Tanuki and Six stared at the portal in the distance. The tribe chief of the goblins, Soup had entered the realm, though she would not participate in the attack. The system would not allow her to harm anyone in Tanuki’s realm, not until it was her time to attack. Instead, it did allow her as much as to observe the boy’s realm and speak a few sentences.

  She did, and not without reason. A good speech could seriously affect the enemy’s morale. Soup knew, so she made sure to go into detail about the savagery of her tribe and the fate of Tanuki’s realm and people: pillaged, eaten, destroyed.

  There was only one small issue with her speech.

  “Can you hear what she’s saying?” Tanuki turned to Six.

  The plantfolk shook his head. Neither of them could from this distance.

  Soup showed her sharp fangs in a final laugh before leaving through the portal. A loud bell rang out after, wailing for the first of three waves.

  Woodrow and the villagers readied their bows in the backline. Edgar stood nearby, hands locked beneath his robe. Since his accident, he bore very little strength and could not do anything to assist the others.

  Six held his wooden shield at chest height. His right fist crunched around the sword. He still wore the cape and crown made by the other plantfolks. Remembering their support gave him all the strength to defeat his enemies.

  Silence stretched its claws like a cat around the realm, watching with curious gloat.

  This wave would consist of two parts. The first to attack were two goblin scouts, followed by three regular warriors.

  There should have been two tiny green creatures charging into Tanuki’s realm, shouting tribal battle-cries.

  Yet none have come.

  “Where are they?” Six turned to Tanuki.

  The boy did not answer. Rather than watching the portal, Tanuki’s eyes guarded a fixed point between the portal and the blockade. Six did not understand it at first, but when he followed Tanuki’s gaze, it revealed to him.

  Of the three health potions he had, Tanuki used one to save Edgar, kept the other in his pocket just in case, and used the last one to summon a soulless husk. Ever since its creation, it remained waiting in the grass, holding onto a rope made by Woodrow. The rope’s other end was tied to a pole planted into the ground on the other side of the road, nearly invisible in the tall green.

  “Have you noticed? Good job, Six.”

  Tanuki grew a playful smile, his eyes unmoving from the rope.

  “I’ve been thinking about enemy units. What makes a unit special? What’s the difference between a regular goblin and a goblin scout? The answer seems obvious, right? One gets to go first, the other must wait. It’s like proper etiquette. When a man and a woman come to a door, it’s expected of the man to let the lady first. Why? Because that’s what the code says and what it requires. Then I thought about it some more. Is it that same code that determines the types of units?”

  A quiet breeze reflected the golden light of the setting sun as it passed between them.

  Six could not find an answer.

  “It was just a random thought that came to me at night, but since then it never left me. There is a correlation between doors and waves. It’s not that women couldn’t wait for their turn to enter, nor do I think they would necessarily care should they go last. It’s the men who made those rules. Why? Because they were stronger. Women earned that special behaviour not because they asked for it, but because men deemed them the weaker sex.”

  “Liege, I do not follow.”

  “It’s the same with scouts. Their role was given to them by the stronger goblins who deemed them weak. Why did they do that? It cannot be related to sex since the tribe is led by a woman. Could it relate to physical strength? I don’t think so. Based on Soup’s savagery, I don’t think they would leave the weaker tribesmen alive. Then what exactly makes these units weaker? Not whether they can put up a fight, but how they do it.”

  Tanuki raised his hand a little so it would draw only Six’s attention. His finger pointed somewhere in the grass.

  “Focus,” Tanuki instructed.

  Six had lowered his weapon since no enemies were present, but as soon as he saw what Tanuki was pointing at, he corrected that mistake.

  It was not something in the grass, but the grass itself that moved unnaturally. A line slithered towards them, parting the grass. Something fast was approaching, and when Six listened closely, he could hear its feet slap against the earth.

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  Tanuki’s grin grew wide with self-assurance. “Goblins praise brutality. Those who kill quickly and silently are considered weak by the tribe.”

  The shapes moved steadily through the grass, but as soon as they got in range of the rope, Tanuki instructed the soulless husk to pull, raising the rope, and tripping the invisible invaders. Suddenly their forms drew colour, and there were two green balls of bloodlust tumbling through the grass.

  Tanuki was right, and he felt so proud of himself that he could not help but laugh. It lasted till he saw the goblins were not alone.

  He could not anticipate that the silent killers would come with steeds. Behind the groaning invaders lay two chickens that were half the size of Tanuki, but the same height as the scouts.

  “Are they dangerous?” he considered, undecided whether the question deserved any thought.

  A chicken was the first to stand up, fleeing away from the rope it had mistaken as a threat. It jumped onto the barricade and kicked off, throwing its wings around to fly, but they could barely halt its fall.

  Not that it mattered. It jumped into the void.

  Tanuki’s heart skipped a beat. He ran to the edge of the platform and went prone.

