Relentless Potential (Original Fantasy)

A/N: Back to Thomas for his take on things!

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Ironically, Thomas is pretty sure he's the one least bothered by the attempted poison out of everyone who knows about it. Between Eloise, Camilla, and Arnold, they all do more than enough worrying on his behalf. Whether its Eloise making sure to cook extra portions so that nothing she hasn't prepared for him goes into his gullet, or Camilla watching him suspiciously whenever she thinks he isn't looking, or even Arnold frowning at him during potion lessons.

They all have their reasons for being concerned over both his poisoning and his survival… but when it comes to Thomas himself, he's just not letting it get to him all that much. He'd survived after all, and from what Arnold had said, he'd survived a particularly powerful poison at that.

His Gift has just kept him going and as long as he'd kept putting one foot in front of the other, the poison quite literally hadn't been able to put him down for good. He wasn't necessarily immune (though he'd be curious to know if he could become so) but he was sturdy enough to just fight his way through something that should have killed him dead.

Of course, his nonchalance was helped in part by a certainty that he knew who had probably tried to poison him. From what he'd read in the original Thomas Marlow's journal, all of his friends from high and low had abandoned him after he'd been 'grounded' by his family and effectively cut off from his allowance.

The nobility he'd associated with no longer wanted to associate with him because he was an outcast among them, and the commonfolk he'd associated with, aka his 'gang', had basically abandoned him since he could no longer pay them to hang out with him.

So really… there was nobody back in the Capital who would possibly want him dead… save for the very same people that had sent him here. It looked like the original Thomas had been half-right. Dame Camilla didn't seem like she was under orders to kill him, otherwise she would have tried by this point, but at the same time House Marlow definitely didn't want him to ever come back to the Capital. They wanted him to die out here… and they were even willing to get their hands dirty to do it.

Knowing that your current body's parents wanted you dead enough to sneak attack you with poisoned cookies of all things was kind of rough… but the emotional impact was offset by the fact that Thomas had never even met these people before. Lord and Lady Marlow, hell even his supposed elder brother 'Martin'… he hadn't so much as laid eyes on them.

And if this latest attempt on his life was all they could muster, it wasn't even worth worrying about because frankly, Thomas as he was right now was as weak as he was ever going to be. That was the true boon of the Gift of Relentless Potential. Every step forward he took made him stronger. Every load he carried, every spar he fought, every run he completed.

If they wanted him dead, they should have ordered Camilla to off him before he ever arrived in Last Hope, because as things stood now… Thomas wasn't an easy target anymore. And he'd only get harder to kill as time went on.

So yes, despite Eloise's worrying and Camilla and Arnold's suspicions, Thomas was in good spirits in the days following his attempted poisoning. He wasn't about to let the attempt on his life stop him from continuing to grow and push forward.

Which led to the latest expedition that he and Camilla were doing into the Darkwoods. This time around, however, Thomas didn't have a satchel over his shoulder because they weren't out here hunting for potion ingredients. Instead…

"There they are. Tracks."

Camilla grunts as Thomas points out the goblin tracks visible in the ground before them. Yes, rather than hunting for herbs and flowers… they were hunting goblins today.

See, there'd been another attempted goblin raid just a couple weeks ago. Once again, it hadn't amounted to anything. This time around, Thomas had even stepped up and helped Camilla put down a few of the green creatures. Then, curiosity getting the better of him, he'd asked Eloise where goblins even came from.

It was all over the place back on Earth, after all. You had everything from goblins literally growing out of tainted and corrupted ground like fucking potatoes, to goblins being a mono-gendered race that relied on… 'cross-pollination' with captured members of other species in order to reproduce.

And hell, in some settings that were more gamified than this one, the goblins quite literally just spawned out of thin air as a low level mob for adventurers and protagonists just starting out to fight.

