An event was announced in the holler. Gold Rush.

Six tiers of rewards. Five days. Dump gold, unlock chests with coveted resources. Simple enough on parchment. In practice, a challenging feat.

The early tiers went quick, almost embarrassingly so. Gold flowed like creek water after a storm, from raids, caravans, busted enemy camps, and even a few who wandered down to the creek beds with shallow pans, kneeling in the freezing water like they were proving something to themselves.

 “Still works,” Bam Bam exclaimed, swirling grit and silt in slow circles and enjoying every bit of playing in the mud. Every now and then a fleck would catch the light, someone would hold it up like they’d struck the mother lode, and for a moment the whole Holler felt  like the old prospecting days of yesterday had come roaring back.

But that feeling didn’t last.

By the time they hit the final tier – an obscene billion gold demanded, clan wide, to unlock a molten dragon statue that supposedly still held heat in its bones – the mood had shifted. The number landed heavy in every chest. Even the loud ones went quiet when the number was announced out loud.

“I don’t think we’re gonna make it,” whispered Llama. “That’s a lot of molten gold.”

That was when Ma decided to make it interesting.

She didn’t call a meeting or make a speech. She simply dumped enough gold to claim the top spot on the clan board and left it sitting there like a dare.

“My goal to knock Goodfella off that top spot has been accomplished,” she declared smugly.

It lasted all of twenty minutes.

“Look again, Ma.” She heard from across the war barn.

Goodfella. Triumphant smirk on his face Every damn time.

No matter where she was – the war barn, the porch, or halfway through stirring a pot on the stove – someone would holler it, or the board would flicker, and there he’d be again, perched at the top like he owned the mountain. Ma pushed back a few times, just to test him. Abandoning her potion making to loot more gold. He answered every time. Harder. Faster. Meaner. Until she got tired of looting. She knew Goodfella was like a dog with a bone when challenged.

That was when she changed the rules.

“Whoever keeps Goodfella off that top spot,” she proclaimed casually, like she wasn’t lighting a fuse, “gets themselves a gold pass.”

The words landed like a gauntlet. Heads snapped up. A gold pass was a coin that allowed a goblin to get extra, and often rare, resources and magical items from Ma’s personal stash. It gave one an advantage in many ways. And sometimes, that god pass included special treats as well, like cake and soups and morsel bites to aid in building their bases faster.

 A few goblins straightened, suddenly hungry for something dangerous. Nick heard the announcement and came running into the war barn, breathless “Say no more. Challenge accepted!”

And just like that, the Gold Rush stopped being a clan event and turned into a two man war with the whole Holler watching.

At first it looked like regular raiding. Clean hits, steady gains, numbers climbing at a respectable pace.

Then the pattern changed. Gold stopped being dumped the moment it was earned. It got hoarded. Held back. Let the goblin on top think he was winning. Then dumped in one savage wave that made the war barn’s scale groan under the sudden glittering weight. Names flipped. Numbers scrambled. Every time someone thought they had it locked, the board would jump and a low voice would call with glee from the shadows:

“Look again!”

“Oh yeah? You were saying?”

It became a rhythm. A warning. A joke. The names flipped between Nick, Ma, and Goodfella.

Nick adapted fast. He quit chasing safe, steady gains and started hunting like a starving wolf. Early mornings, late nights, odd corners of the map, anywhere he thought untouched gold might still be hiding. It stopped working quicker than he expected. Creek beds that sparkled before were churned to mud by morning, pans kicked aside, footprints leading away into the brush. “Raked over,” he muttered, nudging an abandoned pan with his boot. Still, he crouched and sifted anyway. A single tiny glint caught the light. He held it up, squinting. “…still counts.”

It always counted. It just wasn’t enough anymore. The gold was becoming scarce.

Bases with enough gold to raid grew harder to find. From a distance they looked perfect, intact walls, full storages gleaming. Up close they were ghosts. Cracked vaults. Empty collectors. Smoke still curling from the last raid like a dying breath.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Nick said more than once, standing in the wreckage of what should have been a jackpot. “Goodfella’s pillaging everything!”