  The bird tried to fly but quickly lost its strength. In mere seconds, its body became no more than a white dot against a sea of pitch black, and its cries were drowned out by the howling of the void.

  Cold sweat formed on Tanuki’s forehead.

  “What the fuck,” he panted, but barely made a noise.

  The goblins recollected themselves. The luckier forced himself back on the chicken and turned to observe the rope. The soulless husk had since disappeared. He turned to his partner and growled something only they could understand. The one on foot raised his fist and shouted back angrily, but the one on chicken would not wait for him to finish, instead continuing the charge.

  Six adjusted his stance. He could finally see his opponents. They were small but fast, much like the nestmen he had fought in Yoshimura. Drawing the connection gave him confidence.

  The goblin barely lost speed as he drove the chicken around the barricades. After passing the last, it returned to the road to gain speed and pulled on the chick’s head, forcing it to jump over the fence.

  Six stood in its path and quickly bashed his shield into the steed. The bird kicked itself away, sustaining no damage from the attack.

  The goblin pulled back a little, then tried once more. When Six blocked this attempt, the invader reached under his shabby cloak and pulled forth a worn shiv. Then, kicking himself off his stead, he jumped to stab Six in the face.

  It was a mistake. He greatly underestimated the plantfolk’s speed.

  Six let go of the sword and curled his fingers around the goblin’s throat before it could land the attack. His fists grew tight around the creature’s, but seeing it was not enough to snap its neck, he quickly changed his hands to now hold the goblin by the ankle, and with one mighty strike, he slammed the creature onto the wooden spike fence.

  Then, everything moved so… slow.

  Tanuki jumped as the wet crunch assaulted his ears. Six stood only a few feet away, still holding onto one leg of the rapidly convulsing thing. Its body was supported by five sharp spears opening various holes in the upper half.

  Tanuki had fought all kinds of foes before goblins. Husks, nestmen, mostly undead. He never had to hear any of those make that horrible noise, that desperate struggle for air when two sharp spears struck holes through their lungs.

  For those endlessly stretching seconds that thing fought, he wished he could turn deaf, even if he could never recover.

  He was not the only one shocked by the brutality Six demonstrated. The other goblin had rushed to assist his tribemate, but after seeing its frail body fail like a spring leaf under a rain of needles, his legs turned to stone.

  It trembled silently, then something yellow stained the front of his cloak.

  Bells rang out.

  Tanuki uncovered his ears at the bell’s echo. He thought his mind was failing him, but the sound was true, albeit he understood not why it played.

  Whenever those noises played, a wave had either begun or ended. Yet this time, it could not be either. Thirty minutes had yet to pass for the regular wave to begin, and there was still another scout alive for this phase to end.

  Then the realization hit him as he saw the goblin flee towards the portal.

  “Did the wave end because it lost its morale?”

  If not the entire wave, then the scouting phase had come to an end as the only remaining enemy fled. The portal remained open, which meant that it had a way to escape, much to Tanuki’s displeasure.

  “What the hell,” he thought, a quiet hiss of frustration escaping between his teeth, “Can enemies just flee and regroup? That doesn’t make any sense! This is unfair! Even if this world’s system is faulty, even if its mechanics can be abused, this is just too much! It makes defending nearly impossible! What’s stopping them from doing hit-and-run attacks? I have to take all the shit they throw at me, but they can just leave whenever the tides turn against them? How is that fair?!”

  The closer the scout got to the portal, the clearer he could see Soup on the other side. He rubbed the tears out of his eyes and the mischievous grin returned as safety was only steps away.

  Soup stared back. Her eyes smouldered with disgust.

  The scout’s flight came to a sudden halt as something hit him in the head. At first, he did not understand what it was and tried to exit through the portal, but again, he bumped into something invisible.

  It could not understand. Perhaps its brain was too small, or the concept eluded him.

  An invisible wall kept him from escaping through the portal.

  “You’ve proven yourself a coward,” Soup spoke, “With that, your life serves purpose no more.”

  A blade struck through the portal and stabbed the scout in the chest. It fell to the ground and within seconds became a corpse.

  The blade did not retreat, rather its user walked forth. It was a goblin thicker than the scouts, a little taller too, but still on the verge of malnourishment. The blade it bore was nearly half its size. An expertly made pommel at the butt served as proof that this sword was not made by goblins but rather looted from somewhere else. The same truth went for the two goblins following the first. One wore an iron helmet too big for its head, while the other a purple admiral hat and a strange yellow cube in hand.

  They emerged with mischievous grins, growling to invite fear. That confidence waned somewhat when they saw the cooling corpse of the scout impaled on the fence.

  Six may have been many things, but not shy. He stood above his hands’ creation and raised both arms as a sign of invitation.

  The goblins hesitated until the most experienced amongst them, the one with the blade stepped forward, weapon raised, lungs nearly bursting from a battle-howl. The others followed in this manner and by the time their windpipe ran out of ammo for a war-cry, their morale returned high.