She hands me a bottle full of green liquid. I drink down the vial of vile potion, barely managing to get it down without gagging. The transformation is immediate, my ears broadening and lengthening to the point where they’re half the size of my head. The body paint doesn’t spread to fully cover my new ears, and Meadow hurriedly tabs a bit more color on them before I head down into the cavern.
Heart pounding, I approach the ritual site. My instincts tell me to try to be as quiet as possible, but I’m in a bit of a hurry and I don’t know how long I might have before my uncle gets sacrificed or whatever.
I finally spot Uncle Hawk tied up on a stone table. A goblin smaller than any of the others is repeatedly poking him with a stone knife and failing to break the skin. Entirely puzzled about what’s going on here, I approach, and overhear the little goblin muttering to himself.
In English.
I guess that’s just acknowledging that I already speak English and can understand him perfectly fine, but I still find it funny. This odd little goblin, however, is much more interesting. Like mine, his aura is black rather than violet like the other goblins.
“Why isn’t this working?” the young goblin says. “Ugh, I know stone knives are subpar and you’re two ranks above me, but I was expecting to at least do some damage! Blasted child penalties.”
Uncle Hawk’s only response is a glassy-eyed groan. I hate seeing the Heroic Ranger so helpless like this, and thinking about having to kill this weird reincarnated baby goblin, I wonder if an alternative might not be possible. I hate railroad plots.
I decide to take the biggest risk of my short life. I drop my spear and approach the goblin child with my hands held out to show I’m unarmed. If he speaks English, maybe he will be more amenable to talking than I might expect of a normal goblin. If communication is possible, negotiation is possible.
“It doesn’t look like you’re making much progress there,” I say in English.
He spins around, pointing his stone knife at me, and he relaxes just a little upon seeing my posture. “Who are you?” he asks. “There aren’t any other reincarnators in this Hearth. What village are you from?”
“My name is Drake, from the village of Corwen,” I reply. “And I’m just here to talk.”
“You know, I could have you killed in an instant.”
“Sure,” I say, not voicing my doubts about that. “And then you can miss out on the opportunity to talk to someone who has read Tolkien.”
He works up his face into several interesting expressions before finally putting the knife away. “You could have killed me before I even realized you were here if you were actually after me, I suppose. What do you want?”
“Right now? I just want to talk. What’s your name?”
He grunts. “I was given the name ‘Grabrat Grubwick’ in this life but I hate it. I would prefer to be called Milo, my name from Earth.”
“Milo,” I say with a smile. “Nice to meet you. So what exactly are you trying to do here with this human?”
Milo sighs. “I had hoped that killing a Heroic-rank adventurer by myself would help progress me to Elite rank. Additionally, I sought to learn Necromancy, and I was told that requires a sacrifice.”
“You don’t have to sacrifice someone to learn Necromancy,” I say.
“That’s what my grandmother told me. Have you heard differently?”
“You just need to have your Soul stat unlocked and reach Elite rank. As a reincarnator, you should have it already. We can use Necromancy naturally since we’ve already been dead.”
“Huh…” Milo says. “That makes sense, actually. Good to know. Goblins rarely live past thirty and I was also hoping increasing my rank enough would increase my lifespan. The higher rank you get, the more your aging slows.”
“True,” I say. “My great-grandmother is Legendary and she’s over eighty but still looks like she’s in her twenties. That’s quite a tight timetable for goblins. How old are you?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Two years and five months,” Milo says.
“That’s… exactly my age,” I say. “My naming day is November 30th.”
“Same as mine…” Milo says. “Both of our Hearths decided to incarnate a hapless Earthling at the same time?”
“In accordance with ancient scheduling, it seems so. What’s wrong with him, anyway?”
“The Hearth’s [Elder Witch] cursed him,” Milo says. “She’s Epic rank, and forty years old. Grandma Griza is terrifying when she wants to be, but she made sure I had all the resources available as we had. Which… is not terribly much. Stone knives and pointy sticks! This place sucks.”
“I believe I can help with that,” I say.
“You have a weapon that might be able to hurt a Heroic?”
I shake my head. “I can help you level up. My Hearth has resources and expertise. You can join my party and we can get lots of Deeds.”
Milo mulls that over thoughtfully, looks at Uncle Hawk with a frown, and turns back to me. “You would do that for me?”
“Sure,” I say. “I would, of course, want the human released. Preferably de-cursed, too.”
“Ugh, I don’t know how I’d explain that to Grandma Griza,” Milo says.
“You said she wanted to provide you with the best opportunities,” I say. “She should recognize this as a priceless opportunity.”
“Yeah, you’re right… when you put it that way…” Milo says. “Alright. You’ve convinced me. I’m in.”
Milo starts untying Uncle Hawk, and I wave over Anise.
“Milo, this is Anise,” I say in English, then switch to Common, “Anise, I made a new friend. This is Milo.”
