The Golden Goblin

A space sealed off by walls on every side.

Or rather, a place no one could ever hope to find — somewhere reachable only by satisfying a very particular set of conditions.

The labyrinth was all connected, yet here and there sat these odd chambers, completely boxed in by walls.

Why would they build empty rooms like that?

This was a labyrinth laid out with extreme efficiency. Every corridor had been designed with meticulous care. And yet, every so often, you ran into a blank space sealed off on all four sides.

If there was nothing inside, why create rooms like that at all?

Climbing over the walls was impossible. But punching through them — that was another matter.

A Labyrinth Ticket.

At first I'd assumed the tickets were meant for when you got lost or needed to run. But what if this ticket was actually a way to find the true path?

What if something was waiting inside those empty rooms?

A sizable hole tore open in the wall. A space the hands of the wraiths could not invade. I crossed through without hesitation.

Bingo.

I'd found the path.

A staircase descending underground. Following those steps for a long while brought me to yet another labyrinth.

A knight shrouded in black abyss stood before us.

Level 10. But this was no ordinary Level 10. The displayed level glowed orange — an Elite Raid Boss Monster. A creature that demanded a coalition of at least nine Level 10 characters to hunt, and it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had come to greet us the moment we descended into the underground labyrinth.

That emblem…?

On the Abyss Knight's armor, the Empire's symbol — the Golden Pentagram — still lingered faintly.

On a hunch, I pulled out the golden plaque I'd received from the Silver Fox Mask. The moment the Abyss Knight saw it—

—its rage only deepened.

The enraged Abyss Knight was catastrophic. A berserker in every sense of the word. In an instant it shattered the solid defense Isaac and Isabella had erected, then came charging at me like a madman.

A scene that would make anyone freeze in terror.

I drew my bowstring as calmly as I could. The Abyss Knight had lost all reason the moment it saw the golden plaque. It abandoned every scrap of defense, fixated solely on killing the plaque's owner — me.

In that case…

Whoosh!

Thud!

The Abyss Knight staggered as the arrow struck home. Shatiros's Terror — the absolute fear effect that activated on hit — would work even on a monster of the Abyss. It lost its vision, and a random stat dropped by a full ten points.

It's slower.

Agility, most likely. Showing it the golden plaque and driving it into a frenzy had actually worked in my favor.

Whoosh!

I nocked and loosed another arrow in a flash, but the Abyss Knight dodged. It had realized the danger of taking an arrow and slipped aside on pure instinct. The vision-loss curse didn't seem to hit it as hard as I'd hoped. But a ten-point drop in Agility was still massive.

I quickly pulled a mirror from my coat.

A mirror that imposed random behavioral conditions on challengers. I had to use everything available. The Mirror of Added Conditions was supposedly usable only on challengers who had entered the Abyss Labyrinth — yet it worked on the Abyss ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Knight as well.

The Imperial seal. So it really was a challenger.

The Abyss Knight, too, had once been a challenger who entered this place. I'd guessed as much from the faint Golden Pentagram on its armor, but now I was certain. A knight who had challenged the labyrinth, failed, and sunk into the Abyss.

That was enough. Stat reduction, vision loss, and now a behavioral condition on top of it. When your opponent is strong, dragging them down to your level is a perfectly sound strategy.

Shing.

Facing the charging Abyss Knight head-on, I drew a pair of Extreme Iron Swords.

Eliminating the Abyss Knight awarded points equal to two and a half times the fragments I'd gained. On top of that, the system treated the Abyss Knight as a Dead, allowing me to dominate it. Its physical body, however, had sunk into the Abyss and vanished. Only the Abyss Knight's soul remained, floating faintly like a wraith, pointing the way with a finger.

I've got a guide now.

But where was it leading me? Having successfully dominated it, it couldn't do anything that would harm me. I kept walking in the direction the Abyss Knight's soul indicated.

After a long stretch of walking—

Kik?

My eyes met those of a golden-hued goblin wearing a golden crown and carrying a bundle on its back.

Jackpot!

A Golden Goblin — also called a Treasure Goblin. A walking vault of riches. These goblins, which occasionally appeared within the Abyss, were said to inhabit only the so-called "yolk lands" among the sunken territories of the Abyss.

Goblins had always been a race that lusted after glittering treasure. When that greed intensified within the Abyss until their entire bodies shone gold, they began collecting every treasure that had sunk into the depths. In short, this Abyss Labyrinth was yolk land fertile enough to spawn Golden Goblins.

My hand was already on the bowstring the instant our eyes met.

I will catch this thing.

It was almost pure instinct.

Kik!

The Golden Goblin panicked and opened a warp. To sweep up treasures, Golden Goblins could travel freely through the Abyss. They were notoriously hard to catch — blisteringly fast and constantly warping away.

But—

Kya-kya!

Hell's entire body blazed red. Even the Golden Goblin's warp was denied.

Kikikik!!

The Golden Goblin froze in shock as its body failed to pass through the warp.

Thud!

