Toru Nakajima never stood out except as a target. He got good grades,was quiet and polite but always got picked on. He was always too weak.. Too slow always the butt of every cruel joke that his classmates could conjure up. His mother was always working, and so was his older sister so his nights were spent doing homework, or losing himself in video games. “If only I could be like my knight character on this game.. Then I could show them whos boss.”
Years of bullying carved the timid boy into something hollow. One rain-soaked night, his classmates' cruelty went too far. Kicked, stabbed, and left to die in an alley, Toru’s final breath carried only a whisper. “If only I could be strong enough to make them suffer.”
When he opens his eyes again, it isn’t to sirens or heaven’s light
It’s to the stench of blood, mud, and rot. He’s been reborn as a goblin, a runt, the weakest of monsters, in a brutal world where strength is survival and mercy is extinction.
But something in Toru refuses to die. The instincts of a beast mix with the cunning of a man, and soon the goblin called Vris begins clawing his way upward.
He learns. He kills. He evolves.
And with every battle, the forest trembles a little more beneath his shadow.
From prey to predator. From victim to ruler.
This is the legend of Vris, the Goblin King of the Red Maw.
:
The cave reeked of iron and rot.
Flickering torchlight painted the walls in sickly yellow as the sound of labored breathing filled the hollow. Vris crouched low over the corpse of the larger goblin that had nearly split his skull moments before. His hands trembled not from fear, but from exhilaration.
The bigger one had called himself Grak, the alpha of their pack. Now Grak was just meat cooling on the stone.
Vris’s sharp teeth tore into the flesh with a hunger that wasn’t entirely his own. Warm, bitter blood ran down his chin as he swallowed chunks of muscle, gnawing until bone cracked beneath his jaw. It was disgusting. It was intoxicating.
Then it hit him.
A rush like fire flooding through his veins, burning away exhaustion and fear. His vision blurred, pulsing with a faint emerald glow. He could see the air shimmer, feel something ancient pressing against his mind.
[You have devoured a stronger foe.]
[Essence Assimilated: +Physical Strength, +Instinct.]
[Level Up: Rank increased from F– to F.]
Vris froze mid bite, staring down at the twitching remnants of the corpse. His chest heaved as realization crept in.
“...Stronger,” he rasped, the word foreign yet familiar on his tongue. “I... got stronger.”
A grin, sharp and feral, spread across his face. The pain of his wounds faded beneath the thrill coursing through him. For the first time since his rebirth, he felt something like purpose primitive, wild, and terrifying.
He licked the blood from his fingers and glanced at the shadows deeper within the cave. There were more goblins there. Bigger ones. Meaner ones. But none of them knew what he’d just learned.
The weak died here.
The strong fed.
And tonight, Vris had fed.
The dark was alive.
The cave walls groaned and whispered with the crawling of unseen things. Water dripped from the ceiling in irregular rhythms, like the ticking of a warped clock. In the far tunnels, shrieks echoed goblins fighting over scraps of meat, or perhaps fighting over nothing at all. In this place, everything was survival.
Vris had learned that quickly.
He crouched in a narrow crevice, eyes reflecting faint green light as he gnawed on a half-burned rat leg. The taste was vile, but the hunger was worse. It had been three days since the fight with Grak. Three days since he’d felt that surge of power from consuming the larger goblin’s essence.
That power still thrummed inside him an ember of something ancient, dangerous. It made him think, it made him want.
“If strength can be taken… then I’ll take it all.”
He whispered it to himself in the broken, hissing tongue the goblins used. The sound echoed faintly down the stone hallways, met only by the rasp of the underground wind.
Vris had begun to observe the tribe from the shadows. The goblins, crude as they were, built. They used scraps of bone and bark to make traps for cave rats, hollowed out bones for tools, and even crafted fire pits using oil from fungus that oozed along the walls.
They weren’t civilized no, not even close but they weren’t mindless either. Watching them was like peering into the earliest stages of a forgotten civilization.
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They hunted in packs.
They guarded their females.
They worshiped the largest among them until one grew larger still.
It was hierarchy, brutal and simple. Strength was law, and weakness was death.
But even savagery had a kind of… structure.
Vris pressed his clawed hand to the stone, tracing the grooves and claw marks carved by generations of goblin hands. His human memories flickered faintly school, textbooks, words like “evolution” and “instinct.” It all seemed meaningless now, but those fragments helped him understand what these creatures were.
“Monsters,” he muttered. Then, almost smiling, added under his breath, “...but clever ones.”
