Nikola was running.
The war horns were ringing behind him. The goblin band had spotted him. His backpack was heavy with sap and herbs.
The guards were nowhere to be found.
He climbed a tree. Hoping to hide in its crown.
Only to see that the goblins were preparing to cut it down!
"Stop!" Nikola yelled. He was certain that the goblins could understand him, but barely. They were, after all, intelligent creatures… who still picked their noses, but that was beside the point.
Nikola took in a deep breath, when he saw that the goblins were halting in cutting down his tree.
"If you cut this tree down, you will lose a part of your culture!" Nikola began trying to bullshit his way out anyway he could.
"That's nonsense," a goblin said, who was preparing his axe once more. "You think that we are going to fall for something like that? You must be mad!"
Nikola nodded. He had figured that it was a weak gamble. A gamble which was going to cost him, if it didn't get accepted.
"Yes, you will lose a part of your culture! Such lovely forest spirits as you can't simply go about killing trees!"
The goblins burst out laughing.
"He is a funny one," one of them said. "Let's bring him to the chief! He will make him laugh!"
"I don't know," another goblin said. "He is really plump. Might make a good soup."
Nikola cursed the fact that he was healthy once more. He knew that if he had been as thin as a stick, this wouldn't have happened.
"There is one more thing you haven't considered," Nikola said, as he viewed the closest tree.
Had he been a true adventurer, he would have tried to jump to that tree, then the next. So, as if he were Tarzan.
But he wasn't. Nor did he think that it was going to be a good idea to try to risk his health like that.
"I have Covid!" Nikola wasn't sure if him coming to this world had healed his Covid, but he hoped that he was at least as infectious as he had been back when he was alive.
"What's that?" A goblin asked him.
Nikola smiled.
Oh, this gullible fool!
"This is a very dangerous and infectious disease, which…" Nikola blinked. Now, what did Covid do, exactly? He had not paid any mind to all the press conferences which were held during the worst days of the pandemic.
He only knew his symptoms.
"You get fever, and it is difficult to breathe," Nikola said, hoping that it was enough.
"Hm," the head goblin said, as he slowly backed away from the tree. "I think we should leave this one."
"He doesn't have a fever!" Nikola was beginning to hate this one goblin. Unlike the rest, it was smarter, and probably less prone to accepting bullshit. "Or he wouldn't be prancing in the forest!"
"I wasn't prancing!" The indignation in the world traveler's tone was real. He really hadn't been prancing. "I was gathering herbs and saps to get better!"
"What are the chances," another goblin began, as he looked up the tree with a bit of fear. "That he really is sick and that he is going to make it so, that we all die?"
"We won't die from fever!" The smart goblin, as Nikola liked to call the infernal creature, pipped in. "We eat rotten meat! We get fevers and infections every day!"
Which was worrisome, Nikola had to admit. There had to be a better solution to his problems than ending up dead and his meat giving indigestion to the goblins.
"Why don't you just go in town and buy fresh meat?" Nikola finally asked. He had never seen even a single person in Big Capybara who was not one of the locals.
Heck, he was pretty sure that no goblins came to visit.
Still, he wanted to get it all out of the way. Because if he did not, he feared that he was going to get eaten for true!
"We can't! The humans don't want us!"
"Then," Nikola continued, seeing only one way before him which would not result in him getting eaten. "How about this? You let me go back to Big Capybara, and I will buy you meat! Just think beef sausages, ribeye steak!"
The goblins began to whisper to one another.
Finally, they stepped away from the tree.
"You may return to the human town and bring back food. We will even give you money!"
Nikola nodded. Because as things stood now, he really wouldn't have had enough money to feed an entire goblin tribe.
"But not even God will help you if you double-cross us!" The smart goblin said.
When Nikola got off the tree, there was a small treasure chest at the base of it.
The golden coins still had blood on them, which told him all that he needed to know about his future.
****
The butcher's shop was at a frenzy! The world traveler was finally going on a real quest and buying off all the meat they had!
"Gretta," Piers, the owner, said to the part-timer Gretta Ironheart, who also moonlighted as a procurer of bartered goods for Dobri the Gnome. "I think that we can go home early tonight!"
"You can," the dwarf told him, as she sharpened her cleaver. "But I can't! I need to butcher one bull and three pigs, prepare the sausages, and then swing by Dobri to get all his bartered goods!"
Piers nodded, backing away from the lady and going back up front to see that the world traveler was now also eyeing up the cheese they had on offer.
"For how long will you be gone, if you don't mind me asking?" The owner wanted to be a part of this epic journey!
To be a part of a legend in the making!
"A couple of hours," Nikola told him as he began to pile up the cheese in his extended shopping bag. "I'll probably be back tomorrow!"
Piers blinked.
Nikola placed the treasure chest on the counter.
Something was wrong, but the old butcher couldn't place his finger on it. The coins were bloody, but gold was gold.