Village Jille (3)

And everything gets complicated once again...

I sighed as my thoughts raced.

Why would goblins pretend to be a foolish race in the eyes of everyone? What would they gain from it? To be underestimated and hunted as monsters?

Unless...

A thought crossed my mind. I quickly pulled up the stream messages, a specific part, actually.

[Description: A matrix of Mystical Symbols created by a genius of the goblin race on orders from their king, seeking revenge against Terrarians, blaming them for the ancient curse that befell their race.]

A king seeking revenge against Terrarians, blaming them for the ancient curse that befell his race. Those were the exact words the stream had given me.

What if they weren't pretending to be fools, but were actually like that, or rather, had become like that?

A curse strong enough to affect an entire race. A curse strong enough to reduce a species once known as "A great race of mages and enchanters" to mere monsters, beasts driven by basic instinct...

My eyes widened slightly in astonishment at this thought.

That is, until something changed, and they regained their intelligence.

Something happened with the curse, or it weakened over time, or someone managed to remove it somehow, causing the goblins to regain their intelligence...

My brainstorm was interrupted by the shouts of the villager in front of me, or rather, the goblin possessing him.

"TELL ME, DAMN IT! YOU TERRARIAN BASTARD! HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS? TELL ME!"

I blinked confused for a moment and turned my attention back to the yellow-eyed gaze.

I had forgotten about this guy for a moment...

"You don't really think I'm going to tell you, do you?" I raised my right eyebrow, unable to hide the sarcasm in my voice.

What does he think I am? A stereotypical villain, by any chance? Am I going to go around bragging about my "achievements"?

This seemed to only make the goblin angrier; I could see his eyes widening and his pupils narrowing even more as he opened his mouth and probably was about to scream again with his shrill voice.

That is, if the moment he opened his mouth, I hadn't made a rolled-up cloth appear in his mouth, preventing him from screaming.

Clearly, I did this to prevent him from hurting the throat of the body he was possessing even more; it has nothing to do with him having an annoyingly high-pitched and loud voice.

Of course, I could have let him speak to try to talk to him, but from the way he referred to me, throwing some curse and inserting the word "Terrarian" at the end, I felt he wouldn't be a very pleasant conversation partner.

Before I could turn to call Dylan, the door of the Humvee opened, and the guide hurriedly emerged from it, pointing a bow around looking for enemies.

When he saw me standing calmly, he seemed to relax, lowering the bow before noticing the bodies in front of me, or more specifically, the body writhing like an angry worm.

He blinked a bit confused and slowly pointed his finger at the "worm" before asking.

"I suppose the screams I heard before came from him?"

I didn't have time to answer before something curious happened.

The body with the yellow eyes, the one the goblin possessed, fell silent and closed its eyes; shortly after, the body next to it trembled slightly before opening its eyes, now yellow, the same as the goblin's, then opened its mouth and began to scream.

"YOU BASTARD! HOW DARE YOU INTERRUPT ME?! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?! YOU DAMN TERRARIAN! I AM GRONGIR! THE GREAT APPRENTICE OF XANOK!"

I seriously considered just covering his mouth again, but when he started mentioning random names from the stream, or rather, the mission I had received from the stream began to have multiple "PINGs" with the mission updating with each of his words, so I let him speak.

While the goblin shouted the names of all the important people he knew and how he would tear me apart in the slowest way possible for my audacity to have interrupted him, I turned to Dylan, who was gaping at everything happening in front of him.

"As you saw, our friend here is quite 'calm' and speaks quite 'low,' so to speak." I made air quotes with my fingers. "So, did you just prepare that?" I asked without directly mentioning the powder, as the goblin was listening to us.

Dylan mechanically nodded in agreement, as if his body were on autopilot, not taking his eyes off the body that continued to scream insults.

"Great!" I said cheerfully, pointing to our goblin friend. "Do the honors; let's see if this really works."

It didn't matter if Dylan was already sure that this powder would work or something; after the Crimson name was mentioned, caution was essential.

I'm not crazy enough to enter that village without being sure this powder will work.

I waited for the body the goblin possessed to open its mouth again to speak and stuffed another cloth inside, finally stopping its screams. This seemed to be enough for Dylan to "wake up" and start firing questions frantically.

"What is this?" He pointed to the goblin. "Why are his eyes like that?" He pointed to the eyes. "Are those people from the village?" He pointed to the village. "Why do they look sick?" He pointed back to the goblin.

And a few more questions that got lost in his rapid speech.

"Dylan!" I said in a louder tone, trying to get his attention on me. When I saw that he had calmed down and stopped his questions, I continued.

"I'm as confused as you are." That was a lie, but I didn't want to waste time explaining.

"The only things I can deduce are. First. The one responsible for controlling the villagers is this tattoo on their skin." I pointed to the villagers' wrists, where the Mystical Symbols were visible, before continuing.

