It started small. A creak in the floorboards, a flicker of the lights, a goblin shoving a sharpened stick into a mushroom and calling it a trap.
I should’ve known disaster when I saw it. I used to live in it.
Customer service wasn’t a job. It was a slow, drawn-out apocalypse stretched thin over ten-hour shifts and endlessly ringing phones, and corporate nonsense that made you genuinely wonder if civilization had been a mistake.
A warzone.
Except, instead of bullets, the weapons were bad policies, worse tempers, and the unyielding despair of holding for a supervisor who absolutely did not want to take the call.
I remember one guy, and he wasn’t even the worst, who called to announce we were responsible for the end of the world. A national tragedy! A life-ruining catastrophe!
Because his television hadn’t arrived in time for the big game.
“Are you fucking stupid? Is that what you are? Fucking stupid? You’ve gotta be fucking stupid!” he had shouted, as though I were the one who’d lost the war of logistics that kept him from watching the Sixty-Niners win the superbowl in glorious 1080p. “You should be ashamed!”
I was ashamed.
But not for the reason he thought.
I was ashamed that I stayed on the line, apologized for a mistake I hadn’t made, and promised to escalate the issue to a supervisor who, at best, would mark it as “customer upset, lol.”
Because that’s what you did. You sat there, swallowed your pride, and let yourself dissolve into the corporate void.
And for what?
So some baby-boomer could yell at me like it was my fault the universe didn’t personally bend to his expectations?
I used to wonder about the other side of the line. Not middle management, but the ones with actual power.
Did they feel important? Secure? Or were they just as exhausted as the rest of us, hiding behind emails and vague company-wide statements?
And now, standing in a cavern full of goblins who were absolutely convinced I was the second coming of greatness, I wondered if this was what it felt like.
To be in charge.
It was... odd.
Back in the call center, I’d imagined being a boss meant respect, admiration, and maybe even the faintest whiff of fear.
And the goblins? They had all of that in spades.
Every wide-eyed stare, every ecstatic “Bone King!” felt like it was building me into something bigger than I was.
And yet.
As much as I didn’t miss being yelled at by strangers over thumb drive warranties, I wasn’t sure I liked this either. There was something unnerving about being at the center of it all, about seeing these creatures pour so much of themselves into a belief I didn’t even share.
Because what they believed in wasn’t me. Not really. It was the idea of me. A great, powerful leader. Someone worthy of their loyalty. Someone who knew what the hell they were doing.
And that sure as hell wasn’t me.
“Great Bone King!”
Grib had finished barking orders and was now standing directly in front of me, clutching his bucket like a sacred artifact. He had this strange expression on his face, some mixture of reverence and unbridled optimism which I was beginning to suspect might be his natural state.
I raised a bony hand, which I was starting to use more like a traffic signal than a limb. “Grib, you don’t have to call me that. Edgar is fine. Or Ed. Let’s go with Ed.”
Grib’s face contorted as though I’d suggested we put a stop to gravity. “Oh no, Boss. No good. You Bone King. Great One. Stabber of Humans!”
“Yeah, no.”
Grib blinked, ears twitching. “Boss okay?
“I guess that's better than the titles. Let’s roll with it. What’s up?”
He shuffled his feet, head tilted down at the ground. “So... um, what plan, Boss?
“Plan?”
“Yes! You know, plan.” He gestured wildly with the bucket, narrowly avoiding knocking himself out. “Big plan. For big boss. Big boss always has plan! So... what Grib and goblins do when humans come?”
He was trying to be casual. I caught the faint tremor in his voice, the way his ears twitched nervously. His grip tightening around the bucket handle. He was scared. Or at least nervous.
Not that I blamed him. The idea of facing adventurers, whoever or whatever they were, didn’t exactly fill me with confidence either.
Grib, sensing the weight of my silence, suddenly puffed out his chest. “Grib not scared!” he added quickly. “Just—uh—thinking strategically!”
“Of course you are,” I said.
Grib’s ears perked up. “Really?”
“No,” I replied, and he visibly deflated, the bucket slipping slightly in his hands. “But thanks for trying.”
Grib fidgeted for a moment before hesitantly looking back up at me. “Well, uh... if Boss don’t have a plan yet, maybe Grib can… share plan?”
“Sure,” I said cautiously.
His confidence flickered back to life, ears twitching with more of their usual frenetic energy. “Instead of stab humans... maybe slash humans?”
