With rather pathetic screeches, the last of the goblin defenders fell to the Gay-Bros' blades—their corpses littered the settlement as Mormon's story was still ongoing amidst the scent of blood that was quite thick in the air, mixing with so many other scents that would make one dizzy and nauseated if you smelled it far too long.
"...with the mistake in the soul transfer ritual, my soul was sent flying uncontrollably mid-transfer away from the homunculus body that I had prepared for myself. It's such a perfect body that cost me half my fortune to make, you know?" Mormon retold her experience at that time, her fists clenched at the thought of the fortune that she spent for nothing.
"The backlash of the failure flung my soul and consciousness so hard it unexpectedly went through the time and space tunnel somehow, and when I saw a sky again, my soul was immediately pulling into the nearest available living vessel—a goblin brood mother's womb just as her egg was fertilized." She grimaced, recalling the horror of awakening in that squirming darkness until she crawled out of the goblin brood mother's slippery hole. "And to add insult to the injury, by the time I got my bearings, I noticed immediately that my ability to perform magic was simply... gone!"
"And here I am..." Mormon finished with a shrug, her oversized cloak shifting as she gestured at herself. The distant noise of Nadia pulling her sword from a goblin's spine made the statement feel extra morbid.
"I don't know if it's because my soul went through the tunnel of time and space or because my human soul got crammed into a goblin's body that made me lose my magic, but I'm glad that at least my memory and my human sensibility are still intact." The goblin girl smiled bitterly while wondering every day if this is her punishment for trying to defy natural order. "Plus, not looking like an ugly green-skinned monster is definitely helping me not kill myself, haha..."
"I see..." Zarba murmured while he looked at the self-deprecating Mormon with sympathy, as he also experienced something similar to her, while the Gay-Bros began systematically checking the goblin corpses for survivors and finishing off twitching goblins with multiple stabs to make sure.
"By the way, do you have something, like a goal or a plan for the future, or what you want to do now that you don't have to live among the goblins anymore?" Zarba asked as Mormon was caught off guard by his sudden question. The goblin girl made a contemplative expression with her arms crossed, as she didn't really have the time to think of any of that stuff; just trying to survive from day to day is already difficult enough for the ostracized goblin girl.
"Mmmmmhh… I don't know… I want to find a way to regain my ability to use magic, I guess? Maybe creating myself a new beautiful and perfect body too? My ritual is working, so I just have to be more thorough when I do it again!" Mormon said as she listed out the things she wanted the most with excitement, while Zarba chuckled at the goblin girl, who was still undeterred by the soul transfer ritual after such a failure, which was quite amusing to him.
'She might be a magician from the ancient era… I read about them in the books, and most of them are pretty insane or very stupid, or both…' Xin comments in his mind as the half-elf feels a little relief that the goblin girl at least seems to be only the insane one and not the insanely stupid one. You can probably guess which creates the first undead in this world, right?
"Yeah, it's good to have goals to strive for, but first you have to figure out how to make money for all that~." Zarba stands up and walks towards Mormon and pats her head with a smirk. He refused to throw his money away for such an obvious financial trap while he didn't even have any single successful business.
"Eh, you don't have any money…?" Mormon's ears droop slightly as she looks up at him with disappointment in her blue eyes—like she already expected him, whom she just met, to somehow bankroll her magical research for just the virtue of his heart alone.
"I only have my retirement fund; I'm not going to waste it on your random experiments," Zarba ruthlessly denied her with a light chuckle as he ruffled Mormon's hair harder just as Nadia returned, her greatsword dripping fresh goblin blood onto the ground. The scent of blood and gore clung to her armor vividly, making Mormon's nose wrinkle as she took an involuntary step back a little from the muscular woman.
"They are all dead. No runner," Nadia grunted, flicking goblin gore from her blade. Her purple eyes behind the helmet flicked to Mormon and spoke to her, who was being patted by Zarba with a cold tone. "Shouldn't you be leading the way inside the nest now?"
"R-Right…!" Mormon's ears twitched at the subtle threatening aura that Nadia gave off as she scrambled ahead, her bare feet avoiding viscera along the way as she circled around the battlefield.
"The cave entrance is hidden behind that vine curtain over here. There's no other way out from here, so the brood mothers won't be able to escape from the nest. Well, it's not like they can anyway; they're too extremely obese to move and all..." Her clawed fingers parted the vines, revealing a dimly lit cave tunnel from the torches deeper inside to Zarba and Nadia, who were walking towards her.
"You want to go inside as well?" Zarba turned to Nadia as he asked before peering into the cave, where he could hear the faint skittering of chitinous legs echoed.
