"Why not?" The female goblin looked at Protector's group with spite and envy. "If not for the Harmonizer, I would have already grown old and died. Now, instead, I'm smarter and more powerful than I would have ever been as a fallen goblin.
"Who cares about a few runts? As long as I'm alive I can always have more!" The goblin used her words to mess with their heads and cast earth magic to take them down with a surprise attack.
The walls, the ground, and the ceiling around the group of invaders bloated like a bubble before exploding into countless razor-sharp shards, attacking them from every side.
'How conceited! It's easy for those who that belong to perfect races to talk like that.' She thought. 'I can't let them ruin my life. If I kill the intruders, maybe the Lord will reward me with a superior Harmonizer, like he did with Rhona.'
Unfortunately for her, none of them trusted a goblin farther than they can throw her and had been on guard all along. They had already seen reverted goblins use true magic and there was no reason to think that the one in front of them was any different..
Protector slipped his hand under her neck and squeezed it hard enough to make it almost impossible to breathe while a simple air barrier sent all the rock shards to crash against an empty wall.
"What does this Lord look like?" Protector asked while fiddling with the collar's clasp, threatening to open it.
"He always changes his appearance. The last time he looked like an old man with golden eyes. All I know is that his name is Ajatar and he is the Lord of this region." The goblin wheezed for air with each word she spoke.
"That's bullshit. Master Ajatar never had the time to do something like this." Morok spat on the ground in disgust at those accusations. "On top of that, he would have never sent us here if this was really his doing."
"Agreed." Ryman nodded. "Clearly this guy must have used Ajatar's name so to shift the blame in the case their experiments got exposed. I wouldn't be surprised if they even left something to incriminate your master with the Council."
"One last question. Does the Lord have their private quarters here and is there some place where he forbade you to go?"
The goblin hesitated and Protector released his grip while also opening the clasp.
Without the collar, the goblin's body reverted to its fallen state, with translucent skin, a bloated belly, and oversized eyes yet she didn't die.
The transformation seemed to be painful, but the creature didn't care. She just took the metal ring and put it back around her neck, shivering in pleasure as she regained her unfallen appearance.
"It's just as I thought. We cannot trust a word she said." Protector said while looking at the bloodlust and madness that shone in the goblin's eyes no matter what form she took. "The Harmonizers fix a monster's body, not their mind.
"These creatures are too dangerous to be allowed to live and their treachery cannot be underestimated." Ice shards pierced the goblin's head, double tapping her just to stay on the safe side.
The corpse quickly reverted to that of a fallen goblin. Without a mana flow, the magic of the collar had stopped working.
"You can leave the room if you want. I'll put the specimens out of their misery." Protector said to Quylla while pointing at the creatures chained to the walls.
"Can't we just remove the collars and try to heal them?" She asked.
Killing a monster in the heat of the battle to save her life was one thing, killing defenseless creatures in cold blood was another.
"And then what? Even if they somehow regained their sanity, they would still be dangerous creatures that are a threat to every living being. Waiting for monsters to kill someone before getting rid of them is just stupid." Morok said.
"Every life they take would be on us. On top of that, we still have to finish exploring the compound. If there is even a single reverted Balor left, we can't afford to have monsters on our back."
"You are right." Quylla thought back at the female goblin's words and then looked at the collection of agonizing creatures in front of her. "No matter their appearance, they are still monsters who prey on their own kind.
"Yet not even creatures like them deserve to pointlessly suffer."
She closed the eyes of the test subjects one by one, snuffing their life out with darkness magic so quickly that they didn't even notice. The spasms stopped and the tears ended peacefully as if they had just fallen asleep.
Every time Quylla killed someone, Yurial's face flashed in front of her eyes. She still remembered his surprised expression, the betrayal he had felt being attacked by someone he thought of as a friend, and the blood gushing out of his throat.
Her eyes veiled with tears, but she didn't cry nor did she stop weaving spells.
"You didn't have to do that. I could have taken care of it myself." Protector said, knowing how deep her trauma was.
"Thanks, but I can't expect that there will always be someone to do the dirty work for me. If I wanted to keep my hands clean, I would have remained at the academy." Quylla said. "Let's take the Harmonizers as evidence and study them.
"Who knows? Maybe something good will come out of them."
She choked on her words as the artifacts started to crumble soon after their wearer was dead, before Quylla or one of the others could store them inside a dimensional item.
"This makes no sense! The collar didn't self-destruct once you removed it from the goblin's neck nor after her death. Why now?" She asked her companions.
"Because someone must have triggered the mechanism from a distance." Nalrond said as he could suddenly feel the mana of the geyser around them turn against itself.
The caves started to quake as the cloaking arrays that had shielded the base overloaded themselves with mana, making the compound collapse.
"We're dead!" Morok said, knowing that there was no time to escape from the tunnels by flight nor to open a Warp Steps. "I'm sorry for dragging you into this mess. This is all my fault, just like when I Awakened to avenge you.
"I don't want you to die feeling guilty for a creep like me. I-"
Quylla stared at him in amazement, yet she didn't interrupt either her hands or chant, making a red dimensional door appear in front of them and jumping through it, quickly followed by the others.
"I left a Home Stone outside while waiting for Nalrond to let us in." Quylla answered the silent question in the stupefied gazes of her comrades while retrieving the dimensional device from the ground.
"My father is now more paranoid than my mother and he gave the Stone to me just in case something like that happened." Then she turned to Morok.
"What did you just say about your Awakening?"
***
Blood Desert, Heavenly Plume tribe, Salaark Palace, inside Solus's tower.
After his meeting with Xenagrosh and Sinmara, Lith had decided to follow in the footsteps of the Phoenix of Darkness for his training with Origin Flames.