"Second. Those yellow eyes there." I pointed to the goblin's angry gaze.

"He spouted some nonsense, something about being a goblin and that he would throw us into the village to wither like the villagers, something about a matrix on the walls or something." Let's just blame the goblin for me knowing this information.

The goblin looked at me with wide-eyed surprise before returning to screaming, or trying to scream in this case, probably asking me how I knew this information or something.

He could just be cursing my entire family again too, you never know.

I just didn't understand why he didn't switch bodies as he did before; maybe some kind of cost? Is he a bit dumb and forgot?

"Speaking of which," I commented, "Don't touch them; that disgusting tattoo on their skin gives me chills. I wouldn't risk touching it if I were you."

Dylan looked at me as if I were crazy for some reason.

"A matrix that spreads on touch? That's impossible," he said, his surprise giving way to disbelief. "There's no such thing; the amount of mana required would be absurd, not to mention that the matrix would need to be almost alive for that!"

Huh? Strange. What makes him so sure about this?

"I think it's better not to touch them anyway." I commented lightly before turning my gaze to the side and seeing one of the descriptions that the stream had given me about the matrix.

[WARNING! DUE TO EXOTIC MATERIALS FROM THE "Crimson" BIOME, THE MATRIX KNOWN AS "CrimsonBind (Prototype)" IS TRANSMISSIBLE BY TOUCH!]

Yes, I wasn't going to touch that thing. I'm sure some kind of glove or special material was needed to deal with this matrix; otherwise, I doubt even the creator could do anything with it.

"In fact, I'm sure it's not meant to be touched, but if you're confident, you can touch it." I shrugged. "Just give me the powder before in case I need to throw it in your face to wake you up." I took a few steps back, waiting for Dylan to test the powder.

He looked at me briefly with a skeptical look before turning around, and his eyes glowed slightly in blue as he looked at the tattoos.

It didn't take even five seconds for his skeptical look to turn into a look of surprise, then disgust, and finally, complete aversion.

"What the hell is this?" He exclaimed as he took a few steps back.

"Is this thing almost alive?! What is this?! What materials are these?!" His face seemed to get greener with each word, as if he were reading about what the matrix was.

"Terrarian blood!? Slime!?" He seemed incredulous before his face turned horrified, and he whispered so low that I could barely hear.

"Crimson?!"

His face had changed from green to white. He seemed close to fainting, just the name of the biome having made him react like this.

So, did he know the biome? Or at least had heard of them... Curious, I had searched the entire library for both the red and purple biomes, and there seemed to be no sign of either of them, which was expected, since I only had access to the lower floors of the library.

So, Dylan knowing them, or at least the Crimson, was at the very least intriguing, something related to the Guide Order perhaps? But he had mentioned being a novice in it, something common knowledge?

I didn't think that was it, but anyway, before I could continue my train of thought, Dylan didn't hesitate before tapping the ring on his hand twice with his finger, making a light blue bag of considerable size appear in his hands.

He wasted no time before putting his hand into the bag and pulling out a handful of what looked like a bright light blue powder, more or less the same color as the bag but glowing.

He opened his hand, palm up with the powder, and blew.

The powder seemed to have a life of its own because when Dylan blew it, it went to the bodies on its own, or rather, to the tattoos, sticking to them like glue.

It didn't take long for me to see the effects; the tattoos began to "burn" off the villagers' skins, the ink turning into black smoke with a foul smell before disappearing, leaving only scar marks where the tattoos used to be.

I whistled, impressed. I didn't think it would be so effective, especially with the Crimson involved.

As I watched the tattoos slowly disappear, and the villagers of Jille regained some color in their skin, Dylan took the opportunity to grab two small glass bottles with water inside and mixed the powder.

"Here, take this." He tossed me the bottle and didn't hesitate to drink the other. "I roughly know what these things are made of." He pointed to the smoke from the tattoos.

"If it were the place where they got the ingredients to make this abomination, it wouldn't help, but since it's just some diluted materials, drinking the powder should help prevent infection."

"Infection?" A very inviting word from Dylan.

Without hesitation, I drank the water with the powder; it had no taste, just water. After I drank, the stream opened my status on its own.

-//-

[Purification Powder ingested! "Purified Mana (Temporary)" Status Received! - Time: 1 hour 2 minutes]

[Purified Mana: Due to Purification Powder in your system, your mana is in a more "pure" state.

Resistance to negative effects increased by 50%!

Resistance to mental corruption increased by 50%! (Immunity due to the title "The Streamer")]

-//-

Excellent effects, even though I could only enjoy one of them, as my title made me immune to mental corruption, but it seemed that this didn't apply to my body, so this was a welcome effect.

Dylan, seeing that I had drunk the entire bottle of water, spoke again.

"This is just a last resort, a precaution, so to speak." He said, and I could see that he was still affected by everything that was happening.

