Chapter 32

Searching for something else to think about, Divine surveyed all of his realm, meaning his one cavern.

The goblings were still having their fun with the severed leg, Divine had brought.

They were trying to extract the claws, but not very successfully.

The other minions were lazying around after work.

Sometimes they shot looks at Scarface wiping Divine's naked upper body.

The other female minion, the one that liked to snack recently, and one of the woodcutters looked over most often, but the others did too sometimes.

The female minion, Divine understood. Next to indulging in food, the snacky minion liked to indulge in fantasies, too.

But what was up with the others, especially that woodcutter minion?

Then it dawned on him.

They were hungry and were waiting for the next meal.

Scarface didn't let them cook without her supervision with the precious spirit pot. Because she didn't trust them with cooking the glowing mushrooms correctly, fearing they would poison everyone.

The three humans were sitting together pretty close to Venus.

Strange...

Looking closer, there was something up with the looks Divine got from them.

Specifically the young man Torm, he was as nervous and tense right now as he had been in his first night here.

Their eyes met and Torm quickly looked down.

No, not only down.

With Divine's qi-enhanced keen eyesight, he saw Torm wasn't only looking down, but specifically at something... and the only thing that was there, was Venus' vine binding his leg.

After Divine was clean and robed again, Scarface started preparing the meal and he went over to the humans to find out what was going on.

The young man looked like he was getting a panic attack, when he noticed Divine coming.

The older man Beorn looked a little tenser than usual, but nothing else.

And Nola was doing what she always did, since she had arrived here, indifferently staring holes into the air.

Divine couldn't discern anything from her.

The tension in the air rose with every step Divine came closer.

When he finally stopped before the three humans, their reactions were exactly as their attitude suggested.

Nola ignored him.

Beorn looked at him with a calm inquiring expression as if Divine's visit was an unexpected surprise.

Torm's breathing quickened more and more, the panic attack was really coming close, and he didn't dare to look at Divine.

Torm just heaved and made himself smaller.

Something was definitely in the bushes here.

Apropos bushes, Divine noticed all three of them were sitting on a portion of their vines.

Without preamble, a qi wave swept against the cowering Torm. The young man rolled from his sitting position into Beorn's lap.

Venus' vine had a damaged part right there, where Torm had been sitting on it.

It looked more like the work of something pointy than something sharp.

Divine turned his eyes to Nola, who was finally looking at him now, and then to Beorn, who still had Torm in his lap and was trying to get him off, but Torm was no help at all with that.

Slowly but surely, all three of them started showing apprehension.

Divine laid his hand on the hilt of the Dancing Feather Sword and stepped even closer.

The humans collectively backed away from Divine, not in the direction of the demonic venus flytrap, but to the side.

Not one of them left Divine out of their sight for a single moment, as they crwaled backwards.

The three soon hit the cave wall with their backs.

Looking down, the damage on the vines tying up Beorn and Nola was exposed now.

Beorn's was the most damaged, but just not enough to tear.

Nola's the least, she even lacked the motivation to work hard for her own escape.

The damages were all from some pointy things, propably stones.

They had hurt Venus' vines and the little flower didn't even fight back like her instincts or defense mechanism normally would have told her.

And only because she was following his will to bind and not to hurt the three human.

Venus wasn't developed enough for complex instructions with eventualities, not yet at least.

As soon as his qi cultivation reached the foundation establishment realm, Divine would refine Venus further, to help her development along.

Divine looked at the wall with his drawings, where he kept a collection of pointy stones.

He had left Beorn there earlier, before he had taken off to meet the foxes.

That's propably where they had gotten them.

Now, how to handle this?

Show them the stick first, then give a little carrot and maybe destroy some false hopes?

Divine slowly drew his sword and let them sweat.

Nola was the most composed, but even she was tense and jittery with apprehension.

Torm was a crying wreck.

Suddenly, Divine swung his sword arm.

The sword's tip came right at Nola's face. It narrowly missed her ear and pierced into the wall beside her, getting stuck there.

The men cried out, but didn't move.

Nola's eyes widened in fright and her face turned ghostly pale.

Her breathing grew incredibly ragged, but she didn't move a muscle and stayed completely still.

Divine used his qi to grab his old trusted stick and let it fly to him from the cavern's corner.

With the same stick that had already successfully disciplined the goblins in the past, he would teach the two men their lesson.

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When the sword came directly at Nola and death was knocking, she felt scared.

She had thought, she wasn't afraid to die anymore.

When she realized she wasn't dead, she felt really relieved.

As Nola sat there, completely stunned, her heart hammering in her chest, she thought about what to do with her miserable life.

Truthfully, Nola would like to see two special people again.

And she wanted revenge.

She knew this path would end in tragedy and would hurt many people, but to Eternal Darkness with the consequences.

But even if she got away from the goblins right now, she was still too weak to take revenge.

So, there were two initial hurdles in her path, getting stronger and getting free, not necessarily in that order.

Beorn's grunts of pain and Torm's crying pulled her back into the present.

The strange goblin leader was hitting them with a wooden stick, repeatedly.

Torm tried to block the hits that came, but it was hopeless.

The hits came too fast and every time he was close to blocking or even grabbing the stick, it suddenly became faster.

Beorn was just taking the beating, neither defending nor retaliating.

But Nola noticed he was tensing his muscles before every hit to soften the blow.

And correspondingly, the goblin leader only hit Beorn on his muscled arms, chest and stomach.

Not like Torm, who received some hits on the head when he tried to defend himself.

After a little while, the goblin leader stopped and started talking to them.

"You! Not! Hurt! Mine!" The goblin leader looked at them dead serious.

Nola understood the words the goblin leader said, his accent was weird, but his pronunciation was understandable, yet she didn't understand what he meant.

She looked at Beorn, and then at Torm.

The two men stared back in incomprehension.

Wasn't this about the escape attempt? Did the goblin even know what he said?

The goblin indicated the vines around their ankles.

They looked at him incrediously and the goblin just nodded.

"My little flower... the goblins... you, Beorn, Torm, Nola, you not hurt goblins or flower! You hurt, I hurt you!" The goblin pointed at them one after another.

His dark eyes were piercing.

This time Nola understood and she nodded. It was a warning... a threat... a promise.

Divine made a gesture with his hand and the vines retreated from their ankles. "I good for you."

"..?"

What?

Was he letting them go?

No, that wouldn't make any sense.

Of course, they had to get different chains or at least different vines, these ones were damaged.

"You wander here. Trees... outside.... ah, no... forest... yes, forest dangerous. You wander forest, you die. Why go?" The goblin didn't know many words in Cathalish yet, it seemed, but he could communicate already.

Now that the goblin said it, she hadn't thought about how they would get through the Witching Forest alive, after they escaped from the goblins.

And it seemed Beorn hadn't either, judging by his expression.

Not that she had put much thought or much work into the escape, but she was surprised Beorn hadn't.

Or had he?

Torm had discovered Beorn secretively hammering on his vine. Beorn hadn't shared without prompting.

He had said, he wanted to try if it would work first, but promised he would've told them, after he had found out.

The goblin leader had left for the first time since they had come here, so it had been a good opportunity.

When Torm had organised two pointy stones for them too, Nola had worked on her vine only half-heartedly.

"You not hurt mine, and you here, I here, no one hurt you. I good for you. Forest hurt." With these words, the goblin left them there unbound.