“Gryl... you ready for a fight?” Garfumel asked.

Matt peered over the hedge atop the hillock and studied the goblin camp nestled at the base of the hill. “I thought you were going to raise skeletons or something?” Matt whispered back.

Garfumel shrugged. “I have a few spells I can use to start the party, then I can raise a few goblin skeletons as we go.”

“But I haven’t seen Futuke yet,” Matt pointed out.

Garfumel nodded. You should sneak into the camp and look for him.”

“ME?”

“Of course,” Garfumel said. “You snuck into the Red Tower just fine. I’m sure this will be easy!”

Matt was about to argue and then he remembered that he wasn’t really dealing with a powerful necromancer. He was debating a seven year old. The only way this discussion was going to end was with Matt giving in to the kid, so he may as well do it now and get on with it.

He pointed to the far side of the camp that backed into the tree line with a cave. “Most of the goblins we’ve seen have gone into the cave,” Matt said. “So I’ll try to get in there.”

“Good,” Garfumel said. “I’ll be ready to blast them if they escape. We need a signal though, so if you get into trouble I’ll know to come down and save you.”

Matt groaned internally. This might very well be more humiliating than the original fiasco in the character selection lobby. Worse still was the fact that there was a very real possibility that Matt was going to need the kid’s help. Cursed pants aside, Matt was only a level three. He was hardly ready to take on an entire goblin camp.

“Well, get going!” Garfumel prodded, pulling Matt back to the task at hand.

“Have Choppa ready,” Matt said. “If I find the shards, I’ll be running out of there like crazy. If I get into trouble though, I’ll make a bird sound.”

Garfumel scrunched up his nose and regarded Matt curiously. “A sounds like ‘caw caw, caw caw’ or more like a ‘rrrrr-rah-raaah-rraaaaah-raaaaaaaaah!’ kind of sound?”

Matt reached out to cover the kid’s mouth and glanced over at the camp to see if any goblins had noticed the strange screams that had sounded like a dying cat. “What kind of bird sounds like that?!” Matt asked.

“A Channel-billed Cuckoo,” Garfumel said with a shrug. “I helped my older sister write a report on them. I can do a better impression if I warm up a bit first--”

“No, no! That’s fine. I’ll simply say ‘caw-caw’ okay?”

Garfumel giggled and shook his head. “No, you have to say ‘caw-caw, caw-caw’ otherwise it sounds like you’re saying caca.”

Matt stared at the strange sight of a fully grown wizard giggling as only a seven year old can at poop puns. “Noted,” he said flatly. Garfumel was still stifling giggles when Matt finally left their hiding spot and circled around to the southwest toward the tree line.

“You’ve done real well for yourself Matt,” he grumbled. “Signed up for the dream job, except you turned yourself into a prisoner by failing to even notice the fine print let alone read it. Started your first day of work as the town executioner only to eventually wind up in the torture chamber. Finally rescued by a literal imp and now you’ve climbed the corporate ladder enough to be working for a seven year old giggling at poop jokes.” Matt sighed, scanning the valley around him for any goblins that might be patrolling the outer perimeter. He thought a bit more about his current ‘job’ situation and sighed again. He’d heard his father complain about working for bosses with minds like children, but he highly doubted his father had ever literally teamed up with a child at work.

“Dad was right. I should have just gone into accounting. Numbers don’t lie, make jokes, or steal your lunch from the break room.” Matt was still murmuring to himself when he finally reached the tree line and rounded a massive oak that would require at least seven people to fully hug around the trunk. Caught up as he was in his thoughts, he bumped right into a goblin. The three and a half foot tall humanoid bounced off Matt’s chest and landed squarely on his rump. Beady, yellow eyes darted upward as a snarl revealed a nasty row of gray and brown teeth that were worn down to sharp little nubs.

Matt summoned Mythic Dagger and plunged downward. The blade bit into the goblin’s neck, silencing the creature before he’d even been able to move. Matt bent down, looted the body, and was quite pleased with his handiwork as the body disappeared and his coin pouch was three gold pieces heavier.

He also found a ball of yarn, but he discarded that without a thought and kept moving through the forest.

Twenty yards to the north, he found another goblin. This one was fiddling with some sort of spring trap, and had a couple dead rabbits hanging from his belt.

Matt crept forward slowly, Mythic Dagger poised in his right hand and his left hand ready to throw a fireball in case the goblin turned around before he could reach him.

His cursed pants hurt his stamina for sure, but his hood, robe, gloves, and boots all added to his stealth. He moved almost effortlessly across the underbrush without a sound. The goblin had just finished retrieving a third rabbit by the time Matt reached him. The dagger slipped in just under the ribs and angled up. Matt liked this side of the game. Creeping up on goblins and mercing them with a magic dagger was exactly the kind of person he wished he was. Stealthy, calculating, ruthless. He looted this goblin for a total of four gold pieces and a short bow with a quiver holding ten arrows, along with the three rabbits of course.

Matt was fully enjoying his infiltration mission by the time he found his third and fourth goblin victims.

