WildHorizon Guild — Outside the Wall, 8:00 AM
Bathhouse
Dylan sat on a wooden bench inside the bathhouse, reviewing a contract paperwork in his hands while Connor and Rose finished getting dressed.
"More lumber-gathering?" Dylan asked the empty air as he read.
This marked yet another tedious timber-harvesting commission. Apparently, local woodcutters had outright refused to step foot near the southern forest anymore, leaving the citizenry desperate to secure more building materials—particularly to finish constructing the defensive wall separating the treeline from the capital.
Connor stepped out of the shower stall, drying his damp blonde hair with a towel, followed shortly by Rose, who was similarly toweling off her long blonde locks.
"It's to be expected. The civilians are terrified of another sudden war. From what I gather, the pig-men caught everyone completely off guard when they attacked, even though intelligence suggested they were still two months out," Connor remarked before beginning to change into his gear.
As Connor bent down to grab his trousers, Rose cast a quick, appreciative glance at his rear before delivering a sharp slap to it, causing Connor to grunt and whip around with an annoyed glare.
Rose instantly threw her hands up in mock surrender, though a mischievous, unrepentant grin remained plastered across her face. She had zero regrets.
Shaking his head, Connor quietly finished getting dressed.
"You know, when I first woke up in this body, I honestly thought I'd slowly transition into a full biological woman over time," Rose mused, absentmindedly cupping her small, softly rounded breasts, which looked thoroughly feminine alongside the rest of her physique. She then reached down to gently massage her flaccid penis. "Even noticed my member shrinking a bit, but then the changes just plateaued... I guess I really am going to have to shell out the fortune for that transfiguration potion Melissa mentioned a few days ago."
"Did you get even more brazen and shameless, too?" Dylan asked sarcastically, intentionally averting his eyes from where Rose was fondling herself.
"YES!" Rose fired back immediately. "And you too! You know, marico—back in our world, even though I had plenty of similar thoughts and considered myself a pretty kinky, wild freak, I never would've had the nerve to actually... act like this. But here? It's like all those internal filters just evaporated!"
"Unfortunately," Dylan muttered before tossing a spare pair of trousers at her. "Put those on, you male-harasser."
With a dramatic pout, Rose began pulling her pants on.
"What's a marico?" Connor asked out of nowhere, capturing both Dylan and Rose's immediate attention.
"Marico? I don't know, why do you ask?" Dylan replied curiously.
"Rose just called you that," Connor stated, looking perplexed.
Right at that exact second, a strange realization hit Dylan: Rose had actually spoken a word in a completely foreign tongue. Yet, ever since they had arrived, everyone had been speaking fluid English to one another... or had they?
"Now that you mention it, marico—" Rose repeated the colloquialism while pausing to think deeply. "Wait. How on earth are we speaking Spanish so fluently right now? I figured the locals here would be speaking a totally different language!"
"Spanish? We're speaking English, aren't we?" Dylan blurted out, baffled.
"What the hell are you two rambling about? We're speaking Valthirian. It's the only language that exists in Vaelthar," Connor pointed out, raising an eyebrow.
The three of them stared at one another in sudden silence. Connor remained the calmest, entirely certain they were conversing in standard Valthirian. Dylan and Rose, on the other hand, experienced a jarring crash back to reality—only just noticing in that very moment that they had been speaking a native tongue with total, effortless fluency all along.
Southern Forest — 11:00 AM This chapter is updated first at g.com.
*BAM*
A goblin was blasted backward through the air by a fierce kick from Dylan, slamming hard against the trunk of a massive pine tree.
"I have to hand it to you, Connor. Those training sessions felt like they unlocked a dormant instinct inside me; I can genuinely feel the physical gap between now and when I first woke up in the guild infirmary two weeks ago," Dylan admitted with total candor.
Two weeks prior, when Dylan had first regained consciousness under Melissa's care, he hadn't felt the slightest physical alteration. But now, the accumulated conditioning allowed him to effortlessly exert force far exceeding that of an ordinary human.
(It's a bizarre sensation... but I can't say I dislike it,) Dylan thought, watching the slumped goblin he had just kicked lie crushed against the bark.
"Well, at least one of you is actually putting effort into adapting to this world, whereas the other..." Connor grabbed a passing goblin by the throat, snapping its neck instantly with pure grip strength. He turned his gaze toward Rose, who was currently struggling clumsily to dodge a pair of aggressive goblins.
"Don't judge me! We girls are delicate creatures; we don't pick up combat footwork as fast as you guys!" Rose tried to excuse herself, wilting under Connor's disapproving stare.
"If one of my mothers heard you say that, they would've turned you into red paste in a second," Connor retorted dryly.
