Axi finally decides to evolve. I observe her, hoping to learn something interesting. After a while, I notice a surge of vitality in her. I come close and try to find the source. To my surprise, it’s her soul! A lot of vitality is pouring from there, and I notice it’s used to grow her body. It seems she is evolving into a hobgoblin.

I continue to observe both her vitality and her soul. Actually, this is a prime opportunity to learn more about souls. I compare her soul to mine. My sense is rather bad; I only see a blurred ball for now. Interestingly, I can improve this sense, or at least I think so. My Mana Sense grew better with training. This means I must have some Mana Sense and Soul Sense organ in my body, or maybe in my soul, though the soul is part of the body here.

I’m afraid spiders will come here, but we are lucky for now. The evolution takes around two hours. Axi grew to around a meter and a half, so she is now half a meter taller than me. Her body ends up being more muscular than the chieftain of my previous tribe, but she is still feminine. Her muscles look dense but not super big, so she has an athletic build, not a bodybuilder. Her face changes as well, becoming prettier and more human-like. All goblins have ugly faces. Axi’s new face is prettier, but still rather ugly by my previous world’s standards.

Axi wakes up and looks at her body, feeling it out. I can say she is thinking about something. She really got smart.

“What’s your name?” She asks me. I try to remember my previous name, but I can’t. It seems I have memory gaps about my previous life.

“I don’t have one,” I answer simply. The system says the same.

“But I have!”

“Yeah. I give you one.”

Axi starts thinking again.

“You are going to be Smag!” She declares it after a while.

I shrug. “Sure, why not?" It’s a rather childish name, but it’s not a problem for me. I even check the system, but there’s no mention of my name.

“And I’m going to be the new chieftain!” Axi declares. This… no way. I’m not giving up my power!

“What do we do, Chieftain Axi?” I snicker.

“Hm… So… We kill more monsters!”

“Sure. Lead the way.”

She nods, but is hesitant. I don’t know how much intelligence she gained, but it’s not the same as knowledge and experience. Axi leads us back into the tunnels. We wander for some time, killing a few smaller spiders along the way. I’m no longer afraid of them. Axi is a super powerful bodyguard, probably stronger than most 2nd tier monsters.

“Axi, I think we already passed this place before. Where are we going?”

“I… This way!” She points randomly.

“There’s not many monsters, though. By the way, I’m thirsty. When will you lead your tribe to water?”

“Hm…”

“Can I give you some advice?”

“But I’m the chieftain!”

“Sure, you are. The system told you your new race is for being a chieftain, right?” She nods. “I picked the Shaman option. The system told me this type of goblin advice chieftains because they are the smartest.”

“That makes sense!” She nods.

“So, can I advise you, Chieftain Axi?”

“Sure!”

And so I’m back in control. Easy.

“I believe we should consolidate our gains first. You gained a few new abilities, and you should train a bit to learn more. I also have a few things to prepare. Let’s go to the spiders' breeding chambers.”

“Ok!”

"It should be this way.” I point to the correct tunnel.

“Smag, can you tell me about the system?” Axi asks me after walking a bit.

“What do you want to know?”

“I don’t understand some of it.” Knowing what you don’t know is a serious and extremely important ability, so I guide her so we can both understand what she needs to know. I re-unlock the Teaching skill and then drop it.

Basically, she wants to learn numbers. The system is super supportive and practically has an inbuilt reading function. You just need to ask the system about the text, and it will send you knowledge. Concepts like Strength are easy to understand. Even the concept of Experience Points is straightforward in practice. Numbers are not. The system may tell you ‘it’s five’, but you don’t get what’s five.

I spend some time explaining numbers while Axi kills a few more small spiders.

“I need to create a special dagger. Axi, could you craft me a dagger?”

She agrees, and I pick a nice bone and try to inscribe runes. I teach her numbers in the meantime, while she creates a proper dagger. I know I’m going to fail with inscriptions on the first try. I do so quickly, in fact, mostly because the bone is too hard. I find the hardest bone in the pile and try again, using it as a chisel.

Meanwhile, Axi finishes two daggers by splitting bigger bones. She asks me how she should train. I ask her about her new skills.

“Your traits would most likely level up on their own as long as you use them. You should concentrate on the Earth Mana Control skill, but train Move Mana and Mana Perception, too. There is a skill that can make you stronger if you are good enough with Move Mana.” Her eyes sparkle at that. I tell her to start with the basics and train Move Mana and Mana Perception. I give her advice, as this is something I’m good at. She has lower rarity skills, but that probably just means she is way less skilled than me. For now. With proper training and time, she should be able to use Mana Infusion.