I stared at him. “Slash humans.”
He nodded and his little green noggin’ bobbed up and down with enough force that I was worried about whiplash. “Like stabbing… but sideways.” He turned a vertically aligned hand and flattened it, slashing slow and steady through the air with the deliberate motion of a craftsman trying to show someone a flat surface.
No, he wasn’t joking.
Yes, I was sure.
No, I had no idea what the hell to do with… that.
“Grib,” I said finally, “you’re doing great. Just... keep thinking outside the box.”
Grib beamed, practically vibrating with pride. “Yes, Boss!” He paused a moment. “What box?”
I sighed.
Questionable plans aside, he was scared. Even if he wouldn’t admit it. And I couldn’t help but feel a pang of something. Pity? Maybe. Or responsibility. Either way, I wasn’t a fan.
If I didn’t have a plan for them… I had to do something.
Even though the System hadn’t been particularly helpful so far, I decided to give it another shot.
The interface reappeared in my vision with a thought, tidy lines of text all neat and proper compared to the mess of emotions swirling in my head.
Scrolling through it, I looked for something, anything that could help.
Inventory, I noted. I reached into it mentally, scrolling through the items listed.
- Book (unidentified)
- Jar (unidentified)
- Staff (unidentified)
- Ring of Protection
Great. So a bunch of garbage.
But the last item stood out.
Protection.
The kind of word that sounded reassuring until you actually stopped to think about it. Protection from what, exactly?
Swords? Fireballs? The crushing weight of responsibility? Probably not the last one.
The ring materialized in my hand with a faint shimmer, simple but sturdy. I turned it over between my fingers.
It wasn’t anything special to look at. Plain, a little weighty, the kind of thing you’d see in a pawn shop display case listed for $15 more than it was actually worth. But it was something. And something meant options.
I could wear it. Keep it for myself. Because if anyone in this mess needed protection, it was me. I remembered the system’s early warning. Fortify traps. Train goblins. Don’t die.
Then I glanced at Grib.
He was watching me with those wide, eager eyes—big and round, like the greenest, gobliniest puppy you’ve ever seen. If hope had teeth, it would look like a goblin expecting a treat.
I sighed.
"Here," I said dismissively. "This might help."
I grabbed his little goblin hand and placed the ring inside.
He froze, staring at the ring as though I’d just handed him a forgotten, cherished memory, or a stacked Italian Sub with hot peppers.
For a long moment, Grib did nothing.
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Not the deliberate kind of nothing, where someone sits very still because they are thinking, but the complete and total failure to process reality kind of nothing, where the body continues to exist while the brain takes an unauthorized leave of absence.
His jaw worked silently. His ears twitched. His fingers tightened around the ring with the same desperate reverence one might hold a winning lottery ticket.
“Boss…” he breathed, voice trembling. “Grib… so… happy.”
“It’s a ring, Grib.”
Grib’s only response was a near-imperceptible wobble, like he was experiencing emotions too large for his small goblin frame.
I turned away before he could make a thing of it.
I had more important matters to attend to, like figuring out what exactly was happening, why I was here, and whether goblins could die from overexcitement.
But then something shifted.
I could still see Grib.
I knew he was behind me. I knew, with absolute clarity, that he was still cradling the ring, still staring at it as if it contained the meaning of life. I knew that the moment he thought I wasn’t watching, he started hopping in place, the way only creatures of pure, unchecked enthusiasm ever do.
“Best. Boss. Ever!” he whispered to himself.
Which was strange.
Because I wasn’t looking at him.
I was still facing forward. My body hadn’t moved. And yet, somehow, I could see behind me.
The interface flickered to life, smug as ever.
Processing complete. Shape stored and interpreted.
Processing? Shape? What the hell was this thing talking about?
Passive Skill Acquired: Deathly Perception.
- Full 360-degree awareness.
- See through common stealth and invisibility abilities.
- Identify magical items on touch.
I had no idea what the thing was talking about. Processed what?
Before I had time to think, I became aware of the fact that I was still watching Grib. Despite very much not facing him.
“Well,” I muttered. “That’s... unsettling.”
Grib froze mid-hop, then snapped into an exaggerated salute as though he hadn’t just been bouncing like an overcaffeinated rabbit.
“What do we do next, Boss?” he asked, clutching the ring like a lifeline.
I sighed, the sound rattling through my ribs like wind in dead branches. “We... figure it out as we go.”
