“So I understand that you're a lot less connected than you used to be, but are you still a merchant faction?” I asked as we left the relative privacy of the half-constructed gatehouse.
“Aye, but we ain't got a lot of capital anymore. If you're asking if I can set you up a connection to the Global Mercantile System, though, yeah, we can do that. But I'm pretty sure it's going to be best if we just officially join your faction, you got set up here. What are you calling it anyway?” the old Goblin asked, producing a comb from somewhere and running it through his beard. It did little to straighten it or clear out the debris.
“That's another oddity. I didn't get to name the faction. The System created it, called it The Neighborhood, and then immediately founded the stronghold as well. I'm not complaining exactly. It was certainly something we were going to need. Somehow, we've already got monsters everywhere around us. Hell, there was a damn dungeon in one of the basements here. Do dungeons even form that early in integrations?”
All of the frustrations I had been holding in started to come barreling out of me. Grimbleflork was someone I trusted and someone who actually understood everything that was happening. Sure, there was Ralph, but he just wasn't the same thing. This was a Goblin I had been through hell and high water with. He was one of the few people I considered a father figure.
“Sounds like you ain't having a great time this go-around. Probably not so easy doing it without Alecks, huh? With him around, you always got to play the bruiser, and that is usually a lot easier. But it's not like these integrations are ever easy on any planet. You know that as well as I do. And I might be wrong about it, but one of those faces in the crowd looked a lot like yours. You got a kid?”
Despite myself and the rant I just had moments ago, I smiled. While I loved Heather's family and how much they had accepted me, I had never truly had any of my own to show off how proud I was of my kids. And now someone who may as well be their grandfather was here. God, what a damn mess integrations could be.
“Two. You saw Ash out there. She's my daughter. Rich, my son, is or was at school when this all started. Hopefully, he's still with his mom, but I don't know. It's something I'm gonna have to find out, but with you here, that just became a little easier,” I replied. The thought of getting a communication network up had just gone from exceedingly difficult to now, we just needed to be able to afford it.
That probably meant finding one of our people willing to train in a harvesting or poaching class. The only real way we had to build funds right now was monster parts. And it was just too dangerous to start pulling apart most creatures without the right skills. Sometimes you'd get a good mana orb, but other times you'd accidentally hit yourself with a death curse, and that wasn't anything we had the ability to cure yet.
“Maybe. It's probably best not to get ahead of ourselves yet. Whatever access we're going to have to the GMS is going to be limited ‘til you can build up the faction more, but probably still more than I’d have at this point. Pretty much everything we had left was in that ship.” He sighed loudly, following the mentioning of his downed ship.
Knowing how much he loved that thing, I felt for him. And if we could find a way to get it back from that river, I'd do what I could. But with whatever was lurking down there, it would likely be a while before we had the resources to safely risk anything like that.
“You think the tower challenges are even working, considering what is going on?” Since first seeing the number of factions in the world, I had been wondering how the System would even pick the right contenders for it. If the planet were growing nonstop, pulling in more and more factions, where exactly would the line be drawn for tower competitors?
“Who the hell even knows, Eighdum? Sorry, Adam. That's gonna take some getting used to. You know, I remember when you were just a Frog Stabber. What are you now? Some kind of God-slayer? I see you still got that sword on your back, so that wouldn't shock me in the slightest.”
“No, that's where things get even weirder, especially given everything that seems to be going on. I got a class called a Lost Hero that's all about me catching back up to where I used to be. And to top it off, it lets me teach the kids my abilities, too. You ever hear of anything like that?”
“I mean, anyone can teach abilities. But you know that, so what exactly do you mean here?” One of his white bushy eyebrows was raised far enough into one of the many creases marking his forehead that it almost vanished inside of it.
“Sorry, not like a class teaching someone else with something very similar, ability-wise. I can literally tell the story of how I got an adaptation and pass it on to them.”
“You're joking, right? You know how much it costs to buy something that gives you an adaptation, right? There's no way the System will let you do that.”
“Well, it did. I've already used it on Ash, and it worked. She was super sick before all of this started, Grimbleflork. The only reason she's alive is because of the damned integration. And I have no idea how to feel about that. She's in for a life of hell because of this, but she's also in for a life. What do you say to something like that?”
“You say nothing. Kid, you know as well as I do the System is fucked. You take it and you fight it where you need to, and you accept what helps you. Otherwise, you're going to go insane. And you’re probably going to do that anyway, I sure as hell ain't sane.”
