28.2ᴘᴀᴛʀᴇᴏɴ.ᴄᴏᴍ/sᴛʀᴀᴛᴏᴛʜʀᴀx

Opal tapped at her chin. "Maybe it has something to do with growing. A bigger body, outsized strength, and, well, a bigger roar?"

"It was a little more than just a 'bigger roar'. I straight up killed a Minotaur with my voice alone. I think if the witch had been on top of me as well she wouldn't have survived either."

"I'll try think up some way to use that, but right now I'm going to make you hate me."

Rain tilted his head to the side and blinked. "Why's that?"

"What do you think the entire tribe is doing right now now that you've thoroughly spooked them all with all that noise and ground trembling? Yep, that's right. They're all fleeing toward the exits."

Rain groaned and rubbed a paw over his face. "Meaning that they will be trying to figure out how to get past the obstacles we made and will sooner or later succeed...."

Opal simply stood there and with her hands behind her back and rocking on her heels excitably. "Can't let food escape." She grinned. "Coming?"

Rain pressed his lips together in a line but rolled to his feet.

The Goblin led him into the jungle and they made their way back to the main entrance of the cavern. It quickly became clear that as predicted the entire remaining population of the tribe was trying to escape at once. A crowd was fighting at the entrance, unable to keep order long enough to figure out how to move the stone disc and simply throwing themselves at it and shouting their frustration. A pile of them had built up, standing on each other to haul on the wooden pegs that ran along the part of the wheel. Unfortunately for them they had not noticed the stone wedge Rain had placed below so their efforts were wasted and in fact made it impossible for the few Goblins who had noticed the problem to remove it leaving them helpless.

There were a number of Human-goblins mixed in the crowd of regular Goblins as well as three Diredog-goblins. As the pair watched cohesion started to break down. The Human-goblins lost their temper and started laying into the regular Goblins with swords and clubs, the Diredog-goblins seeing this quickly joined in. This seemed to push the terrified regular Goblins beyond all reason and weapons were unslung and used with abandon. They swarmed the surprised half Goblins and through sheer dint of numbers overwhelmed them, though not without heavy losses.

"This would have happened sooner or later. This whole tribe was a tinder trap waiting to ignite and go up in flames," said Opal.

"Mrmm, the ones in charge of all this had no idea what they were sitting on."

A dozen regular Goblins survived, many of them injured, so when Rain pushed aside the foliage and stepped into their midst it was not a terribly difficult fight. However a couple did still manage to escape into the jungle. Opal drew her cutlass and stalked after them.

Rain went on to the exit he had blocked with a tree but found no Goblins near and the tree untouched. When he came to the next exit however he found a pair of Lamia frantically trying to remove stones from the hole they had filled. Unfortunately for them they were inside the partially cleared hole and had no way to escape so that when Rain dropped on them they could do nothing but scream.

He climbed out of the hole a little more bloody than before and moved on to the last escape tunnel. Unsurprisingly it was still blocked as the Cavebear-goblin he had dragged into it was massive and impossible to move. More surprising however was a second injured Cavebear-Goblin surrounded by the remains of maybe two dozen regular Goblins which had been smashed and sliced under foot and claw in what had clearly been a desperate fight. The Cavebear-goblin hadn't escaped unscathed, the Goblins may have been weak but that hadn't prevented them from exacting a heavy toll. There were only bloody pits where the Cavebear-goblins eyes had once been. Rain could only guess what had led to the fight but judging by the footprints around the hole the new Cavebear-goblin had tried and failed to remove the body blocking it prior to the fight.