The Stick and the System

Chapter 3: The Goblin Debacle

The walk to Haggerty Farm was the most chaotic fifteen minutes of Caspian’s life. It started with Guild Master Boris attempting a rousing, pre-quest speech from the tavern doorway.

“My brave… hic… warriors!” he’d bellowed, swaying dangerously. “Today, we strike fear into the hearts of… of… what are we hunting again?”

“Goblins, father,” Elara said, her voice tight with patience. She was tightening the straps on a sensible leather jerkin.

“Right! Goblings! Small, green, nasty… like my cousin Fergus!” Boris took a swig from a flask, choked, and promptly passed out on a hay bale by the door. Elara sighed, pulled a rough wool blanket over him, and turned to Caspian and Tobin.

“He’s out. He’s not coming. It’s just us.”

“Just us?” Tobin’s confidence faltered for a second. “Three against maybe seven goblins? That’s… uh… mathematically interesting!”

Just then, the ground seemed to shake with slow, heavy thuds. A man rounded the corner of the street. He was a mountain of muscle, taller than the tavern door and twice as wide. A wild, bushy beard covered most of his face, and his eyes were two calm pools of blue beneath a heavy brow. Slung over his shoulder was an old, chipped, double-headed axe that looked like it had felled entire forests.

“Bulkan! Perfect timing!” Elara said, relief in her voice.

The giant man stopped before them. He looked at Elara, then at Tobin, then his gaze settled on Caspian and his stick. A long, low grunt rumbled from his chest. It sounded like rocks tumbling in a distant cave.

“This is Bulkan, our fourth,” Elara explained. “He doesn’t talk much. Bulkan, this is Caspian. He’s new.”

Bulkan gave a single, slow nod. “Hrn.”

“Right! The party is complete!” Tobin said, his bravado returning. “The brains, the beauty, the brawn, and the… uh…” He looked at Caspian’s stick. “The surprise element! To Haggerty Farm!”

The farm wasn’t far. Old Man Haggerty, a wizened figure chewing on a straw, pointed a trembling finger at a large, rotting wooden door set into a hillside—the root cellar.

“They’re in there! Took my last good turnip! Make ‘em sorry!” he cackled.

Elara took charge. “Okay. Standard formation. Bulkan, you’re point. Tobin, you flank right. Caspian, you’re with me, we go left. Quietly.”

Bulkan nodded. “Hrn.” He hefted his axe.

They crept toward the cellar door, which hung slightly ajar. A foul smell of damp earth, rot, and something pungently animal wafted out. Bulkan placed a hand the size of a dinner plate on the door, took a breath, and flung it open with a splintering crash.

So much for quietly.

The cellar was a dim, earthen-walled space lit by faint light from the door. Piles of spoiled vegetables were everywhere. And there, caught in the middle of squabbling over a moldy potato, were the goblins.

They were not imposing. They were knee-high to Caspian, with shallow green skin, big bat-like ears, and beady black eyes full of mischief, not malice. There were five of them.

For a second, everyone froze. The goblins stared. The guild stared back.

One goblin, slightly larger than the others and wearing a rusted spoon as a helmet, pointed a bony finger at Caspian’s stick and let out a high-pitched giggle. It sounded like a boiling kettle.

That broke the spell.

“For the Gilded Fox!” Tobin yelled, charging in with his spear leveled.

Chaos erupted.

Bulkan swung his axe in a wide, powerful arc. He didn’t aim for the goblins; he aimed for a support beam. The axe head sunk deep into the wood with a THUNK, sending a shower of dirt from the ceiling and thoroughly embedding itself. Bulkan spent the rest of the fight trying to wrench it free, growling “Hrn!” with each tug, while two goblins pelted him with rotten onions.

Tobin’s spear thrust was elegant. Unfortunately, a goblin ducked, and the spearhead sank into a sack of squishy, overripe pumpkins. As Tobin tried to pull it free, two other goblins latched onto the spear shaft, using their weight to swing back and forth, shrieking with glee.

