Capra hit the earth with a— Plop, which was a very strange iteration of the loud bone crunching noise he had been expecting.

He found that death was a lot squishier than he had anticipated, but then he quickly realized that he wasn’t dead at all.

Whatever he had landed in surrounded him. It felt like mud, and Capra had to keep his hand over his mouth and nose to avoid having it drown him— but sadly the stuff was still wet enough to slip past the defenses of his fingers.

Capra hadn’t been holding his breath, so he immediately smelt it… and it was foul.

It smelled like a combination of month old dirty socks, ammonia, and a late night taco bell run. The smell burnt at his nostrils, and then — much to his chagrin, the liquid reached his mouth.

He tasted it…

It was the stuff of nightmares. It was a taste so rancid that he was immediately overcome by powerfully destructive emotions. Never in his life had Capra wanted to hurt somebody as much as he wanted to hurt the game developers at this very moment. He felt shame, sadness, rage, and the taste was so bad that Capra involuntarily triggered his gag reflex, but he stopped himself from vomiting.

“Shit!” He thought.

“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit!”

It now began to dawn on Capra that he hadn’t fallen in mud, but feces — and it was very fresh.

Capra wanted to scream, but his better judgement won out and he clamped his fingers tightly around his mouth and nose— which really did little to help.

The momentum from the fall had plunged him quite deep into the literal pile of crap he had landed in, so his number one priority quickly became to make his way out without suffocating, because he’d be damned if his first death in Chaos and Fame was by drowning in shit.

At first Capra tried to climb up, but that proved to be futile as more fecal matter would simply fill in the gaps that he opened. Then Capra remembered the scene as he was falling.

As he was falling he saw brown, lots of it. The brown was piled up, and from his perspective in the sky it looked like a large solid hill surrounded by tiny green spots which were probably some sort of plant life.

He knew the hill was pointed at the top and wide at the bottom; so he decided to go forward because even though it would take longer, the dung hill wasn’t that wide.

He kept his eyes closed as tightly as he could to avoid getting any crap in them which resulted in him remaining blind as he pushed. Capra kept his steps as mechanical as possible to avoid walking circles in the giant dung hill, but eventually another problem arose.

Something… well somethings, were crawling on him. At first he had been too distracted to notice, but eventually whatever creatures were on him began to nibble. Little by little they ate away at the feces on him, and eventually they reached his skin.

At first it felt like he was being tickled, but eventually he started to feel as if most of his body had been dipped into a fire ant hill.

“Ow... Ow! Ow!!”

The pain was intense. Right now his privates were safe, but he was wearing a robe... and he had a feeling that if he didn’t escape soon the pain he was experiencing would magnify ten fold. The thought of some unknown insects, worms –or whatever the hell was on him – nibbling at his more sensitive areas gave him a frightful amount of motivation, and soon he found himself moving forward with far more energy than before.

…

A few minutes passed.

At first Capra held his breath, he didn’t think he had a choice; but as he pushed forward the resulting force of his movement opened up enough space for bouts of rancid air to flood in, allowing him to breath normally— albeit uncomfortably.

…

A few minutes later the pain had spread to his thighs, dangerously close to his manly bits.

…

A few more moments passed and then the first nibble arrived. Then the second. Although Capra couldn’t scream, if anyone could see him right now they would’ve noticed that his face had grown a startling shade of red and the veins on his neck and arms were flaring. He was also scratching at his privates with his free hand like a mad man.

…

Plop.

A hand popped out of the massive brown hill startling a nearby goblin that had been shoveling away at the dung with a crude wooden spade.

Plop.

Another hand.

Plop. Plop. Plop!

A grown man rushed out of the dung hill,

“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” He screamed, causing all the nearby goblins to run in a panic.

An onlooker would have noticed that the goblins didn’t seem very afraid… just… disgusted. This was remarkable in and of itself given that goblins were notoriously filthy creatures who weren’t averse to bathing in their own urine or feces, but it seemed even goblins had standards— and Capra was filthy enough to make a grown goblin think twice before approaching him.

“[Conjure Water]!” Capra chanted, causing a fresh stream of water to flow from his hand directly on to his face.

“[Conjure Water]!”

“[Conjure Water]!”

“[Conjure Water]!”

The streams of conjured water were weak, so they didn’t do much, but they were enough for Capra to wash his face in, although it had cost him four tenths of his total mana…

...

The first thing Capra noticed after cleaning his face was that he was on a hill some 20 or 30 footsteps away from the edge of a cliff, and he briefly considered that it might have been better if his falling trajectory had sent him over it...

The second thing Capra noticed was that he was surrounded. All around him were goblins. These goblins were tiny green creatures with big heads and large sharp noses. Their bodies were disproportionately smaller than their heads, and they were particularly skinny.

As Capra watched them, the goblins watched him. They wielded their wooden spades cautiously, but none of them dared to approach.

Capra looked around, it seemed like he had really landed on a mountain.

Ahead of him was the mountain edge and he could see a vast forest in the distance. To his right and left were large caverns equipped with mining railways which had a steady flow of goblins going in and out as they shoveled feces from the dung hill into minecarts.

As the minecarts filled up the goblins would then transport their cargo downhill.

Seeing the goblin’s workflow Capra couldn’t help wondering where this dung hill had come from… there was a system in place to collect it, and at the rate the goblins were working they should be able to make short work of the pile.

As Capra stood in wonder he suddenly heard a, “Plop.”

Almost right on cue a steaming ball of brown fell onto the dung hill not too far Capra.

Capra widened his eyes and looked up.

The sky was filled with giant two and three meter long bats. On the backs of the bats were [Goblin Batriders]. These batriders would direct the bats around the region, occasionally stopping over a mountain like this one to let the bats… unload their cargo.

Because the bats were flying mammals they ate and digested a lot of food quickly, and looking off into the distance Capra felt like the land the bats flew over was showered in their excretions.

Suddenly Capra felt pain.

“Ow!” He shouted.

He had been so distracted by his surroundings that he had completely forgotten about whatever it was that was biting him. He looked down at his robe.

What greeted him was hundreds of antenna. Cockroaches, beetles, and other insects of varying sizes that were crawling all over his now grey-brown robe, their tiny little bug eyes watching him. At first Capra was stunned and didn’t move, but then he picked up a small cockroach and looked at it... it looked back.

Capra’s hand began shaking… and then, he screamed.

“Aaaaaaaaah!” He screamed, as he ran away like a madman. He was flinging off bugs at an impressive rate, but nowhere fast enough to return his calm.

He barreled into the leftmost cavern and no goblin stood in his way, if anything they proactively avoided him as he faded into the darkness with his screams in tow.

…

By the time Capra regained his senses he had begun casting [Conjure Water] with every last drop of mana he had. He scrubbed himself furiously— and as he did so bugs scurried off and ran away.

Some bugs fell out from the bottom of his robe, but they wouldn’t be forgiven as easily as the rest.

“Damn you!” He yelled, as he stepped on as many as he could.

The ordeals he’d been facing the last few hours had left Capra in an uncharacteristically bad mood, and he was determined to make as many insects as he could pay the price.

Occasionally as he stomped away at the cockroaches and beetles the face of the black haired mage who so righteously screwed him over came to mind, and he would find himself stomping harder.

...

It took Capra a good half hour to calm down, he needed to be calm. He didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t know how to get back to the surface. He was safe for now, but he had long since realized that the goblins weren’t afraid of him as much as they were his stench, so he needed to get out of the cavern before his… Goblin Repellent, wore out. He could only hope that the trio on the surface were suffering as much as he was.