Chapter 29

29. Linkage

“Is it one, one or two? If it’s two, it’s not two or three. Three is three…”

Ko Byeong-gap walked around Ashvilam while he sang a Korean song translated into the Goblin language. As he skimmed through the 300-acre farmland, the sprouts were budding. It was a sight to behold.

“If it’s a potato, why would it be a sweet potato? If it’s a sweet potato, why would it be a goblin?”

“Huh?”

“… What?”

“Lord, what did you say?”

“What do I say? You are stupid, what can I do?”

The Normal Goblin, who watered the potato field, pouted his lips.

“Chi…”

“Huh. Put your lips in. Before I cut it off.”

“Heeep!”

The Normal Goblin hurriedly rolled in its lips. He laughed a little because he thought it was funny. Ko Byeong-gap carried his back and walked slowly. He went to the cave.

Kang! Kang! Kang! Kang!

“Oh, my Lord. Are you here?”

“Uh, what’s hot, Gobung.”

“H-hot?” Gobung tilted his head.

“Yeah. Did anything special happen with your work?”

“Yeah! Nothing. I don’t have any.”

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“Hey. I left a drink in the icebox outside, so take it out and drink it.”

“Yep!”

Gobung bowed his head and resumed using his pickaxe. Ko Byeong-gap scoured the cave like a patrolling inspector.

‘I didn’t know there was such a space deep in the cave.’ He smiled, pleased at the tall ceiling.

Three weeks ago, Ashvilam had a family of 324. It was a good thing that the number of workers increased, but Ko Byeong-gap faced one difficulty.

The cave was too narrow to accommodate more than 300 Goblins. It could handle up to a hundred, but more than that was too much. When he put them into other tasks, it was like having ten people do the work that one person did.

He couldn’t believe there was a job shortage in Ashvilam.

It happened while he struggled with how to deal with the remaining swarm of unemployed citizens.

-Lord… Lord! The cave!

-What’s wrong with the cave?

-The cave has collapsed!

-What?

Indeed, he still felt his heart beating when he recalled that time.

He ran frantically to the cave. He was worried about what terrible sight awaited him. However, the scene was quite different from what was expected.

-What…

It was true that one wall of the cave had been torn down. There was debris, and some of the Goblins were slightly injured, but it wasn’t a situation deserving to be called a ‘disaster.’

Rather, it was a positive factor. The cave wall collapsed and revealed a vast space beyond imagination. The ceiling reached tens of meters high and was the size of a football field.

What about 300 people? It could accommodate 1,000 people. Not only that, in addition to the red crystals, there were also white jade crystals with ten times the value of red crystals!

“Lord sir, let me pass.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. You’re working hard, man.”

“No.”

The Hob Goblin answered with gallantry. He headed outside with a cart mixed with white jade crystals and red crystals.

‘Shall we build a railroad track later?’

Ko Byeong-gap came out thinking about how to decorate Ashvilam. He went to his own tent. He sat on the sofa and enjoyed the sound of the water and the wind. Well, that was nothing new.

‘Ancient Shop’

[Ancient Shop]

-Construction

-Techniques

– Miscellaneous Goods

-Others

[Crystals on Hand: 370,496]

“Hey…”

Three hundred thousand. A whopping three hundred seventy thousand. He saved it for three weeks without spending a penny.

A Goblin could mine about 20 crystals in a day. Among them, the ratio of white jade crystal was half, so the value for performance exceeded 100. Although it the daily yield fluctuated between 27,000 and 33,000.

“By the way, where should I use this?”

He was plentiful with crystals, but whenever he used it, he somehow hesitated. That was why he didn’t use it for three weeks.

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“With a little more crystals, we could buy the Explorer’s Flag or a female Goblin.”

The explorer’s flag and the female goblin each cost 500,000 crystals. One or four more days and one of them would come to life.

“But it’s very vague.”