Elara was the only competent one. She moved with calm efficiency, a short sword in her hand. She parried a rusty knife from the spoon-helmet goblin and kicked another one neatly into a pile of squelching compost.

This left Caspian facing the fifth goblin. It held a sharpened chicken bone. It hissed at him.

“Okay, okay,” Caspian muttered, gripping his stick like a baseball bat. “It’s just a goblin. It’s basically a walking, stinky EXP piñata.”

The goblin charged, chicken bone raised.

Caspian swung.

He missed.

The momentum spun him halfway around. The goblin skittered between his legs, cackling, and stabbed the chicken bone into the back of Caspian’s thigh.

“OUCH!” Caspian yelled, more from surprise and insult than real pain. He turned, swatting blindly with the stick. Thwack! It connected with the goblin’s shoulder, sending it stumbling into a basket of old turnips.

Enraged, the goblin scrambled up and launched itself at his face. Caspian reacted on pure instinct, jabbing the stick forward like a pool cue. The blunt end caught the goblin square in its scrawny chest mid-air. There was a poof of expelled air, a sad squeak, and the creature fell to the ground, unmoving.

[Goblin Defeated! EXP +10!]

A blue notification flashed. Caspian barely had time to register it before another one, brighter and more urgent, filled his vision.

[Congratulations! Level Up!]

[Current Level: 2]

[Aether Capacity Increased!]

[New System Function Unlocked: Conduit Evolution.]

Before Caspian could even think ‘What?’, the stick in his hand grew warm. It began to shimmer. The wood seemed to melt and flow like liquid light, then rapidly reconfigure itself. The length shortened. The rough bark smoothed into a glossy, polished finish. A string, thin and impossibly strong, spiraled out from its center.

In less than two seconds, Caspian was no longer holding a stick.

He was holding a perfectly crafted, lacquered wooden yoyo. It hung from his finger on its string, spinning slightly.

He stared at it. The world around him—the grunting Bulkan, the shrieking Tobin, the efficient Elara, the remaining goblins—seemed to fade into a distant blur.

“My stick…” he whispered. “It’s a… yoyo?”

[Conduit Transformation: Complete.]

[Current Form: Yoyo of Simple Return.]

[Trait: Form will evolve with user’s Level.]

[New Suggested Combat Style: Ranged Harassment.]

A wild, giddy laugh bubbled up in Caspian’s throat. The goblin with the spoon helmet, seeing him distracted and holding what looked like a child’s toy, shrieked in triumph and charged again, rusty spoon raised high.

Acting on pure gamer reflex, Caspian let the yoyo drop. It fell in a controlled arc. As the goblin leaped, he flicked his wrist.

The yoyo shot forward with a surprising zip and smacked the goblin right between the eyes with a solid tok.

The goblin stopped mid-air, crossed its eyes, and dropped like a stone.

[Goblin Defeated! EXP +10!]

Elara, having dispatched her second goblin, turned just in time to see Caspian expertly recall the yoyo back to his hand with a neat spin. Her jaw went slightly slack.

Tobin finally yanked his spear free, sending the two giggling goblins flying into a wall. He blinked at Caspian. “Is that… a toy? Did your stick turn into a toy?”

Bulkan finally ripped his axe free from the beam, causing another mini cave-in of dirt. He looked at the yoyo, then at Caspian. A slow, deep grunt of what might have been approval echoed in the cellar. “Hrn.”

Caspian looked at the silly, wonderful weapon in his hand, then at the two remaining, now-terrified goblins who were backing toward a hole in the cellar wall. A huge, triumphant grin split his face.

His stick could transform. It got better as he got better. The possibilities were suddenly, hilariously, infinite.

“Hey Tobin,” Caspian said, his voice full of newfound confidence. He gave the yoyo an experimental loop-the-loop. “You said I was the surprise element, right?”

He took a step towards the fleeing goblins, the yoyo humming at his side.

“I think you're right.”