The words hung in the air, a declaration of fealty that was both terrifying and profoundly satisfying. Gnar, the one-eyed scavenger, was gone. In his place knelt a creature of purpose and power, his new, deeper voice a resonant promise of the violence to come. One by one, the others began to stir, their groans of transformation giving way to grunts of dawning awareness. They rose, not as a clumsy, shuffling pack, but as a unit, their movements holding a new, coordinated grace.
They were taller, their hunched postures straightened into proud, warrior stances. Their sallow green skin had taken on a healthier, olive-grey hue, and their muscles, once stringy and inadequate, were now dense, powerful cords. The brutish, porcine features had sharpened, their eyes, once dull and black, now held a keen, intelligent light. They were no longer goblins. They were an army of nascent Hobgoblins, reborn in the light of a false goddess and the desperate machinations of a terrified scholar.
My first instinct, the one that had kept me alive this long, was to verify the data. I closed my eyes, pushing past the awe and the fear, and dove into the cool, clean interface of the System. I focused on Gnar.
[Target: Gnar, Hobgoblin War-Chief (Level 6)]
[Biomass Assimilated: 1054 / 5000 (Next Threshold: Hobgoblin Elite)]
[Attribute Thresholds Met & Evolved!]
[STR: 9]
[VIT: 9]
[DEX: 8]
[INT: 9]
[WIL: 10]
[Status: Evolution Complete. Awaiting Orders.]
My breath caught in my throat. The numbers were better than I could have possibly hoped. The evolutionary leap hadn't just met the minimum requirements; it had amplified them. A Strength of 9 was monstrous, likely on par with the Orcs we had fought. But it was the Intelligence score that truly staggered me. Nine. He was not just a stronger goblin; he was a fundamentally smarter being. I ran a quick check on the others. Pip, Gruk, Snag—all of them showed similar, dramatic leaps. Their core stats had been boosted across the board, their Intelligence now sitting at a solid, respectable 7 or 8. They were no longer just a pack of rabid dogs. They were a squad of intelligent, disciplined shock troops.
And they were all looking at me, their new, keen eyes filled with a fanatical devotion.
It was in that moment, looking into Gnar's intelligent, analytical gaze, that I realized the profound absurdity of my own appearance. I was still wearing the shimmering, low-resolution goblin illusion, a cheap costume that had been convincing enough for the dull-witted creatures they had been, but was now a transparent, almost insulting lie to the intelligent warriors they had become. To continue the charade would be to underestimate them, a fatal mistake for any leader.
You have to be realistic about these things. The pretense was over.
With a quiet, mental command, I let the illusion drop.
The shimmering, greasy field of deception that had cloaked me for days collapsed inward, dissolving into nothingness with a faint, almost inaudible sigh of displaced air. I stood before them as myself for the first time: Kale Lucas, a pale, strange, soft-skinned creature in a torn tunic and a crude leather harness. I was not a goblin prophet. I was not a divine messenger. I was a human, an enemy, a Bigskin.
A tense silence fell over the clearing. The ten newly-forged Hobgoblins stared at me, their expressions unreadable. This was the moment of truth, the point where the entire beautiful, insane plan could shatter. Their Prophet's Speaker was an imposter. Their faith was built on a lie.
Elara, who had risen to her feet, tensed beside me, her hand moving to the hilt of her axe. She was ready for the betrayal, for the inevitable explosion of violence.
But it never came.
Gnar looked at me, at my pale skin, my round ears, my complete and utter lack of goblin-ness. He blinked his one good eye, processing the new data with his new, enhanced intellect. He looked at my face, then at the still-sleeping form of Elara, then back to me. A slow, deep, rumbling sound started in his chest. It was not a growl of anger. It was a chuckle.
He turned to his crew, who were watching him, their cues taken entirely from their leader.
"Huh," Gnar said, his new, resonant baritone filled with a strange, dry amusement. "So the Speaker for the Sky-Chief is a Bigskin." He shrugged, a gesture so profoundly, unexpectedly casual it left me momentarily speechless. "Makes sense. The Bigskin magic is strong."
And that was it.
There was no cry of outrage. No accusation of betrayal. There was only a simple, pragmatic acceptance of a new fact. Their loyalty, I realized with a profound sense of relief, was not to the form I wore, but to the results I produced. I had shown them the path to power. I had given them a god to believe in. I had delivered on every single one of my impossible promises. Whether I was a goblin, a human, or a three-headed swamp monster was, to their brutally practical minds, an irrelevant, trivial detail.