“Huh,” Anise says. “That’s great! Can we trust him? You speak his language after all?”
“I don’t speak whatever language the humans are speaking,” Milo says in English. “I’ll have to learn it.”
“Ah, yeah, he doesn’t speak Common yet,” I say in Common. “He’s a reincarnator too, though, and we both still speak the language from our previous lives.”
“That’s cool,” Anise says, waving a hand in front of the unresponsive Ranger’s face. “He still looks pretty cursed.” She slings him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “But I’ll get him back to the surface.”
“Is your grandma in the Hearth right now?” I ask Milo.
Milo nods. “I’ll go talk to her. She’s given me everything I asked for so far so I’m sure I can convince her. Wait for me at the cave entrance.”
Milo heads toward the village. As he leaves, my ears choose that moment to revert to normal. They shrink back toward my head and expel green paint as they do. I rub my ears and blink in vertigo for a moment before recovering.
“His grandma, possibly with a ‘great’ or two, is an Epic rank Elder Witch,” I explain as we regroup with the party. “It sounds like she dotes on him, though.”
Anise sighs. “And if she decides to wipe us out, we wouldn’t be able to stop her. Staying could be a risk.”
After a few minutes, a message pops up in my third eye.
Daisy’s eyes widen, and I assume everyone else got that message too. “Good Heavens, that did it!” Daisy exclaims, in her excitement completely forgetting stealth. “I’m an Elite! I’m going to be a Wizard!”
“I got it too!” Meadow says, only slightly more sedately. The two of them hug one another, on the verge of tears of joy.
Uncle Hawk stirs on the ground, blinking and slowly sitting up. “Ugh, what happened? Where am I?”
Meadow breaks off from hugging Daisy to hug Uncle Hawk instead. “You’re alright! It worked! I can’t believe it worked!”
“What worked?” Uncle Hawk wonders, looking around. “We’re underground somewhere? Where are we?”
“You got cursed and captured by goblins,” Anise summarizes. “Drake disguised himself as a goblin and snuck in and negotiated your release. He’s a reincarnator and one of the goblins is too so they could understand one another.”
“I’m not sure if I’m still dreaming or not,” Uncle Hawk says.
“Did you rank up too, Anise?” Daisy asks.
Anise shakes her head. “You two were close enough to rank up that even a minor part in something major pushed you over. But me, Drake, and Burdock still have a long way to go. Still, that was a fantastic Deed.”
“I didn’t really do much,” Burdock says.
Milo remerges from the village and approaches us. Uncle Hawk starts to ready himself for a fight, but Milo holds out his empty hands.
“It’s alright, Uncle,” I say. “This is the goblin I mentioned. Meet Milo.”
“Odd name for a goblin,” Uncle Hawk says. “But what do I know about goblin names, anyway?”
“It’s his name from another life,” I explain, then turn to Milo and say in English, “Uncle Hawk is better and we got a Deed, so I assume you were successful in convincing your grandma.”
Milo nods. “She’s been very supportive. She was surprised but not opposed to the idea. I was hoping she’d give me some fancy heirloom but apparently we’re really, really poor. I hope we can change that.”
Milo unties the captive goblin, and speaks with him in Goblin for a minute before sending him off back to Grubwick.
“I hope the lives of whichever of my clan mates you had to kill are sufficient compensation for our actions,” Milo says, and I translate for the others. “Don’t worry about them. I’ll resurrect them once I learn Necromancy.”
“Trust has to start somewhere,” I say. “Maybe next time we visit Grubwick, we’ll be able to sleep in the inn.”
“That’ll require building an inn first,” Milo says with a chuckle. “I have a number of ideas both on how to level up myself as well as improve Grubwick, but most of them revolved around my prior assumption that killing was the only way to earn Deeds. I was a businessman back on Earth. I don’t want to kill people. I want their money. Dead people can’t generate capital unless you’re a necromancer, so I was planning on using undead as a cheap labor force, but that still requires having consumers. And goblins are idiots.”
Daisy frowns thoughtfully as she listens to my translation. “You were probably incarnated to become an evil overlord. But perhaps even villains can choose another path.”
“You know, I’ve apparently lived five million lives, but for some reason I’m 100% certain that I’ve never been a merchant before. And a goblin cultural and industrial revolution sounds like it would make for an excellent Deed.”
“Have you gotten any quests?” Milo asks. “Grandma Griza said I should expect quests to show up to give me direction but I haven’t gotten any.”
“Neither have I,” I say. “I suppose our Hearths are content to take a hands off approach, sit back and see what we do. And… they incarnated an engineer and a businessman. If they wanted warriors, we were poor choices.”
I definitely have been a warrior in many of my past lives, but I don’t actually remember them and don’t want to. I killed those goblins without a second thought or twinge of guilt. Still don’t feel any, even after seeing them being people. I must have been a freaking murder hobo once, and I don’t want to be. I like my family and my new friend.