"Don't let them touch you if you can avoid it; each touch should spend part of the effect, too many, and it will disappear completely."

I didn't intend to anyway, but it was good to know that it wasn't an exact hour; this could be "spent," so to speak, when purifying something in my body.

Seeing that the villagers were still breathing, I loaded their bodies and placed them in the car's trunk. Not without checking their status first, of course.

Seeing that they were "clean," so to speak, I didn't hesitate and put them in the trunk since leaving them here was practically signing their death sentences.

"So, Dylan."

I asked while looking at the Minimap, the red dots behind us walking back and forth, not advancing. I didn't know if this was good, but it was better than them running towards us.

"What's the plan?" I pointed to the village. "You said you had a way to spread the powder throughout the village. How?"

I asked the guide who was looking at the village walls with a disturbed look.

He hesitated for a moment before responding.

"The Jille village, like most villages around the kingdom, has a well in the middle of it. We need to get there. But it's going to be tough with that thing painted on the walls." He pointed to the red Mystical Symbols on the village walls.

I also didn't think it was a good idea to enter the village with that matrix active.

"If I destroy a part of the wall..." I asked slowly. "Damaging the matrix, will that make everything explode, or will it deactivate?" I didn't have a good experience with runes; if the Mystical Symbols were something similar to that, the chance of an explosion was quite high.

Dylan looked at me confused before asking.

"Deactivate it, of course. Why would it explode?" He seemed genuinely puzzled, as if this were common knowledge.

"You know, when you do something wrong with Mystical Symbols, they don't explode or something? Like melting the metal they were engraved on?" I asked, fearing the answer a bit.

His look became even more confused. "No...?" He answered hesitantly.

"That doesn't happen; they just don't work and need to be re-engraved. If a Mystical Symbol explodes, it's because it was designed to do so." He pointed to the walls.

"From what I can see of the size of this matrix, how it was made, its materials, size, and engraving method. It was entirely focused on stealing vitality and mana..." He made a disgusted face before continuing.

"As much as I hate to admit it, whoever made this matrix is a genius. Just having it work is something I can't quite understand; having explosive Mystical Symbols?" He shook his head, his eyes stopping glowing.

"It's not impossible, but it's very unlikely. So, damaging a large part of the matrix should deactivate it. Do you have something that can do that?" He asked, turning to me and finally noticing my face.

"Are you okay?" He asked hesitantly, vaguely pointing to my face. "Because you look like you have a stomachache."

I should look like that to him. Because, after all, I was almost in physical pain at this moment.

What do you mean Mystical Symbols don't explode or mess everything up when you make a mistake with them? I felt very deceived at this moment.

If I made even a tiny centimeter mistake with a rune, it would do something wrong, and fifty percent of the time, that thing would explode in my face.

Now, this guy is telling me that Mystical Symbols don't do that? Damn! Of course, I looked like I had a stomachache, as I felt I could shit bricks at this moment with the anger I was feeling.

"Nothing... I'm fine." I shook my head, dismissing Dylan's concerns. "Get in; let's get this over with. I have something to destroy part of the wall." I pointed to the Humvee as I stood up and headed for the driver's seat.

After Dylan got into the car and fastened his seatbelt, I said.

"From now on, things are going to get serious." More serious than they already were, in this case. "We haven't known each other for a long time, but I'll trust you to do your part, Dylan." I said seriously.

This made the guide look at me surprised before nodding with a serious look, but I could see he had a small smile on his face for some reason.

With that said, I accelerated the Humvee, driving the car straight towards the village gate.

Before the Humvee could collide with the gates, I turned the steering wheel, making the car drift and perform a drift, becoming parallel to the walls.

Now close to these Mystical Symbols, I could clearly feel how disgusting they were. Just being near them, my nostrils were attacked by the smell of blood and decay.

I could feel the malice emanating from the symbols, as if they wanted to devour me and couldn't.

While the Humvee accelerated again, I didn't hesitate to use one of my trump cards, so to speak: dynamite.

I didn't have many of them, ten to be exact, as the few Souichiro had, he spent on clearing zombies while escorting survivors from the property to the port... That didn't stop me from stealing some while no one was looking.

Of course, I had helped kill even more zombies after that, so I think it was a fair compensation.

Briefly looking at the Minimap, I could see that no one was behind these parts of the walls, the dots representing the residents scattered throughout the village.

Seeing that no one was behind the walls, without hesitation, I lit the fuses of the dynamites and started throwing them at the wall with a few seconds' interval, giving time for the Humvee to distance itself.

After a few seconds, I began to hear the explosions.

I turned the Humvee again, turning the car to see the damage the dynamites had done, and it was not a small amount of damage.

The village walls were made of wood, nothing like the stone and steel walls of Terraria; just the ten dynamites I had caused a huge hole in the wall, knocking down about thirty meters.

I could smell the decay and blood slowly diminish, even the malice I felt coming from the symbols decrease, until, finally, they disappeared completely.

Only a faint smell of blood and decay remained in the air.

Seeing that the plan had worked, I didn't hesitate to accelerate the Humvee again, this time towards the debris of what had been the village wall seconds ago.

The woods already destroyed by the explosions were no hindrance at all, with little effort and minimal impact on hitting the debris, we were inside the village.

I accelerated the Humvee for a few more meters before stopping, why? The villagers in front of me.

Jille village was a farming village, so it was expected that some of the roads within the village were large, for carriages and carts carrying goods to pass.

But not large enough for me to ignore the village residents and pass by them without running them over.

If they were like the HOTD zombies, I wouldn't hesitate to run them over; maybe even if they were enemies, humans, or Terrarians, I could harden my determination and run them over with minimal hesitation.

But they weren't.

They were just civilians, villagers from a random village who had been caught in an evil plan and used as batteries. They were not to blame for being controlled to stand in my way...

I squeezed the steering wheel until my fingers turned white.

"Me and my damn empathy..." I muttered to myself.

Without hesitation, with a mental command, I threw the Humvee back into the inventory, causing me, Dylan, and the four unconscious men in the trunk to fall to the ground.

"Devas?!" Dylan asked as he quickly got up. "Why did you store the mechanical carriage?"

Already on my feet, I didn't hesitate to respond as I prepared for combat.

"Dylan, I'm not going to make a massacre." I pointed to the people in front of me with my hand. "They're not to blame for being controlled. I'm not going to paint the village red as I run my way to the center."

I could see that Dylan hadn't thought of that, as when I finished my words, he turned with a green face, as if he were imagining the carnage it would be if I just ran over everything and everyone in the way.

As a sign, when I stopped talking, the villager in front of me, a man, trembled slightly before his eyes changed, going from a common brown to the goblin's yellowish eyes.

"YOU BASTARD! HOW DO YOU KNOW ALL OF THIS?! HOW DARE YOU DESTR--" Without hesitation, with a fluid motion and a thought, two black boxing gloves appeared in my hands.

I took quick steps forward the moment the goblin had started talking, not letting him finish, I delivered a quick punch, a jab with my right fist to his stomach, making the body he possessed bend forward.

Before he fell completely, I spun my other arm and delivered a blow to his chin, making the goblin's yellow eyes roll back. The body unconscious.

It seems I restrained myself enough, as the villager's body still breathed, which was good. A stomach and chin ache from the punches were a better option than death.

"Quick, Dylan!" I shouted to the guide when I realized the rest of the villagers were running towards us. I lifted the guide quickly by the arm, and we started running.

I could easily defeat these people, but that wasn't the goal, so I focused on running, briefly hitting the villagers who got too close with one or two punches before we continued running.

It wasn't very difficult to dodge the villagers; they were frankly slow and predictable since their movements were mechanical, I suppose due to the mental control the matrix had over them.

The only annoying part was this guy.

"YOU WILL DIE, TERRARIAN! I WILL PERSONALLY TEAR YOUR LIMBS SLOWLY, ONE BY ONE, AFTER I EXTRACT THE INFORMATION ON HOW YOU KNOW ABOUT OUR GREAT MATRIX AND OUR SECRETS!"

This goblin was annoying as hell, seriously.

He had learned that if he possessed a body near me, I wouldn't give him a chance to speak, punching his face as quickly as possible, so he now only possessed the villagers who were far from me, forcing me to choose whether I would go to him or continue my way to the center of the village with Dylan.

Of course, I could use my inventory to make our way to the center of the village easier, even shut up this annoying goblin who couldn't speak without shouting.

But I had been avoiding doing that since I entered the village for a simple reason.

The goblin. He had been watching us all the time since we entered the village.

I didn't want to show too much of what I was capable of to him. Sure, he already knew about my inventory since I had used it to tie the first bodies with the chains, but that was it.

He didn't know the maximum range or what else I could do, so if I could avoid showing him what I was capable of, I would. After all, as much as the villagers were a problem, they were a lesser problem.

At all times, I kept part of my attention on the minimap, or more specifically, on the red dots in the forest.

Since Dylan and I entered the village, they had only increased; at this point, I would guess there were about five hundred of them in the forest, and they didn't seem to want to stop increasing.

The real problem was this damn army that was forming little by little, so I was conserving my strength in case something happened, not showing my trump cards.

But look on the bright side, I now had confirmation that they could only appear in one place, as all the red dots came from the same region in the forest.

Was it useful information? Kind of, but it was better than nothing.

"RUN, RUN PATHETIC TERRARIAN! RUN LIKE THE PREY YOU ARE! HOPING TO ESCAPE THE GREAT PREDATOR I AM!"

"Damn, you're so annoying!" I shouted back at the goblin as I pushed a village man to the side, being careful not to touch his skin.