In this case however, goblins were apparently pretty close to the 'bog-standard'. Namely, they were normal creatures with two genders who reproduced and tended to coalesce into primitive tribal arrangements. They weren't 'evil' necessarily, but they were inherently violent in a way even your average human wasn't and very short-sighted.

They would continue to attack Last Hope until either they were dead or every last human was dead simply because they had no concept of diplomacy or negotiations outside of their species, and even within their species such concepts were exceptionally violent and brutal and usually resulted in fatalities.

Basically, there was no reasoning with them, not even to scare them away. Last Hope just had to deal with them… unless Thomas and Camilla did something about it. As the only two people in Last Hope capable of venturing far enough into the Darkwoods to locate the goblin tribe's camp, it fell to them to put a decisive end to the problem.

Eloise hadn't been too sure about the idea, looking like she was worried for some reason, but Thomas had told her it was going to be fine. Even if he himself wasn't strong enough to handle a whole goblin tribe yet, Camilla almost certainly was… and together, they were more than enough.

Still, it had taken them more than half a day to get this far out, and that was with them moving much faster than they had back on their very first expedition into the Darkwoods. He was faster, stronger, and tougher by several orders of magnitude than he'd been back then, while Camilla was… well, she was Camilla.

And they were getting close now, because the goblin tracks they'd been using to track down the tribe's camp were getting more and more numerous, until it was honestly all but impossible to miss them.

Armed and armored, Thomas beckons Camilla forward and the two of them move a bit more stealthily as they follow the tracks until they start to hear noises up ahead… noises that can only be goblins carousing.

Shortly after that, they come upon the goblin camp. It's pretty much exactly what Thomas was expecting, with sharpened wooden sticks to create a makeshift looking wall around the camp's edge, and a bunch of ramshackle dwellings made of mud and sticks and animal pelts within. And all of it up against the side of a big hill with a large cave entrance in the side of it.

Glancing around briefly, Thomas turns and scales the nearest tree, his spear and shield on his back to leave his hands free. Camilla gives him a strange look as he does this but he pays her no mind, instead using the vantage point to get a better view into the goblin camp.

There are dozens of the small green creatures in the camp, chattering among themselves and cooking whatever animals they managed to capture. There's a pit where some of them are fighting with each other, some using nothing but their clawed hands and the others using the crude weapons that Thomas has seen them wielding in their last two raids on Last Hope.

They aren't holding back very much against each other. There's blood and gore galore, with any goblin weak enough to wind up dead being tossed off to the side into a large and stinking refuse pile.

The one thing missing to complete the fantasy was that there were no cages filled with human prisoners anywhere that Thomas could see. Sure, they could have been in the cave or something, but he also knew that Last Hope hadn't lost someone to a goblin raid in literal years. The goblins simply weren't organized enough to threaten the human town with anything but constant low level attacks.

Alas, he wouldn't be the Big Damn Hero rescuing the damsel from the goblin camp any time soon. He wouldn't be saving someone in distress or freeing prisoners who were destined for the soup pot if he came along. But ultimately, it doesn't matter. He's doing this because this goblin tribe in particular will never stop harassing and striking out at Last Hope so long as they exist. This wasn't some glorious quest, nor was it war… it was merely pest control.

Having seen all that he needed to see, Thomas gets down from the tree and nods to Camilla.

"I'm ready when you are. There are several bottlenecks all over the camp, but from what I can see they aren't purposeful… meaning we can use them to our own advantage as we launch our assault."

Camilla grunts at that and slowly draws her sword.

"Just remember to be careful of projectiles. That is the most likely way for us to be overwhelmed."

Nodding again, Thomas retrieves his spear from his back and buckles his shield to his arm. Clad in his wolf-pelt armor, he feels pretty damn good about himself… but he knows that Camilla is right. Dying here today to goblins of all things would be a humiliating way to go too.

