I took some deep breaths to calm myself down as the rush of the fight slowly drained out of me along with my frustrations. And in its wake came the wave of pain from the various wounds I had sustained throughout the fight. Each and every small movement I made sent jolts of pain lancing through my body. The worst was the hole in my side from the goblin’s spear that was still weeping blood, though the two arrows digging into my muscles with every move were a close second.

I did what I could to slow the bleeding with a bit of flesh sorcery but I was running low on mana. Switching my focus to gathering more, I slowly walked over towards the goblin’s campsite near the center of the clearing, careful not to worsen the bleeding. I gently sat on the ground near the fire and admired the flickering flames.

It was my first time seeing fire and I was amazed. Heat was constantly radiating off it in waves and the flames danced about in the air like they were reaching out for the sky, only held back by the logs they clung to. A brilliant core of white that quickly bled away into yellows and then oranges, I felt like I could get lost staring into it as it popped and crackled away.

Before I knew it my mana was full and I could get to work on patching myself up. First was the still leaking hole in my side that had barely missed some important organs. Then I finished closing the various spear induced cuts across my chest and arms as well as the shallow cut on my cheek from the first arrow. Finally I carefully pulled the arrows out of my shoulder and thigh, using my flesh sorcery to ensure I didn’t cause more damage while I removed them, and repaired the remaining holes.

That stab wound could have been very bad if it had been just a little deeper or slightly to the side. I don’t know if I would have had enough mana to heal it and finish the fight if it had. That whole fight had been much closer than I first thought.

Now that I was thinking about it, I couldn’t help but reflect on how the fight had gone. And I couldn’t help but to be disappointed in my performance. I hadn’t done that poorly overall and my practice had come in handy multiple times, but there was a lot I needed to work on. The biggest concern was my accuracy, as I missed my rock throws multiple times and couldn’t even hit the archers from a distance. I don’t know if it was the pressure of the moment or if my aim is just bad but I need to practice either way.

My lack of experience also seemed to be a problem, since this was pretty much my first actual fight. Many of my wounds were caused while I was focused on one opponent and another launched an attack without my notice. I also had trouble dealing with multiple opponents when they closed in on me, at least if I wanted to avoid getting hit. It seems I still had a lot of work to do.

That could all wait for later though, as right now I had a whole bunch of new stuff to look over. The first of which being the carcass hanging over the fire that the goblins were eating earlier. The bottom seemed to have gotten a bit black, possibly from sitting there unattended throughout the fight, so I gave the roast a few turns like the goblin I saw had.

I could see the fat sizzling and dripping off the meat into the fire below, accompanied by a mouthwatering smell. Picking a spot the goblins hadn’t torn up with their little claws, I cut off a piece of the meat with a conjured bit of sharp stone. I savoured the smell before taking a bite and found the meat to be surprisingly tender. The flavour had an earthy undertone I wouldn’t have expected but was a very different, yet enjoyable, experience from the crystal berries I had eaten.

I ended up feasting on a good chunk of the roast before I was full and even tried the black part on the underside which was not good at all. Feeling pleasantly full I moved on to examining the many things the goblins had scattered around their camp.

Near the fire there were a couple of different sized bags made out of what looked like it could be animal skin. That along with the goblin’s similarly made coverings gave me some interesting ideas to look into later. In one of the larger bags were a bunch of oddly shaped light green crystals. Taking one out I could see that there was a flat end where it looked to have been hacked off something. It then extended and curved a bit before it branched out a couple times, ending in sharp points at each tip. It kind of resembles a small tree branch. The crystal was jagged in a couple areas but the majority of its surface was smooth.

I put the crystal back in the bag and moved on to the next one which was filled with what first appeared to be grass. Taking some out to check I found that my initial impression was wrong and that it was actually similar to the hides that made up the bags. One side of it seemed to be spotted with dried blood and flesh, while the other looked like a combination between moss and grass. It looked kind of like someone tried to recreate fur out of plants. If it came from an animal like I thought, then I was excited to see what one looked like.

Looking through the bag further revealed that there were some other types of animal hides as well, though they were all more normal looking furs. There was even one that I was sure was from a cinderrel with its signature black fur and red stripe along with the bushy tail.

