“Why do you think she betrayed us?” Prinkipas asked. “Fotia had never done anything before to even suggest she cared for humans, and she certainly would never have said what she did.”

The hobgoblin king let out an exhale. Prinkipas had a history with that crazy girl, but she had never once showed signs of disobedience. “Maybe the voice took the last of her sanity. Maybe she was being controlled. Regardless, she betrayed us, and it’s too late to take it back. Take her off your mind, and let’s keep going. They shouldn’t have gotten far.”

“Yes, my lord.” Prinkipas replied.

They continued down the tunnel, their leisurely pace — at least leisurely for warriors of their rank — turning to a full-on sprint as they tried to catch up to the humans.

“Where are they? How could they have gotten this far ahead of us?” The hobgoblin king grumbled as he ran.

“Perhaps they’re faster than we thought. You go on ahead, I’m only slowing you down.”

“That you are. Try to catch up.” The hobgoblin king smirked before shooting lightning down his own heels, blazing down the tunnel.

Prinkipas sighed in relief as the hair-triggered hobgoblin ran ahead. Sometimes Prinkipas wondered why he, and all the goblins that serve him, ever put up with that lazy, murderous maniac.

Then he remembered. It’s because the king thoroughly outranked everyone else in the encampment, and disobedience was met with an iron fist and a lightning hammer. The memory of Prinkipas’s mother being killed for refusing to give Prinkipas up to be raised as part of the royal family still haunts him. Less so, given the constant yammering of the voice in his head, which has grown louder and made him more uncaring as he grew, but even the voice rarely riled him up enough to overcome his fear. At least, not in the short term.

There would come a day when Prinkipas would usurp the throne, as the king had done to his predecessor. But to do that, he would need power. Those humans would do nicely to assist in his growth, and unlike the king, Prinkipas had noticed they were going down the wrong path.

There were no footprints down this path, and the wall at the fork in the tunnel they had slain the other goblin at was clearly added as patchwork.

Prinkipas turned around, and ran back in the direction he came from, eventually coming to the fake wall, and noticed a random torch on the ground in front of it that hadn’t been there before.

“That’s peculiar…” Prinkipas thought aloud. He wound up, then smashed his whip to tear a holethrough the wall in front of him, expecting to see an opening behind it.

Instead, gallons upon gallons of oil leaked out from the opening, igniting as it touched the torch.

* * *

A few minutes prior

I lit a torch in front of the wall then tunneled through it in petra vermis form. Afterwards, I covered up the hole, then set up another fake wall just in front of it, and filled the space with oil. If they come back, and smash through this wall, the oil will fall out and light on the torch, assuming they don’t decide to snuff it out or move it out of the way first.

I doubt the trap will kill the bigger hobgoblin, but it should at least make them think twice about coming after us.

I changed to dolosus lupus form, then tracked down the humans.

As I got close, one of the adventurers called out “Guys, behind us.”

The other adventurers started charging spells just in case. “It looks like a wolf. Is it a Dolosus Lupus?”

“It could be that blue mage from before.”

“Correct.” I yapped before reverting to another goblin’s form to communicate. “Thanks for checking before attacking. You wouldn’t believe how often people just start attacking without checking first.”

“To be fair, we thought you might be coming up. You seemed pretty confident in your chances of getting us out of there. I didn’t think they’d be sending anyone else into the labyrinth to save us. Certainly no one of your caliber.”

“No one sent me. I came of my own volition, and just happened to come across you. I’m not even all that strong. Just lucky.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. Luck wouldn’t be enough to let you survive against an entire goblin village with a C rank hobgoblin.”

“Who said I survived?” I chuckled. “Anyways, the hobgoblins are still around, but they shouldn’t be coming after us again any time soon.”

“So we really escaped? We're going to live?” One of the miners asked, a tear forming in the corner of his eye.

“Don't get your hopes up yet. We still have to find a way out of the labyrinth” The adventurer replied. “Speaking of which, do you know how to get out? Our guide didn’t make it.”

“Not exactly, but I can at least tunnel us close to the surface. That being said, We’d still need to go through the official barricade, though. It’d take days to tunnel around the barrier to breach the surface directly, and I’m sure none of us want to spend any more time down here than we have to.”

Though I don’t know all of the intricacies of the labyrinth barricade enchantments, the result of its main function is common knowledge. So long as the main barricade is powered and intact, it can create a barrier that prevents creatures from breaking through the surface. This effect only works within the radius of any surface mana wells, but since the main exits of the labyrinth each have a mana well around them, this filters out the vast majority of monsters from surfacing. Unfortunately for us, this filter also applies to humanoids. The mana analyzer that can differentiate between humanoids and monsters has a short range, only reaching the tunnel of the main entrance itself.

Effectively, the only ways to exit the labyrinth is to find the main entrance — Which usually requires a guide — or to tunnel dozens of miles around the edges of the underground barrier, then surface outside the mana well.

“Any ideas for actually finding the barricade once we’re near the surface?” I asked.

“Well, the main entrance has a few pieces of every material and mana type you can think of built into the main tunnel for just this situation.”

“Built in?”

“Same way most enchantments are made: with an aligned crystal surrounded by layers of dense labyrinth stone that’s already been filled, or neutral mana crystals. Either way works, so long as they’re capable of preventing the inner mana from degrading into neutral mana. Normally you’d just have to approach the surface, then walk down random tunnels until you get close enough to the entrance for a druid to feel it. Unfortunately, we don’t have any druids with us. These three are warriors, and I’m a mage.”

“In that case, I don’t know how great my range is, but I might be able to find a goblin form that can detect something. Otherwise, we can try to manually look for the entrance.”

“We’ll be in your care, then.”