Bonk bonk bonk.

  The screeching wails of fearful, fleeing goblins echo across the stone walls of the underground labyrinth before quickly being snuffed out by the hollow thunking of wood against bone. My feet slap loudly against the cold floor as I sprint down the winding tunnels, deeper into the goblin’s lair.

  Bonk bonk bonk.

  Around every corner lies a trio of goblins, ready to attack. Their intentions of ambush quickly turn to escape once they see the naked, blood-soaked demon sprinting towards them with a hungry look in her eyes, a splintered, gore-covered door raised above her head. An unhinged broad with an unhinged board.

  After killing Gumgum and cleaning up the rest of the goblins in the dining hall, I continued my killing spree down through the tunnels. There’s something I need to find. I’m sure one of these tunnels will lead me to an exit eventually, but that’s not what I’m looking for. The most important thing to me right now is...

  “Fwahahaha!" I laugh, bonking my way through another group of goblins. "Is it this way?! It's this way, isn't it?! Is this where you keep all the cute, kidnapped girls?!"

  Cute girls! The most important thing right now is cute girls! For a goblin horde to have gotten this big, they must be running some kind of sick breeding factory down here. Abducting women from a nearby village, dragging them back down into their lair, and using them to spit out more goblins is practically a cornerstone of goblin culture!

  Don’t worry, ladies. Pepper’s got you now, I’ll tell them, clutching them tightly to my chest as I softly massage their heads with my gently gyrating pectoral muscles. Fwah~! Pepper is so super cool and pretty and definitely my type! They’ll reply. For saving us from those disgusting goblins, please kiss us all on the mouth as many times as you want!

  “Fwehehe...” Drool spills from the corner of my mouth at the thought of all the future mouth-kissing, confusing an already-panicked goblin in his final moments before being bonked into a red paste by a downward swing of my door.

  Fwaha! This is the only tunnel I haven’t been down yet! They must be this way!

  Sprinting down the tunnel, I notice an opening up ahead. Licking my lips in anticipation, I burst through into the new room.

  “Don’t worry, ladies! Pepper’s got you now!”

  Inside, the floor is covered in thick layers of animal furs and skins. The warm softness beneath me is a welcoming change from the cold, rough stone I've been slapping my feet against for the past couple of hours. A figure rises from the centre of the room amongst a bedding of furs, roused awake by my loud entrance. It stands and turns to face me.

  “Where Gumgum?” it asks, scratching at a collection of boils forming underneath a particularly hairy breast. “Want baby.”

  A giant creature, bigger than Gumgum himself, stands alone in the new room. From its rough, greenish-grey skin, plump body, and stupid face, I can immediately tell what kind of creature it is. A troll. A female troll too, if the ill-fitting fabric barely covering its chest is anything to go by.

  My face drops as my excitement quickly turns to disappointment. I don’t want to kiss a troll. Especially not on the mouth. I’ve seen enough trolls back home and I can’t say I’ve ever thought of one as being anywhere near anything resembling cute. My elder sister Beans had a hemorrhoid once from falling asleep on the toilet too many times and even that looked more kissable than the troll in front of me right now.

  It seems she probably wasn’t dragged here against her will too. She is a troll after all. If anything, she was the one who dragged them into all of this. I can’t imagine a goblin putting up much of a fight against a troll. Every girl dreams about being a queen at least once in their life, I guess. Even trolls.

  Cute or not, a girl is still a girl, so I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to still be somewhat polite...

  “Uh. Gumgum died somehow. Bad migraine, I think. Sorry,” I tell the troll, before turning back to the exit. “I’m late for a date with my sister so I’ve gotta get going. I’ll, uh, see you around may...be...?”

  My words trail away as something about the troll catches my eye and makes me pause in my tracks.

  “Where other goblin?” the troll asks, seemingly unfazed by the news of Gumgum’s death. “Want baby.”

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  My eye twitches a little as I look back at the troll’s ill-fitting clothing. Rolls of fat spill out in bubbles underneath the familiar yet barely recognizable black and white frills of the dress stretched across her wide chest. A black ribbon, once tied into a neat little bow, is now just a sad strip of unravelled string, hanging across her chest like a long, sad moustache.

  “All the other goblins died too somehow. Sorry,” I hiss through clenched teeth. “Again, my sister’s waiting for me so I really have to—”

  “You look like strong man. Like big goblin. Maybe small troll.” She scratches the underside of her belly, lifting it a little as she does. From underneath her gut, I can make out a tiny sliver of fabric buried between the folds of her undercarriage, supported by a thin, trembling waistband on the brink of snapping. Blue and white stripes. “Want bab—”

  The room explodes in a shower of meaty troll chunks and splintered bits of door.

  “Fwah~! I feel a lot better now. Mm!” I nod to myself, leaving the mess of a room, ruined outfit, and broken door, all behind.