"AGHK—Long live the—Agh!" A goblin leaped down from an overhead branch, only to be cleanly impaled mid-air by Dylan's sword.
"Did you say something?" Connor called out, glancing back at Dylan.
"Hm? No. You must've hallucinated whatever gibberish that goblin was shouting," Dylan lied smoothly, earning a hearty laugh from Connor at the absurd notion.
"Impossible, goblins don't—"
"GHAK!! Die, human!" another goblin suddenly burst from the thicket, shrieking at the top of its lungs and completely blowing its own stealth.
Connor turned to stare at the goblin in utter bewilderment, reaching out to grab it by the neck mid-charge and yanking it close to his face.
"He... Did you just say something?" Connor asked, deeply unsettled.
"Human... fool... Cough, cough!" the goblin choked, struggling vainly for air inside Connor's iron grip.
Connor listened closely, his expression twisting into profound shock. Without a word, he slammed the goblin violently down into the muddy earth and planted a heavy boot squarely over its chest.
"Do it again, you pathetic little creature!" Connor demanded, leveling the tip of his sword right between the goblin's eyes.
The goblin stared at the steel blade in sheer terror, trying to squirm backward, but Connor's foot kept it pinned fast.
Drawn by Connor's sudden outburst of erratic behavior, Dylan and Rose hurried over out of curiosity.
"What's wrong, Connor? Just finish it," Dylan urged.
"Didn't you hear it?! It spoke!" Connor exclaimed, his face locked in absolute confusion as he demanded answers.
"Yeah, and?" Dylan replied flatly, failing to see what the big deal was. Goblins had been running their mouths ever since he first encountered them. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
"Goblins aren't supposed to speak!" Connor roared, lifting his boot and stomping down on the goblin's head, crushing it instantly.
"Of course they do!" Dylan argued back. "Ever since I first ran into them, they've always talked!"
"And you didn't think to mention that to anyone?! Didn't you find it even slightly disturbing that we were slaughtering intelligent, sapient creatures?!" Connor pressed, dumbfounded.
"Well, yeah, of course I did! But since every local adventurer treated them like mindless vermin, I figured it was just some weird cultural norm over time," Dylan excused himself quickly. "Besides, it doesn't help that goblins only ever screech about their own supposed superiority—they aren't actually all that smart."
"Wait... have you actually talked to them? Like, an actual conversation?" Connor asked, his jaw dropping.
"Sure. They're insanely arrogant; the second you humor them by acknowledging their strength, they just start gloating endlessly."
Three hours later, the trio pushed deeper into the dense undergrowth of the southern forest, eventually spotting a lone goblin crouched by a cluster of crimson blood-blossoms, seemingly harvesting the flora.
(I wonder what those flowers are even used for?) Connor pondered quietly, watching the creature handle the plants.
Dylan signaled with a hand gesture for Connor and Rose to hold their positions while he approached the goblin alone.
Slipping quietly out from behind the ferns, Dylan stepped out into the open path right in front of the goblin.
"GHAK, human! I won't let you interfere with the Grand Connoisseur's grand designs!" the goblin screeched furiously, brandishing a crude stone dagger and preparing to charge.
"Whoa, easy there. I'm not here to interfere; I just wanted to ask you a few things about your kind," Dylan said, raising his hands in a placating gesture.
"Ask about us?... Hah! Typical idiotic human wanting to learn the ways of superior beings. The Grand Connoisseur is the pinnacle of all wisdom!" the goblin barked proudly, waving its tiny dagger in the air.
"Grand Connoisseur? Who's that?" Dylan inquired, playing along. He knew that as long as he kept feeding the creature's ego, the goblin would happily spill every secret it knew.
"The Grand Connoisseur is the true chosen one blessed by the arcane arts! He forged his wisdom entirely on his own by reenacting a sacred pact," the goblin explained with manic enthusiasm. "By gouging out his own eye and hanging himself from the branch of a sacred tree, he attained supreme wisdom and cosmic power! Just like the great Odin, god of gods! Only we goblins possess the sheer mental capacity to achieve such enlightenment!"
The goblin danced around excitedly, intoxicated by the grandness of its own words, visions of its almighty leader clearly dominating its tiny mind.
"So... does that mean if you perform that exact same ritual, you'll become just as powerful as this Grand Connoisseur?" Dylan asked innocently, planting the seed.
Thirty minutes later, the goblin hung lifelessly from a thick tree branch, its own crude stone dagger jammed straight through its eye socket.
"I can't believe it actually went through with it..." Rose muttered in utter disbelief, staring up at the swinging corpse.
"It seems they truly did acquire cognitive intelligence. But they completely lack logical reasoning," Connor analyzed, lowering his gaze from the dead goblin.
"Told you—they aren't that smart," Dylan concluded with a shrug.