I also want us both to learn Mana Shield. Observing Axi I learn that magic is very dangerous for the unprepared, so we both need at least a rudimentary defense against it.

I continue to scratch runes while Axi moves to her earth mana skills. She moves mana from her core, which is way easier than moving ambient mana. She tells me her earth mana is very easy to control. I ask her to try to control natural earth mana, and she says it's harder but possible. She can’t control all stones, though, only some. I think there may be separate stone mana, which is similar enough to earth mana that my Mana Sense is not recognizing it. Generally, Axi is able to influence loose soils and some brittle stones.

I ask her to try to create a new tunnel, and she does so. I smile. She is our ticket to the surface. I stop her. There are still easy targets in the tunnels. I want to raise my level as much as possible, and here, in the broken underground system, there’s a small chance we will find a powerful predator. Only spiders should remain.

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I advise Axi, and she figures out more abilities. She can push the earth mana into things, but it only strengthens the earth and weakens everything else. No petrification or anything. She unlocks Earth Mana Infusion, a skill she can use on herself, but it increases her durability. She tries it on me, but it only hurts. Earth mana fights with my vitality mana. I wonder how regular Infusion is going to play with the earth mana variant.

Her affinity is more like soil than earth. For example, I ask her to make dust by pushing the earth into the air, and she does so but can’t control it anymore. After the dust falls, she can control the soil again. There are going to be limited options for offense. I advise her to push soil into the enemy's eyes and nostrils to distract. It’s complicated, so she would need to train more to do so in a fight.

Her affinity seems very situational. I bet it wouldn't work with mud, so she needs to watch out for water. In the tunnels, there is some soil on the ground. The ceiling is not made of uniform stone. I don't think we are deep enough for that.

We test her Superior Earth Armor. It’s armor from the dense soil. It is covering her nearly entirely, only leaving some space in her joints. She can control it a bit, so I advise her on how to remove this weakness. We try simple mechanisms, but ultimately she creates two layers on top of each other that cover the joints completely. As she moves, layers move relative to each other. The soil in armor is very condensed, behaving nearly like a weak stone. It can be pierced, though. It should work best against blunt strikes.

I test it against Mana Orb. Isolating mana sticks in the armor, weakening the struck part. I knew earth-mana-filled armor would defend against Mana Orb, but this confirms it. Axi tries to fight the isolating mana with the earth mana, but it becomes obvious it’s an uphill battle. Not super hard, but not effective either. The easiest way seems to be to abandon the struck part and reform the armor. Axi trains for a while to do so manually.

Axi also asks for advice on the rest of her skills, but I know she is better at fighting than me. I give her some advice but remind her every time it’s just a suggestion and that she should check first if this works out for her.

After the whole day, I finally complete one dagger. Axi actually crafted two more for me in the meantime.

You have unlocked Rune Scribbling (Uncommon) skill!

I’m going to keep it, but come on! My runes are not so bad! During the day, a few spiders entered the room, and I managed to convince Axi to keep them alive. We cut all their legs and threw them in the corner. It’s time now to check my new skill.

I carve a rune on my arm. It hurts, but I should be fine, even if this fails. I then carve a second rune on the spider while it hisses in pain.

That’s it. Now, I only need to kill. I plunge the dagger into the spider and observe. Nothing happens. It doesn’t work. Wait! The spider is still alive. I stab it a few more times. Now, I can see how vitality is sucked from the spider into the dagger, and then it flows into me. My wounds close fast. It takes a moment, and it’s over. I check my HP, and it’s not full.

My Rune! Obviously, the rune I carved on my skin healed. I need a better way. I create the rune from ambient mana to insert it into my vitality. This rune is way simpler than the mark from the Tactics perk, but without the perk’s help, it takes me a dozen minutes to create something that works.

I kill another spider, and this time, way more vitality flows into me. Not only am I'm fully healed, but my vitality is even overflowing. I check my status and that gave me a temporal boost to Vitality and Endurance stats.

I do the same to Axi, this time it takes a bit longer. Axi is also completely healed by that, though there's no buff for her. Axi now has a HP pool many times bigger than mine, so that’s understandable. I would probably need to kill 2nd tier creature.

I tell Axi to block the entrance with her magic. We need to go to sleep. We ate spiders and find a place with some water dipping down, though we mostly got fluids from drinking spiders' blood. I lay down to sleep, but I notice Axi is somewhat squirming in place. I ignore her, but soon I feel her hand on my cock. Is she horny? This must be a kind of new experience for her. I mean, with her new high intelligence. I decide to tease her a bit.

“What do you want?”

