Lord: Starting from a Goblin Nest

「A dozen or so days later.」

”Have you heard? The goblinoids around here have gotten restless and are all leaving their lairs,” Wilson said, handing a mug of pale ale to his fellow Adventurer leader. ”The city-states are all offering high bounties, especially Carolina. They’re willing to pay one Gold Coin per goblin—can you imagine anything crazier than that?”

”I can’t,” Ron said, accepting the mug with a slight smile.

”Well, let me tell you,” Wilson said with a booming laugh. ”The crazy part is, these goblins are *only* attacking Carolina’s Slave Hunters! And they’re freeing every slave they come across!”

”The king of these goblins must be a chivalrous Knight! A toast—to the goblins!”

A hundred years ago, the Elven Hailan Empire faced a joint assault over its deranged pro-slavery policies, but that didn’t mean slavery was eradicated from the world. Quite the opposite, in fact. Various city-states and powers had traditions of buying and selling slaves to some degree; the Hailan Empire was just so extreme that even its peers could no longer stand by and watch.

The people on the continent’s West commonly referred to the Carolina City-States as ”Little Hailan of the West.” Their relatively limited influence, however, kept them from drawing widespread attention. But for Adventurers and Mercenaries, seeing such a city-state suffer a setback was a welcome sight.

No one wanted to be down on their luck one day, only to be ambushed by a band of Carolina Slave Hunters—slavers from other city-states generally weren’t so shameless.

As for Ron, what he marveled at was Klade’s astonishing efficiency. They wouldn’t even reach Rose City until tomorrow, yet the earth goblin had already launched his attacks and secured a preliminary victory.

’He really is cut out to be an Earth Goblin Warlord,’ Ron thought. ’Or maybe it’s just in his blood?’

”I hear those goblins are incredibly powerful now!” the Sorcerer in Wilson’s party chimed in. ”They have infantry, cavalry, and rumor has it they even have an air force and siege engines! Their next step will be to attack Carolina!”

The Sorcerer’s name was Luo Wei. She was a bit nutty, but she possessed an extraordinary talent for Flame Magic, making her far stronger than the bandit Sorcerer Ron had once encountered.

”Pah, you need to stop listening to tavern gossip, especially from those Bards!” Disbelief was written all over Wilson’s face. ”Since when have goblins had an air force? What are they riding, pigeons?”

”And as for siege engines... let me tell you, if they really are going to attack Carolina, you can bet I, Wilson, will be there to lend a hand!”

”Even though they’re goblins?” Delaford muttered, his head lowered. The Ranger had kept himself bundled up tightly for the past several days. Wilson and his group had mistaken him for a shy Underground Dwarf, and no one had discovered his true identity.

”’Even though?’ What’s wrong with goblins? Don’t you look down on them!” Emboldened by the ale, Wilson would say anything. ”If you ask me, goblins are a hell of a lot better than those slavers! At least goblins aren’t so damn cruel to their own kind!”

”Actually, they can be...” Delaford muttered under his breath, but no one heard him.

”Why do you have so much animosity toward Carolina?” Ron asked Wilson, blinking. ”Did they do something... ’bad’ to you?”

”’Something bad’?” The burly Adventurer let out a drunken belch. ”Hah—the way you educated types talk is so frustrating. What do you mean, ’something bad’?”

”I have a score to settle with them! A blood feud!”

”Do you know why I became an Adventurer? My parents owed a massive debt to loan sharks they couldn’t repay. In the end, they had no choice but to sell themselves. And it was men from Carolina who came to collect them!”

”It took me twenty years to scrape together the money to buy their freedom and clear the debt. And do you know what they told me happened to my parents? ’Dead!’” The middle-aged man—a good deal brawnier than even Bisera and covered in far more scars—spoke with a sob in his throat. ”I couldn’t even find anyone who was enslaved at the same time, just to ask what happened to them. I couldn’t even find their graves to leave some flowers and thank them...”

”Even children sold to Carolina at a young age have a hard time adapting to life there, let alone people who’ve spent half their lives as commoners,” Silvia said, raising her personal waterskin and taking a sip of blood. ”If your parents had been able to send you in their place, it might have actually been the better choice. You have a strong build. You look like the type who would’ve survived.”

”You’re not a Carolinian, are you? How do you know so much about the place?” Wilson demanded, his bloodshot eyes glaring at the Vampire Descendant with hostility.

”I was a slave in Carolina for several decades. A Carolinian? I suppose that counts,” Silvia shrugged. ”I might have even seen your parents, though I certainly wouldn’t remember them. I wouldn’t have cared, either.”

”Wilson’s had too much to drink. Don’t mind him,” one of Wilson’s companions said, hastily pushing the speechless man aside with an appeasing smile.

”Miss Silvia, what about someone like me? Could I survive in Carolina?” Andre asked curiously.

For days, he had listened to Ron’s group talk about the city-state, but he had no real frame of reference for it. ’Could it really be more terrifying than goblins?’

”You’d last about three days. Five, at most,” Silvia said, sizing up the young farmer. ”The first day, they’d work you to the brink of collapse. The second, you’d fail to complete your task, so you’d be starved and beaten. By the third day, you’d be dead, either from exhaustion or the beatings.”

”You’re past the prime age to be a worthwhile investment, and you don’t have special talents like Seymour or me. You’d be assigned to the harshest labor camp, where the rule is simple: only those who finish their work get to eat and avoid a beating.”

”Then what about you and Seymour?”

”Where Seymour was, you didn’t get beaten if you finished your work, but you had to scrounge for your own food. As for apprentices like me, we got beaten whether we finished our work or not, but at least they fed us.”

”But for people like us, aside from having a higher price tag, life wasn’t necessarily much better than in the labor camps. One of Seymour’s peers is still buried in our front yard. If someone like me got sold to a decent master, it was tolerable. But with a bad one... well, the outcome is better left unsaid.”

”And what games can we imagine, compared to the ones the nobles come up with?”

Silvia smiled nonchalantly. Perhaps because she had now escaped that sea of suffering, she could look back on her past with some composure. But the hatred in her eyes hadn’t faded in the slightest, unchanged by time or circumstance.

”Wilson,” Ron said, walking over to his side. ”Since you hate Carolina so much, why don’t you take on quests against them from the Adventurers’ Guild?”