The goblin was yelling something at me in its guttural language.
“You’re in my world now!” I yelled back at him. “You need to speak my language you weird, green piece of shit.”
To my surprise, the goblin grinned. I could tell he understood me. The little monster switched the knife back and forth between hands. “You’re not speaking your language,” he said. “You’re speaking Syndicate Standard, you idiot slave. They programmed it into your brain. Do you really think you’ll survive past…”
The goblin never finished the sentence. As he was distracted with his own soliloquy, I leaped forward, snatched the pot off his head, and clobbered him with it. Sharp little teeth went flying. The goblin stumbled. I smacked him again. He careened off the side of the tractor. His health bar appeared after I’d smacked him the first time, but it was still well in the green. He splatted to the ground, groaning. His knife went flying.
I peered over the edge. The goblin lay on his back. The tractor continued to spin and buck, but it was edging in the opposite direction. The goblin’s health was still 3/4's full, but he’d had the wind knocked out of him.
The goblin started to sit up and I threw the pot at him. To my utter astonishment, I clobbered him right in the forehead. He cried out, his hands reaching to grasp the new wound.
I gauged the distance. It wasn’t very far. Like maybe seven, eight feet. I’d done that plenty of times as a kid.
What the hell. I jumped off the murder dozer, aiming both feet toward the chest and stomach of the still-recovering goblin.
I’m not sure if I mentioned this earlier, but this is important information right here. I stand six-foot, three inches tall. I weigh about 230 pounds, and while I wasn’t in nearly as good shape as I was while I was on active duty, I’d been hitting the gym three times a week for years, building my muscle mass. I’d always been blessed with one of those bodies that naturally held muscle well. My dad was a linebacker. Hell, even my mom was five foot ten. And her dad had played center for Oregon State before becoming a prison guard.
So, what I’m getting at is that I’m a large dude. I have a lot of bulk. The goblin was small, and he did not have hardly any mass at all. The effect of me jumping onto him from high above was like someone smashing a fat jelly donut with a sledgehammer. The little dude didn’t have a chance. Goo spurted out of the goblin from every orifice.
The murder dozer started to whine even louder. I looked down at what I’d done, and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. More notifications appeared on my screen. A tooltip popped up, appearing in my peripheral vision. I turned to look.
Goblin Murder Dozer – Boiler Breach Imminent.
A countdown timer appeared below the text. It was at 12 seconds and counting down.
Son of a bitch. It’s gonna blow.
I turned back toward the room, a mere thirty meters down the hall. Was that too close? I didn’t have time to think about it. I ran, slipping and sliding on the tiles as I booked it back to the room. I ripped open the door and jumped inside. I slammed the door and braced for impact.
Bam! The world shook. The door bucked, throwing me forward onto the floor of the guildhall. My ears rang. But the door held, and I didn’t seem to be otherwise injured. Donut was in the corner of the room, poofed out and hissing.
“What the bloody hell did you do, kid?” Mordecai asked, looking over me at the door. “That gate is capable of holding back a kinetic strike from a star destroyer. I’d never seen anything shake it that much.”
“Huh,” I said, sitting up. My ears continued to ring. “That goblin bulldozer thing got stuck against the wall, and then it blew up.”
Mordecai nodded slowly. “A boiler breach then. The local shaman probably enchanted it in case it ever exploded. It would have focused the energy from the blast at the closest non-goblin. You’re lucky you were behind that door. A focused explosion, even a small one, has a lot more energy than you might think.”
Having decided the commotion was over, Donut left the corner and returned to her spot in front of the fire. Her normally-poofy exterior remained extra puffed out, and her tail swished up and down. I could tell the cat was pissed off.
“Your creature crapped in my mother’s ashes,” Mordecai said, shaking his head. “This is so not worth it. Not worth it at all.”
“So, Mr. Training Guild,” I said, leaning against the wall. My feet ached. My heart continued to thrash in my chest. I was covered in goblin blood. It felt as if I had raw hamburger meat stuck between my toes. I shuddered. I need to get shoes. Shoes and pants. “What the hell is going on? What’s with the dungeon? Is everyone really dead? How do I work this shit?”
A million other questions popped into my head. I knew he could probably snap and break me in half, but I had an overwhelming urge to grab the rat man by his stupid vest and shake him until all the answers tumbled out of him. “Also, who the hell are you? Why are you here? What’s really…”
Mordecai held up his hands. “Okay, okay, slow down, kid. I know you’re confused. I’ve been in your position. All will be explained. That’s why I’m here. But before I start, I need to explain something to you two.” The rat looked over at the cat, who glared back at him. “My name is Mordecai, and I am what’s called a Non-combatant NPC. I am like you. I’m a person whose world was displaced. This was many, many solars ago. I was a dungeon crawler just like you. I made it all the way down to floor 11, and I knew I would never make it any further than that. Once you descend to floor 10, you’re given several options to exit the dungeon. The deeper you go, the better those options are.” He walked over to the shelf with the upset vase, and he picked up a framed photo of one of the bird creatures. He handed it to me. It looked remarkably like a normal, framed photo. But the material was peculiar, and the photo was cut oddly, oval-shaped with the corners lopped off.
“That’s what I really look like. This is a photo of my brother. I was born a skyfowl, but I became a Changeling when I reached floor three of the dungeon. I switch form every time my guildhall is moved.”
Mordecai continued. “When a dungeon first opens, I work in a guild such as this. Later on, after the third floor collapses, my room here is transported to a much-deeper level, and my form is changed again. I spend most of my time working a magic guild, which is a place one can go to pick spells and train if they’ve chosen a magic-based path. Though over the years I’ve only had a handful of people actually make it that far. Most crawlers don’t make it past the tenth floor.”
“So, a Changeling is a shapeshifter?” I examined the picture. I couldn’t tell if it was a photograph or a painting or something else. The eyes of the image seemed to bore into me. It was a golden eagle-like creature. Wings, angel-like, were folded on its back.
“Yes,” Mordecai said. He sighed. “They recreated my home for me, including all my possessions when I decided to become a guildmaster. I had but a few moments to grab anything I wanted before they evaporated it all. Now, every time I move to a new world, they change my shape. It’s something different every time, but it’s always a type of mob from the current floor of the dungeon. I don’t know why.”
“I don’t believe any of this,” I said. “So you’re aliens? You’re all from a different world? Then how does the game or whatever know how we talk? Some of those last notifications mentioned Jean Claude Van Damme and incels and steroids!”
Mordecai nodded. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. Each dungeon is specially built for the world it inhabits. And they spend a lot of time... a lot… of time making sure the locals understand the game and the notifications. They go for authenticity. I’m not really supposed to tell you any of this stuff, but I figure if you’re going to be stumbling around out there, you need to know what’s happening.”