Reverence

The goblins stared at me, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, as I stacked the corpses one by one.

The pile kept growing—Direwolf after Direwolf, all of them thick-furred and massive, their bodies heaped like firewood for a festival no one wanted to attend.

By the time I stopped, the mound had risen taller than most of them.

"Chief… y-you…" Zzok stammered, his eyes darting from me to the corpse mountain. "You killed all of these?"

I gave a simple nod.

Zzok promptly fell to his backside, stunned silent. His mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air. He had seen strong goblins before—his previous chief had been no slouch—but this... this was beyond anything he'd imagined.

Then, without warning, he bowed low to the ground.

"Chief! I devote my life to you. I swear it."

Eh?

That came out of nowhere.