Absorbing the blood that left my mouth, the flowers, after a minute, returned back to being spotless, as if nothing had happened.

Thoroughly entranced but still with a hint of fear in my heart, I dug my knife out of my satchel, before beginning to cut the flowers from their stems. Taking care not to damage the petals, I slowly and carefully harvested the flowers, biting my tongue again whenever I felt the slightest bit mentally different.

In all taking a quarter of the flowers in the clearing and with the sun having already set, I quickly tapped on my golden ring, sending all of the harvest inside, before running away.

I only stopped ten minutes after I could no longer smell the sickening scent of the flowers, once again reaching the lake with Abetra’s floating corpse.

Throwing down as much dry wood as I was able to carry, I promptly started a fire with the fire starter I brought, finding that it was essentially just a cylinder of flint.

Time passed, and with the crackling fire illuminating my face, I set down the Fire Shot scroll I was reading from, instead absentmindedly looking out at the stream that fed into the lake and biting down and nearly dislocating my teeth on a strip of dry jerky. Abetra’s corpse had disappeared in the time I had gone to gather firewood, likely having sunk to the bottom of the lake after the fish cleaned his skeleton of all his flesh.

Using my molars, I slowly grinded the jerky down, dissolving it enough with my saliva to eventually be crammed down my throat.

Admittedly, despite my nearly falling victim to and becoming fertilizer for the hypnotizing blue flowers, I still felt the urge to go back to gather the rest of them. After all, I had acquired a quality alchemical ingredient which I could probably use to it's fullest potential in the near future, and all I had to do was bite down on my tongue a few times.

Not to mention, I also felt rather fortunate. After all, had I not formed my magic circle when I did and still went on to inspect that clearing, I likely actually would have died. I didn’t know the mechanism by which the flowers worked, but it was very clear they brought about some sort of mental haze which caused the viewer to become entranced and eventually die.

Looking down at my satchel, I reached for another strip of jerky, only to find that I had absentmindedly polished off both sacks I had brought. And I was still hungry.

Smacking and silently cursing in my head, I had forgotten that with my having formed a magic circle, the amount of food I had to consume just to function normally had also increased.

Sighing, I threw a few more sticks into the fire. If it came down to it, I could just kill and eat a goblin. I read from the Compendium that although their flesh was incredibly stringy and had a horrible off taste, they were still edible and were even eaten in times of famine.

I looked up at the bright moons and seeing just how dark it was, I yawned, curling up into a ball and resting on my side. I looked out at the surface of the lake off of which the moonlight reflected.

Aurelia probably would have loved the sight.

***

With the sun directly above in the sky, I awoke to the sound of rushing water and chirping birds, having fallen asleep late last night. I got up to stretch, but without any food for breakfast, I quickly packed up my things, before stomping out the few remaining embers of the fire.

Not feeling as sluggish as I expected, I began to make my way up the stream Abetra and I had so thoroughly explored previously, completely and utterly lost on what I was supposed to do. Unable to consult the 7th Compendium, I was essentially forced to work within the bounds of my already known knowledge, which meant when it came to plant life, unless the thing had an incredibly obvious effect such as yesterday’s blue flowers, I could only identify and harvest hemoroot and purifern.

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But doing so was essentially useless for the current me. I already had twelve viles of bloodclotting and numbing potions as well as a whole wardrobe full of the two plants.

So that meant I could only attempt to hunt monsters, but as I didn’t have any way to track them, I could only kill monsters I knew the location of.

Such as a certain hobgoblin archer.

Beginning to slightly speed up, I made my way upstream, eventually coming across the general location where Abetra and I had set up camp the first night. Where I didn’t go through with shooting a crossbow bolt through his throat at night but nearly did so anyway in the morning after he so rudely woke me up. Walking even further, I set foot on the small patch of dirt on which the purifern grew and he had first called out to me.

A certain bitterness welled up and grew inside of me, before I forcibly shook and cleared my head.

I had no part to play in his death. It was his own weakness and stupidity that got him killed.

Continuing to make my way upstream, I stopped, looking down at the trail of blood Abetra had left before he died. Leading into the forest, there was also a large, intensely crimson patch I hadn't seen before, right at where he had pushed me into the stream.

I steadied my heart rate, before raising my crossbow and making my way forward, following the red trail. Slowly, I walked, making each step with calm, precise intentionality and not making any sound louder than necessary.

Spotting the entrance to the grass clearing where Abetra was shot, I quickly muttered a quiet prayer, before returning to the path.

I was officially in goblin territory. Walking forward to where Abetra's dried up blood began as well as ended, I stopped, as voices somewhat human yet so distinctly not entered my ears. There was obvious intent in the sounds I heard, as well as a distinguishable pattern to them and the question of whether or not goblins had ever developed a language briefly entered my mind before I snapped back to reality. Either way, I didn’t really care. It was an idle thought conjured up to distract myself from the tension that came before battle; goblins were just fleshy sacks of poor quality magic circle catalyst.

Judging the sounds as coming from directly in front of me, I ran as fast but also as quietly as I could diagonally, hiding behind a tree before crouching down and peeking my head from the side.

In front of me, two goblins, one tall, carrying a weathered old bucket, and one short, were walking together through the forest. The short one held a primitive pointed stone knife and was wildly gesturing this way and that, while the taller one just continued to trudge forward, an expression of profound boredom on it’s face.

As the two passed where I hid, I briefly considered popping out and killing them both. I ultimately decided against it however. Not only would doing that not provide me anything of value, as I still had lots of left over goblin blood, but they also weren’t what I was hunting for.

Seeing as the two weren’t carrying proper weapons and their demeanor was remarkably relaxed, there had to be some sort of goblin encampment close by, else their current lack of tension would make no sense. Unless they were just born simple, but if that were the case, they probably already would have been eaten.

Hearing the two goblins return from the stream, the taller one's bucket now filled with water that sloshed this way and that as it walked, I followed them, making sure to keep a constant distance of about ten yards, terrified of the possibility of alerting them.

But that fear was misplaced, as the two were so preoccupied with whatever meaningless drivel the shorter one was spouting that I probably could have loudly yelled out and they still wouldn’t react in any way. My speculation that the two were born dull became increasingly likely in my mind the longer I observed them.

Two minutes passing by, the two neared a cave imbedded in an incredibly tall cliff face, which they promptly entered. The entrance defended by a group of goblins that looked stronger than the sort I was used to but not to the point of equaling the hobgoblin, I cursed.

With presumably all of the goblins living inside the cave, not only did I not want to, but I also wouldn’t be able to fight them directly, effectively raising the difficulty of being able to successfully kill the hobgoblin significantly.

I rubbed my chin, a myriad of different thoughts running through my mind. I couldn’t just try and fight this battle with brute force alone. After all, I had seen what happened to Abetra when he did that and I had no inherent desire to have my arm be ripped off. I knew so little about the goblins beyond surface level traits, such that any plan I could come up with would only lead to my failing. I didn’t even know how many goblins there were, or how many of them were capable of fighting. Compounding on to that, the strongest weapon at my disposal, Flame Shot, needed approximately thirty seconds of constant chanting to shoot out and it was limited by my overall mana, so I couldn’t reliably count on it getting me out of a tough situation.

Coming to a decision, I steeled my nerves. My first order of business would have to be to gather as much information on the goblins as possible. From their day to day activities to their general temperament, If I knew everything there was about them but they knew nothing about me, I was confident that I would be able to kill the hobgoblin archer and harvest it’s corpse.