Goodfella appeared behind Nick, as if from thin air, voice jovial. “You know it!” came the reply, and the laughter was thin.

They stopped moving like raiders. They moved like thieves racing each other to the last scrap of treasure. Nick started slipping out before first light, cutting through brush instead of main trails, trying to stay one step ahead of whoever else was thinking the same thing.

Once, just once, he almost had the jackpot all to himself.

He spotted the base at the exact same moment Goodfella did.

Tucked behind a ridge line, half hidden by skeletal dead trees, sat an untouched prize. Storages bulging. Gold glinting through cracks like it was whispering their names. Nick didn’t hesitate. He ran straight down the slope, boots sliding on loose gravel, cutting the distance the fastest, riskiest way. Trying to get there before anyone else found it.

Then he saw movement to the right. Goodfella, already committed, already locked on the same target. He was also running along the upper part of the ridge, jumping over bushes, weaving between thick, low lying branches, pushing away thick brush.

Their eyes met for half a heartbeat. That was all it took for them both to pick up the pace.

“Oh, hell no!” Nick yelled as soon as he saw.

Goodfella just laughed a maniacal laugh. “Gotta be fast, Nick!”

They both broke into a dead sprint. No strategy left. Just raw distance. Nick cut downhill, risking a broken ankle on the scree. Goodfella stayed higher, cleaner footing but longer path. Both adjusting on the fly.

“You ain’t gettin’ that one!” Goodfella shouted.

“Watch me!”

Nick snatched a small vial from his belt without slowing and hurled it ahead of his rival. It shattered on the ridge and exploded into thick gray fog, swallowing the path. Goodfella choked and spluttered, slowing slightly and charged straight through it anyway. In answer he shouted “That ain’t gonna do!”, then loosed an arrow that struck the slope just ahead of Nick and burst into a vicious scatter of metal shards. Nick skidded, nearly fell, caught himself, and kept running.

“Dirty play!” Nick shouted as he regained his footing.

They slammed into the base almost simultaneously, Nick from below, Goodfella from above, and attacked without another word. It was ugly. Desperate. Troops fell early. Spells flew wild. Both of them adjusted on pure instinct, racing to crack the storages before the other could drain them dry. One vault burst on Nick’s side, gold spilling like blood. Another cracked under Goodfella’s push. The numbers danced, climbed, seesawed. They weren’t even trying to three star the base anymore. All that mattered was the gold.

For a moment it balanced perfectly.

Then one wall collapsed faster. Nick broke through just enough to edge ahead. Not by much. Never by much. The rest drained unevenly until the base was hollowed out and silent. Goodfella shook his head, a crooked grin tugging at his mouth. “Alright… now that was low.”

Nick smirked. “You threw spikes.”

“Yeah,” Goodfella said, still breathing hard. “And I’d do it again.”

They both laughed once, short, raw, exhausted, and pulled out. After that, neither of them believed any base truly belonged to just one of them.

By the final day the map felt hollowed out. Not empty. Hollow. Bases looked promising until hit. Then nothing. Like the gold had learned how to hide. Or worse, like someone else had already taken it.

“Forty searches,” Nick muttered one night outside the war barn, voice rough with fatigue. “All junk.”

“Anything?” someone asked.

“Nothing worth hitting.”

It took ages just to find something halfway decent. Even then it barely moved the needle. Still, he didn’t stop.

The war barn changed. It was no longer loud or busy. It was just… occupied. Goblins drifted in at all hours, leaning against posts, sitting on crates, pretending they weren’t staring at the board. Nobody talked much. They didn’t need to. Every now and then the numbers would shift and a quiet murmur would ripple through the room. More often they didn’t. And somehow the silence felt heavier.

Nick started checking the board between every single run. Before. After. Sometimes in the dead of night when he should’ve been sleeping. He’d step inside, glance up, see nothing had changed, and feel his stomach tighten anyway. Because if it hadn’t moved, that only meant it could. At any second. Somewhere out there, someone was sitting on a pile big enough to flip the entire thing. His suspicion was on Goodfella.