  Satisfied with the complete extermination of a goblin horde, I skip my way back up the tunnels at a leisurely pace. It had taken a few hours and well over a thousand dead goblins but I had completely cleaned the place out. In the end, there were no cute girls, but that was okay because I still got something very important out of the whole ordeal— Jerky!

  Skipping my way back through the tunnels and back into the dining hall where most of the goblin corpses lay, I make sure to collect as much usable goblin meat as I can find. Unfortunately, most of the goblins had been splattered into unrecognizable pastes of varying consistencies across every surface of the goblin lair, and if I have to peel it off a wall, I probably can’t make jerky out of it. I probably should have considered that when I was going on my rampage...

  Oh well! Let’s just make do with what we have!

  Hmm. Usually, it'd take just a few hours to properly prepare, dry, and cook a handful of little goblins. But there are hundreds of bodies in here. And not just little ones either. I mean, Gumgum himself is like four goblins in one. This could take me days! Weeks even! Weeks that I don’t want to spend knee-deep in goblin. I still have to meet Trish in that human town after all.

  Fwahaha! Let’s do it the hard way then! There isn’t anything in this world that can’t be brute forced with Muscle and Power! Cooking included!

  I slap my thighs together and flex them to their absolute limits. Rapidly vibrating the muscles in my thighs, I start feeding goblin parts between my legs. Squeezing just enough to push the meat through while leaving the blood and bone behind. Where goblin parts are fed through one side, completely cooked, cured, dried, and seasoned jerky is pushed out of the other.

  It’s a simple enough process. My thighs squeeze the meat, wringing out the moisture and drying it out. The vibrating muscles cook the meat, heating it through the friction of my intense vibrations. And the sweat dripping from my legs seasons the meat, boiling away into a simple salt as it’s massaged into the jerky.

  My thighs are throbbing in pain, but I continue to cook. Squeeze and cook, squeeze and cook, squeeze and cook. Hundreds upon hundreds of goblin meat passes between my rapidly vibrating thighs, until finally...

  “Fwahaha!” I burst out into the fresh open outside air, laughing up into the bright blue open sky. “Jerky made!”

  I had done it. Hundreds of goblins, fully jerkied in a matter of mere hours. Usually, something like that would be impossible but...

  “Fwahahaha! Pepper Black is a woman who doesn’t know the meaning of the word impossible!”

  Now, what was I doing before I— Fwah! That’s right! Trish! The town! It looks like it’s still only morning, but I better do this before I forget...

  Slapping my trembling thighs back into action, I find a tall nearby tree and scoot my way up the trunk. Making my way to the top, I look out over the sea of greenery. It’s definitely a much more pleasant sea of green than the one I had to deal with last night. The wind feels really nice up here too. And the warmness of the sun is— Fwah!

  Looking towards the direction of the sun, I spy something in the far distance. I flex the muscles in my eyeballs to get a better look.

  Wagons rolling over dirt roads. Smoke rising from tiled roofs. Wooden fences. High walls. And most importantly— People! Hundreds of little blobs, swarming around like colourful little ants in the distance. It’s the town! The human town! Finally!

  Once I get there, I can meet up with Trish and we can buy those supplies Mom and the others wanted us to get. Mostly just spices and other ingredients that can’t be found back home underground. Apparently, the shiny chunks of shiny metal that grow near our home are pretty valuable up here on the surface so trading for stuff we need is easy breezy.

  Usually Trish makes these supply runs by herself once a year, but this year I begged Mom to let me go too. She seemed really worried but Trish reassured her that it’d probably be fine. Pepper’s not a kid anymore, Mom. She told her. That muscle-brain will be fine no matter what happens to her.

  As soon as we got to the surface, Trish slapped a map in my hands and told me to take my time getting there. She said there was something she needed to do first and to meet her in town later, before racing on ahead of me. A few nights wandering around blindly in the forest and a few thousand strips of jerky later and... Here I am!

  Judging the distance from here to town, I’d say I’m about an hour’s sprint away. Perfect!

  Sliding back down the tree, I pop back into the cave quickly to load up as much jerky as I can comfortably carry, and then immediately leave to continue my journey, making sure to mark my scent along the tunnels on my way out. I’ll be back later to collect all of my jerky, of course. Can’t have others stealing any while I’m away.

  Pumping my calves into overdrive, I take off at full sprint towards the direction of the town, a wide grin on my face.

  “Fwahahaha!” I laugh, branches and thickets whipping at my exposed body as I trample through them. “Make one hundred friends! Kiss one thousand girls!”

  As the landscape starts to take a sharp slope downwards, I leap into the air, soaring over the dense brush and past the tips of the trees below me.

  “Daughter to the Demon Queen Gluttony! Sister to the Bloodstained Blackspawn! Like my mother and sisters before me...” I shout out over the treetops as I fly over the green landscape. “Pepper Black is a woman who will rampage across the surface world as her demon blood compels her! A woman who will proudly live up to her title of Strongest Demon!”

  I fall back down to the forest floor and, landing with a heavy thud, I hit the ground running.

  A town full of humans, huh? This is gonna be so much fun!