Shamrock City, Core Region. The time was high noon, and the atmosphere was not so hot that it would make even the hardest working official sweat like a factory laborer. But there was a lot of sweaty backs, sweaty faces, and jittery eyeballs visible in the streets of the core city today.
A pale-skinned, short man was seen walking through one of the six major streets leading to the central area of the core city. Behind him, a team of four top-level officials was carrying an unusually wide wooden coffin. An ignorant passerby might treat it as the funeral procession of an unimportant official, but few people who lived in the core city were so clueless.
The rumor was spreading throughout the core city— the parasite clan's honored guest had been caught in the center of an ambush, orchestrated by people likely to be connected to the city's top authorities. The victim himself has now boldly walked into the core city as if he did not fear for his own life!
With every building the five men passed, two or three new faces would join the curious, tense crowd following them. In every street junction, carriages would stop without a signal the moment their drivers noticed who the leader of the silent parade was.
The pale man didn't seem to care that he was being followed by a crowd so huge. His destination was straight ahead, and not for a single moment did he turn his head from that direction. As the street got wider, the fury in his eyes became more and more pronounced. The number of buildings at his sides began to dwindle, and so did the humanoid characteristics of his body.
Large clumps of dead skin fell from the folds of his luxurious robe. Every time the wind blew, tufts of long hair from his head were ripped away gently. And those ahead who met his eyes could see two streaks of black pus on his face, slowly growing more prominent.
The central area of the core city consisted of three conjoined hundred-meter-tall towers. These towers were built on top of a dozen-foot high stone platform no less expansive than ten thousand square meters.
The crowd could not follow the procession further as they walked up the steps of the staircase that led to the top of the stone platform. This was a restricted area meant for the highest authorities. Even the officials carrying the coffin hesitated for a moment before gritting their teeth and following the man's trail.
The three towers seemed deserted, not a sound nor a soul responding to the unusual scene playing out right atop their foundation. Under the increasing flow of wind that should not have appeared in an area enclosed by walls, the decaying man looked up at the towers with a burning hatred in his eyes.
His face began to melt slowly, twisting the little human feature left in him. The eyeballs became a delicate paste within their holes, and the internal fluids of the body leaked out of every orifice with feeble pressure.
Not a sound was made as the man's figure flopped down to the floor and broke apart like a husk of dry sticks and dirty snow. Within the puddle of spoiled blood, rotten meat, and hollowed-out bones, a fist-sized ball of flesh and cartilage shivered weakly. It appeared to be the last living part of the body.
The obsidian doors of the conjoined towers that had remained shut until now disappeared, all three of them at once. Three Goblins of the exact same appearance crawled out of the doorways. And the crowd that had formed in front of the tower took a step back simultaneously, almost an involuntary reaction to the vision on top of the stone platform.
These three Goblins looked little like the common green-skinned humanoid creatures. Each of them had an elongated, bloated torso that required them to move on all fours. A mass of diamond-sharp spikes covered their backs, and their legs had taken on the likeness of earth dragons, bent, thick as centenarian oak, with claws that left an effortless trail on the stone floor.
This was the appearance of the most powerful being of Shamrock City. This was the Super Rank Goblin Duke Roshoka, accompanied by the manifestations of his Totemic magic.
Despite his massive body, the duke was an agile creature. He was atop the remains of the parasite guest in the blink of an eye, his long neck taking his head low enough to scrutinize the remains in great detail. The small ball of flesh seemed to shrink smaller upon sensing the majestic presence above its naked form.
"A fool, but not as foolish as I would have liked him to be. What a shame..." The Duke muttered to himself and straightened his neck, focus shifting on the coffin on the shoulders of the four officials.
"Grab this dirty thing and lock it inside its own home which he made you carry over. Then leave the coffin here for the world to see. This will be my presentation to the world in celebration of our hard-earned victory all those years ago. Let those filthy, stinking creatures recall their stance at that time...and shiver in fear just like this one does."
His order was obeyed without a question. The Duke and his clones crawled back into the towers without looking back. The doors that had disappeared suddenly materialized behind him, sealing off the tower once more.
The officials heard one last order from the depths of the tower at this moment.
"And investigate how his prized spirit pet ended up dying in the Capera River when it was supposed to be slaughtered outside the city."