“Don’t trust him!” Ma warned. “He will let ya think you’re way ahead, hoard his loot them Bam! Dump and there he is, back at number one!”

“Hey now!” Goodfella laughed. “So is Nick!”

“Because he clocked what you were doing,” Ma retorted.

“Only because you ratted me out!”

“Nick,” Ma called out. “you can’t let him win!”

Nick was sitting in the corner, munching on a quick snack and taking a break. “Don’t worry, Ma,” he promised. “I won’t let ya down!”

“I ain’t even dumped yet,” Goodfella said more than once, casual as breathing. “Just keep watchin’.”

XTC barged into the barn. “Look again!!” He yelled and everyone’s heads turned, shocked at the third contender.

Nick was still at the top.

“Just kidding,” XTC laughed. “But really, you all are insane! Holy moly!”

Nick and Goodfella exchanged glances. “He’s probably hoarding too,” Nick said with paranoia. “Watch him swoop in at the last second and take it from both of us.”

They both eyed XTC warily.

“Ma might be hoarding too,” Goodfella mused. “But I’ll tell ya this, Nick. That…” he pointed to the leaderboard. “…..that ain’t gonna do, I hope ya know that!”

They both went back out into the woods, searching for more. No matter how far ahead Nick pulled, it never felt safe.

“It’s one in the morning,” Nick said, eyes bloodshot. “Work tomorrow out in the field with Pa. Dunno how I’m gonna get through it.”

“Like twelve hours today.” He said the next day

Still going.

“Just one more.” He said, eyeing the top spot. Goodfella still hadn’t dropped and he knew a drop was coming. He just didn’t know how much, so he kept grinding.

The words had stopped meaning anything hours ago. The numbers still climbed. Slow. Brutal. Every piece of it clawed out of nothing.

Then the board rolled over.

1,400,000,000 next to Nick’s name.

“Crazy!” Dowski exclaimed.

“And to think,” Llama said. “I had doubts that we’d get that dragon statue.”

Nick stared at it longer than he should have. Then he let out a tired, disbelieving laugh. “Yeah… I got no life.”

“You’re STILL grinding?!” Goodfella shot back across the barn.

“…yeah.”

A pause. Then a low chuckle from the other side. “Man… you’re gonna bury me. Gonna have a one billion lead on me!”

Even then Goodfella wouldn’t say he was done. “I’ll dump soon enough,” he promised. “Just keep watchin’.”

A couple of the younger goblins chuckled, but it sounded nervous.

“I’m going to bed,” Ma told everyone. “Y’all duke it out. Will see who is on top in the morning!”

“Night, Ma,” the goblins said in unison.

And still Nick kept going.

Then finally after more than a thousand attacks, after scraping the map until it bled, after the clan dragged nearly four billion gold total out of dust and stubbornness Goodfella spoke.

“Well…” A long pause. “…after all that…”

Another beat. “I’m callin’ it.”

The war barn went dead quiet.

“I officially concede to Nick.” Then, like it hadn’t been a five day blood war, he added: “From here on out… we call him…The Grinder.”

Nobody argued.

“Enjoy that gold pass, buddy” Goodfella said, genuine this time. “You earned it.”

“Well done, bro,” someone added. “That’s a wild grind.”

When the final numbers settled, they didn’t even look real. Nearly four billion gold. Enough to finish the entire event three times over and still have plenty left.

Ma stood at her stove, stirring slowly, watching the board settle with quiet satisfaction. “Mhmm,” she said with a smirk. “About right.”

Pa passed through once, dust still on his boots, glanced at the board, then at Nick, who was still half lost in the grind, eyes distant. “He still at it?”

 “Mhm.”

Pa nodded once. “Good.” And kept walking.

In the end, it wasn’t even close.

Not because Goodfella didn’t push; he did, harder than most ever would. But Nick never stopped. Not when the gold dried up. Not when the hours turned cruel. Not when it stopped making any kind of sense.

He just kept going. And Goodfella, as competitive as he was, recognized the dedication. He didn’t need the gold pass himself. And all the gold he still had hoarded, that he never dumped? Well….no one knew but him and Ma.