Chapter 11: The Old Man's Tears
Rigurd's office smelled like paper and exhaustion.
Stacks of bark documents covered every surface—reports, requests, complaints, the administrative overflow of a nation growing faster than its systems could handle. The administrator himself sat behind a desk too large for the room, looking every bit as overwhelmed as he had at the coordination meeting.
But today, his attention was focused entirely on me.
"Tarruk." He didn't stand. "Sit."
I sat in the chair across from his desk, the bark-paper records bundled in my lap. My hands wanted to shake. I made them stay still.
"You've been conducting interviews with the original goblins."
Not a question. The bulletin had told him.
"Yes."
"Recording their memories of life before Lord Rimuru's arrival."
"Yes."
Rigurd's expression was unreadable—administrator's mask, the same carefully neutral face I'd seen him wear in meetings.
"Show me."
I handed over the records.
He read in silence.
The office had no windows—artificial light from somewhere I couldn't identify, probably magical—but it felt darker than it should have. The quiet pressed against my ears while Rigurd turned pages, his eyes moving across words I'd written in charcoal on borrowed paper.
"He's going to ask who authorized this. He's going to ask why a newcomer is documenting elder knowledge. He's going to ask what right I have to—"
Rigurd set down the papers.
His hands were trembling.
"The spirit shrine," he said quietly.
"Garrdo told me about it. He said it was—"
"I know what it was." Rigurd's voice cracked on the last word. "I was the shrine keeper."
The admission landed like a physical weight.
I said nothing.
"Before Lord Rimuru came, I was the one who placed offerings at the Spirit Tree every morning. My father taught me. His father taught him. Five generations of our family, maintaining the connection between our village and the forest spirits who protected us."
He picked up the page describing the shrine—Garrdo's words, recorded in my handwriting—and read a passage I'd nearly forgotten writing.
"'The shrine keeper was the most sacred role in the village. He didn't lead, didn't hunt, didn't build. He remembered.'" Rigurd set the paper down. "Garrdo wrote that?"
"He said it. I wrote it down."
"He remembered that." Something broke in Rigurd's voice—not dramatic, not loud, just a small fracture that let the grief through. "I didn't think anyone remembered."
"He's been carrying this. Months of carrying this, while he built a bureaucracy from nothing and managed a nation he wasn't trained to manage, and nobody asked about the shrine because nobody thought it mattered."
"When the naming happened," Rigurd continued, "everything changed so fast. We were goblins one day, hobgoblins the next. Stronger. Smarter. Able to build things we'd never imagined. Lord Rimuru gave us a future, and I was so grateful—so overwhelmed by the responsibility of helping him create it—that I forgot to preserve the past."
He looked at the papers on his desk. The records I'd made. The memories I'd collected.
"The shrine was demolished for materials. I don't even know who gave the order—probably no one did. It just happened. One morning the tree was there, and the next morning it was lumber for the scaffolding. And I didn't notice for three days because I was in this office, drowning in supply requisitions."
His hands pressed flat against the desk, as if grounding himself against the weight of confession.
"A leader doesn't mourn traditions when his people are finally safe. That's what I told myself. We have food now. We have walls. We have a lord who could kill the demon lords themselves. What are old stones and a dead tree compared to that?"
The ticker pulsed at the edge of my vision.
[Achievement Proximity: Emotional Breakthrough — High Value]
I ignored it.
"Lord Rigurd."
He looked up. His eyes were wet.
"The traditions aren't gone." I pushed the papers across his desk—all of them, every interview, every fragment of memory I'd collected. "They're here. They're recorded. And more people want to talk—the elders have been waiting for someone to ask, and now they know someone's listening."
"You're listening."
"I'm writing it down. That's all I can do."
Rigurd stared at the papers. At me. At the papers again.
"Why?"
The question I'd been dreading. Why would a newcomer care about goblin traditions? Why would someone who'd arrived weeks ago spend his free time recording stories that meant nothing to anyone except the people who'd lived them?
I gave him the only truth I could afford.
"Because I came from a village that was destroyed. Before Lord Rimuru's time. We had traditions too, and when they died, nobody wrote them down. I don't want that to happen here."
The lie tasted like copper. But the feeling behind it was real—the genuine grief for things lost, the desperate need to preserve what remained.
Rigurd heard the feeling.
"They're not gone if someone remembers," I said.
His breath caught.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Then Rigurd gathered the papers—all of them—and placed them in a drawer I hadn't noticed, tucking them away like something precious.
"Continue the interviews," he said. "I'll make sure you have time in your schedule. Kitchen duties reduced, if Haruna agrees."
"She'll agree."
"Yes. She will." He stood, and I stood with him, and he walked me to the door of his office with a hand on my shoulder that felt heavier than it should have.
"Tarruk."
"Yes?"
"Cultural Liaison to the Administration. Unofficial. Unpaid. Report directly to me." He paused. "Someone should have been doing this work from the beginning. I should have been doing this work. Thank you for starting it without being asked."
The title landed differently than the system ones. No notification, no stat boost, no achievement unlocked. Just an administrator's gratitude and a responsibility I hadn't expected.
"I'll do my best."
"I know you will."
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