I tried to stop myself, but it came out before I could clamp my own mouth shut. The damn old man had made me laugh. I was so glad he was here that I didn't have the words to express it to him. And at the same time, I felt a little guilty that he got pulled into this mess, but that wasn't a responsibility I was fully willing to shoulder. This was not my fault.
“You know, I don't think I've laughed like that in awhile. I'm sorry you got caught in this mess, but I am glad you're here.”
“Yeah, seeing you kind of makes it a little worth it, too. That damn class you just told me about really makes me think something big is on the horizon.”
“Just wait until I tell you about the Loamhag…” I trailed off as a voice interrupted us.
“So, Goblins are real?” Norm asked loudly as we neared.
“That's your only question?” I replied, my eyebrows raising a bit. I expected a lot more.
“I mean, we had a quick discussion about you not being from Earth, apparently, but honestly, I think we're all past that as mattering. We've all been sharing space with Rock Trolls in this new world for a while now. And you're probably the only reason most of us are alive, so what do we have to complain about here?” Norm followed up, shaking his head at me the whole time he spoke.
“Fair enough, I guess. So obviously Grimbleflork has a language ability. How about the rest of you?” I asked, looking over the other Greel Goblins.
“They don't, but mine blankets all of them. It's a commerce-specific translation skill, so it ain't just you Humans understanding us. The Rock Trolls are getting what we're saying, too,” Grimbleflork answered.
“That solves the problem, Adam,” Lukiss said as he pushed his way through some of the crowd. “That makes it much easier for me to accompany you when we go in search of the rest of my kind.”
“Somewhat. Grimbleflork, is that going to keep working once you're placed within our faction? Will it still count as commerce as you interact with us?” I was worried that the specific definition of his ability would nullify it the moment he joined our faction.
Certain abilities had very tailored languages. It was, in theory, how the System made things that would be overly powerful, not as fundamentally broken compared to other choices someone could make. Not that that ever actually worked in practice. While anything could be useful in certain niche situations, there were just things that were usually better universally.
“No idea. I think mine will. Maybe not the rest of the boys, but we'll see,” He said with a shrug.
“So one of the Goblins mentioned that the planet is currently rapidly expanding continuously. That can’t be true, right?” Tom asked nervously. Why, of all things, that made him nervous. The man had been perfectly calm for everything else we had done, somehow.
“I don't know if rapidly or continuously are the correct words, but they sure as shit ain't entirely wrong either. It keeps pulling in more and more worlds and adding them into this merger, and every time comes with more factions. So far, there is no end in sight,” Grimbleflork answered.
“There has to be an end in sight. Oh, I guess there doesn't have to be, technically. Whatever the System and the magic that comes with it is capable of, I guess I don't know the end power levels of it. But there are certain things in physics that become pretty unavoidable the more mass you add to an area,” Tom continued, the worry in his voice increasing.
“Wait, you mean like a black hole?” Ash asked. I was glad that at least my daughter was following what was going on, because I hadn't known that was where he was going.
I had seen a few documentaries on the idea of the cosmos and how it worked, but had never been one of my favorite things to watch or read, for that matter. Space, as big as it was here, felt much smaller than anything I had been used to in the past. It also felt very wrong to what I knew, and that made it hard to have conversations about.
“I do. And if we're growing non-stop, that will happen.”
“Eh? I mean, maybe I guess I ain't really an expert on planetary integrations or anything like that. But I doubt the System is going to do anything to actually endanger itself. Either what you're suggesting ain't possible, or it's going to shut off at some point. Hopefully the second, because this is already getting kind of insane,” The Goblin answered with a confused shrug.
“Tom, this is the first time I've heard you actually be worried about something here, but Grimbleflork is probably right. The idea of the System endangering itself is pretty unlikely. But if that is the path it's going, there's also nothing we can do about it, so it's probably not worth worrying about,” I added, hoping to calm the man down a bit.
“Alright, alright, sorry. Just certain things get in my head, and it's hard to get them out sometimes. I'm gonna go get back to work. And try to take my mind off these new issues,” he said, his voice not entirely returning to normal. That man was still not happy about what he'd learned. Hopefully, he was right in his own prescription on how to handle it.
As Tom walked away, Grimbleflork spoke up with a louder boom in his voice. “Alright, boys, you kinda heard Adam say it already, but we're dissolving the faction and joining the Neighborhood. I don't really see much of an option for our future beyond that. But if any of you want out, now's the time.”
To their credit, each of the Goblins looked utterly determined to follow Grimbleflork into hell.