When Nikola came by the next morning, the goblins were still eating from yesterday's meat. He smiled, placed the holy shopping bag with the meat in the middle of the village square, and he looked around.
There were gorgeously carved bones already piled next to the only well in the village.
Nikola figured that they were for him.
But before he could pile them all in his extra shopping bag, he saw Goglina, the tribe's Alpha Female, coming his way.
"Look," the goblin told him, as she pointed at the smaller carved bones. "You do realize that these are our anger management tools?"
"Do you need them for further therapy?" Nikola asked, as he eyed the bones with more than a little awe.
Was that an elephant he was seeing? On a bone? He could get that to the Black Market for sure!
"No, not really," which was something Nikola took with a grateful smile and a heart full of greed. "But if someone says that we cursed them with them, don't believe them! We don't curse with our therapeutic tools."
Nikola nodded. He waited for Goglina to point at the carved bones once more. "Do you think that this could get us meat when we want it?"
That was a good question. The brunette had no idea if the meat was going to flow like a river or not. There were only so many animals at Big Capybara, and the goblins ate a lot.
"I will go on a trading expedition," Nikola suggested, as he began to take the bones. "To secure you a permanent delivery of meat and other necessities."
He was sure that the goblins needed cloth for their loincloths, at least.
"If we are to stop eating the travelers," Goglina continued, as she began to help him with the gathering up of the bones. "Then we need to make a couple of things clear."
Nikola nodded. There were always demands in such relationships.
"You are to never become a holy hero," the female goblin told him sternly.
"And why? Not that I have much desire to become a hero, mind you," Nikola asked, because he needed to see the reasoning behind this order.
"All heroes are sent off against goblins at the start," Goglina told him, as she handed him a bone that was carved like a forest.
With trees, and bushes with berries on them!
Nikola had no idea if the goblin who had created this masterpiece was frothing at the mouth or not, but he hoped that he could get many more like it!
"The system tried to saddle me with a general who expected I would wash in public," Nikola told her, scrunching up his nose at it all. "But I am not willing to do such a thing, thank you very much! Nor am I willing to put this business venture on the back burner!"
Goglina nodded.
"Then you will be a goblin hero!" A light went out of the goblin and into Nikola.
The brunette smiled.
It was nice to be a hero. Even if his main job was to deliver meat.
Besides, at least Goglina was not demanding he call her ma'am.
Small mercy, that.
****
Nikola was walking at a leisurely pace. There were two goblin guards at his side, with one scout up at the tree, so that no goblin tribe would try to attack and eat him.
The two goblins which were walking by his side so, as if he were a wagon full of gold, weren't a chatty bunch.
That didn't mean that Nikola had not thought up a backstory for them yet.
"Hey, Arch," Nikola said, as he looked at the goblin to the right. "How's your family?"
"We are in an unknown territory, human," the goblin told him, as he patted his throwing axe once more. "And if you get eaten, all our hopes and dreams are going to get eaten with you."
"Come now, Arch," Brog, the other goblin, said. "We can chat with the human. It is not like Flog is not keeping watch from the trees?"
There was a rustling in the forest canopy. Nikola figured that Flog had jumped from his tree to the next one by now.
"My family is well. My child doesn't have a fever, because he didn't need to eat rotten meat," Arch told him, as he bowed his head a little. "Which is all thanks to you, by the way."
"And not just that!" Brog said, as he patted Nikola on the knee. "We are thinking about commissioning you from the Adventurer's Guild! You know, as a public speaker."
"Yes," Arch continued, deciding to clarify. "You can spread our anger management wares to the world. They are really good for warding off ghosts!"
"There is just one thing I can't understand," Nikola said, as he looked ahead. He could already see the beginnings of the pearly white wall that protected Mirstone from invaders. "Why didn't you try to sell your wares by yourselves? I mean, you have talent!"
Arch sighed. Brog chuckled.
"We are monsters. The fact that we try to eat pretty much everything doesn't help," the goblin told him with a smile. "But, you know, when you are not allowed to keep a job and your children cry from the hunger, lying down and without strength to get up, you do what you must."
Nikola's eyes widened.
"Do you goblins really have it so bad?" He asked, as he tried to imagine living in such horror.
Something the goblins had made into their reality.
"All monsters do," Brog told him, as he patted him on the small of his back. "Come now, the Black Market is this way."
"No!" Nikola said, standing his ground. "I told Goglina I will get the wares to Mirstone, and I will get them to Mirstone! Now, I just need you to let me do the talking! Have faith in me!"
Nikola was not going to let the goblins down. Nor was he ever going to ignore the plight of the monsters!
He was a man on a mission. A mission he was going to succeed on!
Even if the mission was just securing a meat supply for goblins!