Days went by.
One or two weeks, maybe.
I had lost count.
The sun rose. Fell.
And I hunted.
Sometimes, nothing.
Entire days without prey.
Without movement.
Without sound, except the wind.
And sometimes…
A carnivorous rabbit, screaming, frantic.
Or a wolf, alone, fast, caught by a snare or a treacherous branch.
I killed.
I ate.
I drank.
And the purple light returned.
Always the same.
Fluid.
Silent.
It entered me like a slow poison.
A gentle venom.
And I let it.
I wasn't afraid anymore.
After two weeks, my kingdom was no longer just a corner of forest.
It had grown, slowly, meter by meter.
At first, it was just a circle of trees by a river, vaguely marked with stretched vines and primitive traps.
But with patience, obsession, controlled fear… I had shaped something else.
A perimeter of about fifty meters in diameter, sometimes more, sometimes less, shaped by the terrain, the trees, the slippery zones. I knew it by heart.
Every root.
Every bush.
Every anchor point.
A fully trapped terrain.
There were now more than fifty active traps, placed with maniacal precision.
Some were simple: ankle-height snares, triggered by a stretched vine or a fragile twig.
Others were devious: branches bent like bows, ready to strike with a sharpened stone at the end, or bone fangs held under tension.
But the deadliest of all was the vine labyrinth.
Vegetable ropes, stretched between trunks, formed a three-dimensional net.
Some paths were deliberately blocked, others narrowed to force prey to lower their heads, slow down, contort themselves.
And that's where the real traps waited.
The whole space was designed to tire, disorient, annoy.
Then strike.
Strike hard.
Bits of flesh—remains of rabbits, rats, sometimes unlucky little birds—were hung here and there, on the vines, sometimes just on the ground.
Bait for predators.
Scents to attract the curious.
Proofs of death to deter the bold.
I had also set up an invisible path, known only to me.
A precise sequence of steps, a safe line of passage between traps.
An Ariadne's thread etched in my memory.
One wrong step, even for me… and it was over.
There were even elevated paths.
I had woven some vines between branches, forming flexible walkways above the ground.
Nothing stable, nothing lasting.
But enough to move quickly if needed, or to observe unseen.
My favorite tree had become my watchtower.
Bark polished by my claws. Branches reinforced with knots and ties.
A throne, rustic, but terribly effective.
From up there, I saw everything.
The ground.
The traps.
The movements in the bushes.
The glints in the eyes of those who dared to come close.
And this kingdom…
This damn kingdom of rope, dried blood, and dead leaves…
had become a lair of death.
Not spectacular.
Not grand.
But perfectly lethal.
Those who entered here—animals or other goblins—didn't come out.
They were caught. Tired. Mutilated.
Then killed.
And I waited.
Like a spider.
Like a spirit in the tree.
Like a minor god, invisible, cruel and silent, ruling over a domain no one wanted to visit twice.
I may have been just a goblin.
But here, in this space of cunning, death, and waiting, I was no longer prey.
Little by little, I was creating my own experience farm.
Every trap set, every prey caught, every strangled scream in the silence of my kingdom brought me that purple light.
My fuel.
My offering.
My evolutionary poison.
I saw it coming.
Wrapping around the corpses.
Then entering me.
Again. And again.
And I changed.
First my mind.
Less stressed. Less clouded.
More precise.
As if my fear, once constant, had become a tool, a sensor, a compass.
Then my body.
Faster to react.
Less exhausted.
Tougher, more flexible, more… right.
I still didn't sleep deeply.
But I slept better.
And above all: I lived.
I killed several creatures a day now.
Carnivorous rabbits.
Lone wolves.
Each one trapped, bled, consumed.
And no one came to disturb me.
So yeah, I sometimes thought…
I had become a zone boss.
Not a titanic monster.
Not a mini-boss in a lava cathedral.
But a fixed predator.
A den guardian.
A monster you only see when it's too late.
I made sure not to become overconfident.
Not completely.