“I want to make children.” She replies, surprising me. Oh, well. I suppose in two weeks we will be either dead or on the surface. It's time to revive my tribe. We start kissing and soon make out on the floor. Different from the last time, she tells me how she wants to do it. It irks me somewhat, but I recognize it as a goblin’s instinct.

I still believe myself to be the top goblin, so I want to rule her. I refuse to be ruled by instincts, though. I agree with her suggestions. Instincts are shoved to the back of my mind. I’m not passive; we communicate and generally have nice sex in which neither of us dominates the other. I can tell Axi is also frustrated. I tell her what to do sometimes; after all, she thinks herself the chieftain.

The next day, I advise hunting. We start by sweeping the remaining tunnels. Axi can get us out, but it would be faster to find an exit. There’s none, though. We kill the remaining few spiders in our tunnels. I convince Axi to feed me kills. Axi is much stronger than me, but that is because she skipped one evolution. We can compare each other when I reach the second tier and then her level.

You have killed 6 1st tier monsters. You have earned 340 Experience Points.

Your Mana Infusion skill has advanced to level 4!

We find a collapsed passage with spiders on the other side. I guide Axi to create some fortifications for us to fall back on. We can be prepared, so we should. After that, we remove the rubble. Before we complete the work, spiders notice us and attack. Axi cripples most of the 1st tier spiders and leaves them to me. The cleared passage is not too big, so there’s a limit to how many spiders can cross it, allowing us to kill them safely.

At some point, a bigger spider appears, but Axi just activates her armor. Venom does nothing to armor, and she kills the monster without trouble.

You have killed 46 1st tier monsters. You have earned 2300 Experience Points.

You have advanced to level 4!

You have advanced to level 5!

Your Rune Scribbling skill has advanced to level 4!

Your Soul Perception skill has advanced to level 3!

Your Transfer Vitality skill has advanced to level 5!

Your Mana Infusion skill has advanced to level 6!

After that, we move forward and explore a new set of tunnels. We find more spiders, which we kill similarly. After the entire day, it becomes obvious that this part is also locked.

You have killed 21 1st tier monsters. You have earned 1050 Experience Points.

Your Rune Scribbling skill has advanced to level 5!

Your Soul Perception skill has advanced to level 4!

Your Transfer Vitality skill has advanced to level 7!

Your Mana Infusion skill has advanced to level 7!

I counted experience, and I believe it took around 200 more EXP to reach level 5, than level 4. My guess is that you need 200 Experience Points for the first level, and then 200 more for each subsequent level. For level six, I should then need 1200 Experience Points, and a total of 8000 to cap my level, not counting Experience for skills.

The next thing on my agenda is soul research. As I kill spiders to heal us, I observe the soul of the sacrificed spider. As vitality wanes, it stops flowing to important organs. The soul snaps and disconnects from vitality. I observe as the soul leaves the spider’s body and drifts in the air. I observe it for some time, but I’m forced to stop as it drifts into a stone wall.

When killing the next spider, I try to observe changes happening to a dying soul. There’s not much, but my skill is getting better as well. I try to capture the soul, but normal mana does nothing. Isolating mana does something, but it slips on the soul. I experiment more and take inspiration from my new Mana Orb perk. I create a structure of isolating and connecting mana around a soul.

You have learned Move Soul (Very Rare) skill!

Great! I move the soul some more, keeping it in my sensory range. In the end, I have to sleep, and the mana structure crumbles without my attention.

The next day, we look for another tunnel. We find it and do the same as yesterday.

You have killed 36 1st tier monsters. You have earned 1800 Experience Points.

You have advanced to level 6!

Your Rune Scribbling skill has advanced to level 6!

Your Soul Perception skill has advanced to level 6!

Your Transfer Vitality skill has advanced to level 8!

Your Move Soul skill has advanced to level 2!

Your Iron Stomach trait has advanced to level 15!

Your Tactics skill has advanced to level 33!

Your Mana Infusion skill has advanced to level 8!

This tunnel is blocked as well. We go back, and I ask Axi to train me a bit in melee fighting while I give her advice on magic. Meat from corpses is starting to go bad, but we should be able to push our stomachs for a few more days.

The next day, we search for another tunnel. We excavate one cave but only find the already-explored part. We find spiders on the next try.

You have killed 25 1st tier monsters. You have earned 1250 Experience Points.

Your Fortification Construction skill has advanced to level 10!

Your Soul Perception skill has advanced to level 7!

Your Transfer Vitality skill has advanced to level 9!

Your Spear Fighting skill has advanced to level 16!

There are no levels for Move Soul. I believe it’s because I cheated. I used mana to do so, rather than a proper tool. I could experiment with my own soul, but I don’t want it to leave my body. I just learned it means death.