop and personal combat training.

Vanguards block incoming attacks from enemies, and manage their position to prevent them from swarming the party, giving their teammates the freedom to fulfill their own roles uninterrupted.

Vanguards are a popular class. Together with healers and duelists they form the classic trifecta of party roles, making them a staple in almost every party.