Finally, the opening revealed a large cavern room inside. Lyrian quickly dashed inside to a shocking reveal.
30, no, over 50 living goblins were scattered all over the place, with the adventurers from the previous situation right in the middle of the surprisingly bright room that was lit up by amber crystals on the walls.
The group looked to hug a fountain or shine of some sort in the middle as they barely continued to fight off the overwhelming amount of goblins, their bodies heavily cut and injured already.
Something was off though, as Lyrian squinted to take a closer look, he realized that Stafon, the older gentleman from before, wasn't amongst the crew.
Scanning the rest of the room, he noticed another opened wall similar to the one that he came inside from.
'He must have escaped through there.' Lyrian thought, now fully convinced that Stafon was driven by evil intentions.
Without any hesitation, Lyrian began slaughtering goblins left right and center with his knife.
In the middle, the larger boy with the ax tried to stand more in front, blocking the heavier attacks with his chainmail armor similar to a tank role.
Still, he bared several deep cuts that pierced through his armor and didn't look like he was going to survive long.
The other boy tried his best to attack the goblins with his sword but had tears falling down his face and an arm nearly detached from his body.
The look in his eyes was one of despair and desperation like he just wanted to stop fighting and die at this point.
The girl was the least injured out of the group as she stood in the back trying to cast healing spells and occasional fireballs and even some ice spikes here and there, but she was much paler than before, most likely due to mana exhaustion where one used up too much mana and drained their life force.
Their screams were relentless, enough to send shivers down a normal person's spine. The human cry for help was something that could break anyone down mentally, but Lyrian refused to be discouraged by it.
Just like that time when he killed the mother of those two baby rabbits, he needed to accept that this was simply the nature of the world; the strong killing the weak.
However… Another thought was also prominent in Lyrian's mind.
These rookie adventures were lied to. They were told that this place was going to be easier and were now going to die because of it.
This was not their fault, it was not how things were meant to go. It was not the natural order of life.
No, a horrible person did this to them on purpose to cause this.
Right now, Lyrian had no hopes that they could survive by the time he reached them since their injuries were far too serious.
So instead, he decided to focus on killing the goblins here first to move on to the next room through the other opening that he saw.
He wanted to confront Stafon. He didn't know what for exactly yet, since it wasn't his business to begin with, but in his mind he felt like it was the right thing to do.
As Lyrian continued to move like a serpent through the crowd of goblins, his footsteps flawlessly placed in order to avoid any mistakes and his blade flowing like water, he cut down several more goblins in the span of a few seconds.
Noticing this however, a large chunk of over ten goblins changed their attention to him instead, quickly closing in on him on all sides.
Just as he was surrounded by the goblins, Lyrian finally yelled "Garmr! Out!"
Out of his shadow suddenly appeared a 6-foot white wolf with an obsidian back, immediately howling ferociously as it held its master atop its back.
"Go!" Lyrian shouted as Garmr immediately dispersed the ten goblins by ripping them all to shreds.
Their bodies tore apart pieces of paper as Garmr's obsidian jaws crunched down and frivolously shook them in the air, causing blood to splatter everywhere.
He jumped off of the wolf's back as it went on a rampage, instead focusing on reaching the middle of the room.
By the time he sliced through the leftover goblins and arrived in the middle, the three adventurers were all on the floor.
The taller, bulkier-built boy looked to have bled to death from his chest wounds, and the other, sword-wielding boy's head was decapitated, but the mage was still breathing.
Lyrian approached her and knelt down, as she looked like she was trying to say something.
"Silandra…house–" She barely managed to softly whisper as her voice finally gave out and her eyes became dull of life.
Lyrian had no clue what she meant by that, but he decided to keep it as a mental note in case he ever needed it in the future.
After all, not many would say pure gibberish as their final words. It definitely contained some value.
"Garmr!" He shouted, seeing that no more goblins were alive.
The wolf quickly ran over to Lyrian, lifting him up by the snout and placing him on his back.
His nose was drenched in blood, but his tail was wagging like a puppy.
"Through that opening," Lyrian said, pointing with his finger as Garmr began running full speed towards that direction.
Right now, curiosity was killing Lyrian. He just had to know why anyone would lead rookie adventurers to their death in a goblin den?
If it was for simple evil pleasure, Stafon would still be around to see the adventurers get killed, but it wasn't. Clearly, he was driven by some ulterior motive, a motive that Lyrian was only going to figure out by confronting him directly…