Dungeon Exploiter

The next dungeon had a goblin in it, and everybody wanted it dead.

It was a Grade-D called the Loop, an abandoned subway platform that smelled like wet pennies. Thirteen of us dropped in, and the second our boots hit the tiles, a little green guy with a sack twice his size looked up, screamed, and ran the other way.

A screen lit up.

TREASURE GOBLIN DETECTED

Loot Rating: LEGENDARY

Catch it before it escapes! (03:00)

That was all it took. The platform emptied, twelve people gone in one direction, chasing one goblin like it owed them money — which, to be fair, it did. That sack was worth a year of rent and then some.

I stayed where I was.

“Everyone’s chasing the goblin,” Liya said from my shoulder.

“I noticed.”

“You’re not chasing the goblin.”

“Noticed that too.”

A treasure goblin is fast, and fast is the whole job — hold the good stuff, run, portal out before anyone catches you. If you chase one in a straight line, you lose every time. So while everyone else read the loot card, I read the boring entry underneath it.

TREASURE GOBLIN

Speed 9. Courage 1. Drops everything if cornered. Cannot open doors.

Tunnels branch. Somewhere up ahead, twelve optimized raiders were herding one terrified goblin toward a dead end none of them had checked, because their companions were all screaming CATCH IT and not one of them was screaming READ THE MAP.

I took the maintenance door instead — the boring one marked STAFF ONLY that every single person had jogged straight past, because you can’t loot a staff door.

The goblin came out ahead of the mob, wheezing, sack dragging behind it, and hit a wall where the tunnel just stopped — rebar and rubble, no portal, nowhere left to go. It spun around: twelve raiders coming from one side, me in the staff doorway on the other.

And then I did the thing that, as far as I know, nobody in the history of treasure goblins had ever done.

I said hi.

“Hey,” I said. “You good?”

The goblin froze. Its ears went flat, then up, then flat again.

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“...You can hear me?”

“Yeah.”

“Nobody hears me. It’s just the pointy things and the chasing, always the —” It clutched the sack to its chest. “You want the sack. Everybody wants the sack.”

“Not really,” I said. “You look like you’re having a worse day than me, and I got eaten by a customer-satisfaction survey this morning.”

Behind it, the raiders hit the choke point and stopped being a team. Twelve people do not fit through a gap built for three, and their companions had not run the numbers on width.

Somebody’s ring light went into somebody’s eye.

A guy cast a fireball in an enclosed stone tunnel and learned, in real time, what an enclosed stone tunnel does with a fireball.

The goblin watched them fight each other for the right to reach it first.

“They do this every time,” it said, and it sounded tired in a way I recognized. “I carry the sack. I run. They chase. Somebody dies in the tunnel. I portal out. Next day I do it again. It’s a job.”

“You get benefits?”

“...What are benefits?”

Yeah. That checked out.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Gobi.”

“I’m Jon. Gobi, those twelve are going to be through that gap in about a minute, and they are extremely motivated. There’s a door behind me. You want out?”

Gobi looked at the open door, then at me, then at the sack.

“Why,” it said.

“Because you’re cornered, they’re coming, and I’ve got the only exit. This is the part where I take the sack.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not going to.”

Gobi stared at me for a long second.

“Go on,” I said. “Door’s open.”

It went. Three steps later it stopped, turned around, and came back.

He dug in the sack and held out a gold ring, heavy enough to bend a finger.

“You didn’t take it,” Gobi said. “Nobody doesn’t take it. Take this. And —” He hesitated. “Do you want more? I’m good at getting. Getting is my whole thing. I could get you more. As, like. A regular arrangement.”

A monster was offering me a business partnership. It was going better than most of my actual job interviews.

“Sure,” I said. “What do you want for it?”

Gobi went still. I don’t think anybody had asked him that before, either. Then he got shy, which is a strange thing to watch a goblin do.

There was a snack he wanted, he said, quietly, like he was asking for something enormous.

Ketchup chips. If I brought it a bag now and then, we’d be square forever.

That was the whole fee, so I said sure.

Behind us, the raiders finally squeezed through the gap and spilled onto the dead-end platform, where they found no goblin, no sack, and one unranked temp holding a door open.

A screen popped up, just for me.

DUNGEON CLEARED.

Treasure Goblin: ESCAPED.

Loot Recovered: 0.

Method: [UNRECOGNIZED]

Note: the goblin left with you. it isn’t supposed to do that. why did it do that.

“Zero loot,” Liya observed. “A LEGENDARY sack, right there, and you walk out with zero loot and one goblin.”

“I got a ring.”

“You got a ring and a mouth to feed.” She yawned. “Joe’s going to love this.”

* * *

Joe did not love this.

“Why,” Joe said, “is there a goblin in your hallway.”

“His name’s Gobi.”

“WHY IS THERE A GOBLIN NAMED GOBI IN YOUR HALLWAY.”

“He told me.”

“He TOLD you. They talk?”

“To me.” Gobi says nobody has ever heard him before — to everyone else it’s just squeaks. I don’t know why I get the words. I’ve stopped asking this week to explain itself.

Gobi waved. Joe did not wave back. Joe was doing his small circles.

“You had a legendary drop,” Joe said. “A legendary drop, Jon. That’s a down payment. That’s a car. And you came home with a goblin, a ring, and — is that a snack IOU?”

“It’s a good ring,” I said.

Gobi held the gold band up helpfully. It was, in fact, a very good ring.

Joe looked at the ring, then the goblin, then me, and sat down slowly on my floor.

“One bag of chips,” he said. “You made a friend for one bag of chips.”

“Cheapest friend I ever made,” I said. “You cost me a kidney in college.”

Gobi, thrilled to be included, reached into the sack and handed Joe a second ring, to make him feel better.

It worked, a little. Joe stayed on the floor a while anyway, holding his ring.