Chapter 9: The Secrets Of The Goblin Sorcerer Part II
December 14, 2:10 PM – Eldora, Lunarest Outskirts (Night in game)
"Before Shiv, goblins were shadows feral, forgotten, uncounted. He made them more than monsters; he made them a clan."
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The cold hit before anything else.
Rin felt his body peel apart into noise, nerves dissolving into static as the world fell away. The tunnel of system light swallowed him whole, a rush of green and white and black. Voices blurred past his ears in a language that sounded like broken steel and ash. Goblin chants. Screams. A woman's voice barking orders in rough Goblin, sharp and relentless, like Wyx yelling through a storm. Somewhere in the middle of it, a single note rang through his bones like a bell being struck underwater.
Then everything snapped back.
He dropped into his body all at once. Damp earth. Stale air. A sharp ache in his legs, like he had been squatting for hours.
Rin's eyes opened to darkness.
A single witch-fire torch guttered in a sconce near the ground, coating everything in a thin, sickly green glow. He was in a low hide tent, walls stitched from patched leather and bone plates. His breath fogged in the cold air. The taste of smoke and unwashed bodies clung to the back of his throat.
He glanced down.
Shackles bit faintly at his ankles, iron rings joined by a short length of chain bolted into the floor.
He stared at them for a heartbeat, then snorted.
"At least they didn't pitch me into the bonfire while I was out," he thought.
His head throbbed like a hangover. He held out a hand and flicked his wrist.
System light washed over his vision.
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[WORLD QUEST: CALL OF THE BONES]
Time Remaining: 4:07:13
[WORLD QUEST TRIGGERED – CALL OF THE BONES]
Objective: Scout Lunarest for the Goblin Chief.
– Infiltrate the city.
– Retrieve the Gate Map for the tribe.
– Find the secrets of the Goblin Sorcerer Ghiv.
Restriction: Only goblin players may accept.
Reward: Legendary (Unknown).
Warning: If the quest is not completed, the world event resets.
[ACCEPT] / [DECLINE]
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Rin blinked. The numbers stabbed straight through the fog in his skull.
"Four hours," he thought. "It was at seventy-two when I dipped."
He swallowed hard.
He had been gone for almost two in-game days. While Chiyo was dealing with lawyers and a restraining order he was bouncing between the twins, Tochi's paperwork, and every Goblin guide and half-dead forum thread he could scrape off the net, his body had been sitting here in a meditation pose while Eldora kept moving without him.
"Right," he thought bitterly. "Time doesn't stop here just because you are busy IRL."
He dismissed the window and finally noticed the rest of the tent.
On the far side, near the flap, there was a neat pile of gear. Leather armor. A chipped bone short sword. A belt of worn pouches. Next to it, propped against the wall, sat a crude iron mask shaped like a snarling goblin face.
Right beside the gear, on the packed dirt, were two broken ankle chains. The ends were blackened, as if cut by fire rather than tools. The ground around them was scorched in a perfect oval, mud turned to cracked glass.
Rin's stomach dipped.
"That's where the loud one was," he thought. "The goblin they kept yelling at when I first woke up."
He remembered the goblins' laugh, the way the idiot had crowed along with the insults when Rin told them their breath smelled like they'd been eating each other's gobshit. He remembered Wyx threatening someone.
The clan hadn't been bluffing when they said they always paid blood he thought.
A scrap of parchment lay on top of the armor pile, pinned with a bone dagger.
Rin shuffled forward, iron links scraping, and tore it free.
The handwriting was rough, but surprisingly clean for a goblin.
Kaiseki,
You sat like a stone for two sun cycles. We honored your word and did not drag you to the fire. The Thrash clan is not without patience.
The goblin who wore your chains before you did not share that blessing. Sevish sent him to the front lines. He earned a fire worthy of the fool he was.
Use his armor. It will not fit him again.
When your trance ends, report to the main fire. Camp has been harried. We bleed.
Do not waste our time.
– Wyx Thrash
Rin exhaled slowly through his nose.
"They really did it," he thought. "They sent that idiot out in my place."
He looked back at the scorched circle on the ground. No body, just the mark and the chains.
"Could've been me," Rin told himself. "If they'd decided meditation didn't count."
And if he'd gone out there half-clueless, still salty about not rolling elf, he would've just been another green corpse feeding somebody's highlight reel. Seven-day death lock and his whole Winter Bash shot flushed. The thoughts fustrated. Him more as he shrugged it off.
He tucked the note into his inventory. As he straightened, the torch flickered.
The temperature in the tent dropped like someone had opened a crypt.
Rin's breath turned thick white. Every hair on his arms and neck lifted. Sound from outside the distant horn, the muted roar of goblins, the crackle of the camp's main bonfire faded to a dull underwater hum.
The ankle chains on his legs shivered.
