SSS-Ranked Trash Hero: I Was Scammed Into Being Summoned-Chapter 48: Gold in the Goblin’s Den

Everything was getting too ominous and creepy for Hiroshi now. He can’t take it anymore. He wanted to get the hell out of this place. "Let’s just focus on survival first." He said.

He started moving around the area trying to find anything useful. The others did the same. They agreed with him and spread out.

After sometime Baros got excited. He shouted that he found something. Hiroshi and the others met up with Baros. He was standing beside a hole in the cavern wall. It was quite big. Big enough for a small man to fit entirely.

Elias checked the hole and confirmed that it opened from the other side. It will lead them somewhere at least. That was good enough.

Hiroshi prayed in his mind. He just wanted the hole to lead to anything but a dead end. He really couldn’t take more creepiness. He was done with it.

They started crawling through the hole. The first one to go was Elias. Then the injured man. Then the woman guard. Then Baros. And lastly Hiroshi.

The crawl was tight and uncomfortable. Stone was pressing against him from every side. He just kept moving forward. It went on longer than he expected. The stone under his palms was cold and damp. He focused on the sound of Baros moving ahead of him and kept going.

When Hiroshi came out of the hole something greeted him and made him stumble back. It was a room. And not just any room. Something like a treasure room because there was gold. Lots and lots of gold. And equipment and weapons and so many other things piled everywhere.

"Looks like a Goblin Treasury," Elias said.

They stood there for a moment just taking it all in.

The room was larger than the cavern they had come from. The ceiling was higher too. The walls were rough but the floor had been flattened. Torches sat in iron brackets bolted into the stone at uneven intervals, still burning. That meant someone had been here recently enough to keep them lit. That thought sat uncomfortably at the back of Hiroshi’s mind but he pushed it aside for now.

Then practical thinking kicked in. Hiroshi started moving through the room slowly. The others did the same. Nobody was grabbing anything yet. They were just looking first.

The gold was real. Hiroshi picked up a coin and turned it over. It had markings on it he didn’t recognize. It was proper gold coin. Human made.

There were chests stacked along one wall. Some open some closed. The open ones had cloth and spices inside. Trading goods. The kind merchants carry. The spices still had smell to them. Hiroshi caught something sharp and familiar underneath the general damp smell of the underground.

Baros went quiet for a second then said something.

"This is my caravan."

Everyone stopped.

Hiroshi looked at him. "You sure?"

Baros nodded. He pointed at one of the chests. There was a marking on it. A small symbol burned into the wood. "That’s the Baros family mark."

Hiroshi walked over and looked at it. The mark was simple. Two lines crossing with a small circle at the center. He believed him.

So the missing Baros caravan was here. In a goblin treasury under the ground.

That explained some things. Not everything but some things.

They kept checking. The injured man sat down against the wall and rested while the others moved through the room carefully. He looked worse than before. His face was pale and he was holding his side with both hands now. Hiroshi made a note of it but there was nothing to be done about it here. They needed to find a way out first.

There was a lot here. More than a single caravan should have honestly. Either the Baros caravan was carrying more than people knew or the goblins had been collecting from other places too. There were items that didn’t fit together. A merchant’s chest sitting next to a soldier’s pack. A nobleman’s traveling case with the latch broken open. These things didn’t come from the same source.

There were weapons along another wall. Swords mostly. Some axes. A few bows with the strings still good. Hiroshi checked one of the swords. Sharp. Well made. He kept it. He found a sheath two steps away that was close enough to fitting and buckled it on.

The woman guard found the magical items.

They were in a separate corner away from everything else. Set apart like even the goblins knew these were different. There were maybe eight or nine items total. A few rings. Two small orbs that had a faint glow to them. A cloak that looked too clean compared to everything else in the room. A dagger with markings running down the blade.

Nobody touched them yet.

"We need someone who knows what these are before anyone picks them up," Elias said.

He was right. Magical items were not something you just grabbed without knowing what they did. Some helped you. Some did the opposite.

Hiroshi looked at the orbs. The glow was faint but steady. Whatever they were they still had something active inside them. That made them either very useful or very dangerous depending on what they were.

It was a significant find. His mission was to find the missing caravan, which he had done. Now he just needed to get out of here and report it to the guild.

Baros kept moving through the goods slowly. He was checking things more carefully than the others. Methodically. Working his way through the stacks with quiet focus. Hiroshi watched him for a moment.

"Is there anything especially important you are looking for?" Hiroshi asked.

"Nothing," Baros said. He didn’t say anything else after that.

Hiroshi didn’t push it. But he kept half an eye on him.

The woman guard came back from checking the far end of the room. "There’s another passage on that side. Small but it’s there. Probably how they were bringing things in."

That made sense. The hole they crawled through was too small to move chests and supplies through. The goblins had another way in. Which meant it was also a better exit than the hole they had come from. Which also meant it was the direction any goblins would come from.

Hiroshi was about to say it when they all heard it.

Footsteps.

From the other passage. The one the woman guard just found.

Everyone went still immediately. Hiroshi’s hand went to the sword he had just taken. The others moved too. Baros stepped back behind a chest. The woman guard pressed against the wall near the passage entrance. Elias stayed low.

The footsteps were getting closer.

More than one set. Moving at a steady pace.

Hiroshi kept his eyes on the passage.

A figure came through first.

It was a goblin. Small and hunched the way they all were. It was carrying a torch and looking back over its shoulder like it was checking if something was following it. It stepped fully into the room.

Then the second figure came through.

A human.