Still, they don't bother with subtlety from there, instead approaching the camp from the entrance with determination in their steps. That was the other way in which this world's goblins were different from some of the interpretations he remembered reading about back on Earth. They weren't trap builders.

In some fictional settings, the writers would have their goblins make up for their small size and physical weakness by having them be excellent trap makers, the type to set a thousand different traps up around their camps and also to rely on ambushes and the like to take down stronger opponents like humans.

That was not the case with these goblins, however. They didn't seem to be intelligent enough for it. Case in point, as he and Camilla are finally noticed there's a long pause as the goblins process that there are two non-goblins standing in the entrance of their camp… and then, with infuriated roars, they begin to charge at the two of them.

What follows is not so much a battle as it is an extermination. To expand upon the mention of pest control from earlier, there's not really anything honorable or heroic about any of this. It's just killing, just like with the numerous wolf packs that he and Camilla have had to fight off whenever they've gone into the Darkwoods for potion ingredients.

The difference now of course is that the goblins have their own spoken language as well as their own tools and weapons. Bows and slings are the most dangerous things to him and Camilla, as she'd mentioned before. The swords and clubs that the average goblin wield aren't made well enough to truly harm either of them, but a well fired arrow or slung stone could easily take one of them out of the fight if they aren't careful or paying attention.

Fortunately, Camilla is Camilla and Thomas' two months of hard work and training have really started to pay off. Even as he strikes out with his spear, stabbing any goblin who gets close enough right in the chest and swinging their corpses off to the sides, Thomas raises his shield, letting the arrows thunk into it and the stones bounce off as the goblins in the back fire upon him.

Camilla, meanwhile, doesn't have any shield… but she also doesn't need one. Her sword flashes out quicker than his spear can yet move, striking down goblin after goblin while also cutting both arrows and stones down before they can ever reach her.

And reach is right… because Camilla's reach is far further than her physical sword would suggest. Goblins learn to fear getting within a certain range of her, because ultimately whether they're running at her or trying to flee, if they're within twenty feet, she can cut them down just as if they were within normal striking distance.

Together, they move through the camp, killing any and all goblins that get in their way. As Thomas had previously mentioned, there are accidental chokepoints all throughout the camp, moments where they can be sure that none of the goblins in front of them can get behind them. He and Camilla use these quite frequently, leaving nothing but corpses in their wake.

Until eventually they reach the mouth of the cave and cut through the goblins with bows and slings who had taken up residence there. Slicing them down as well, they advance into the cave itself. Thomas didn't see a single goblin who escaped into the woods, so as far as he's aware, this extermination mission is going great so far. They just have to finish the job now, of course.

The goblins make their last stand in the back of the cave… where the nursery for their young is located. Fortunately there's not some goblin shaman or anything like that to turn the tables on them at the last second or anything like that. There is a goblin chieftain wearing a wolf pelt over his shoulders and wielding a big-ass club, but even he's no match for Camilla.

From there… well, the last part is messy but also necessary. After all, it's not much of an extermination if you leave any goblins behind to grow up with a vendetta against you…

It's the knowledge that the goblins would kill every last person in Last Hope if they could, including the women and children, that makes it easy for Thomas to use his spear to help Camilla end it. It doesn't make him happy or gleeful… but there is a certain sense of grim satisfaction as it's done all the same.

They set fire to the bodies inside the cave and then depart. There's no point in burning the entire camp, not and risk starting an actual forest fire, but supposedly the forest's natural predators will come along and pick the place clean if they want to.

For now, he and Camilla are done… and while they'll probably have to make camp tonight before heading back to Last Hope tomorrow, they aren't going to be doing that here… no, they'll travel back a couple hours first.

All in a day's work, Thomas thinks to himself… once again unaware of the eyes watching him from the shadows as he and the Knight Bachelorette depart.

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A/N: Just some goblin extermination, no big deal~

Please let me know what you think! Your feedback, suggestions, and ideas for this story are keeping the inspiration flowing in a big way!

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