"Do you only know how to scream?! Your voice is irritating as hell! Didn't goblin mommy teach you manners?" I couldn't help but taunt the goblin; I had been doing that for some time now, making him irritated.

It had worked so far, as Dylan was a few meters ahead of me, practically totally ignored by the villagers, all of them running towards me as if I owed something to them.

Before I could shout anything else to the goblin, I had to quickly raise my arms to defend myself from a punch that had come at me much faster than the previous ones.

"Urhk!" I grunted lightly as I received the impact of the punch on my forearms, more from surprise than real pain, as I didn't expect the force of the impact.

Looking at who had punched me, it was the goblin, who was now possessing the body of a male villager, but unlike the others, this one was muscular, very muscular for someone who had had their vitality stolen for almost a year, which was strange...

I had to take a few steps back to defend myself from the quick punches and kicks the goblin was unleashing at me.

"WHAT'S WRONG, TERRARIAN?! ON THE DEFENSIVE?! IT SEEMS YOU ONLY BARK! LIKE THE DOG YOUR PATHETIC BREED IS!" The goblin shouted again, not stopping the rain of attacks coming at me.

Since the goblin had possessed this body and come to attack me, the other villagers had stood still, their vacant eyes looking at nothing.

A limitation in the matrix? Or was it a limitation of the goblin? It seemed that he didn't have very good control over the villagers while he was fighting himself.

Dodging a long punch he had given me with his right hand, I took advantage of it to duck and deliver a hook to his chin, which the goblin defended with his left hand and kicked me back, making me step back to avoid being hit.

This wasn't a normal villager, even though I was restraining myself a lot, the speed of my punches shouldn't be something a farmer could see, dodge, or much less block, which meant only one thing...

"This body belongs to a Guild contractor..." I murmured lightly as I blocked a low kick with my shin.

"Tell me, little goblin." I teased the body possessor slightly before continuing, a thought coming to my mind.

"How long have you been luring Guild contractors into this pit you call a trap?"

Dylan had said before that the number of people in the village was three hundred and sixty-seven, but the current number I could see at a glance on the minimap was at least five hundred.

And that would make sense, after all, who had more mana and vitality: a common farmer or a contractor who spent a good part of their time on missions, training, and fighting?

It was a simple answer.

The mission all this time had been a trap, not to kill Terrarians for revenge, but to lure them and use them as batteries.

That's why it was in such a visible place, for someone to accept it as quickly as possible before someone from the army saw it.

That's why it was also on the low-ranking mission board, even with such a large reward, the chance of a very strong contractor accepting it was low.

That was the only clue missing for me to figure out why no one had accepted this mission before. I thought I might have seen it wrong, but no.

When I went to get the mission to exterminate that pack of wolves, the mission wasn't there, but when I came back to deliver the reward and ended up meeting Dylan, it was.

It wasn't that I had missed the mission the first time I went to the mission board, no, it was that the mission hadn't been put on the board yet.

When I met Dylan, it was around ten in the morning, about the time the Guild starts to get crowded, most contractors go there at that time.

What better time to put a mission you want to be accepted quickly than one of the Guild's peak hours?

It was luck, or in this case, bad luck that I had taken this mission. If I had gone to the mission board minutes before, it might not have been there, minutes later, someone else would have accepted it in my place.

Such damn bad luck, as always.

The only thing I didn't understand was how no one had noticed this before. This shouldn't be the first time this mission appeared on the mission board, so how...

"Tsk."

I clicked my tongue as I dodged a kick coming from my right, courtesy of the goblin possessing the body in front of me. Then I crouched to dodge another punch.

It was obvious, damn it! How had no one suspected this trap mission? No, how had the goblins put this mission on the Guild in the first place...

A traitor, there was a traitor in the Guild. And not just that, someone with a high enough position or contacts in high places to hide this for almost a year if what I'm thinking is correct.

The goblin growled through the Guild contractor's throat, annoyed by my ease in dodging his attacks and the way I seemed to belittle him by calling him a "little goblin."

It was easy to notice his anger increasing, with each blow he became more ferocious, his attacks more furious and faster, but also easier to predict due to his clouded mind and troubled thoughts.

But contrary to what I expected, he didn't say anything, didn't retort or speak at all, choosing to remain silent while continuing to attack me.

"What's wrong, little goblin~?" I intoned the word, as if speaking to a small, not only that, a particularly stupid little animal.

"Not gonna say anything? Did I hit a nerve? Or is 'little goblin' the nickname your boss uses when he calls you into his tent at night?" I continued my taunting, dancing around his attacks, not bothering to counter, trying to make him even more irritated.

That seemed to be enough as he snarled and shouted while speaking.

"YOU PATHETIC CREATURE! WHEN I GET YOU, I WON'T EVEN BOTHER TRYING TO GET ANY INFORMATION FROM YOU! I'LL TORTURE YOU PURELY FOR MY PLEASURE OF SEEING YOUR FACE TWISTED IN PAIN AND YOUR SCREAMS OF AGONY!!"

He took a few steps back, stopping his onslaught of attacks. I could see a malicious smile forming on his face before he opened the arms of the body he possessed and stared at me with a superior look.

This time, he didn't shout, just said slowly and clearly, as if wanting to make sure I understood his words.

"Yes, Terrarian, it was one of my best ideas!" He smiled proudly as he waved one arm, as if presenting the village to me.

"I came up with the idea of putting this mission in your pathetic realm, in your pathetic Guild!" He growled with what he said about the realm and the Guild, his hatred apparent in his words.

"It was so simple, just a paper with a reward higher than usual, and you, stupid Terrarians, came here like flies, one by one fell into my trap..."

He pointed with his finger at me, who was silent just listening to everything, with each of his sentences a "PING" appeared in the stream, or rather, in the mission that was updated with each new piece of information received.

"You're no different from this body I'm using." He ran his hand over the right arm. Slowly as if showing off a trophy or rare item from his collection.

"This pathetic Terrarian sack of flesh. Like you, he came confidently to the Guild, his pride so great, his arrogance so high that he didn't even realize what was happening until he was under my control."

He smiled, a twisted smile that didn't seem natural in the body he inhabited, especially with the alien yellow eyes in the body.

It was true, I had fallen into this trap in a pretty pathetic way. I didn't even stop to think why the reward for what seemed like such a simple mission was so high.

Looks like I owe the girls, the lost hours of sleep really took their toll, if I were in my best state, I doubt this would have happened.

"But I figured out your plan quite easily, didn't I?" I sang innocently, teasing the goblin as I sat on a wooden box next to one of the houses on the street where we were fighting.

My gaze quickly went to the minimap. Dylan was already close to the well, which was good, but the increasingly populous red dots were a bad sign.

"A bit foolish on your part, huh? Letting me in and finding out everything like this, your parasitic matrix." I pointed to his body, or rather, the tattoos. "The cannibal matrix on the village walls." I smiled maliciously with fake guilt.

"Matrix that I blew up. Sorry about that, hope it didn't give you too much trouble to finish it, I would be devastated if that were the case." I raised my hand to my forehead and pretended to faint, as if genuinely sorry.

The goblin in the Terrarian's body growled in anger. I could see that he almost attacked me again, but he held back. Interestingly, after that, he stopped, remaining silent for a few seconds before smiling in an innocent way, which frankly, was very uncomfortable to watch.

"True, true. It was foolish of me not to attack you the moment you started pushing that weird machine." He commented slowly as he sat on a box on the other side of the street, mimicking my movements.

"I'll give you that point. You're a good planner and have a keen eye. You noticed that something was wrong with the village the moment you got kilometers away from it." He clapped slowly as if congratulating me.

"If I hadn't reacted quickly and summoned part of the army, you probably would have escaped and messed things up even more."

He seemed impressed by something. With how I had noticed something strange in the village? With his quickness in summoning his subordinates? I didn't know.

"I should have suspected that something was wrong with you right there. After all, you discovered the existence of the army behind you almost instantly and acted accordingly, pretending you hadn't noticed anything and acting as if your transport was broken." He seemed impressed and guilty in equal measure.

"But I've always been too greedy, I'll admit. I wanted to see what else you would do, how you would fight before I crushed you under my feet!"

He snarled slightly before continuing.

"But it seems I bit off more than I could chew. After all, you managed to find out about the two matrices, and your companion even has that strange powder that can easily disperse the matrix of mind control. A foolish mistake on my part..."

The anger on his face was visible even as he tried to hide it. He was a mediocre actor, but if he wanted to hide something from me, he was a few hundred years ahead. After all, I had experience with actors...

...And compared to my "father," this goblin was more than a mediocre actor.

At this point, it was easy to guess that he was buying time for the rest of his army to be summoned, but I was doing the same. After all, Dylan was by the well of the village at this point.

"But tell me one thing, Terrarian." The goblin in the Terrarian's body sang innocently, the same way I had done before, and smiled, opening his arms and pointing to the village around us.

"You have a sharp eye, as I said. So answer me this... Have you noticed that there are no elderly, children, or babies in the entire village..." He feigned concern, as if this fact were something bad... and it was.

I had already noticed this. I wasn't the only one. Some more observant people in the (CHAT) also, and all of them, including me, couldn't find anyone with these descriptions.

No elderly, children, or babies. No matter which way I looked while fighting the goblin. No matter the house, window, street, alley. I couldn't find any.

[(MOD)RedHuntressLive]: What?! Why? Why are there no children in the village? Didn't Dylan say there were 22 children and 12 babies? 27 elderly too! Where are they all?! (Worried Little Red Riding Hood emote).

