Sword Art Online Volume 16 – Alicization Exploding Chapter 18 – War of the Underworld 12 Having reached twenty this year, Kosogi had been pondering over why the goblins were regarded as the worst among the five races of the land of darkness—the humans, the giants, the ogres, the orcs, and the goblins—for over five years. Certainly, the goblins were the smallest among the five races and the weakest physically too. However, they once held numbers to compensate for that disadvantage and in fact, they conducted battles against the orcs and humans on equal terms during the ancient «age of blood and iron». When the races eventually ended their wars, exhausted, the goblin chief, too, gained a seat in the Ten Lords Assembly, the highest aggregation in the land of darkness, upon the conclusion of the five races’ peace treaty. However, the treaty was, in reality, in no way fair. Both the mountain and plains goblins were given no more than the withered wastelands in the north as their dominion and there was nowhere near enough agriculture or game to preserve the Life of a whole race; their children constantly starved and their elderly rapidly died. In short, they were done in by the chiefs of the other races. In order to curb the goblins’ greatest strength, their numbers, they forced upon them a vast but infertile land. As such, the goblins had to exhaust all ends to even survive to this current day and could not further their civilization. Having maintained training institutions for their children to practice like the black iums was impossible; they were instead sent down rivers on boats in order to reduce the mouths to feed. All while aware of the treatment their children would receive in the lands of the other races when they arrive. If only they had fertile land and sufficient resources, their soldiers would now hold not these machetes and plate armor casted from crude iron but tempered steel equipment. They would have amassed Life from ample food supplies and studied sword techniques and tactics. They might have even acquired those dark arts monopolized by the black iums eventually.