"Do you think there really is an unknown monster roaming around?" a goblin carrying a bucket in each of her hands questioned without looking back.
"Heh, doesn't matter, we're going to kill it!" another carrying a small spear replied boisterously.
"Argh, didn't you listen to the chieftain? We need to be super careful, let's get the water and head back" a third goblin shook his head, he was clutching his primitive hammer tightly.
The one with the spear rolled his eyes.
"Pay more attention to her! What are we going to look like if something just grabs her and swims away?! Huh?!" the cautious goblin stayed close to the female whilst the more relaxed one just faced a tree and began to take a much needed leak.
"No animal or monster will attack when there are multiple of us!" he spoke from behind the tree, stretching his neck and still barely catching a glimpse of the other two.
"I hear that on the other side, the kobolds have to deal with some big lizards that wait in the water near the shore, waiting to grab them, maybe that's what got Gobert?" the female goblin leaned closer to the impenetrable waters and filled one of the buckets.
"Those are some old stories, the kobolds have long gotten rid of them with the help of the fishfolks" the cautious one corrected her, wholly believing that the source of their worries was unknown.
"Which kobolds? The scaly ones or the furry ones? Mmh?" the goblin with a spear asked from behind the tree as he was finishing his business.
"The dogs are the only ones near the lake you idiot" the other goblin was getting fed up with this guy.
"I got the buckets" she spoke up and began walking away from the shore, not feeling very comfortable with it.
She could barely see her own reflection in the lake, anything could be right beneath the surface and she would have no clue.
"Where did he go?" the goblin with the hammer tensed up as his annoying brethren was nowhere to be found.
His first thought was that he was being a pain in the ass again, until he looked down at where he had been standing.
In perfect equilibrium on a blade of grass, a small drop of blood attracted his attention, looking around the tree, he quickly found a trail of blood leading straight into the lake.
"..."
"..."
"Let's go" feeling his throat constricting, he spoke with utmost calm, feeling like panicking would get him killed.
He grabbed the goblin with the buckets by the arm and began to calmly walk away, fearing that going too fast would only prompt the mysterious beast to strike.
Looking back at the lake, he saw a faint shape retreating back into the water, he didn't say anything.
______________
Loimos stayed near the shore for a few moments before going to drag the newly acquired corpse back with the rest.
In the center of the room with all of the ancient undeads, a small pile of bodies had been arranged.
Consisting of six relatively fresh goblins, as well as a variety of animals and monsters that had committed the grave mistake of drinking suspicious water, Loimos had begun sensing death force, allowing him to track down the remains of the unfortunate wildlife.
His control over his rot had also increased, he could coat his entire hand with it in ten seconds and also produce the blighted blood on its own.
Apart from those bodies, there were also skeletal remains laying around, thanks to being able to feel death force, the undead had managed to discover where the goblins buried their dead, they didn't have a designated location for that.
They just buried them wherever, which was how he had retrieved the body of the goblin he had suffocated in the dead of night and collected many other remains.
The cloud of death the mass was forming was beginning to resemble something else.
Placing a skeletal hand on the decaying pile, Loimos felt like something could be done with it now.
_________
After the death of that one goblin, dishonourably ambushed with his loincloth down, things had suddenly calmed down, two weeks went by without anything weird happening.
"Hum, something's not right, I feel like something is wrong" the chieftain repeated himself as he stroked his grey beard.
His well-honed instincts were tingling, the odd beast should have struck again and he refused to wallow in the possibility that it had gone away or died off without anyone knowing.
He had reached the point where he now stood by being much more cautious than the rest, which wasn't saying much about him since most of the other goblins weren't examples of intelligence by any means.
Still, he could feel that a storm was brewing.
He could only await for the three hunters to do their diligence once every other chieftain was alerted, he would use his and their own influence to make The First Seed move its old roots and at least point out the threat to them.
The ancient tree didn't interact much, Gobstroz always suspected that it was because he wasn' active much at all, spending most of its time in some sort of sleep, or whatever trees did.
If the threat was serious enough, it would deal with it and the status quo would return to normal.
He looked around, his tribesmen were hard at work.
"Stolgob!" the best hunter was currently on one knee and trying to charm Irgob, the fairest of the younger goblin's generation.
Gobstroz didn't quite understand the point of such theatrics, in his time, if you were strong enough, you just walked up to whoever you wanted as your mate and proclaimed it.
Shaking his head as he realised that he had completely missed out on the new ways of the youth, he watched as Stolgob waved his hands around at Irgob before hurrying his way.
"Yes chieftain?" he asked respectfully.
"I will need you to oversee some new work I will be putting in place, gathering the strongest hunters, you guys will be uprooting the trees around the tribes and bringing them back in" the chieftain didn't want anything to be able to get above the fence by climbing up on a tree.
He also wanted to have a stronger presence outside and around, clearing up the vegetation will also prevent the unknown monster from approaching unseen.
'Something is definitely off…'