[WiseWizardGleam]: ... Using this kind of mind control is something horrible. This vitality-stealing matrix? Even more... But killing babies and children? How wicked.

[HalfBloodPrince]: It reminds me of a certain dark lord... What a pathetic thing to do. (Emote of a green snake with a disgusted face).

[BestToadSannin]: Even the most wicked nukenins and enemies I've encountered hesitated to murder children and babies... How despicable to see.

[(MOD)GeniusBillionairePlayboy]: ... And the press says I'm the monster for selling weapons... (Sad Iron Man sighing emote).

Yes... I had that impression too.

I'm glad that at least Red is innocent enough not to have realized what had happened yet. But it seems the goblin was going to address that.

He changed his smile from an innocent one to a malicious and twisted one, a smile so big that it slightly tore the lips and cheeks of the body he was possessing.

"SUCH FRAGILE LITTLE THINGS!" He shouted as he stood up, hands in the air. "SO PATHETIC AND USELESS, WITH SO LITTLE VITALITY AND MANA! WITHERED AWAY SO QUICKLY!" He chuckled a bit before turning his face towards me.

His yellow eyes, red iris meeting my brown ones.

"THE ELDERLY LASTED LONGER, THEIR WILLPOWER HOLDING ON TO THEIR PATHETIC LIVES, LASTED ABOUT A MONTH!" He laughed before continuing.

"THE CHILDREN?! LESS THAN A WEEK! TERRARIANS! PATHETIC EVEN IN THEIR INFANT AGE! THE BABIES?!" He licked his lips maliciously before uttering the words that would make me hunt him in the future.

"THE BABIES, I WAS MERCIFUL! I KILLED AND ATE THEM MYSELF THE MOMENT I STEPPED INTO THE VILLAGE! THEIR FLESH WAS SO TENDER! SO DELICIOUS!" He laughed even harder before taking a deep breath, calming down and saying in a lower, calmer tone.

"My only disappointment was not being able to rape every woman in this miserable village! to see their despair on their faces as I deflowered their bodies in front of their children, fathers and husbands!." He seemed disappointed by this fact.

"It's sad, but what can you do? That would take away some of their vitality, and we can't waste any of our precious batteries, can we?" He smirked maliciously, ignoring my angry glare and clenched fist.

This goblin's luck was that the body he possessed wasn't his own. It would be pointless for me to destroy this body in front of me. Nothing would change, except that I would have killed an innocent person.

"You're going to die, goblin," I said coldly, locking eyes with him. It wasn't a threat, it wasn't a statement, it was a fact.

I would kill him myself.

I could understand his anger, his species' anger towards Terrarians. To find out that his race is cursed, a curse that took away their intelligence, their gifts, and the supposed beings who cast this curse upon their kind would be hunting them like cattle?

I understood his anger, his contempt.

But this? Using people as batteries? Murdering children? The elderly? Babies who had no sin on their backs? That I couldn't understand, and wouldn't want to.

The final straw was the rape. This goblin would really have done that, the only thing that stopped him being, oddly enough, that disgusting matrix. Batteries... isn't it?

How I hated that act, even that word. Just hearing it made me angry...

"I know. Terrarian, we all die someday," the goblin chirped cheerfully while smiling.

"You? Screaming and begging for mercy at my feet. Me? Peacefully in the midst of my harem of slaves, very, very old." He laughed one last time before speaking his final words in this body calmly.

"See you later, on the battlefield... Don't run away, in~."

Then the body fell to the ground, like a puppet with cut strings, its eyes returning to normal, the goblin undoing its possession.

It seemed he had realized it was useless to continue this charade; he wanted to take the fight elsewhere...

I stood up calmly, ignoring my turbulent thoughts and the anger I felt, and ran towards the center of the village, where Dylan was. At no point did any villager try to stop me, all looking blankly into nothing.

With no one to stop me, it didn't take long for me to reach the well, where I could see Dylan drawing mystical symbols around the stone structure and throwing plants and materials I didn't know into the well, into the water.

Dylan noticed me a few seconds after I arrived. Tensing up and pulling his bow, pointing it at me. When he realized it was me, he seemed to relax, especially since I didn't have any tattoos like the villagers or yellow eyes.

I approached the well and stood behind the guide, who had returned to throwing things into the well, finally pouring all the Purification Powder.

"We'll have company soon, Dylan," I said calmly as I looked at the red dots clustering in the forest. "Is your soup ready?" I couldn't help but make the joke, even in this situation.

Dylan chuckled lightly before nodding, but didn't verbally respond to me, choosing to continue what he was doing before tapping the ring on his finger twice, making a book appear in his hands.

I widened my eyes slightly as I looked at the book, I knew what book this was, how could I not?

The book had a dark brown cover. In the center of the book's cover, a small light blue jar was surrounded by a set of light squares that seemed to glow.

The first magic book we could get in Terraria, the game, the Water Bolt, the book we found in the dungeon.

Dylan seemed to focus, his attention fully on the book as he opened it to one of the pages.

As he opened the book, before I could read what was written, the book began to glow in a light blue hue. I could feel the mana in the atmosphere slowly changing.

I could see sweat accumulating on Dylan's forehead every second, but I didn't focus on that; I was busy feeling the change in mana.

Every second, the mana in the atmosphere seemed to shift, concentrating at a point and dispersing, flowing gently like a river, stagnating like a lake, furious like a sea.

Even for me, someone entirely ignorant of magic, I could perceive this. The mana was taking on a more "wet" aspect, as if turning into water.

Dylan then placed his right palm on the book and calmly uttered two words.

"Water Bolt."

The words seemed to resonate with the mana in the atmosphere, then, like magic, which it really was, the well's water flew into the sky.

Liters and liters of water soared into the sky in less than a second, gathering into a large water ball, floating in the sky. The ball glowed faintly in light blue, perhaps due to mana? The ingredients Dylan had thrown into it before? I didn't know.

Then, in a second, the water ball floating in the sky exploded into a rain that seemed to cover a good part of the village. The small drops falling rapidly toward the ground.

When the drops hit the ground, unlike normal rain, this "rain" was not normal. When the water droplets hit the ground, they didn't just wet it; no, they bounced off the ground!

Every drop, every droplet hitting the ground ricocheted, flying in random directions. Some hitting the villagers, others the walls of the houses, some even me and Dylan.

I quickly shielded my eyes when I saw raindrops coming towards me rapidly, but my concerns were unfounded. When the drops hit my body, aside from getting wet, of course, they didn't hurt me.

On the contrary, they seemed to heal me slightly. I could feel the slight fatigue I had disappearing quickly with every water drop that hit me.

And it continued, with each new surface the drops reached, no matter what surface it was, ground, house, Terrarian, or me, human, they ricocheted again and again.

I opened the Minimap while ignoring the raindrops soaking me; with that, I could see, live, each orange point within the village slowly turn yellow.

One by one, none escaping the artificial rain Dylan had created.

In the end, within the village walls, there were only two green points, me and Dylan, surrounded by yellow points.

Taking my eyes off the Minimap, I turned to congratulate the guide on the good work and ask what the hell that was before realizing the state Dylan was in.

He was shaking a lot, his skin pale as if all the blood had drained from his body.

I could see that besides being wet from the rain, drops of sweat were running down his face.

I didn't hesitate to go towards the guide and help him sit down, placing the book, which had lost its glow, next to his body.

Before I could ask anything, he said. "Just... a... second." His voice sounded tired, breathless, as if he had run a marathon.

Between his breaths, he managed to squeeze out a few words.

"This... took more... mana... than I... expected."

Slowly, he brought his left hand to the right, tapping the ring on his finger twice.

Quickly, a small blue stone, the size of a grain of rice, perhaps smaller, appeared in his hand, coming from inside the ring.

With trembling hands, he brought the small blue stone to his mouth and swallowed it. It wasn't instantaneous, but I could see the effects on his face.

Slowly, the color seemed to return to his skin, his hands stopped shaking, and the sweat running down his forehead slowly stopped, his breathing returning to normal.

"Are you okay? Better?" I asked the guide sitting on the ground.

After a few seconds of silence, he seemed recovered enough to speak. The first words out of his mouth confusing me.

"I suck at magic." He said as he tried to get up. I extended my hand to help, a hand he grabbed and pulled himself up.

I raised an eyebrow in doubt, was this being bad at magic? Damn! If this was being bad, what would a real mage do? I didn't know if I wanted to know the answer.

As if understanding my doubts, he sighed and explained.

"I can't use spells properly..." He shook his head. "Actually, I can only use a single spell effectively." He pointed to his eyes that now had a light blue glow.

"This." He finished, making his eyes return to normal.

He bent down slightly, picking up the book from the ground and putting it back into the ring.

"But I'm good with Mystic Symbols, and my sister is a strong contractor." He seemed a bit bitter about this fact. "So I cover my weaknesses with items I make and some of the items she brings back for me."

"Like the book." I affirmed. Possibly being one of the items his sister brought back from somewhere for him to use.

"Like the book." He agreed.

Before I could ask anything else, I could see the people in the village starting to wake up, one by one.

They still looked sick, but whatever the rain had done, they were much better than before.

If before they looked like terminal patients on the verge of death, now they just seemed to have a strong flu. It was still bad, but it was a significant improvement.

Then, without any warning, a shout echoed in the distance, saying the words I never thought I would hear in life.

Words I didn't want to hear.

Words that I had only read on a computer screen in an innocuous 2D game before.

Words that were now the harbinger of a threat...

"A goblin army is approaching from the west!"