Gruk, the grumbler, just grunted. "Bigskin, goblin… who cares? He showed us the numbers. That's what matters."
Pip, his own small frame now taller, stronger, looked at me with the same wide-eyed, hero-worshipping devotion as before. The package was different, but the contents were the same. I was the one who had given him a spear and a purpose. That was his truth.
Gnar stepped forward, his gaze meeting mine. The last vestiges of the master-supplicant dynamic were gone. We were now two leaders, two commanders, assessing each other before a war.
"Your magic is a good lie, Speaker," he said, the statement a compliment of the highest order in goblin culture. "A strong weapon." He gestured to his own, newly powerful form. "And it has made us strong."
He then turned his gaze towards the direction of the goblin camp, a cold, hard fire burning in his single eye.
"Now," he growled, a predatory smile spreading across his new, intelligent face. "We show Grul the new tribe."
Their loyalty was not to me, the man. It was to me, the concept. I was the living embodiment of the System's promise, the one who could read the ghost-writing and show them the path to bigger numbers. My humanity was just another strange and powerful attribute, like Elara's impossible speed or Lyra's holy light. It was a piece of my magic, and they respected magic.
"So," Gnar said, his new, resonant baritone cutting through the silence. He gestured with a broad, powerful hand towards the distant goblin camp. "The plan, Speaker. You said you had one. You said we would be the new head of the snake."
The war council had convened. It consisted of me, a battered scholar with a broken shoulder and a head full of Earth-bound military history; Elara, a one-woman death squad with a fresh level-up and a simmering, protective rage; and ten Hobgoblins who were, for all intents and purposes, a day old and already spoiling for a fight.
I took a stick and drew in the dirt, the crude lines a stark contrast to the complex, brutal elegance of the strategy they represented. "The camp is not a single target," I began, my voice clear and steady, the familiar cadence of a lecturer returning. "It is a beast with three heads. To kill it, we must sever all three at once."
I drew a large, lopsided circle to represent the chieftain's hut. "This is the first head: Grul. He is the will of the tribe. The political leader. He is strong, but he is soft, protected by his Bully Boys. His death will create a power vacuum. It will cause chaos."
I drew a second, smaller circle nearby. "This is the second head: the Pain-Artist. The torturer. He is not a warrior, but he is the source of their control. He is the one who breaks the spirits of captives and dissenters. He is the fear that keeps the tribe in line. His death will be a symbol. It will be a message to the broken that their tormentor is gone. It will give them the courage to run when the doors open."
Finally, I drew a scattering of smaller circles around the main fire pit. "And this is the third, and most dangerous, head: the Bully Boys. They are Grul's enforcers. The five strongest warriors in the camp, not counting Grul himself. They are the physical power of the regime. They must be eliminated before they can rally the rest of the tribe. If they are left standing, they will crush our rebellion before it can even begin."
Gnar stared at the crude map, his one eye narrowed in concentration. His new mind was processing the information, seeing the logic. "Three heads," he growled. "All must fall at the same time. A hard thing. We are only twelve."
"Thirteen," Elara corrected quietly, stepping forward. "And we will not fight them with numbers. We will fight them with a weapon they have never seen before. We will fight them with a plan."
And so, the training began. The clearing became our classroom, our barracks, our proving ground. The next two days were a blur of sweat, pain, and the slow, agonizing process of forging a disciplined military unit from the raw, chaotic material of goblin nature.
My role was the strategist, the teacher. I drew on a lifetime of useless knowledge, the forgotten history lessons, the documentaries on ancient warfare, the strategy games I had played in my dorm room. It all came flooding back, not as trivia, but as a deadly, practical curriculum.
"The principle is called Asymmetric Warfare," I explained, pacing before the assembled Hobgoblins. They stared at me blankly. I sighed. "Okay. New term. The principle is called 'The Big Ones Are Stupid.' They are strong, so they think strength is the only answer. They will charge. They will swing their big weapons. They will expect you to meet them head-on and die. We will not do that. We will be the trap that the rock falls into. We will be the water that flows around the stone."
Elara was the drill sergeant, the brutal, physical manifestation of my theories. She took the concept of the shield wall, which they had barely grasped as goblins, and she evolved it.