I knew overconfidence killed faster here than any snake bite.
But…
So far, I hadn't come across anything more dangerous than a wolf.
Nothing smarter.
Nothing faster.
Nothing bigger.
So deep down, I wasn't too worried.
After all, if the adult goblins had thrown us into this forest…
It must've been designed for that, right?
A tutorial zone.
A little wild patch.
Not too hard.
Not too easy.
A sandbox for budding monsters.
I sincerely hoped… that's what it was.
Because if this wasn't a starting zone…
Then I was just a cockroach on borrowed time.
Just as I thought that… night fell.
Slowly. Deceitfully.
Like a sheet of soot laid on the shoulders of a still-warm corpse.
In this hell of vines, blood and silence, I sometimes thought of my life before.
It wasn't anything special.
No great passions. No highlights.
I didn't have a warm family.
No siblings, no unforgettable friends.
I was a student. Serious. Lonely. Focused on the future.
I had bet all my time, all my energy… on the long term.
And I died before the harvest.
Too bad.
This world had dealt me a new hand.
Another body. Another starting line.
But in the midst of this life devoured by survival, there was one image that came back more and more.
Not of a lost love.
Not of a dream of glory.
My mother.
Not the one from my other life.
Not that absent woman, too distant a ghost.
But my goblin mother.
The one from this world.
The one who had given me her milk.
The one who had offered a smile—gentle, sad—knowing I might never come back.
The one whose silhouette, bathed in light, had become my only guide in the dark.
In my solitude, she shone.
And I…
I wanted to see her again.
Talk to her.
Tell her I had survived.
That I was getting stronger.
That I was trying.
So I had to keep going.
Kill.
Set my traps.
Gather the light.
Evolve.
Because one day, I'd come back.
I'd find her.
And I'd speak to her.
Not as a child.
But as someone who had been through hell.
And as if in response to my thoughts…
it appeared.
No sound.
No vibration.
Just… a shape.
My sixth sense exploded.
A shiver ran down my spine.
My stomach tightened.
My breath stopped cold.
No doubt.
No lies.
My body, my mind, my instinct… screamed in unison:
DEATH.
I held my breath.
No air.
No breath.
No sound.
No existence.
I didn't dare move.
I didn't dare think.
I couldn't think.
Because it was there.
A shadow among shadows.
A presence foreign to all logic.
It tore apart the corpses I had left as bait—as if they were just dead leaves.
It broke the traps, ripped the vines—as if slicing air.
It didn't pass through my traps.
It ignored them.
It annihilated them.
As if nothing here could stop it.
As if this world belonged to it.
And that's when I understood.
This wasn't my kingdom.
I wasn't the king.
I had just… rented a patch of forest.
A ruin.
A piece of land that this monster had forgotten to claim.
I was a squatter.
And it, the rightful owner.
I was right to be modest.
But I should've been even more so.
A thousand times more.
I wasn't a zone boss.
I was a maggot on a throne of string.
And while it fed…
While it tore apart the limbs, skins, bones of my trophies…
While it trampled my entire work without even noticing me…
Something exploded inside me.
A pure rage.
Not against it.
Against them.
THOSE FUCKING GOBLINS.
Those asshole adults who had sent us here.
Teenagers.
Children.
Barely trained. Barely awakened.
Thrown into this?!
Into the lair of that thing?!
ONE WEEK.
I had lived ONE fucking WEEK before being thrown here.
And I thought this was a tutorial?
A TUTORIAL?!
WHAT THE HELL WAS THIS?!
WHAT KIND OF SPECIES SENDS ITS OWN KIDS TO BE EATEN ALIVE IN A FOREST FILLED WITH HUNGRY GODS?!
FUCK THIS WORLD.FUCK ITS LOGIC.FUCK ITS CULTURE.FUCK GOBLINS.
I COULD ONLY HATE THEM.
All of them.
No exceptions.
Even myself.
…
Well.
Except my mother.
My goblin mother.
She… she was cool.