Earth's SSS Pornstar to SSS Combat God in Another World-Chapter 21: Another Tribe’s Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure

Chapter 21: Another Tribe’s Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure

Joji untied the kobolds and let them down, then he asked.

"Do you know a smart goblin around?" He pointed at the skinned ogre. "You can take that one."

"Yes, hooman. I know a goblin cave just behind the mountain to the north. Why do you ask?" the elder kobold said.

Joji kept his tone easy.

"Do you think they will help us if you speak for us?"

The elder’s pug face creased deeper. He sighed like a man agreeing to swallow pride.

"I will vouch for you. They will help if you give them that meat."

Joji nodded once. "Alaric. Let’s start making carts."

"What’s the plan?" Alaric asked.

"I think it would be best if we can employ these smart bros."

Alaric’s eyebrows jumped.

"You mean you want us to travel with them?"

Joji nodded. In his mind, if they paid up front, it would plant a new stronger alibi for their identity.

And in Primeria, monsters and humans had been talking to each other for thousands of years.

Working together was not strange.

They moved fast. Trees were picked, cut, and stripped. Wheels were crude, axles rough, but the frames held.

Soon the ogre carcasses were hauled up and loaded, the carts groaning under the weight.

The kobold band started north as well, and the elder kept them in line with sharp little barks.

Goblins and kobolds fought skirmishes and turf wars, but they did not like dragging other races into their own squabbles.

Joji glanced at Walter. The merchant still looked energetic, eyes clear, hands steady.

"I will teach you an art I created on my own," Joji said. "It’s simple, and it’s not of Everhart origin."

"It will create heat in your hands without turning your aura into fire."

It was something the original Joji had tried to build, and right now it mattered because the leather needed to be processed fast.

Walter needed heat. Something controlled.

"That would immensely help in our endeavor, sir," Walter said, and his voice carried honest excitement.

Joji showed him how to guide the flow, how to coax warmth out until moisture steamed from the ogre hide in thin white breaths.

Walter tried it once, then again, and his grin came easy.

"Amazing. This is just what I need," he exclaimed.

Before long, Joji and Alaric were hauling two heavy carts by woven vines, each stacked with one and a half ogre carcasses.

Ten kobolds strained on each cart behind the two knights, back paws digging into the dirt, shoulders low, breath coming out in hot little bursts.

With that many bodies pulling, their pace held at a fast jog, and the night road to the north began to unspool under them.

Walter, however, rode atop the cart Joji pulled.

He worked as they moved, cutting and fitting the suit they would wear, fingers busy while he coaxed heat through his aura, steaming the hide as he went.

The forest crawled with sentient monsters and hungry wild beasts, all of them looking for an easy meal.

Joji had seen this coming. He had watched enough Bear Grylls to know you did not wait for teeth to reach your throat before you acted.

A bundle of short javelins rode across his back. He had made Alaric carve fifty of them to spear salmon on the road, but one less javelin to solve a problem was worth it.

His right arm drew fast. Aura flooded the wood, stiffening it, hardening it, making it feel less like a stick and more like a lethal weapon.

With the cave ogre eyes inside him, the dark did not matter anymore. He could see as if night had never existed.

A panther flowed out of the brush, low and silent, ready to leap for the cart line. Joji threw once.

The javelin punched through its eye before the beast could even gather its spring. It hit the ground hard and went still.

Shapes in the brush halted. Noses lifted. Blood. Fresh. Softer than ogre meat. Better.

After a few more tense pauses, the trees thinned and they reached the first wooden goblin guard post.

A goblin no taller than four feet stood there, lean and sharp, eyes flat and watchful.

The elder kobold stepped forward and produced a token, then made signs with his paws.

"Trustworthy."

The goblin watched the motions, then looked from Joji to Alaric and gave them a single tight nod.

Joji had seen goblins before, in games, but seeing one this close still threw him.

Green skin. Long nose. Flat rectangular pupils. Its throat wheezed when it tried to breathe too deep.

It did not speak out loud.

Instead it signed, one handed, the way the original Joji had learned.

"What do you plan to do?" the goblin asked.

Joji answered in the same signs, careful and slow.

"We want to trade this cart of a complete ogre hill, and a halved cave ogre."

The goblin’s fingers shifted. Thumb rubbing against index and middle, plain as a merchant’s grin. It wanted a cut before he was let in.

Joji did not argue. He sliced off a strip from the skinned hill ogre, a piece like a pinky finger, and offered it.

The goblin grabbed it and started sucking on the raw strip like it was a delicacy. Then it whistled as loud as it could.

Kobolds moved at once, drifting back toward their elder. That whistle was not a greeting.

It was a call. A call for goblins.

Joji leaned toward Alaric.

"I need you to talk to the kobolds. Check if they can employ kobolds too. If we can get a shadow kobold or a kobold caster, do it."

"I understand," Alaric said. Then he added, too casually, "Make sure we do not get an ugly healer. Take care."

Joji felt a small flare of exasperation. He swallowed it and kept walking.

’How are you supposed to find a handsome goblin when they are born green and wrinkled?’

The camp opened up ahead, crude, busy, and alive with movement. Goblins of different sizes prowled between tents and fire pits.

Hobgoblins stood around five feet tall with slim hard muscle.

Shamans wore bone ornaments and carried staves, eyes too calm.

An eight foot champion turned its head as Joji entered, gaze heavy.

The guard cried out in its wheezing goblin language that the human wanted to trade ogre meat for services.

Interest snapped toward Joji like dogs turning to a dropped bone.

The guard looked back at Joji again, then made the hand signals.

"What service are you looking for?"

"Healer," Joji answered.

Goblins began to line up. Most of the healers were common goblins, small like the guard.

It would have been funny if it was not so real. Joji knew the strange rule here.

Goblins grew with happiness, with life experience, with satisfaction. The easiest way to grow was battle.

It showed in the champions and hobgoblins.

Still, it did not sit right with him. If it spent its days saving lives, why did that not make it grow too.

Joji asked the guard with his hands, then with a low voice.

"Why is she so small?" he signed, hands pointing toward the goblin who stood under three feet tall.

The guard signed, simple and blunt.

"All day only read book. Does not want to make children. Always practice go away wounds power."

"That is it? No sickness. No abnormality?" Joji asked.

The guard nodded.

Joji pointed at the same small healer in the line, a female goblin with tired eyes and hands stained with herbs.

"How much for this one?"

The guard hesitated, then glanced at a champion.

The champion lumbered over, grabbed the small goblin by her clothes, and lifted her like a sack.

Pride puffed it up. It tried to speak like a man.

"Human. You buy," it said, head tilted.

Joji blinked.

"For sale?" he asked.

"Bum. Not give babies to tribe," the champion replied.

Joji understood then. The camp had decided she was not useful in the way they valued.

He pointed at the cart.

"Is this whole cart alright?" he asked.

The champion bobbed its head a few times, a little too fast, like it feared Joji might change his mind.

Joji caught the hesitation.

"You add bone javelins," Joji said, pointing at the rack from afar.

Not the big ones. The kind the small goblins used. Light enough to carry, and good enough to throw when he needed reach.

The champion started counting on thick fingers, then got lost. A smaller goblin, yellowish and older looking, kicked the champion in the shin and shooed it away with a sharp bark.

The elder stepped in with an abacus like a merchant and clicked the beads with quick certainty.

Then it showed the number with its hands.

A hundred ten bone javelins. Joji did not haggle. He agreed with a nod.

He turned to leave, and the small goblin healer fell in behind him without being told.

They walked out together, past the edge of the camp, until the noise became a distant blur and the trees swallowed the fires.

Then, behind him, the small goblin spoke. Clear words. Human words.

"Yes. Yes. Finally out of that barbaric place."

Joji felt a jolt in his chest. That was proper English. He did not show it.

Outwardly, he kept walking as if nothing had happened. Inwardly, a small sharp grin formed, and plans began to stack in his head one after another.

If he could shape the way this goblin girl thought, if he could steer her mind where he wanted it to go, she could become more than a healer.