The rain was getting heavier and there was no shelter apart from their flimsy capes and hoods. Jin followed closely behind the three goblins as they paced themselves not to be found, kept hidden in the shadows when necessary.
From what Jin was told on the way, the Gob Gob Kingdom usually had a curfew at night with guards walking around. Unless you had an official pass or a work permit for the goblins that were required to work in the night, you were not allowed to walk around that late.
However, Goblin Pubs still function at night. As long as they stayed within the pubs during the night there would be no problems.
Hence, going into a Goblin Pub was a measure of skill and wits trying and hoping that you do not get caught. It’s a subtle way to promote subterfuge and training the goblin guards on duty too. Initially, the goblin citizens found it ridiculous until some official blurted out the reason during a Pub crawl, stating that the King wanted to encourage the goblin citizens not to forget their skills and hone their awareness despite the peace they were having.
The word spread and the curfew became an exercise for the Goblin Guards to spar in the night and the goblin citizens to practice their hiding abilities. Hence, the punishment for breaking the curfew was not severe nor kept in the records unless intentions to do malicious harm was found.
Initially, the goblins planned to get caught so that they could be brought into the castle almost immediately. This plan was quickly abandoned as Jin was with them and his treatment would be different. It was also a gamble since the guards might not necessarily recognise them, after all they did not know how much time had past after Jin captured them. Therefore, they decided to just find a nearby Goblin Pub while avoiding the guards.
As Jin followed the goblins, he noticed that he could learn a lot from them up close instead of just watching the goblins in action from the monitors. The timing to move, the places to hide and the coordination between the three of them were fantastic. They might not be exactly the strongest in terms of firepower in his assortment of creatures, but in Jin’s opinion, the goblins had the best teamwork coordination of all his monsters, though the Jacks came in as a close second place.
After hiding and almost encountering some extra vigilant goblin guards, the trio and Jin found their way to the nearest Goblin Pub where they were welcomed with open arms. The pub was boisterous with goblins chugging down rum and ale as if there was no tomorrow.
Ripcaller went towards the bartender and threw a gold coin on the table. The busy bartender who did not give a shit because of the ruckus happening in the pub suddenly shifted his attention to the gold coin. He picked it up and bit the coin to test its ‘authenticity’ before looking at Ripcaller.
“Hmm, you may order four drinks from the secret menu.” The Bartender said as he gave a quick glance at Ripcaller.
“No, I want information. The Night had dawn before the Sun turned black.” Ripcaller cited the secret passphrase that was unique to his family which the Bartender furrowed his eyebrow for a moment and sighed. It seemed it was an old passphrase, but it still checked out.
“Come with me. OEI YOU! PICK UP THE SLACK!” The Bartender shouted at one of his assistants as he beckoned the rest to follow him upstairs. Jin was rather surprised that there were multiple floors to the pub, but the higher you went, the quieter it got.
“The pubs also serve as a place of resting. You have your own names for such things… Hotels? Inns?” Piercestriker tried to use more modern words to describe the Goblin Pubs for Jin to understand since he was the tourist after all.
On the fifth floor, where the Bartender reached a particular room, the group stepped into the hall of his office as the Bartender sat at the desk but asked Jin outside for now. They knew he had the dispersing presence aura from his magical half panda mask and the silent cape, but it would be better if the Bartender did not know his exact identity. Jin agreed and he stayed outside while asking the System to open telepathic communications with the goblins inside the room.
“User can listen to what your monsters are listening. System can activate the particular ability if User wishes to.” The System offered and Jin nodded his head in silence. There was some fuzzy noise at first but eventually, he could clearly hear what the Goblin Trio were hearing.
“Give me a moment as I set up the communication stone.” The Bartender told them as he fiddled with some of the contraptions on his desk with a blue gem at the centre of it all. Eventually, it glowed and the Bartender eyed Ripcaller. “Speak of your business, Lost son of the Dagger General.”
“So you know who I am.” The goblin lowered his hood and the Bartender sighed as he confirmed Ripcaller’s identity.
“Of course. It was a big thing for the sons of three famous generals to disappear out of nowhere. Goblin scouts were sent to the site and they only found traces of dead guards, fighting and human footprints. However, there were no other footprints from the vicinity at all. While evidence was inconclusive, the scouts figured that a magical portal had to be used, which would indicate that a human mage of high talent still exists during the reign of the Gob Gob Kingdom.” The Bartender spoke as he looked at the other two hooded goblins who subsequently let their hoods down too.
“Heh. So the sons of Spear General and Sword General are still with you… Care to explain?” The Bartender asked as if there’s a juicy story waiting to be squeezed from a customer. This kind of information could be sold for a pretty penny.
“Now is not the time, what is the year and time? Did anything drastic happen while we were gone? More importantly did our disappearance cause anything with our neighbours?” Ripcaller asked in a solemn manner which led the Bartender to rub his stubble.
“I do not remember hearing gossips and rumours of the son of Dagger General to be this…calm.” Bartender took another look, but the appearance of the goblin did match the wanted poster. He resumed checking the communication stone while he continued to babble. Apparently, the goblins were gone for more than a year. The only reason the goblins could infer was that time was in fact relative between worlds just as Jin had guessed and warned them beforehand.
“Various secret missions were sent to scout the human towns after your disappearance but there was no news. Secret contacts also said that there was no kidnapping of any high ranked goblin nobles and so the Generals were desperate and conducted ‘exercises’ around the borders to the Gob Gob Kingdom. In actual fact, those were search parties in disguise to look for pockets of human resistance since they could not make a big deal of their sons being gone. It would have been a political disaster. Eventually, conclusive evidence from goblin sages noted that there were no traces of magic being used during the fight. You three were just suddenly gone from the world.” The Bartender explained as he now became very curious about how the three of them re-emerged again.
“Eventually, the generals gave up publicly. But behind the shadows, they continued to have us contracted to work with them. They suspected that internal politics were involved, so they had goblins check on the high ranking individuals. Occasionally the generals also send out quests to search for the ‘missing goblins’ and paid us in advance should you ever appear in Pubs…like now.” The Bartender opened his drawer and showed them the contracts.
“Other than that, I can provide you with a magical portal to the castle since the magical scroll came along with the contract. But be careful how you contact your parents, the Orcs are in the King’s castle tonight. You know how we cannot show weakness to the Orcs, even parental care.” The Bartender warned them as he wilfully summoned a portal.
“The Orcs? I thought the Orcs were enemies?” Slashreaver remembered his lessons on history about how they had once been slaves under the Orcs, but the humans and Orcs fought furiously before the goblins learnt how to take advantage of the situation and defeated both of them.
“Heh, how would I know? All I heard was that they are here for a courtesy visit.” The Bartender shrugged his shoulders.
“Why don’t we make our way to the castle ourselves instead of using the port-? …Oh.” Piercestriker initially thought of Jin who was not here in the room to take the portal but then they had forgotten how omnipotent their master was.
“Where does the portal exactly lead to?” Ripcaller asked and the Bartender replied stating it was the usual place. Only Ripcaller understood that as there was a mini Pub in the bas.e.m.e.nts of the Castle for goblin guards to relax too.
“Let’s get going. For some reason, I had a bad hunch that the Orcs are trouble.” Slashreaver had his hood up once more and took a breathe before walking into the Portal. Unknown to them, what the Goblin Trio were about to do with Jin would forever stay in the records of their history.
