It is said that humans often have the most profound realisation in the most mundane moments of their lives. So it was for Moros as he was happily squeezing the throat of yet another goblin that just so happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
After the kill notification flashed across his visor, he suddenly remembered his desire to find out why these monsters did not drop any cores.
Much to his regret, however, the current one had already lost its value as a test subject, since it was neither alive nor had it been particularly strong.
To determine the cause for the cores and make sense out of this whole situation, Moros decided that he would need different subjects.
Thankfully, a lot of those unwilling patients swarmed the Evergreen Forest and all he needed to do was just pick the right sample and conduct a few, ethically questionable tests on them.
At once Moros began the search for suitable candidates. It did not take long till the first one was found. In Moros mind he at once commented on it like they did it in that one movie he watched in school ages ago.
"Indeed, a goblin of the common variety," Moros tried to sound as smart as possible as he documented his findings out loud.
"Unlike its armoured brethren it does seem to boast little to no strength."
Hearing him speak drew the attention of the goblin that started to charge at the human being in madness.
Moros dodged to the site and kicked the knife out of its hands.
"Further testing is needed to confirm the prior hypothesis. Now, I will let it punch me in the face to verify the findings."
In the name of the scientific spirit, Moros placed its head in front of the goblin and waited for it to throw its green hands into his face.
At first, the test subject tried to always grab the knife again, but soft encouragement and throwing the knife deep into the forest convinced the goblin slowly that using a knife was not an option in this scenario.
Yet, the goblin stood before Moros unsure on how to proceed. It used a knife to kill people, how does it kill people without its weapon?!
"Observation number 1: Goblins of the common variety do not possess an ounce of intelligence and just react based on instinct and emotion."
Moros then approached the goblin, formed its little green fingers into a fist and then guided it into his face. Afterwards, he would dramatically fall to the floor and play dead.
He did repeat this procedure until the goblin had learned to form a fist on his own.
"Commencing attempt NR 2: Confirmation of goblin common variety via a punch to the face."
Holding out his face, he awaited the goblin to punch his face. And he waited, and he waited and he waited. The goblin he had trained simply stood there with its fingers turned into a fist, doing literally nothing else.
Sighing, Moros turned around and grabbed the goblin. After placing it on his shoulders he went deeper into the forest to yet again secure another subject to experiment on.
"Test subject A has proven itself to not capable of following instructions aimed at the intelligence of 5-year olds. Another specimen is to be used to determine if test subject A is an anomaly or if the common variety is just lacking in brain cell activity."
Moros muttered to himself as he abducted the common goblin to his next destination.
How should he determine where the cores of the monsters go if the monsters themselves are this incapable of fulfilling the easiest of orders?
If they have the capabilities to poke knives into him, they should at least have the decency to do the most basic things imaginable. He simply hoped that the first example was just a statistical outlier and not the norm.
Hopes are however, easily shattered as the next goblin joined the experimentation cycle.
The second goblin, test subject 2, proved equally capable as its predecessor. With one hand formed into a fist, now there were 2 goblins, which stared at Moros with their eyes filled with expectations.
The scientist in question could only shake his head in disappointment at the quality of specimen he had managed to locate in the Evergreen Forest.
Were breathing not done on instinct Moros presumed they would suffocate on the spot.
But the scientific efforts did not stop at a few setbacks. If the specimen were too dumb to follow basic instructions, only simply needed to dumb it down further, till their intellectual low ceiling had been reached.
Carrying A and B over his shoulders like a bag of potatoes, he began the search for the third one he needed to give the two of them a hands on example.
A minute later another volunteer popped up from behind a tree and received a warm welcome from Moros, who promptly sent it to the land of dreams with a chokehold.
Now, in to ensure that A and B could practise and learn the technique to throw a punch, goblin C was tied to a tree so that It could not move. The other goblins just continued to hold their formed fists.
Afterwards Moros, positioned the goblins so that they could look what he was doing.
In slowmotion, he moved his right feet back, shifted his right arm fully back, the upper body twisted and exhaled once. The right arm now moved forwards at a snail's pace and he took a step forwards. Pushing his hips forward slooooowly, the "punch" connected and the C did not feel a thing.
He repeated the process several times, the eyes of the watching goblins as empty as always.
After the tenth time, he did so in full speed and hoped that the test subjects would understand better.
But, Moros clicked his teeth in annoyance yet again.
The goblins did very goblin things, namely nothing except clenching their green little hands into green little fists.
Since this option did not work, Moros grabbed test subject A and positioned it before punching bag C.
Moros positioned the goblin in position and shifted all its body parts into the necessary position for it to throw a punch. Afterwards he would guide its hand towards the intended target.
He repeated this again and again, till A's 2 working neurons seemed to have got the memo and it slowly began to copy the movement Moros had beaten into it.
Seeing the goblin throwing a punch caused the scientist to shed tears of joy. All these minutes of intensive research had finally paid off. He always knew that even someone as stupid as A and B would be capable of throwing a punch.
With renewed enthusiasm, B was also made and taught how to throw a punch, by literally guiding it through every step of the process.
It did not take long and both goblins were throwing a strike at the punching bag C.
The only downside was that it could never be called a punch, since the speed and strength they used would never do any damage.
The hands-on approach had a solution planned for this scenario.
He just did what he had done prior and repeated the process again, but this time he sped up the movements for them. At first he started slow, a bit quicker than before.
It did not take long until the goblins A and B had grasped that they could throw a stronger punch by following through the steps at a greater pace.
Punching bag C had woken up and started to scream at the goblins in a language Moros could not understand. Instead of listening, they just resumed to punch it in the face with the strength of their punches increasing with each repetition.
The face of C started to deform with contusions and swelling since the wave of punches did not stop. Yet, Moros only watched on as a proud father of 2 newly raised goblin punchers.
C was like the third child, that no one really liked and no one really cared for.
If C stopped existing they would simply find a D to take its place. Sooner or later C would realise that it had no place in this world, so it should just stop its useless struggle and understand its worth.
Next Moros, instructed them in the usual manner that there are other targets than the face to aim for.
This time he showed A to hit it in the private parts and B stood at its side punching into C's stomach.
Through a bit of trial and error, namely hitting other areas, they soon managed to hit the new targets with utmost precision.
C screamed bloody murder as its children-maker was massaged with heavy punches, but C always was doing it for attention. Thus, it was promptly ignored to focus on science.
"It is a great success, the goblins proved their ability and thus we can proceed to the next step of the process. Determining their fighting capabilities to ensure that they can carry a monster core."
It is time to host a goblin fight club!