The last of the large bags was filled with bloody chunks of a variety of fresh looking meats, I could even see what looked like an entire hooved leg. I left the meat alone after a cursory glance since I didn’t know what to do with it, but they reminded me of the fact I was still covered in blood. Not that I could do much about it at the moment since there weren’t any sources of water nearby that I knew of.

Moving on to some of the smaller bags scattered about I found a variety of rocks, including some sharp ones that looked similar to the rocks at the tip of the goblin’s spears and arrows. There were various types of teeth, claws and bones as well as different lengths of string made from some type of fibrous plant. I even found a pouch filled with what appeared to be the severed ears of other goblins? Just... why?

One of the medium sized bags had a bunch of meat that appeared to have been hardened somehow. I didn’t know what the purpose of hard meat was, but it must be useful if they had that much of it.

Setting the bag aside I realized I had gone through most if not all of them, so I started walking over towards the goblin corpses scattered around the clearing. I gathered what I could from a couple of the bodies and took the time to banish the stone wall I had conjured earlier.

Back near the fire, I laid the assortment of items I had gathered on the ground and shaped a mound of dirt to sit on. The first thing I looked at were the weapons the goblins had used. The spears consisted of a straight stick made of an unfamiliar type of wood with a sharpened stone tied into a slot at one end. They seemed simple and useless for someone who can launch rocks with enough force to blow a goblin’s head off, but the key point for the spear is that it wasn’t reliant on mana.

While magic seemed far far better than some mundane weapon, I often found myself running out of mana at crucial times. I was near empty after both my fights so far and if they had gone on a bit longer I may not have survived them at all. This may not be such a big problem when I can gather mana while I use it, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to accomplish that. The fact the goblins could do so much harm to me without any magic at all tells me that I shouldn’t neglect non magical means.

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Moving on from the spear I examined a bow and the container of arrows I had scavenged. Similarly to the spear, the bow was a wooden stick but it was bent into a ‘u’ shape with a string of some sort. I couldn’t tell what the string was made of but I enjoyed the way it sounded when I plucked it with my finger.

The arrows were like smaller spears, though they also had feathers stuck on the end. I wasn’t sure what the feathers were for but birds have feathers and they fly so maybe it helps somehow. I tried to shoot a couple of the arrows and found it much more difficult than the goblins made it look. It took me many tries just to get an arrow to fly and even then I couldn’t get them where I aimed. The string even left a painful welt on my arm. My conclusion was that bows suck.

Tossing the bow to the side I decided to check out the other things I had looted. The goblins had all worn some type of coverings that appeared to be made out of animal hides. I thought it was a little weird they wore the skin of animals they had killed but maybe it was due to the lack of natural fur. Anyways, some of the goblins wore straps of hide with pouches attached so they could carry things without using their hands! Now that was useful.

Though the things they thought important enough to carry seemed questionable to me. A common one was a couple pieces of the hard meat, so maybe it was just for eating? Another thing they all carried was some manner of stone knife, which was basically just a sharpened stone with a hide wrapped handle. Though one of them had a knife made out of some type of bone which was cool.

Rocks seemed to be a common find in these pouches, though I could not fathom the reason why. One of them contained a partially eaten tongue which smelled horrible and looked so slimy and disgusting that I just threw the whole pouch into the fire. I gagged just thinking about a goblin eating it.

Other than the belts and pouches, I left the hide clothes alone since they were absolutely covered in filth and smelled as bad as the corpses they covered. There were some interesting ornaments that I took note of to use as inspiration, especially one necklace with a large fang in the center.

With my looting and learning coming to a close I finally noticed how much darker it had gotten. There was still some daylight remaining but I would most definitely not be able to make it back to base before it got dark. I could start walking back now and stop to set up for the night once the sun set, or I could use the remaining light to set up here for the night.

Choice number two seemed the better option so I looked around the clearing for good spots to set up. There were a couple of good trees I could mold into a spot to sleep if I wanted, but a glance at the fire gave me a better idea.

I knelt down near the fire and placed both my hands palms down on the ground in front of me. Closing my eyes, I focused on spreading my mana out into the earth around me. I slowly pulled and conjured stone to form four walls around me and the campsite until they were about a head taller than I was. From there I pulled four pillars up from around the fire and carefully created a ceiling to connect the four walls and central pillars, leaving a small gap between the top of the pillars for the smoke to escape.