The metal rings glowed a faint, sickly orange, then lifted from his skin as if invisible hands had tugged them upward. The iron passed straight through his ankles without friction. Links twisted in the air, rising until they hung at eye level in front of him.
Rin froze.
His muscles wouldn't move. His fingers twitched uselessly. It was like someone had poured cold wax inside his limbs.
A faint window tried to open in the corner of his vision.
[STATUS: ????????? – Minor]
It glitched once and vanished, like the system itself didn't want to name what was happening.
The links melted.
Iron sagged into streams of gray light, folding and curling around nothing. Bone shards formed in the glow, jagged pieces of something old and blackened, drawn in as if pulled through a crack in the air. The chains threaded the fragments together into a crude ring.
A pulse of green light burst from the center.
[WORLD QUEST: CALL OF THE BONES]
Sub-Objective: Accept the Spirit's Pact.
The torch guttered low. Shadows in the corners stretched long.
Something stepped out of them.
It wore the shape of a goblin, but only as a suggestion. A tall, lean figure of ash and smoke, edges trailing off into nothing. A wide-brimmed, buckled hat sat low over its brow, soaked in shadow. Coats and belts hung from its frame, layered and ragged, the details never fully solidifying if Rin looked at them too long, as if his eyes kept sliding off the exact lines.
Its eyes were the only things truly real.
Twin orbs of burning green, bright enough to core him out from across the tent.
Tiny clover-shaped motes of light drifted around its boots and fingers, falling in slow spirals to the dirt and sinking into it like drops of phosphorescent ink. Where they sank, hairline cracks of pale bone-light spidered briefly through the ground before fading.
Rin's lungs forgot how to work for a second.
"Okay," he thought faintly. "That's not in any of the guides."
When the spirit spoke, his voice sounded like a bonfire forcing words through wet wood.
"You return to your body at last, little spark."
Rin's throat locked.
He had seen Shiv in clips and lore posts, player fanart and old event trailers. None of it matched the presence standing in front of him now. Those had been game models. This felt like weather - pressure and heat and the sense that if it turned on him, there would be nothing left.
"Shiv," Rin whispered.
The paralysis bled away just enough for him to tilt his head up.
The spirit studied him, eyes moving in slow, careful passes. Not like an NPC scanning a script. More like someone measuring the worth of a gamble.
"In my time," Shiv said, "goblins who went still stayed that "
His gaze flicked to the burned circle and shattered chains.
"While you sat in silence, another of Thrash blood walked to the front line in your place," Shiv said.
Rin forced his jaw to unclench.
"That on me, then," he thought. "He got sent to die while I was juggling real-world crap and trying to figure out how this race even works."
The thought pricked, sharp and quick, but it didn't hollow him out. The goblin did laugh when Rin insulted them.
"If I'd stayed, I might have been the one respawned in some random pit with nothing," he reminded himself. "Seven days locked out."
The logic didn't make the scorch mark look any smaller.
Out loud, his voice came out rough. "You're saying this place doesn't care why I'm gone. Just that I'm gone."
Shiv's mouth curled in something that was not quite a smile
"This place cared before you arrived," he said. "It will care after you vanish. It is older than you Kaiseki."
Hearing his name in that voice sent another shiver down Rin's spine.
"You step between two hungers," Shiv went on. "The hunger of your world, and the hunger of this one"
He lifted one hand.
The ring of bone fragments drifted closer to Rin's chest, hovering in the air between them. The chains had hardened into a metal the color of storm clouds, each link etched with faint green sigils.
"You want to stand in Lunarest's shadow and not be stepped on," Shiv said. "You want to walk into Lumerin's heart, into the Astralum Archive beneath the king's bed, and take what they buried."
Rin's eyes widened.
Shiv's gaze sharpened.
"I wrote the first lines of its story," he said. "They locked it away because they feared what a thinking goblin could do with it."
For a heartbeat, the tent dissolved around Rin.
He saw stone halls lit by cold blue lanterns. Banners of black and green hanging beside silver sunbursts. Humans and beastfolk and dwarves lining a marble floor. A goblin in armor made of polished bone standing before a throne, staff grounded, as a human king bowed his head.
The vision snapped away, leaving him back in the cramped tent, breath ragged.
"You have watched my memories of Lumerin," Shiv said quietly. "You have seen demi-humans hauling crates in its streets and guarding its doors. Tell me, little spark. Have you ever seen a goblin in the royal court?"
Rin thought of late nights scrolling through old VODs, tournament broadcasts, player faction campaigns in front of the palace.
"No," he admitted.
"Exactly." Shiv drifted closer. The temperature dropped another notch. "Demihumans are allowed in the capital because Lunarest bleeds coin from their labor.."
Rin swallowed.
Yuna flashed across his mind, lit by holographic stage lights.
