Chapter 12

After Divine was cleaned up he made the minions get new water. They and the goblings needed a good washing even much more urgently than him.

To get the goblins to check how to pull water out of the well was a challenge.

To make them disrobe and wash was even harder.

Luckily beforehand Divine had chosen the prettiest stick laying around to help him help the goblins with these tasks.

One stinging blow for every stupid mistake.

*smack*

For daydreaming.

*smack*

For wandering off.

*smack*

For not taking their rags off.

*smack*

For dropping one of the goblings.

*smack*

*smack*

*smack*

*smack*

For the first time he really noticed the gender of the goblins around him.

Scarface was female. Like one other of the two remaining minions.

Divine named the other female Oneear. Surprisingly he chose that name because one of her ears had been cut off.

The last minion left was male. Hooknose.

Divine didn't feel anything with these naked goblin bodies in front of him.

Not even disgust.

After all the deaths Divine had seen since he got to this world and the massacre he himself had caused not hours ago, the minions' naked bodies were only some flesh to him.

Hooknose was the opposite and couldn't help but gaze at the naked females' bodies again and again.

Divine took notice of the goblings' genders too. There were two males and two females.

The goblings fought hard against their cleaning but surrendered in the end.

The doe pelt was finally dry and the clean goblings were placed on it.

Divine let the minions make fire while he skinned the rabbit and the shadow cat.

He hung the wet pelts on the stonewall to dry.

The horn of the horned rabbit was kept too and placed near the giant book the Demonic Path of Immortality.

Divine filled the spirit pot with some water.

From the food in his ragpack he picked out the broken eggshells. Next he filled the mix of mushed winter berries, three eggs and some rabbit blood into the spirit pot.

Divine cut the horned rabbit's meat and threw it into the pot too.

Then he put the pot over the flames. Sometimes stirring it with a stick.

But not the good stick used for the minions' punishments.

Divine gave the meat of the shadow cat to the minions. For himself he only kept a little piece and grilled it on a stick.

Just because he was curious about the taste.

In the shadow cats body Divine found a tiny crystal that felt a lot like the shadowy qi it had used for its special claw attack.

It was a tiny magical beast core. Like spirit stones or spirit crystals one could use a magical beast core as a qi source for cultivation or artifact creation.

Not everyone could cultivate magical beast qi just like that, but for his top cultivation techniques that wasn't a problem.

Divine kept the magical beast core in his sleeve for now.

The skeletons and the innards of the horned rabbit and the shadow cat were thrown on the pile of corpses at the entrance.

Something had to be done about that stinking pile of corpses. The sooner the better.

Divine checked on the cooking food again.

The soup of winter berries, eggs and rabbit meat was happily boiling in the spirit pot.

The shadow cat meat stick was nicely grillling.

A delicious fragrance was spreading, more from the soup than the cat meat.

To eat the soup Divine used one of the cups that the system had given out when he had purchased spirit water.

The soup was the most delicious thing he had tasted since his transmigration.

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The qi infused into the soup by the spirit pot was faint but noticeable. It gave the soup something extra special.

Eating relaxed Divine's sore body and alleviated his tiredness somewhat.

Divine shared the wonderful soup with the goblings and the minions.

Everyone enjoyed the soup immensely.

The cat meat just tasted weird to Divine but the goblins ate it happily.

After the great meal Divine sat down in a meditative pose, cultivating to regenerate his qi and then to continue raising his strength.

Hours later, rested and refreshed, Divine opened his eyes again.

The goblings were sleeping, as were two of the minions. Oneear was eating from the leftovers.

Divine took out the magical beast core and held it in his hand.

He tried to copy the shadowy feel of the qi with his own. The endgoal was to learn the claw technique of the shadow cat.

For that he explored the qi in the beast core with his qi sense meticulously.

Then he tried to recreate the technique by sending qi into his claws and trying to get his qi to take the shape of his claws and become shadowy.

Progressing was difficult so he decided to stop after some time and add it to his training routine.

Afterwards Divine went through the movements of the Shining Blood Demon Body Cultivation Manual.

It was gratifying to see himself getting better and better.

When Divine had enough of that activity he read to the goblings and discovered something promising.

A flesh-eating plant that got big enough to eat whole corpses and refine them into qi.

Not only exuded this plant qi, it even smelled nice.

This type of flesh-eating plant could be nourished and refined by a cultivator to gain control over it and help it evolve.

Growing controllable vines or delicious fruits were only some of the possibilities.