The smoke hole was a spur of the moment idea. At one point I got distracted by the smoke when I realized I could feel it the same as I could normal air with my sorcery and spent some time comparing the differences. The smoke gave me a similar feeling to the bad air I had expelled from my base so I figured it wasn’t a good idea to breathe it.

With the structure of the room complete I walked a circle around the fire to check for mistakes. Seeing none I moved on to some of the detail work, like putting a stone lattice in the smoke hole so nothing could climb or fall in. I also sunk the fire down a bit to create a circular stone fire pit and spread the stone outwards to connect it with the surrounding pillars.

I created a temporary doorway in one of the walls so that I could throw out that spit roast that had continued to blacken over the fire. I left the goblin corpses outside since I didn’t want them to stink up the place, but I ensured that all the bags and loot were inside.

I went out again to get a chunk of wood from a nearby tree and shaped it into a bed before I went back out to the tree. Coming back in with a handful of moss I laid it down on the bed and coaxed it to grow with my flesh sorcery. Once I had a nice and even coating I sat down to try it out and found it much softer than the wood or stone alone. It was so soft and springy that I was almost tempted to just fall asleep right then and there, but I still had some stuff I wanted to do so I dragged myself back up.

I sealed up the door and then searched the room for some things I had seen earlier. I found them near one of the corners of the room. They were five wooden containers that I opened to reveal some much appreciated water. It didn’t taste very good and I struggled to avoid thinking that it was the goblins’ but I was very thirsty after my exploration and the fight.

That done, I noticed the fire was starting to get smaller and wondered why that was until I saw one of the logs crumble to ash. Realizing what the pile of wood near the fire was for, I tossed a couple pieces into the flames and smiled when they caught and the fire grew once again.

I made one last pass around the room to add a few thin air slits near the top of the walls before finally sitting by the fire to relax. The gentle crackle and glow of the flames was mesmerizing and I planned to figure out how to start one for the waterfall base at some point.

Although my meeting with the goblins hadn’t turned out the way I wanted, I had still learned a lot in the end. About the things I needed to continue or start working on. About meat, hide, weapons, and other fun things. And about how Common was not so common after all.

Today had been a useful experience and I was now even more motivated to improve. So on that note, I headed to bed.

Lying down I closed my eyes, but not to sleep. I thought it was about time I explored my soul sorcery, even if just a little. So with my eyes shut, I focused inwards and sought out that familiar place my mind could retreat to. But this time I kept my consciousness where it was and just observed.

I received a basic understanding of the soul from my sorcery but seeing it for myself was much different from that instinctive knowledge. From what I knew, every living being that could be considered sentient had a core. It wasn’t usually an actual physical thing, though it could sometimes crystalize and become physical upon a being’s death, but existed inside a being regardless. Its location was typically in the same place as the heart.

The core was divided into roughly five parts and typically spherical in shape. The outer layer was what I often called my mana pool and was where mana was gathered and stored. The second layer was where the energy of the soul was stored and I decided to call it my soul sea to match with my mana pool.

In the center of the soul sea was the soul core, which was the actual structure of the soul and what the word ‘soul’ was usually referring to. It was a very complicated construction that I understood could be used to figure out a lot about a being, but I could hardly make any sense of it. Near the center of my soul core I could identify the four large shards that seemed to be the source of my sorceries, though I didn’t know why they seemed so different from the rest of my soul.

Inside of the soul core was a small area that I typically called my soul space, though it could also be called a soul realm or inner world or all sorts of other names. This is where my consciousness retreated to and where I woke up for the first time. And in the very center of it all was a tiny little speck that I could hardly even sense while knowing exactly where it was. It was called the soul spark or source and was what breathed life into the soul and provided it with the soul energy it needed to grow and function.

There were many other intricacies of the soul that I had some instinctive knowledge of, but diving into my soul like this had provided a much better understanding for all that instinctive knowledge to build on. I had a lot to process and think through but I was getting sleepy so I shelved my soul exploring for another day.

Relaxing further into my springy bed, I sent myself off to a deep sleep with a bit of flesh sorcery.