Idol Yuna had sung in Lumerin's plazas, danced on floating platforms above noble balconies, smiled with NPC guards at her back. She had broken more walls than anyone. Even then, she had never once posted anything that hinted at some secret library under the palace Rin thought.
"If she couldn't get down there," Rin thought, "nobody else has."
Shiv's voice cut into his thoughts.
"You wish to reach it," he said. "You wish to do more than dance on their streets. You wish to pull at the threads under their feet."
Rin met those burning green eyes. Something in his chest settled.
"Yeah," he thought. "I do."
Aloud, he said, "I don't want to be another face grinding story quests near the capital walls. If I'm going to risk getting my family killed by rich assholes, I might as well take the good loot."
The corner of Shiv's mouth twitched.
"Spoken like a goblin," he said.
The necklace floated between them, waiting.
"Take it," Shiv said. "If you wear my name, you carry my work. My weight. My enemies."
Rin's hand shook as he reached out. The bone fragments looked old enough to crumble if he breathed wrong. They were smooth and cold under his fingers, then hot, then something in between. The central shard was darker than the rest, almost black, shot through with veins of green.
The moment his skin closed around it, the world flared white.
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[ITEM ACQUIRED: CALL OF THE BONES NECKLACE (WARSET PIECE – SHIV)]
Type: Legendary (Bound – Soul)
Set: Shiv's Warset (1/7)
Effects:
+10 INT
+3 STR
+5 Spirit Affinity (Spirit Magic Path)
Passive: Bone Sense – Faintly pulses when another Warset piece is within range.
Active: Call Home – Mark one friendly goblin camp. 1x teleport / 12 hours.
Special: Spirit Pact – Unlocks access to the Spirit Magic path through Shaman's Veil.
Restrictions:
Bound to [Kaiseki].
Cannot be dropped, traded, or stolen.
A second window layered over the first.
[SHAMAN'S VEIL INTERACTION DETECTED]
Goblin INT Racial Negated.
New Path: Spirit Magic – Beginner tier access granted.
Rin watched the ugly negative sign near his INT stat shrink in real time.
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"Finally," he thought.
His fingertips tingled. Something like static crawled up his arms and into his skull. For a heartbeat, it felt like someone else's thoughts brushed against his own, old and heavy and tired.
The necklace settled against his chest.
He suddenly felt taller.
He looked down and realized his perspective had shifted, just a little. The tent felt less cramped. His arms, still goblin-thin, seemed a bit longer. His hands, still green, looked less like claws and more like narrow, bony human fingers.
Part of his UI flickered.
For a second, over his portrait, the squat goblin model blurred into a taller, hat-shadowed silhouette, lines echoing the spirit that had just stood before him. Then it snapped back, leaving only a faint new icon next to his nameplate.
The status window added one more line.
[SKILL UNLOCKED: ANCIENT BONEFLAME BARRAGE]
Type: Ultimate – Trap / Rune Circle
Cast: Channel (2.5s)
Effect: Places a hidden bone sigil in target area (10m radius).
On Trigger: Summons spectral bone pillars and spirit fire, dealing heavy AoE damage.
Bonus: Fire damage doubled and radius increased when interacting with combustible toxins.
(Goblin Gas / Toxic Breath / similar effects qualify.)
Cooldown: 300s
Rin's lips pulled back from his teeth.
"A trap ult," he thought. "With extra damage if you drown the place in farts first. That is the most disrespectful spell I've ever seen."
Shiv chuckled. The sound made the tent's leather walls shiver.
"You feel it," Shiv said. "The shape of it. Goblins are claws and chaos. They burn bright and die fast. I was not meant to be one of them. The curse broke my body, but not my mind. I made their wildness march in a line."
The torches outside flared as if pushed by a wind only the spirit could feel. He drifted back, toward the shadows at the tent's edge.
"The Thrash clan remembers the path we walked," Shiv said softly. "They tore themselves from Myrrhwood's roots because they believe a goblin can stand before a king again and not bow."
He inclined his head just enough that Rin understood it was an honor.
"Prove they were right to wait," Shiv said. "Learn to make your fires walk with you, little spark. Do not waste the hours you have left."
The sounds outside crashed back in.
Hoarse horn. Goblins shouting. Armor ringing. Somewhere, a roar that was almost human and almost not.
Rin's heartbeat synced with the pulsing shard at his throat.
He sucked in a breath through sharp teeth.
"World kept moving while I was out," he thought. "I either move with it or get farmed."
By the time the last of Shiv's smoke-edges dissolved into the witch-fire, Rin had already grabbed the dead goblin's armor and started strapping it on.
Outside, the horn sounded again closer this time.
END OF CHAPTER 9
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CHAPTER 10: BONEFIRE SMOKESCREEN – PART III
"Shiv never won his wars in open daylight. He won them in the breath after his enemies laughed, when the smoke looked harmless and the bones under their boots were already listening."
- Elder Grak of Thrash Clan