Grib nodded with absolute, unwavering confidence.
“Yes, Boss. Whatever you say.”
And as he marched off to rally the goblins, still holding the ring like it might personally save his life, something strange settled in my chest.
A mix of guilt. Amusement. And something disturbingly close to responsibility.
It was the same feeling you got when a dog happily dragged a sock into the room and looked at you like it had just slain a mighty beast.
Equal parts endearing and profoundly, profoundly inconvenient.
Grib marched off with the certainty of a man who had never once considered that his faith in the system might be misplaced.
I envied him for it.
I turned back to the cavern, the scattered goblins, the dim glow of the mushrooms, and the faint, unfeeling shimmer of the countdown in my peripheral vision.
Six hours and fifty minutes.
It didn’t seem like nearly enough time.
As if sensing my need for distraction, another interface window unfolded itself at the edge of my vision. Abilities.
I hadn’t summoned it. But apparently, it had decided now was the moment.
With a thought, the list expanded. There weren’t many, but the names alone were enough to be vaguely concerning.
- Fear Aura
- Chilling Touch
- Minor Poltergeist
- Create Undead (Unavailable)
I squinted at the last one. Unavailable. That felt ominous.
For now, I focused on Fear Aura. More out of curiosity than anything else.
The effect was immediate.
Not dramatic. Not even visible. Just a shift in the air, like a wrong note in a song you hadn’t realized you were listening to.
I didn’t feel it. But the goblins did.
Within seconds, the cavern exploded into chaos. Goblins screamed, tripped, ran. One attempted to scale a wall, despite having neither the physical ability nor a clear reason why that would help.
They weren’t running from me. Not exactly. They were running from something their tiny goblin brains had convinced them was lurking in the shadows, waiting to devour them.
It was, presumably, me.
“Cancel,” I muttered, and the effect vanished.
The goblins stopped running.
A long silence followed.
Then, slowly, one of them exhaled and declared, “The Bone King is unstoppable!”
Which was not the conclusion I had been hoping they’d reach.
I sighed and moved on. Chilling Touch.
This one was slower. Less immediate.
The air around my fingers dimmed. Snowflakes appeared, a hesitant few at first, as if checking to make sure this was the right place. Then more followed, swirling as frost unfurled along the stone.
It wasn’t a dramatic effect—no blizzard, no surge of power. It just spread. Creeping forward, seeping into the cracks, turning the damp cavern floor into a sheet of glistening ice.
It was quiet. Unassuming.
And, judging by the goblins’ faces, infinitely worse than the first one.
A few of them huddled together. Others stared at me like I’d just rewritten the laws of nature for fun.
Then Grib reappeared, shivering violently, teeth chattering like castanets.
“Did you see that?!” he blurted, pointing at the frost-coated walls. “Boss, that was amazing!”
“It was fine,” I said, flexing my fingers. The glow of magic faded, but the frost remained, lingering like an awkward pause.
I scanned the rest of the menu, pausing at the bottom where a stat called Soul Counter read 0/1.
The reassurance vanished.
I stared at the counter. 0/1.
It didn’t blink, flash, or come with a cheerful little message like, “Hey there! Here’s a cryptic number to ruin your day!” No, it just sat there, quietly glowing and somehow managing to feel superior about it.
“What even is a soul counter?” I muttered. “And why do I have one?”
No response, of course. I didn’t know why I expected otherwise. The interface wasn’t exactly the chatty type, though it had mastered the art of being condescendingly silent.
With a long, unnecessary breath—I was still clinging to the habit, even if the lungs were gone—I looked around the cavern. That’s when I spotted Grib. He was crouched by one of the traps, inspecting a stick like it was an ancient relic. His expression was intense, the kind of focus you’d expect from someone trying to determine whether an object was real or cake.
“Grib,” I called.
He sprang to his feet, ears twitching as he spun toward me. “Yes, Boss?”
“I think I have a plan,” I said, hoping that by saying it out loud, it might actually become true.
Grib’s face lit up like a kid being told bedtime was officially canceled. “A plan! I knew it! What’s the plan, Boss?”
“Maybe... no one has to die,” I said, letting the words out slowly, like they might break if handled too roughly.
Grib tilted his head, his ears flopping as he stared at me with the same expression people reserved for flat-earthers and unicyclists. “No one has to die?”