They would need both the explorer’s flag and female Goblins someday. In the end, it was something he had to buy. However, not right at the moment.

Explorer’s flag? They weren’t prepared enough to go out through the fog.

Female Goblin? Buying one now was useless.

“Yeah, don’t waste your money on it. Let’s save it. I’ll live well if I save it.”

It would take a lot of money to build walls and buildings in the future. If he used up crystals without thinking, he might have trouble when he needed them.

He bought a bottle of growth potion from the ancient shop and drank it. He drank one a day, like taking supplements those days.

Of course, there had been little physical change at that point. He used to feel like he was going from 10 to 100, but it felt like he was going from 100 to 100.5 these days.

It was a pity that the medicine didn’t work well, but one thing was for sure. He was getting stronger.

***

Ko Byeong-gap rested his chin and looked at the bonfire. The embers were dying out. He reached out and picked up a piece of dry firewood and threw it into the campfire.

“I feel like I’m getting more organized.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t help you enough.”

“No, thanks to you, I learned a lot.”

Ko Byeong-gap habitually bit the cigarette in his mouth. He lit up and sucked it in deeply. He then slowly brooded over the stories he had heard.

‘It’s a strange story.’

Darkness descended on Ashvilam. Ko Byeong-gap called Dorma to his private tent and had an in-depth conversation.

The subject of the conversation was clear. It was about their race and Ashvilam.

That was what the Goblin Shaman, Dorma, told him.

It started with their origins.

-Crack. Lord, you call it a crack. We don’t have a name for it. Well, as Lord said, the name doesn’t really matter. You asked where and what we did before we were in the crack? Unfortunately, I have nothing to answer for because I don’t remember.

Dorma replied that he didn’t remember.

The phenomenon was said to be similar to a dream.

Just as a dream he would have the previous day that would be quickly forgotten the next morning, their memories before coming to the crack were forgotten quickly.

The only thing left in his head at best was a very fragmented memory. Moreover, he added that even such fragments felt distant as if they were hundreds of years ago.

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Ko Byeong-gap asked him to tell him anything that came to mind, and Dorma replied.

-My last memory is… I was… No, we were running away. I can’t think of what I was being chased by.

-Are you saying that you’ve been chased by monsters or something?

-Well… I don’t even know if it was real or not. One thing’s for sure: we were terrified.

What came to mind was the memory of running away.

Ko Byeong-gap wanted more in-depth content but couldn’t get any more stories out. He then talked about Ashvilam and the Goblin Lord.

Fortunately, the memory of the past might’ve been erased, but his knowledge remained. Thanks to it, Ko Byeong-gap could hear more details than before.

-Ashvilam had already been destroyed since the ancestors of my ancestors. That’s why Ashvilam was a kind of legend to my generation. Nevertheless, my people always dreamed of returning to Ashvilam. To be honest, I’ve never even seen Ahsvilam, but I could feel it as soon as I came here.

-That… This is Ashvilam?

-Yes, I felt like I was back home. A hometown I’ve never been to.

-What is a Goblin Lord?

-The Goblin Lord is the same as Ashvilam. Legend, superstition, myth… That’s what the Lord was for us. One difference was that the Goblin Lord has existed in our generation.

-You had a lord other than me?

-Of course. I have a vague memory of the Lord. He was also a Goblin Lord that appeared for the first time in centuries, but he was ill. He didn’t have a mighty power or the virtues to lead his people. He passed away and was very inexperienced, and for the next few decades, the Lord’s seat was vacant. I thought I would never see the Lord again in my lifetime. But then, you, Lord, showed up.

-I was able to become the Goblin Lord thanks to a Goblin Shaman named Oddick. Do you happen to know him?

-Oddick? Oddick…

Dorma recalled the name Oddick for a long time. He shook his head in the end.

-I don’t know. Since Ashvilam’s fall, the people have been scattered throughout the continent. That’s why people of even our own kind look different. It’s the result of adapting to the environment we live in.