"This is not a wall!" she roared, kicking Gruk's shield so hard the big Hobgoblin staggered. "This is a pile of junk! Lock them! Overlap! Your shield protects the man next to you as much as it protects you! You are not twelve warriors! You are one beast with twelve bodies and a shell of wood and iron!"
She taught them the phalanx, a simple but brutally effective formation for advancing across open ground. She taught them the testudo, the tortoise, a defensive shell for weathering a storm of arrows. She made them practice it by having Snag and Pip climb onto the rocks above and hurl stones down at them until they learned to lock their shields overhead without flinching.
While Elara forged their bodies, I worked on their minds.
"The kill box," I said, drawing a new diagram in the dirt. A narrow path between two groups of our warriors. "The enemy is funneled here. They think they are charging a small group. But the real threat is here, and here." I pointed to the flanks. "You do not need to be strong enough to kill them. You just need to be disciplined enough to hold them in place while the real damage comes from the sides. We will bleed them, harass them, break their morale before the final blow ever falls."
They began to understand. Their new intelligence allowed them to grasp the geometry of the battlefield, the simple, brutal elegance of a well-sprung trap. Gnar, in particular, proved to be a gifted student of tactics.
"If we pull back from one flank," he mused, his one eye tracing the lines in the dirt, "they will turn to face the greater threat. This leaves their back exposed to the first group. Good. Very good. We can make them dance to our song."
He was no longer just a brute. He was a commander.
The final lesson was my own specialty. Psychological warfare.
"Fear is a weapon," I told them, my voice a low, conspiratorial whisper. "It is more powerful than any axe. Grul's tribe is held together by fear. We will turn that weapon against them. We will not just be warriors. We will be ghosts. We will be nightmares."
Corvus, perched on my shoulder, let out a dry, rasping caw of approval. "Now you're talking, Speaker. A proper application of misery."
We practiced feints. Diversions. We taught them how to use the darkness, how to use sound. We had Pip, their smallest and fastest member, act as a lure, his job to create a disturbance on one side of the clearing, drawing the attention of a mock patrol, while the main force, the 'hammer', swung around to strike them from the unprotected rear.
It was a slow, brutal education. There were mistakes. There were injuries. Tempers flared. Gruk, the grumbler, complained endlessly about the complexity of the formations, until Elara silenced him by disarming him and putting him on his back in less than three seconds. He didn't complain after that.
But through it all, they learned. The change was remarkable. The clumsy, bickering pack of scavengers was gone. In their place stood a cohesive, disciplined unit. They moved together, they fought together, they thought together. Their crude spears were held at a uniform angle. Their shields, now reinforced with strips of cured Lurker hide, were locked in an almost perfect line. Their eyes, once dull and fearful, now held the sharp, focused light of soldiers who understood their mission.
On the dawn of the third day, the training was complete. We were as ready as we would ever be.
I stood before them, my own armor a patchwork of scavenged leather and newly-forged iron plates, a testament to Leo's tireless work before we had left. The short sword at my hip felt less like a foreign object and more like a part of me. Elara stood at my side, a silent, deadly shadow in her new, perfectly fitted suit of hardened black Lurker-hide armor. She looked less like a Ranger and more like a royal assassin.
My Gutter-Guard, my thirteen-strong army (counting Elara and myself), stood before us in a perfect, silent formation. Lia, my tiny, impossible ward, was being held by Mog, the fat Hobgoblin, who had, to everyone's surprise, revealed a gentle, protective streak. She was our mascot, our living, breathing reason to fight.
"Today," I said, my voice quiet but carrying in the cold morning air, "we do not march to a hunt. We march to a war. We march to cleanse the filth from our tribe. We march to liberate our brothers and sisters, both goblin and human, from the tyranny of a false chieftain."
I looked at Gnar. "War-Chief. Your orders."
Gnar stepped forward. He drew the new sword that Leo had forged for him, a heavy, brutally efficient weapon of clean, dark iron. He raised it high, the morning light glinting off the polished steel.
"For the MourningLord!" he roared, his voice a deep, resonant thunder that echoed through the clearing.
"FOR THE MOURNINGLORD!" a chorus of twelve savage voices roared back, a single, unified declaration of faith and war.
I looked at Elara, and she met my gaze. A slow, dangerous smile touched her lips. "Ready when you are, boss."
I nodded, a grim satisfaction settling in my gut. The pieces were in place. The army was forged. The plan was set.
"Then let's begin," I said.