The next week brought more travel and training for Ratface.

The two other women had taken two different approaches to Ratface’s sudden change in mood. Isabelle treated her a lot more nicely. Her criticisms started to always begin with ‘that was good but-’ which meant that Ratface struggled telling when she was screwing up or not. She wanted to call the woman out, but she could tell the woman had her own troubles after the glamour. She had started drinking a tea all day that smelled fowl and by Isabelle’s grimaces tasted even worse.

Abigail had a different take. Ratface’s physical training had gone from exhausting to hellish. She was doing more shuttles and carrying extra weight.

The worst one was the new addition of ‘push ups’, a hellish exercise made up by goblin haters no doubt. She had to force her entire body up by just her arms then lower herself and do that ten times and only after that could she go running to catch up to the other two. Oh, and did she mention she was doing all of this with her backpack on that Abigail had stacked with extra weight? Because she was.

She complained but it was working. In fact it was working better than it should be. Ratface could feel herself getting stronger each day. It was unnaturally fast, and she hadn’t realised why until she’d spied Isabelle putting something in her food one night.

“Are you drugging me?” Ratface had asked in horror. Isabelle had tilted her head in thought. Without the illusion making her old, the woman was much more expressive.

“Functionally yes,” she answered. Her lips twitched in amusement, so Ratface didn’t immediately stab her despite what her instincts screamed.

“A little bit of health potion in your meals to help your muscles heal and develop faster,” Abigail interjected as she took the meal from Isabelle and gave it to Ratface. She eyed it sceptically.

“Shouldn’t that not work?” Ratface asked. Once, her village had had a goblin to try and do just that. There’d been an uproar when everyone realised that he’d wasted the village’s year supply. The outrage had only gotten worse when they all realised that he was weaker, not stronger, after it. His selfishness had cost them deeply in winter when they’d had to go hunting and had no way to heal injuries. Goblins had to rely on potions a lot given their lack of magic.

“Health potions are magical in nature,” Isabelle explained, “not many people know this but the potion causes your body to sacrifices part of itself to heal the rest. That’s why warriors don’t just constantly drink them during a fight. Eventually their organs would be eaten into and there’s no coming back from that.”

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Ratface looked at her own stew and back to the two women. She didn’t feel organ failure, but she had no idea what that would feel like. She began to push the meal away, but Abigail stopped her.

“If you’re careful then a few drops of health potion on top of a higher intake of food can offset the sacrifice. The royal guards use this to train.” said Abigail.

“We’ve been feeding you twice as much as a goblin your size needs. More importantly we’ve been feeding you mana rich food,” said Isabelle. Ratface looked at her meal. It had been alligator meat for the entire trip, but alligators were normal creatures.

“This is city gator meat?” she asked.

“It’s a delicacy in this area, though usually hard to find. With Abigail taking out the golem though they are flocking towards the area. They’re particularly interested in us though because they can feel the core.” Isabelle noticed Ratface’s look of confusion. “Oh right, I suppose as a goblin you can’t sense the magic. Right now, Abigail is basically a beacon to monsters. That’s part of why so many adventurers turn up when there’s a golem, to help with the parade of monsters after.”

Ratface grimaced at that. Magic was a whole world denied to her because of her species. Now that she wasn’t starving every day, she had enough energy to worry about such things.

“Just eat your food,” said Abigail. She pushed the bowl of city gator meat closer to Ratface. “The only negative is that with your muscles developing so quickly you’ll lose flexibility if we don’t stretch. Which reminds me that we need to add that to your training.”

Ratface chewed down on her meal. At the end of the day if they wanted to waste resources on her that was their decision. It did seem to be working as she felt stronger. She’d never done stretching before so she was interested what that’d be like.

It was hell as it turned out. Abigail contorted her though a series of awful combinations like she was piece of rope instead of another thinking creature. She’d push Ratface right to her edge where she’d be convinced something was on the verge of breaking and then hold her there. It was a wrenching pain that all her other exercises didn’t prepare her for.

At least she noticed the improvements the next day. Her backpack felt lighter as she ran, and she told Abigail as much.

The old bag put more weight in her bag after that.

That training carried on for a week and by the end of it Ratface felt much more capable. She bet if she’d been back in that brawl this time, she would’ve been able to run away much faster. Running away is what she’d be doing as well.

Her knife skills hadn’t improved nearly as fast. While her body could be improved through the health potion trick, there was no trick for speeding up learning a new skill. The unfortunate reality was that if she got into a fight that anyone else who wasn’t a complete beginner like her, then she was going to be doomed. That was the lesson Abigail was trying to hammer into her anyway.

It was a pity they didn’t have a crossbow to give her. That at least she was pretty good with. All the goblin children got taught how to use them in case monster ever made it to the village. Knives hadn’t been as much of a priority because if a stone boar got too close and she hadn’t already killed it, she was probably screwed anyway. Here’s hoping she could buy a crossbow with the money she’d made from the skin when they got to the next village.

She went to sleep that last night thinking it’d be exciting to see a place filled with humans instead of elves or adventurers.