“Yeah,” I said, straightening up in what I hoped looked like confidence. “Maybe we don’t fight. Maybe we talk to them instead.”
The cavern went quiet. The brittle, uncomfortable sort of quiet, like the pause after someone at a dinner party confidently mispronounces "quinoa."
“Humans are for stabbing,” one goblin said eventually, his tone suggesting he’d never questioned this fact any more than he’d questioned the sky being up or rocks being hard.
Another nodded solemnly. “That’s just how it works.”
“And maybe slashing, someday!” Grib added, ever the forward thinker.
“No stabbing. No slashing. Just... let me handle it when they get here, okay? Don’t help unless they attack.”
Grib blinked at me, his confusion as tangible as the mud clinging to his feet. “But, Boss, what if—”
“Grib,” I said, cutting him off before he could finish whatever deeply concerning question was about to leave his mouth. “Can you do that?”
He hesitated, ears twitching, before finally nodding. “If that’s what you want, Boss.”
“It is,” I said.
The goblins shuffled back to their work, still muttering, still glancing at me like I’d just suggested we declare war on the concept of gravity. From what I could see, their trap-building efforts had somehow doubled the amount of mud in the room. I decided not to ask how.
I wandered away with no real direction.
Eventually, my feet led me down a side tunnel. It twisted and turned in ways that suggested the person or creature who built it had been either lost or deeply indecisive. I glanced at the countdown.
Four hours and fifteen minutes.
I kept walking. The further I went, the cooler the air became, the smell of the cavern shifting—less wet earth, more old stone and rusted iron. The mushrooms were sparser here, their weak light casting jagged shadows that moved when I wasn’t looking directly at them. The walls were different, too. Marked. Scratched. Maybe carved, if you squinted hard enough and ignored the distinct possibility that whatever made those marks had claws.
Then the tunnel opened into a chamber, and there it was. A staircase.
It spiraled downward, polished stone steps gleaming faintly in the dim light. Unlike the rest of the dungeon, this wasn’t rough-hewn rock or slapdash goblin architecture. This was deliberate. Precise. Made with care.
I hesitated. Something about it felt… significant. Not dangerous, exactly. Just not for me.
I took a step anyway.
The stone was cold beneath my foot, and as I descended, the air thickened. Not physically, but in a way that pressed at the edges of my thoughts, like an idea just out of reach.
Then the interface appeared.
System Notification: You cannot leave your assigned level with a Raid pending. Return to your designated area.
I stopped. Stared at the words floating in front of me, cold and unyielding.
“What do you mean I can’t leave?” I stared at it, unsure whether to be angry or relieved.
The notification didn’t respond. It just hovered there, the digital equivalent of a bored security guard telling you, with absolute certainty, that this part of the club wasn’t for you.
I waved a hand through it. Nothing happened.
With a sigh, I turned back. Whatever was down there, it wasn’t mine to see. Not yet.
Back in the main chamber, the goblins were still working. Or something that resembled work. I lingered at a distance, watching them move. Chaotic but with purpose, like a storm that had briefly agreed to follow instructions.
And then I heard it.
“More mud!”
“Jesus chri—” Grib interrupted before the string of expletives could escape my mouth.
“Boss!” Grib trotted over, beaming. “How’s it going?”
“Grib,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Great! Everyone’s working hard!” He gestured to the goblins, who were in the process of dragging… something across the cavern. I decided not to investigate.
“Good,” I said. “Just... remember what I said, okay? No fighting unless they attack first.”
Grib nodded solemnly, ears twitching. “We’ll do what you say, Boss.”
I wasn’t sure if I believed him. But it was the best I was going to get.
I sat down near the edge of the chamber, leaning back against the rough stone wall. The timer hovered in my peripheral vision, its numbers ticking down with mechanical indifference.
Three hours and thirty-four minutes.
It pressed against me—not literally, of course. I didn’t have much left to press on. But in the way important things always do, demanding to be felt even when you’d really rather not.
I tried closing my eyes. Remembered, too late, that I didn’t have eyelids.
Instead, I listened. Goblin chatter in the background. The scrape of movement. Somewhere deep in the tunnels, water dripped—steady, patient, unbothered by my personal crisis.
Fairness, I decided, was one of those lies we told ourselves. Like “this won’t hurt a bit” or “I’ll hit snooze just once.”
Life hadn’t been fair.
Death hadn’t been fair.
And as it turned out, undeath wasn’t interested in fairness either.