Lord: Starting from a Goblin Nest

”Please, spare me! You can take any of the treasure here!” the Personification Monster said, trembling. ”I’m just a humble, insignificant trap. There’s no benefit to killing me!”

”Personification Monster meat is generally quite chewy,” Aiksuuri said, smacking his lips. ”An old Green Dragon might turn his nose up at this cut, but for me, it’s just right.”

”Eeeek—” The Personification Monster immediately began to shudder violently.

”A Personification Monster that can speak the Common Language is pretty rare, and one that speaks it this fluently is even rarer,” Ron said, cupping his chin. ”I think its rarity alone is reason enough to let it off the hook.”

”But it’d be a waste to just leave it here.”

”Are you saying I should put this thing in my treasure hoard?” Aiksuuri shot back, his voice dripping with disgust. ”If you like it so much, why don’t you take it to the trading post?”

”The trading post doesn’t have any treasure to guard, unless—”

The Young Black Dragon immediately clutched his treasure. ”Fine, fine! I’ll take it back with me, okay?!”

Extremely displeased at being coerced, the Black Dragon staggered to his feet. He kicked the wooden chest in the corner with a powerful hind leg. ”I’d rather haul this piece of junk home than—”

As the kick landed, the ”wooden chest” sprang open, revealing a gaping maw. The Young Dragon’s terrified shriek echoed through the cave. ”Ron, help me! There’s another Personification Monster here!”

”Let him go, you idiot!” The Personification Monster that had already surrendered immediately snapped at the classic Treasure Chest Monster in the corner, its Common Language interspersed with muffled, gurgling sounds. ”You should open your twelve nearsighted eyes and take a look around! That’s how you survive!”

With a series of CREAKS, several wooden planks on its surface pushed open. It spat out Aiksuuri’s hind leg, revealing a double-digit number of small, purple eyes. ”I’d be more than happy to, if you weren’t trying to steal my food!”

”Why don’t you try being a proper treasure chest and test your luck against mine?”

”Why don’t you try breaking those stale old rules and test your strength against mine?” Ron’s Personification Monster shot back—if it had lips. ”You deserve to starve because I’m way smarter than you!”

’To think I’d live to see two Personification Monsters arguing. I must be sleep-deprived.’ Silvia stared blankly at the two creatures trading insults, forgetting for a moment that she hardly needed any sleep at all.

Naturally, their argument was pointless. The two of them seemed to have difficulty moving on their own. No matter how fierce the argument became, they could only exhaust their already limited Common Language vocabulary before devolving into beast-like roars.

Fighting was out of the question. Even if they stretched their pseudopods to the limit, they couldn’t reach each other—likely a result of their past arguments.

”I never thought a dragon’s hoard could be this noisy,” Aiksuuri muttered. ”Ron, you have to take one! There’s no way I’m bringing both of these guys back to my lair! It’s way too noisy!”

”Take us back?” The Personification Monster disguised as a treasure chest was slow on the uptake. ”Are you saying we can move to a new hunting ground?”

”That Green Dragon hasn’t been here in a long time. It seems he’s stopped managing his territory, so our food source has dwindled.”

”He’s not coming back,” Ron said, reaching out to pinch the first one’s skin, then knocking on the other’s hard shell. ’Transformed Creatures are really something else, to be able to take on forms with completely different textures.’ ”He was killed. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to get in.”

”Oh, so he’s dead,” the Personification Monsters sighed in unison. ”Guess we won’t be getting the food he couldn’t finish anymore.”

”And we won’t be able to clean the scraps off his body anymore.”

”Well, you never know. Maybe you can find that feeling again in a new place?” Ron shrugged. ”But I need to confirm something first: you two don’t eat much, do you?”

”From the last time the Green Dragon was here until now, I’ve eaten a total of six and a half field mice, plus fifty-three earthworms and other bugs,” the Treasure Chest Monster said. ”My compatriot is always stealing my food!”

”Then get good! You can transform, but you insist on staying a wooden chest. What a disgrace to our race!” the other Personification Monster said disdainfully. ”I’ve caught at least twice as much food as you!”

Thirteen field mice and one hundred and six bugs. Considering a span of at least a hundred years, it wasn’t exactly a praiseworthy haul. Even for ambush predators, these two had taken ”lying in wait” to an extreme.

”That sounds... acceptable. They don’t move much, and they won’t eat too much of my food.” Aiksuuri’s slitted pupils stared at the two Personification Monsters, and for a moment, they felt as if they were back in the days living under the Green Dragon’s shadow.

”I’ll take one of them, but what to do with the other one is up to you, Ron.”

”At least we can use one as a hunting trap,” Sera said. At some point, she had draped three thick, heavy necklaces of gold and Gemstones around her neck. ”Even a veteran Hunter like Delaford couldn’t avoid the trick, to say nothing of other prey.”

”If you can stand its filthy, highly corrosive slime... Oh, gods. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fall for a bear goblin lass again.”

Delaford was awake now. He sat up, staring blankly ahead with hollow, lifeless eyes. It was clear the encounter had left the Goblin Hunter with deep psychological scars.

”Speaking of which, are you two familiar with the area?” Aive moved closer to the two Personification Monsters. ”Are there any other places like this in the Green Dragon’s lair?”

”We don’t know,” a Personification Monster answered. ”You must have seen the Vine Monster at the entrance, right? We don’t dare go out.”

”That kind of creature doesn’t judge whether something is edible by its appearance. At our size, it would definitely devour us first,” the Treasure Chest Monster chimed in. ”But there is a rather special place here. Maybe you’d be interested?”

”Over in that corner of the wall, there’s a hole that was dug out.”

Leaving the two Personification Monsters—trapped in the treasury for a century—for the moment, Ron’s group followed the direction the pseudopod pointed. Sure enough, they found a collapsed hole that looked to have been dug by hand. After they cleared it out, the partially decomposed body of an Elf lay before them.