"Hm?" Caldrin tapped on a familiar screen. Not long ago, he had pointed out the problem with Grey to his Associate Producer, but Gard hadn’t cared all that much and had ordered to just let Grey die naturally.
However, something odd happened.
Caldrin swiped several times and formed a light pink envelope once again. He furiously scribbled in some notes and then sent it off to Gard.
A Rare Instance had been triggered. He would need to hear his Associate Producer’s opinion on how they should edit this. This might only happen a few dozen times across the several million Tutorial Zones they had, so the audience would be very interested in it.
...
It wasn’t long before the light pink envelope made it to the top of Gard’s notifications and he clicked on it.
"The Last Goblin Swordsman? Hm... Quite rare. I believe this has only happened once before."
Rare Instances referred to any divergent path the Genesis Games took that had a less than 5% chance of occurring. In Tutorial Zones, these were often harder to trigger precisely because they were designed to be controlled environments.
But goblins were an especially weak starting position.
All Tutorial Zones were outfitted with weak creatures, but some had poorer lore than others. While the playing field was artificially kept even, there would always be some differences.
Kobolds, for example—especially the lizard ones—had some draconic blood within them. They were much closer to their more powerful ancestors.
Goblins, by comparison, were impossibly far away from their warring ancestors. They were only about as strong as the children of most races, and they needed the fewest adjustments in the Tutorial Zone.
If not for the fact that the audience would get bored of watching every Tutorial Zone fight the same exact creature, it would have been more cost-effective to use goblins in them all.
This was all to say that the Genesis Games rarely allowed the ancestral line of the goblin race to awaken precisely because they were so weak, it took something quite involved to stimulate it.
Associate Producer Gard chose to rewind Grey’s journey and see if he could find what had triggered the Rare Instance, but to his surprise... he couldn’t find it.
By the time he concluded there was no obvious path, Grey was already clinging to the Last Goblin, heaving his last as he was being burned to a crisp.
It seemed it didn’t matter what Grey had triggered, then. It would end here anyway.
**
Grey’s breath came out in a broken, shallow wheeze. He couldn’t see his body right now, but he bet the burns that took on the form of lightning streaks had probably covered him whole.
He couldn’t even begin to move a single inch, and his eyes were fused shut, their lids melted into one another.
Some part of him had hoped that once the damage to his body reached a certain point, he would shut down, or maybe his nerves would just stop functioning properly, but nope.
It was like his body was insistent on him feeling every little aspect of it until he breathed his last.
The blurry flash of notifications formed in front of his eyes despite their current state, as though they too had been burned into him. But he couldn’t focus enough to read them, or find the will or care to. What did it matter?
A creaking caught Grey’s attention. A rush of wind swept out as the heavy twin set of wooden doors were pulled open, but that sensory overload was quickly swallowed by the scream of a woman.
He recognized that scream. That was the same scream he had heard when they replayed her death back then.
"Shut up! Shut up!" a harsh whisper echoed quickly after.
Grey had never heard this voice before, but in all likelihood, this was the very same archer he had been trying to avoid all this time. Not that that mattered anymore.
A silence fell for several moments, but then they began to inch forward. Even while trying to be quiet, they didn’t do a very good job of it. Grey’s ears were probably little more than a molten mess of his own flesh and he could still hear them.
"These are..." Fitz spoke again softly, seemingly realizing that there was no immediate danger. "... Rewards, right? These are rewards. Whoa..."
May didn’t respond. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the burnt pile.
Grey didn’t know it, but he had all but welded himself to the Last Goblin. They didn’t even really look human right now. They were just a pile of brown and black, their blood having turned a rusted shade of red.
"Is that an Epic Loot Box? There’s no way... the Safe Zone Overseer said that’s only a 1 in 10,000 drop, no?"
Fitz was practically whispering as though he was speaking to himself.
Grey, of course, couldn’t say anything in reply. It wasn’t like he could open loot boxes anyway. He had come across several Uncommon ones, only to be forced to walk away. Now someone else was benefitting from his death.
All he could feel was fury.
There was a shift in the pile and Fitz jumped back, letting out a little yelp.
"What the hell? What the hell!"
PENG.
Grey felt something hit the Last Goblin fused on top of him. It quivered against their bodies, but it didn’t manage to hurt him.
It didn’t take a genius for him to know that it was an arrow. If he could have, he would have been gritting his teeth. Hadn’t this bastard had enough?
PENG.
A second arrow hit, this one ripping right through his arm.
Grey shuddered, the fresh shot of pain forcing his mind into clarity.
Enraged, his mouth opened, his lips ripping apart as the flesh that had melted together was unhinged by his jaw.
"Don’t let me—."
PENG!
An arrow pierced right into his skull and he never got the chance to finish his words.
—
[You have died. Better luck next time. Oh wait, there won’t be a next time. Toodle-oo.]
—