In that split second, an arrow buried itself between its eyes. The Golden Goblin slammed its head into the wall where the warp had formed, shuddered, and went limp. Then the hands of the Abyss dragged its corpse away.

A solid haul of Labyrinth Points, too. That message I'd seen when first earning Labyrinth Points — about obtaining or spending points through various events — must have meant this. Hunting event monsters awarded points the same way.

All that remained were the crown and the bundle.

So this is another way it helps.

I looked at Hell. This little thing was proving far more useful than expected. If I hadn't survived the Silver Fox Mask and received the golden plaque from him, I never would have enraged the Abyss Knight enough to land that arrow. And that wasn't all — Hell had even blocked the Golden Goblin's warp. On my own, I likely would have lost a Golden Goblin whose survival instincts were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠second to none.

Kya-kya!

"I'll give you double the feed today."

Kya-kya-kya-kya-kya!

Hell spun in circles above my head. Apparently the thirty Honor I offered as feed every day still wasn't enough.

I carefully recovered the crown and the bundle.

At current market rates, the crown was worth roughly two hundred thousand gold. Substantial on its own — but the real treasure wasn't this.

The bundle. Every treasure the Golden Goblin had gathered over a lifetime of roaming the Abyss was inside.

I checked the contents and gave a small nod.

"Th-that's incredible…"

Isaac stammered, recognizing the value of the treasure.

Whoa.

This was a big catch. Old Empire coinage was typically valued at twice its face amount, so from a single kill I'd effectively netted around four million gold.

Each Golden Goblin specializes in different loot.

The limited variety was because every goblin focused on collecting a particular type of treasure. The one I'd just killed had gathered only gold and gold-related artifacts — and every last piece bore the name of the Old Empire.

This Abyss Labyrinth was Old Empire territory in the distant past.

The pieces were starting to fall into place. The Silver Fox Mask, speaking of a "mission" while trying to kill Sword Saint Ryleigh. The Abyss Knight recoiling in disgust at the golden plaque. Sword Saint Ryleigh had been a rising Sword Saint of Pangenia — and a hero of the Old Empire. If this labyrinth had once been Old Empire land, the connections between them all became far clearer.

The land of the Old Empire, which had held more gold and treasure than any other…

There might be more Golden Goblins.

My mind snapped into sharp focus. There could be far more than I expected. But Golden Goblins had always been creatures that brought blood in their wake.

Kill one Golden Goblin, and everything after turns into pure chaos.

Because Golden Goblins could only be caught through Abyss exploration. Unless someone with overwhelming leadership brought a massive army to hunt an Abyss Overlord, Golden Goblins always became objects of contention.

That's why most Abyss expeditions collapse from internal strife.

Gamers posing as soldiers. Treasure hunters looking to score big. Countless mosquitoes trying to stick their straw in somehow. The moment desertions and infighting broke out, Abyss expeditions failed and everyone was wiped out. On lands where Golden Goblins appeared, it was especially bad.

So the moment this fact got out, all hell would break loose. Golden Goblins in the labyrinth! The Abyss Labyrinth is former Old Empire territory! The second even a whisper of a rumor leaked—

…Just thinking about it is terrifying.

The instant word spread outside the labyrinth, an enormous flood of people would pour in. The warp leading to the Abyss Labyrinth connected to every other warp. As long as you had a Broken Fragment of the Golden Rule, there were no entry restrictions to speak of.

Do Golden Goblins only appear in the underground labyrinth?

There was no way of knowing whether they spawned in the upper floors. But if Golden Goblins only appeared down here, this could be an opportunity — a chance to monopolize them as much as possible.

The problem was that finding Golden Goblins was far from easy.

"Successor. The soul is pointing somewhere else. Could this mean…"

"That 'could' is exactly right."

Just as Isaac said, the Abyss Knight had suddenly begun pointing in a different direction. In all likelihood, toward the location of another Golden Goblin.

A smile crept unbidden onto my lips.

Jackpot.

Not just any jackpot. An absolutely insane jackpot.

If the Other-dimensional Community — where ordinary people and Dimension Warriors gathered to talk — was a major trend, then on the flip side, Player Talk, a space reserved exclusively for Dimension Warriors, was just as popular among their own ranks.

Membership required answering questions that only someone who had played Pangenia could get right. It was a dark-web site for anonymously sharing scraps of information. Three thousand members. Players called it the largest community among their kind — and right now, it was buzzing with talk of the labyrinth.

Complaints about the labyrinth dominated the feed. It was a place with no end in sight. The Golden Rule time they held was desperately short, and for all they'd spent, the returns were nothing. Dangerous, and even the Labyrinth Merchants were locked down by the Seven Heroes.

Most of them were players with deep grievances against the Seven Heroes. But outside of Player Talk, there was nowhere they could speak freely. Only Player Talk could evade the tracking of Master and the other powerful loudspeakers.

The owner of Player Talk was unknown. Player identities were famously never exposed to the outside. Logs were periodically wiped, servers relocated, and the site had been running for three years straight.