Time passed by ever so swiftly. After the happiest time of his life, Moros was ready to wake up. It was a dream, or so he believed…the visions of the past too great to be part of reality.
Having enjoyed the sweet moments of his childhood, he knew it was time to return to the world of the living. He heard a faint voice calling out his name in the distance.
With a great sigh, he took one last glance at the happiness surrounding him and willingly closed his eyes.
These dreams, he would turn them into a reality someday.
But for now, he needed to do the other fun stuff. Because living the dream meant making money and killing them goblins.
Moros opened his eyes, ready to start the day in earnest…only to discover that he could not move a muscle.
His entire body felt like it had been anchored to the floor, heavy enough that even breathing became a tough task.
Moros' thoughts raced, desperately trying to figure out what this strange pressure on his body could be.
One look down delivered the answer.
"OOOOOOH," he loudly muttered, drawing the attention of all the guards who had him surrounded with their weapons drawn and directed at him.
There were 15 heavy iron chains on his body, all tied to the ground. Even if Moros wanted to escape, there was no way he ever could.
"Did I do something wrong?" he asked the crowd in earnest. To him, it seemed strange that all of them gave him such scared looks.
How could he ever be a threat to people like them? Goblins and Ballas had to be afraid of him, not actual beings with an IQ above room temperature.
Yet, to his surprise, no one replied, they all continued to warily stare at him.
As if they were preparing for a beast to pounce onto them or their bodies were frozen in fear at whatever stood before them. Though Moros quickly dismissed this interpretation…because in what world could that ever be the case?
Looking around the room, he saw countless layers of glass, barricades and other safety equipment. All torn apart, destroyed and irreparably changed. The walls neither had pictures, nor windows…there were just more traces of destruction.
Holes littered it, displaying a pitch-black outside. Stone had been shattered, littering the ground.
"Just what had happened here?" Moros had no choice, but to wonder if they fought a dragon here or some other unspeakable monstrosity had decided to commit an insane amount of property damage for no reason.
From the furthest corner a man, wearing a white lab coat approached him casually.
He walked up close to Moros and eyed him with the greatest of interests, carefully he walked around the chained youth and scribbled things down on his notepad in great excitement.
His glasses wiggled up and down as he continued to look at Moros as if he wanted to cut him up and see what was on the inside.
"I really want to cut you up and see what is on the inside," the scientist muttered out thoughtlessly. Moros did not feel creeped out, not in the slightest.
"Truly a fascinating specimen."
Moros did not feel creeped out, not in the slightest, not at all…
The scientist looked Moros in the eyes before he gave himself a slight facepalm. He had forgotten about something very critical.
"Where are my manners, where are my manners!" he exclaimed loudly for all to hear. With assured steps, he approached Moros again and extended his hand for a handshake.
With expectant eyes he looked at Moros and wondered why he was not given a firm handshake, had he messed this social interaction up in some shape or form?
A few awkward seconds passed before he realised the problem; it was hard to shake hands if one could not move their arms.
With a reassuring step, he walked closer and put his hand into the chained hands of Moros to shake them in all earnest.
"The name is Albert One Stone, nice to make your acquaintance."
Despite Moros feeling a bit concerned by the scientist before him, he still felt pleasantly surprised by having someone to talk to. Since he did have a lot of unanswered questions.
"Hey, Albert. Could you help me out and explain what exactly happened here and why I am in so many heavy chains?"
The guards shook in fear at the mere mention of the word chains. What did they live through to have that much PTSD from just a word?
"You have as many unanswered questions as I have Moros Terra. But, do allow me to give you a short summary of what we do know."
The scientist corrected his glasses and went back a few pages in his notepad, before finding the page he was looking for.
"There we have it. Moros Terra worked in the goblin farm 7 days ago, when he took 20 of our special pills. 1 does normally make a grown adult magician think he could do everything as for 20…you see the result of that around here."
Moros looked around with a baffled expression…this was all of his doing? How could this be? Last time he checked he did not have the strength or the ability to cause this much damage.
Albert did not wait for Moros to understand the situation and just continued to monologue.
"These 'happy pills', for some reason nobody knows, made your body possess strength that no mortal body should or realistically could have. Punching through 6 feet of steel, reinforced walls…is no feat that remotely can be considered human."
He looked at the big hole in the wall and at Moros' small fists. Even now his mind refused to acknowledge that such frail youth could have caused this kind of outcome with a simple punch.
But, as a man of science the evidence was before his eyes. He could not, not acknowledge the sight that was before his very eyes.
"Had you told me this morning, I would have been teleported in to observe the results of a man eating 20 of these pills and living to tell the tale─I would have laughed in their face and told them to lick the nuts in my pants."
"Which nuts?" Moros could not help but be very confused by what he wanted other men or women to lick.
"Oh, I meant these rare nuts that my wife gave me," removing a small package from his pockets, he presented them to Moros.
'Deez' Nuts' the finest nuts found on the distant land of Deez could be seen on the ugly, brown package. The descendant of the Terra family thought about asking the scientist for one, but kept silent…he didn't want to risk it.
"These things are absolutely terrible."
"Anyhow, in the span of 7 days: You managed to kill 40000 goblins, which the prison is very thankful for. While you did destroy equipment worth the death of 4 million goblins, which the boss of the prison is not so happy about."
Moros gulped, he did not like these numbers. Something about them caused his mind to realise an ugly truth that was about to ruin his life. He just knew it.
What made Moros so afraid was that there was just one thing that could cause this kind of deep fear inside of him.
The topic of this fear was money. By instinct, he knew when there was a lot to gain and by instinct, he feared when on the other side, the horror of money came into play.
Something worse than death─debt. DEBT!!!
"The big boss wanted to have you killed on the spot! But thanks to my tireless effort, I managed to convince him to have you work for us, till you repaid all the damage you had done."
The scientist patted himself on the back, all the while Moros was taking deep breath, after deep breath. He had to stay strong, he had to stay strong.
Suppressing all the anger dwelling on the inside, he asked with the nicest voice that he could still muster.
"Albert, my fuc…friend, could you tell me how big my debt is in small monster cores?"
Albert nodded and did quick calculations in his head.
"It is a one with…" he counted the number of zeroes on his fingers… "one, two, three, four, five… 30 zeroes."
"30 zeroes, I see…" Moros wanted to cry, no Moros wanted to find the nearest volcano and jump into it, no Moros wanted to kill everyone that knew of his debt, no… Moros had absolutely no clue what he wanted to do.
The scientist patted Moros on the shoulder and gave him a big hug…
"I know, I know…you are shedding tears of joy, since you are still alive. I understand, I understand."
He did, in fact, not understand.
"Let me cheer you up, by telling you about how you can quickly repay all that gold. Help us out by collecting more goblins. After you killed every goblin in the last seven days, we have run into a supply issue."
"So, what do you say, partner, 10 small stones per goblin? Are you in or are you in?"
Moros realised that he did not even know the name of the number of the amount of goblins he would have to catch. But he would not be Moros Terra, if he did not think of ways to maximise the gains.
"Just stay away from the happy pills…for now. Boss does not want those anyway near you."