The plant could even gain sentinence and cultivate a humanoid body, but only with time, luck and nourishment.

Divine checked the system shop bought it immediatly.

[+1 Demonic Venus Flytrap Seed] [-20 Blood Qi Essence]

He still had enough savings for nutrition pills, spirit water, spirit soap and qi condensation pills left over and he could always gather more.

Divine read the passages about artifact refinement in the Eternal Divine Demon Cultivation Scripture and the Shining Blood Demon Body Cultivation Manual to the goblings.

There was one technique to refine artifacts with spirit qi in the scripture. And in the manual was one to refine them with blood qi.

Since his cultivation was at the second stage of the first realm, both in body cultivation and in qi cultivation, he would use both techniques.

They seemed to work best in tandem anyway according to the subtext of the two books.

Refining low class treasures like the Dancing Feather Sword or the Spider Silk Robe was redundant with his low cultivation.

Either you had a higher cultivation and raised a treasure's quality through refinement or the treasure was of higher quality and the refinement was used to gain control over the treasure.

Often times it was even useful for the cultivation if someone refined a more powerful treasure.

The Demonic Venus Flytrap Seed was such a treasure and it would be beneficial for his low cultivation to refine it.

After carrying out the deal Divine immediately got the seed out of the system inventory.

The Demonic Venus Flytrap Seed was pretty big but otherwise unremarkable.

Only his qi sense could make out the seed's extraordinaryness, its hidden might inside.

First Divine fed the seed a drop of own his blood according to the refinement technique of the Shining Blood Demon Body Cultivation Manual.

Then he nourished the seed with his spirit qi according to the refinement technique of the Eternal Divine Demon Cultivation Scripture and waited until he could feel that a connection had been established between himself and the Demonic Venus Flytrap Seed.

It took almost all of his spirit qi until it clicked and he felt the seed with more than his qi sense.

Now the seed felt like one of his limbs. Like his arm he could feel the seed accurately if he concentrated. And if he thought of something else the sensation disappeared in the depth of his mind.

Now it was time to plant the Demonic Venus Flytrap Seed.

Divine looked around for a suitable place.

Between the former pit, that was a well now, and the cavern's exit the earth was still soaked in blood from the cannibal Divine had killed there.

It was a good place to plant the Demonic Venus Flytrap. The bloody earth would be beneficial and the pile of goblin corpses was near.

Divine dug a small hole with one of his rusty knifes and buried the seed carefully.

To celebrate and give the seed's growth a kickstart Divine bought a cup of spirit water.

[+1 Cups of Spirit Water] [-2 Blood Qi Essence]

Divine took a sip and poured the rest onto the earth where the seed was buried.

Project accomplished. Only waiting for the seed to sprout was left.

His next project would be planting glowing mushrooms all around the latrine pit. Or supervising the minions in this task.

It depended on the goblins' performance if he would have to do much of the work himself.

Exactly like their punishments depended on their performance too.

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It was summer now and the situation of the Lost Tooth Tribe hadn't improved much since winter.

Many had died reducing the quantity of the needed food supplies. And when spring came the tribe got food in abundance from the forest.

Then came all the births and now food was scarce again.

Furthermore the tribe had plundered everything they could in their immediate surroundings already.

The only alternative was a little farther away where they had to compete with another goblin tribe. All the other regions spelled doom for weak goblins.

Groby had three new goblings at home and a grumpy goblin tit that had him by his dick.

He wasn't happy to join Chief Mouth's raid on the other goblin tribe.

But he hadn't had much of a choice when one of the chief's followers had appeared before him and ordered him to follow.

And maybe, only maybe, he would get lucky and come back with riches and reputation.

Or not, and he would die. Then he wouldn't have to worry anymore either.

Their group was already pretty big but their leader, the chief's follower Snorktooth, lead them into one of the tunnels bordering on the main cavern to gather up more cannon fodder.

Groby had gone down this tunnel before. Winters ago.

It had been a filled with the lowest of the low. Everywhere the sick and the dead had been lying around.

It wasn't so overpopulated anymore and no dead bodies were around.

Groby thought of the crazily desperate goblins he had seen eating other goblins. Those digusting savages.

Worry grew in his tummy and instinctively he made his steps even softer and quieter.

The goblins they met didn't look so bad and the leader was happy to gain a few able goblins for the raiding party.

Groby kept a suspicious eye on the goblins from this particular tunnel.

Who knew how they survived the winter.

The newcomers were talking amongst themselves and Groby picked up a strange word that he hadn't heard before. "Divine".