In the darkness, he saw two young goblins dragging a fungus-covered branch toward the central fire. They were filthy, shrieking little things but their teamwork, their coordination, it fascinated him. He realized then that goblins survived not just because they were vicious, but because they were adaptive. They learned. They copied. They endured.
And so would he.
Vris shifted back into the shadows, the embers of the fire casting his thin silhouette on the walls. His heart pounded as he watched the tribe. His mind raced faster than it ever had as a human. He was beginning to understand his place here, and how to change it.
To rule these tunnels, he would have to become both beast and mind.
To unite them, he would have to be something more.
His claws dug into the stone.
His yellow eyes gleamed in the dark.
“I’ll make this tribe into something new… something the world will learn to fear.”
The sound of distant roars rolled through the tunnels ogres or worse but Vris only smiled, fangs glinting faintly in the firelight.
The goblins were beasts.
But he… he would be evolution given form.
The ground shook before the roars came.
Vris had been half-asleep, tucked in a fissure in the cavern wall when the first tremor rippled through the Burrow. Dust fell from the ceiling. Goblins yelped in alarm. Then came the second, heavier boom and the sound of something massive dragging its bulk through the tunnels.
By the time Vris crept toward the main cavern, chaos had already erupted.
A hulking ogre, its flesh gray and slick with cave slime, lumbered into the goblins’ nesting ground. It was twice the height of a man and as wide as three. Its eyes glowed faint yellow, and in one fist it clutched a half-eaten cave boar, bones and all. Goblins scattered like insects, shrieking, hurling rocks and crude spears that broke harmlessly against its hide.
The creature bellowed, swung its arm, and crushed two goblins into the stone floor. Blood sprayed the walls. Another swipe sent a third screaming into the fire pit. The ogre roared in triumph and stooped over the tribe’s food cache rotted meat, fungus, and bones and began to devour it, heedless of the small green things clawing at its ankles.
Vris crouched behind a jagged pillar of stone, heart pounding.
He could smell the ogre’s sweat and the iron tang of blood.
He could feel the hopeless panic rippling through the tribe.
The largest goblin their self-proclaimed boss was barking orders in broken shouts, too afraid to charge but too proud to flee. The others followed his panic, not his command.
Vris’s claws tightened.
They would all die like this.
Unless…
He looked up. The ceiling was riddled with loose stones, hanging precariously where the ogre’s entrance had cracked the tunnel. Above the beast’s head, the weight of the cavern trembled.
Vris bared his teeth and slipped into the darkness.
He moved through the shadows like a whisper, crawling along a side tunnel that led above the main cavern. His body blended into the rock, the scent of blood masking his presence. Below, the ogre was still feasting, ripping limbs from a fallen goblin.
Vris took one of the tribe’s half-burned torches from the wall. The flame was weak perfect for what he intended. He pressed it to a thick strand of fungus growing along the ceiling. The stuff was oily, and it caught fire almost instantly.
The ogre looked up, confused, as orange light rippled above him.
Then the roof began to groan.
Crk... crk... CRAAAAASH!
The ceiling gave way, sending a rain of stone shards and burning fungus down upon the monster. It roared in fury, thrashing blindly. The goblins, wide-eyed, saw their chance.
They swarmed.
Spears jabbed. Rocks flew. For the first time, their frenzy had purpose.
The ogre smashed and flailed, bleeding from its eye and shoulder. The boss howled encouragement, trying to reclaim command but the tribe’s eyes weren’t on him anymore. They followed the small figure standing in the smoke above the broken ledge, eyes glinting with feral cunning.
Vris leapt from the shadows, landed on the ogre’s neck, and drove a jagged bone dagger into its throat. He tore, twisted, and bit down with sharp goblin teeth until hot blood poured over him.
The ogre fell with a thunderous crash.
Silence followed shocked, disbelieving.
Vris rose slowly from the corpse, chest heaving, dripping red. Then the voice came again, cold and familiar inside his skull.
[You have slain a creature of higher rank.]
[Essence Assimilated: +Vitality, +Strength.]
[Level Up: F → F+]
His pulse quickened. He could feel it again that heat, that rush of power sinking into his bones. The tribe watched, wide-eyed, as his shadow seemed to stretch across the cavern wall.
The boss stepped forward, face twisted in fury. He jabbed a claw toward Vris, spitting curses in the crude goblin tongue.
The meaning was clear enough:
You stole my kill.
Vris met his glare and smiled, the same cruel grin he’d once seen on human faces that beat him to death.
He crouched over the ogre’s body and tore a chunk from its heart, never breaking eye contact. Blood ran down his chin as he swallowed.
The boss hesitated.
The tribe murmured.
And in that single heartbeat of uncertainty, Vris knew the fight for leadership had begun.