Ko Byeong-gap understood right away. There were Giant Goblins, Albino Goblins, Beast Goblins, etc.

The long story ended there. So, back to the present.

“I’m hungry. I’m hungry.”

The cigarette burned out before he knew it. He threw the butts into the campfire. Something flashed across his mind when he was about to clean up.

“Oh, and there’s one more thing I wanted to ask. Why don’t you guys have any women?”

“It’s because of the curse on the Goblins,” Dorma answered immediately.

‘Curse?’

The word ‘curse’ was familiar to him. He remembered seeing it somewhere. He immediately opened the ancient shop and read the entry about the ‘Female Goblin.’

[Female Goblin]

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-Price: 500,000 Crystal

-Description: A female goblin who became extinct by a curse. It has a breeding function and can give birth to females.

‘Right. It was said that they became extinct by a curse.’

He asked and closed the shop window, “What the hell kind of curse made all females extinct?”

“I don’t even know why the curse was placed on us. Only the story of Asvhilam’s rapid decline after the disappearance of the Female Goblins was handed down to us.”

“You mean there were no Female Goblins before Ashvilam was destroyed?”

“That’s right.”

“Then how were you born?” Ko Byeong-gap felt like he could ask such a question.

Dorma answered bluntly, “We were born with the magic of our predecessor.”

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“Magic?”

“Yes. When an old Goblin dies, it is reborn through magic.”

“No, that’s possible? That’s amazing! Then we don’t need a female? Can you do it?”

Dorma’s expression hardened. He shook his head heavily and said, “It’s not a great thing.”

“Why? It sounds great.”

“Goblins, born through magic, become inferior over the generations.”

Ko Byeong-gap tilted his head and didn’t understand Dorma’s words, but a second later, he let out a startling exclamation.

“Come on, you’re not…?”

“Yes.”

Dorma looked at the campsite with a mournful look.

“You may not know. Those poor children are no different from animals.”

“…”

“We’re getting inferior over the generations. They get smaller and smaller, and their power gets weaker and weaker. Our appearance becomes ugly, and our nature becomes simple. The change has reached a point where they can’t even speak properly.”

Ko Byeong-gap swallowed his words. He felt goosebumps all over his body.

‘Fuck…’

He thought that the Normal Goblins had a cute charm so far. Poor tone, small size, child-like innocence… but it was a product of a terrible curse.

Degradation.

The regression of evolution.

From an intelligent body to a beast… What in the world was more terrible than that? By analogy, a Normal Goblin was a patient with severe dementia.

“And did you ask me if I could do that spell? No, I can’t. The technique has also become inferior as the species become more inferior.”

“Right…”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Ko Byeong-gap felt dizzy in his head. Suddenly, his electrocuted spine became cold.

‘Go, the ancient shop!’

He opened the shop window like a possessed man.

‘That’s what happened!’

He was wide awake.

He looked into the ‘Seed of Enlightenment’ under the category of ‘Others.’

[Seed of Enlightenment]

-Price: 10,000,000 Crystals

-Description: Seed of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. It contains the spirit of a race that bought the wrath of God and eventually lost its wisdom. When the world tree sprouts, the long-standing aspirations of the race can be fulfilled.

‘They lost their wisdom in the wrath of God!’

It felt like the link was currently completed.

God’s curse… The result of the extinction of Female Goblins…

With the power of magic, they somehow escaped extinction, but the price was wisdom.

“Lord, sir, are you alright? You don’t look well.”

“… Uh, it’s okay. Dorma, you should go rest now. You did a great job talking today.”

“Okay. Have a nice night,” Dorma said, then left.

He looked up at the sky with a cigarette in his mouth. There were countless stars in the night sky.

“Whoa.”

Cigarette smoke scattered through the clear sky.

“To save the cursed race. It’s not something that can be solved by simply raising a few buildings.”

It was truly a thought-provoking night.