He made a mental note to enchant more items with stealth and perhaps something to help boost his dagger proficiency. As he reached the northern edge of the camp, hiding in a thicket overlooking the cave and the encampment below, he counted the goblins around him and his resolve weakened.

Seventeen goblins in the outer camp, and likely five or six times that number inside.

How was he supposed to get inside? He couldn’t possibly assassinate all of them. He sat in the thicket watching the goblins move around the outer camp. There was a pattern to some of them. Certain goblins would move from hastily constructed tents of animal hides to various bonfires around the camp. They’d eat, chatter on in the goblin tongue, and then go back to their tents. Others remained at the fires at all times, while the rest seemed to mill about the camp in a less organized fashion.

Matt equipped the bow and spied a single goblin near a fire to his left. The roving goblin had just left that fire, so Matt waited until the rover returned. Then he took aim and fired. The arrow flew straight and true, sinking deep into the back of the goblin’s head, knocking it into the fire.

The other goblin started to turn, but Matt had already loosed a second arrow. The goblin caught it in the face and fell backward into the flames as well.

“Jarvis would be so proud,” Matt said. He then turned and found a goblin heading toward his tent. The tent opening faced the thicket, so Matt waited until the goblin was inside and then fired. The third goblin went down without sound.

Matt smiled now, his spirits bolstered by his success. Four more well timed shots brought down four more goblins without raising the alarm. As he knocked his eighth arrow, a branch snapped to his left. His blood froze. Was it a patrol? Was it Garfumel? He tried to keep his body still and use only his peripheral vision, but he couldn’t spot the noise’s source.

He held his breath. Maybe his stealth buffs were enough to hide him from whatever was nearby.

Another footfall thumped, this time almost directly behind him.

Sudden images of pumas flooded Matt’s mind as he recalled stories his grandfather had told him on long hikes in the woods.

Don’t be a cougar, don’t be a cougar.

Branches and leaves exploded around him. Sharp, burning pain bored its way through his rump and an instant later he found himself airborne, flailing out over the ledge and down toward a suddenly alert goblin camp. Cries of alarm rose up around him as he twisted his body to look up at what had tossed him over the edge.

There, standing triumphantly and pawing its hoof at the ground while snorting proudly was a massive boar with great bloody tusks. Atop its back was a sneering goblin wearing a bone necklace and holding a spear over its head. The goblin shouted something, and the camp broke into commotion.

Matt slammed against the dirt as arrows and spears flew toward him. He lashed out with a fireball at a nearby goblin, blasting it away with a single hit. In rushed a second goblin with a spear. Matt fired his short bow at point blank range, piercing the goblin in the chest and dropping it just inches before the spear would have finished Matt.

Matt fired his last two arrows, but only one struck its mark as the tenth and final arrow flew over a charging goblin’s head. Another enemy came in from the side, hurling a spear and then rushing in and jumping headlong toward Matt in an apparent attempt to ram him like some sort of goblin-torpedo flying through the air.

Matt stepped aside and scored a gash on the strange goblin with his Mythic Dagger. The goblin jumped up, spun around, and kicked Matt in the shin, but it didn’t feel overly powerful, so Matt retaliated with a kick of his own. The goblin’s lower jaw snapped up and then its head jerked backward as it fell to the ground. Matt wasn’t sure if he’d stunned the thing or killed it, but he hadn’t the time to check either as another pair of goblins rushed in. He leaned down and picked up a spear in his left hand and held the dagger with his right. He parried the first spear attack and then launched a snap kick that sent the first goblin flying several feet backward. He spun around the second goblin’s attack and then came down with his spear, stabbing the goblin through the chest and pinning his squirming body to the ground.

He finished the wriggling goblin with his Mythic Dagger and then his avatar started huffing and puffing.

The cursed pants! Matt was out of stamina.

He held off several more goblins with his fireball spells until his mana was fully depleted, leaving only one goblin standing outside the camp. This one snarled and held a wicked two-handed axe.

“FUTUKE!” the axe-wielding goblin shouted.

There was some commotion from the cave behind Matt, but he didn’t turn to look at first. His eyes were fixed on the axe-wielding goblin before him. Did this goblin know Futuke was the target? Or was he summoning Futuke to join the fight?

Matt groaned when the answer finally came amidst the rising wave of war drums from deep within the cave.

“Huggator!” came Futuke’s response from the cave.

Matt had regained just enough mana to throw one more fireball. He threw it at the axe-wielder, missing by inches, but forcing the axe-wielding goblin to back pedal a couple feet and then he spun around to see Futuke emerging from the cave, riding atop a black boar and leveling a spear at Matt.

Knowing he was in over his head, Matt decided it was time to make the agreed upon bird call and summon Garfumel to charge in and save his worthless behind.

He certainly meant to shout “caw-caw, caw-CAW!”

But all that escaped his mouth in that moment of panic was, “Rrrrr-rah-raaah-rraaaaah-raaaaaaaaah!”