CHAPTER 254: ARTILLERY

He stood several meters away with three goblin workers at his side, all of them positioned behind something that looked like... heavy artillery?

A large wooden-and-metal contraption mounted on wheels, its "mouth" still smoking from the last volley it had spat at me.

"What is happening...?" I muttered under my breath, staring at the absurd scene.

Narg, who had positioned himself behind me with his own [Mana Shield] shimmering around him, cleared his throat like he was bracing for impact—just not the physical kind.

"Chief..." he began carefully. "We didn’t know you would appear here all of a sudden."

I turned toward him slowly. "What were you doing?"

He opened his mouth to explain, but before he could get a single word out, Bundi and the three goblin workers sprinted toward us and dropped to their knees so fast the ground shook.

"Chief... oh heavens, we didn’t see you there," Bundi stammered, bowing so low his forehead nearly cracked against the dirt.

"We made a mistake."

"It wasn’t intentional."

"A mistake?" I asked, brows pulling together as confusion settled over me.

Before Bundi could dig himself any deeper, Narg sank to his knees beside him, lowering himself with the same weight of guilt you’d expect from someone confessing to burning down a village.

"Bundi informed me that he and his workers had created a weapon," Narg said, voice steady but humbled. "He wanted me to come see it, so I agreed to test it out on myself. But just as we started the demonstration... you appeared."

He lowered his head even further, shoulders tight with remorse, like he expected me to strike him down for it.

"We’re sorry, Chief!" Bundi shouted, pressing his head to the ground so hard I thought he might bury himself alive. The three workers immediately followed, slamming their foreheads into the dirt in perfect unintentional unison.

"Please don’t kill us," Bundi squeaked, shaking like the arrows were about to be turned back on him.

"We told him it was a bad idea," the second worker muttered, still glued to the ground.

"He did," Narg added without hesitation, basically throwing himself under the boulder and taking full responsibility for the whole disaster.

I sighed inwardly. At least they weren’t lying.

"I hold no grudges," I said, my voice steady. "Get up. All of you."

They exhaled in unison, a chorus of relieved gasps.

"Thank you, Chief."

"Thank you."

I lifted my hand slightly to acknowledge their gratitude and walked past them, heading toward the artillery that had nearly turned me into an arrow-riddled corpse. So the clan actually had a weapon like this now. That was... something.

Up close, I could appreciate the work put into it. The machine stood as a reinforced wooden torsion engine mounted on a rotating base, its build surprisingly sophisticated. Thick lumber had been layered and polished with some kind of resin that gave the structure a sturdier feel, and the frame was braced with tightly wound cords that hummed faintly with tension. A multi-grooved firing rail ran along the center, each channel wide enough to hold a row of arrows side by side before launch.

Wow... to think the clan had a weapon this deadly.

Impressive, honestly. The intelligence behind the construction was obvious in every joint, every notch, every reinforced beam. This wasn’t thrown together. Someone had thought about it. Someone had planned it.

I turned toward Bundi, still analyzing the machine. "Did you make this?"

"Yes," Bundi said immediately. "With these three." He gestured at the workers beside him.

I noted the way he included them without hesitation. Credit given where it was due. That alone told me he was someone worth investing in. Goblins didn’t usually share praise unless you forced them, yet he did it unprompted.

Still looking over the weapon, I asked, "How long did it take?"

Bundi hesitated for a moment, scratching his cheek as he tried to recall the exact number.

"Thirty-five days... or more?" he repeated, glancing at his coworkers. They nodded, confirming the estimate.

"Chief Jael had us build it after he saw the mini prototype I made for fun," Bundi added.

I stared at him for a moment.

For fun?

He made something like this for fun?

Before I could comment, he continued, his voice tightening as the memory soured.

"He demanded we make a bigger version—dozens of them—so they could be mounted on the towers. But when we couldn’t get one to function properly for weeks, his second... the shaman... stripped us of meals and made us sleep outside in the cold as punishment. He made sure we weren’t given food or shelter until we showed progress."

There was anger there—real anger—and it wasn’t the loud kind. It was buried, controlled, the kind that came from humiliation that had been endured for too long. Bundi’s resentment pulsed under the surface like a quiet heat, and even the workers behind him stiffened at the mention.

If I remembered correctly, the shaman’s name had been Marcus. He’d died pathetically fast because I didn’t give him time to try anything.

I studied Bundi’s expression again.

Hopefully, Marcus’s death had put at least a small dent in the bitterness Bundi still carried.

Because honestly, it was no surprise they hated him.

Punishing them for not making progress wasn’t exactly the smartest idea.

Fear of death could push someone to work harder in the short term, sure, but creativity never thrived where someone was constantly looking over their shoulder.

You couldn’t innovate when you were starving, freezing, and terrified of slipping up.

Cruelty didn’t create loyalty. It broke it. And when the time came for those goblins to choose between staying during turbulent times or taking the first opportunity to run—or rebel—they would always choose the latter.

That was why Bundi had been the first to swear allegiance to me.

Bundi continued, the anger still clear on his face.

"We worked nonstop, and now we were finally about to complete it after so many nights without sleep. But since the former chief is dead—I want it to be used by the new chief instead."

Oh. That was nice.Very nice.

"Thank you for the effort, Bundi," I said, appreciating the sincerity behind it. "All of you."

They all grinned, their pride showing in their eyes and in the straightening of their backs. They deserved that pride. This machine wasn’t a simple project.

But something bothered me.

When they said Bundi was a builder, I assumed he had some basic skill—bricklaying, construction, maybe structural reinforcement. I didn’t expect he’d be capable of inventing something this complicated.

So I asked: