Sitting in the grass were fifteen of the large, pear-shaped fruits that the goblins had found. Dis held one in his hands, and hesitantly bit into it. Ethan and Alyssa waited, tense, for the goblin’s reaction, but after a few seconds, the goblin simply shrugged.
“It fine, I think.” Dis said, and it took all of his willpower to avoid biting into one himself.
“We… should wait a bit longer. It might take a while to kick in or something.” Ethan said, and Alyssa quietly nodded, staring longingly at the fruits as well.
“What do we do about Gadget, though?” Alyssa eventually asked, but Ethan shook his head.
“Dogs are omnivores. He can eat them, probably.” Ethan told her, and Alyssa looked at him, disbelieving.
“Really? I thought dogs were carnivores. I… guess it makes sense, now that I think about it.”
Ethan nodded. As a child, he’d seen his mother feed Gadget an apple slice and had been so worried about it that he’d gone and asked the neighbor, who was a vet- or maybe he was a doctor? Even with his now-superior memory, Ethan couldn’t remember- if it was alright. Of course, it had been.
Ethan smiled wryly at the vague memory. ‘Those were better times, weren’t they?’ Ethan thought, and then had to stifle a chuckle at the thought. ‘Not even a full two days have passed yet, Ethan.’
Alyssa was looking at him weirdly, having heard his stifled snort loud and clear, but Ethan pretended not to notice.
It was an agonizing wait, but after fifteen full minutes- most if it in a suffocating silence-, Ethan decided that the fruits were probably safe to eat. Since Alyssa had the better physicality of the two of them, he decided to let her be the guinea pig- which, she was more than pleased to do.
She took a bite of the juicy fruit and, after only a moment of processing, rapidly devoured the entire thing.
‘I thought we agreed that she’d just take a single bite… At least it’s probably good,’ Ethan thought. He managed to hold on and wait for a minute to confirm that Alyssa was alright, but when she started on a second fruit, Ethan gave up and picked one out of the small pile.
He brought it up to his face and sniffed. The goblins had earlier, detecting nothing of danger, but Ethan was just curious what it smelled like.
It smelled like… artificial grape flavor. It was very potent, and Ethan sighed. He’d never liked the artificial grape flavor- it reminded him far too much of medicine. Regardless, he took a bite of the increasingly-bizarre fruit… and his eyes widened in shock.
It was, quite possibly, one of the best thing he’d ever tasted- second only to his mother’s fajitas, of course. Despite it being shaped like a pear, colored like an apple, and smelling like a grape, it tasted like none of those- instead, it tasted like some bizarre mixture of cherries, honey and lime- that didn’t sound like it should taste good, but it did. Just like Alyssa, the fruit disappeared from his hand in moments, sent to his ravenous stomach.
Ethan had felt significantly better only instants after finally drinking a swig of water, but this was even better- Ethan’s entire body felt rejuvenated the moment he was finished. Ethan glanced down at his leg, realizing for the first time that it hadn’t hurt in quite a while, and found that not even a scar remained.
‘That’s not the cause of the fruit, though- probably the Fortitude Milestone.’ Ethan thought. Still, the fruit clearly had some sort of rejuvenating property, because Ethan felt like he hadn’t just ran up a mountain for an hour and a half only a half-hour ago.
Acting on a hunch, Ethan focused on his mana sense and directed it towards another one of the fruits resting in his hand. Just as he’d expected, it was faintly filled with mana- specifically, mana that seemed to yearn to heal, rejuvenate and protect.
Ethan ate another of the magical- literally- fruits, but he couldn’t stuff another one into his stomach by now. The hand-sized fruits were clearly not only tasty and rejuvenating, but dense with calories and such, judging by how full he felt. Ethan leaned back in the grass, feeling significantly more content and happy than before.
‘Just wish that Gadget would wake up, now…’ Ethan thought, glancing over at his unconscious dog, and then at Alyssa, who was finishing her third fruit. Ethan had no clue how she’d managed that, but she at least seemed like she was barely keeping it down when she finally sprawled out on the ground.
‘Shit… I really need to get around to telling her everything. I’ll… do it when we get back to the burrow.’ Ethan thought. Spurred on by the thought of the burrow, Ethan realized how long they’d spent away from it and sat up, staring up at the sun, which was three quarters of the way through the sky, finally beginning its descent.
“We need to get back,” Ethan said, and Alyssa groaned.
“Yeah, alright… My stomach hurts now, though.” She complained.
“And whose fault is that?” Ethan asked, and Alyssa sighed.
“Tred, Bred, Dis, grab the fruits. Fred, grab Gadget.” Ethan ordered. The goblins were able to hold three of the fruits each, which left Ethan carrying the last one, as he directed their small group back to where they’d come from.
∑
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An hour later, they arrived. The three unclothed goblins were sent out to monitor the area- Ethan realized only now that Alyssa had had to put up with their nudity for quite a while without complaint and grimaced- while Fred was put on guard duty. With the fruit’s rejuvenation, though, Ethan hardly felt tired even when the sun began to set, and with his greater Fortitude, Ethan didn’t even feel that cold. Alyssa, on the other hand, passed out in the corner of the little burrow only minutes after they arrived, giving Ethan no time to explain his situation.
‘…I’ll tell her when she wakes up,’ Ethan thought. He hadn’t had any problems with the Corruption since last time, so it wasn’t too urgent, probably. ‘Besides, this is a great opportunity to finally begin studying summoning. I’ve been preoccupied for a while and haven’t even started… but it’s about time I do.’
Ethan stood up and stretched, releasing some of his Processing and Creativity from the grip of his Fortitude- only some, though.
‘Let’s start with hybridizing the Hobgoblin and Goblin summoning ritual. I just need to add an additional step to the ritual, right? It can’t be that hard. Probably best to start with the muscles.’ Ethan decided. He could work on translating the harder to perform Forms of the hobgoblin ritual into things he could actually do, but that was going to definitely be a long-term project. Right now, he wanted more immediate gains.
Ethan briefly skimmed over the knowledge of the two rituals and then got started. He had some spare mana to play around with now, since the goblins he had at his command were all able to be maintained semi-permanently now that they’d each eaten half an Amfruit- Alyssa had named the fruit and the corresponding tree after ambrosia, which was apparently the food of the Greek gods.
Of course, he was still going to use it sparingly.
To start with, Ethan simply practiced the third form in the Hobgoblin’s summoning ritual- the one that formed explicitly the muscles and nothing else. The complete focus on the single aspect meant that they would be significantly stronger, more durable, and et cetera- moreover, the more intricate nature of the Form and the greater amount of mana poured into it pushed it even farther.
Basically, if he managed to shove this into his current goblins, they’d be way stronger, faster, and have greater endurance. That sounded great, even if it would increase the cost of maintaining them a fair bit- after all, Ethan hadn’t forgotten his fight with the Cleftfiend.
His goblins were so much weaker than it that, the moment he stopped pumping them full of mana and tried to flee, the Cleftfiend had simply ran past them, leaving the goblins almost entirely useless. If not for Gadget, Ethan would have died right then and there. That was unacceptable.
Shaking his head, Ethan realized he’d gotten a bit off-track. It was the result of his mental Attributes- unless they were entirely locked away by his Fortitude, the two attributes working together were more than able to ignore the passive suppression put onto them. Even with only half of them out, Ethan had a hard time staying focused unless something particularly interesting or dangerous came along.
Once he had the third Hobgoblin Form down, Ethan simply shoved it into the Goblin ritual. The issues arose here- the second Form in the regular Goblin summoning ritual included its muscles already. He either had to cut that bit out of the second Form in the ritual or integrate the two together.
This was where Ethan fully came to realize that mana seemed to be very similar to machines and coding and such. Until now, Ethan had simply been using the code and hardware of others, but now he had to delve into the code and mangle together a crappy Snake game- and learning to do that from scratch was not going to be easy. Ethan only had a few slight leads from his two Impartments.
To begin with, Ethan dissected everything he knew about the second Form- he really needed to come up with better terminology for this- and trying to locate the bits that were related to the muscle. The issue was that almost all of it was deeply intertwined with the flesh and blood. After all, muscles needed those things to work.
‘They also need oxygen and stuff to work, but the organs come last. Thus, they’re only interconnected for the better fit and greater efficiency.’ Ethan thought. That meant that, theoretically, what he was doing should be possible.
‘Is it even worth it to try to separate them? It might just be more efficient to create a new Form from scratch- one that includes the Hobgoblin’s muscles but the regular goblin’s blood and flesh. It would let them be tied together, as well.’ Ethan thought. When he thought about it a bit more, he became more certain that this was the best choice. ‘It’ll be faster, more effective and easier, since I’ve got the knowledge of both. I just need to replace the goblin’s muscles with the hobgoblin’s and copy everything else.’
The issue was that Ethan needed to actually see the mana from here on out- he couldn’t glean everything he needed to do based on the Forms alone. Thus, he eventually got ready to start. He didn’t want to waste any of his mana, so he at least went in with a plan- he wasn’t sure if it’d work, though.
Ethan started by doing the first two Forms of the goblin’s summoning ritual normally. He carefully monitored the mana every time it changed with his forms, analyzing what did what. When he finished with the second Form, it was a ball of knots once more, and Ethan stopped. The third Form didn’t play a part in this- not yet.
The mana would stay together for a while without his guidance, and Ethan intended to use that time to its upmost. He moved as close as he could to the ball of mana, even more intently scrutinizing it. It began to come undone roughly two minutes later, and Ethan shoved his hand inside of where the ethereal, invisible mana ball should be and pulled with all his might, trying to bring the mana back into his core.
Shockingly, it worked- sort of. About half of it surged into his body, flowing towards his mana core, but he was too late to save the rest as, with the ball of mana falling apart even faster with his interference, the remainders broke apart and spread out into the world, leaving him forever.
‘Shit,’ Ethan thought. He’d tried to absorb the mana too late, and he’d made a huge mistake by taking in the center of the ball first, causing the rest to crumble. He was at least certain that, with this knowledge, he’d do better next time- and it wasn’t like it was a total loss, anyway.
Ethan still had enough mana to continue practicing, although the tiny trickle of regenerating mana was rapidly becoming smaller and smaller as the goblins hungered for more sustenance. The halves of the fruits simply weren’t enough to make up for the fact that the goblins had been awake for- in the case of Fred, at least- two day, were dehydrated, and were still hungry.
Regardless, Ethan continued. If sustaining the four goblins at once became unsustainable and Ethan began to lose mana faster than he generated it, Ethan would begin to draw from the Mana Orb.
Moving on to his gains in relation to his project, Ethan grimaced. It was both better than he’d feared and way worse than he’d hoped.
‘This is going to be fucking hard,’ Ethan thought. The intricacy of only the second Form of a mere goblin was mind-blowing; Ethan knew that only a legitimate expert of summoning could have devised even that. Ethan was far, far away from an expert- he wasn’t even a novice.
Mana truly was like coding, it seemed, and Ethan was way out of his depth. Every single tiny twist, groove and bump was filled with intent and purpose, urging the mana to create a real, living body, even if it was stuffed with only an artificial ghost of a soul.
‘Summoning is a fucking insane discipline of magic,’ Ethan thought. There was no way that almost any other would be as intricate and complex as summoning, he was certain.