"Too cramped for my greatsword," Nadia muttered, eyeing the narrow tunnel entrance before shaking her head. She then cut the vines blocking the cave entrance for him with a clean swipe of her greatsword before she turned around and glanced at him as she said, "I'll guard the exit."
"Alright," Zarba said to his pretty warrior slave as he drew his Excellent from the sheath.
"Me, Mormon, and a few Zar-Bros—should be enough to handle whatever's left in there..." Zarba muttered with narrowed eyes as he glanced at the dimly lit cave where the brood mothers are waiting helplessly to be exterminated. 'I hope they are not too ugly...'
"Let's go, Mormon," Zarba said while summoning ten Zar-Bros behind him as they instantly materialized from thin air—their black silhouettes that suddenly appeared like ghosts almost made the goblin girl jump in fright.
"R-Right, let's go…" Mormon quickly calmed down as she nodded her head before they entered the damp cave tunnel while the Zar-Bros flanked the goblin girl, who started telling them where to go together with Zarba, who was walking beside her.
÷×÷×÷
Twelve silhouettes moved soundlessly through the cavern's maze-like tunnels: eleven black knights and one small goblin girl whose bare feet stepped over slippery mosses and weird-looking dark green mushrooms she saw on the floor.
The cold and damp air thickened with the scent of dust, smoke, and a rancid stench like rotting meat left to stew in stagnant water. Zarba and Mormon wrinkled their noses but kept moving forward despite the nauseating smell, the goblin girl's claws occasionally brushing the slick cave walls for the carved marks she left for navigation assistance.
And finally, after ten minutes of walking, the tunnel suddenly widened into a chamber lit by flickering torches jammed haphazardly between stalagmites, but that was not the sight that concerned Zarba, as what he saw inside the chamber made him pause his breathing on instinct.
Within the chamber three bloated brood mothers lay heaped against the far wall, their huge bellies pulsing with the movement of half-formed younglings. Their skin was stretched so thin it glistened like spoiled sausage casings, veined with purple and green beneath the torchlight. One of them turned her misshapen head towards the entrance with a wet, rubbery sound—yellow eyes reflecting the flames that made them seem to glow eerily.
'Wow, that's some body horror stuff…' Zarba thought as he observed the morbidly obese goblins with disgust.
Seeing the intruders already here, the brood mothers let out a guttural hiss of panic, their multiple chins quivering as they struggled to rise on atrophied limbs to escape. Their swollen abdomens scraped against the cave floor, leaving trails of glistening mucus behind them. There's really nothing they can do to defend themselves since they already used the accelerated growth hormones on the last litter.
"Ughh…" Mormon hid behind Zarba as she watched while holding her mouth with her hand—even after years among the goblins, the sight of the brood mothers still turned her stomach.
"Well, shoot them." Zarba finally commanded his summoned units as the Zar-Bros immediately moved forward and raised their bows to unleash a volley of enhanced arrows directly into the brood mothers' pulsating bellies—each impact releasing a wet, bursting sound like punctured water skins.
The creatures shrieked, their swollen torsos rupturing as half-formed goblin fetuses spilled onto the cavern floor in tangled, twitching heaps. The stench that erupted was beyond words—a mix of ammonia, bile, and decaying placenta that made Mormon's eyes water as the goblin girl gagged and coughed while she pressed another hand to her mouth as she moved away from the chamber along with Zarba, who was also closing his nose with his hand and quickly backed away from the source of the strong stench with her.
'Goddamn it, I shouldn't have come!' Now the reincarnated prince really regrets coming along.
The brood mothers, on the other hand, thrashed around weakly, their short limbs clawing randomly while one of them tried to push her broken stomach and the fetuses back together with futility.
One of the brood mothers, the oldest one, managed to drag herself forward to the entrance of the chamber, her burst abdomen splitting further as she left a glistening trail of entrails behind. She glared intently at the intruders with vengeance in her bloodshot eyes as Zar-Bro stepped forward and buried his short sword into her skull with a wet crunch, silencing its gurgling cries of resentment.
Seeing the oldest one killed, the other two can only writhe weakly, their breasts leaking yellowish fluid onto the cave floor before finally going still as well.
"I am not going to be able to eat meat or soup for a while..." Zarba muttered behind his hand as the horrible smell of ruptured brood sacs seemed to cling to his sinuses.
"Same…" Mormon whispered as she turned away from the gruesome sight of the dead brood mothers. She somehow feels a bit bad for them, but since they are just a monster born from mana, she immediately loses the sympathy for them.
"Well, it's done; let's get the hell out of here." Zarba then turned around and quickly walked back as Mormon also turned from the chamber and followed him out, leaving the Zar-Bros to stand impassive back at the chamber, unaffected by the biological horror dripping from the ceiling in thick, coagulating strands…