Vision slipping away, the now elected chieftain sat inside the cave staring at the corpse of the thunder-bird as his yawns became more frequent. In contrast to the intenseness and brutality of the fight, the corpse was actually well kept as the only actual injuries it had were small wounds where the scabs once were and the now caved in eyeholes.
Humans had started a classing system for monsters, on it simple goblins were in the first tier whereas thunder-birds were all the way up in the third tier. This might not seem like much at all but it wasn’t actually based on just fighting strength. Instead it was based on what that animal preyed and what it could prey on, which although did rely on fighting strength had also other variables to consider. This in turn meant that thunder-birds didn’t even prey on 1st tiers like goblins due to have weak and scrawny they were. Their prey were usually 2nd tier and rarely 3rd, this was as they were only at the middle stage of 3rd tier so would need to fight a life/death battle just to kill another 3rd tier. This showed in the fight as the goblin couldn’t even cause any serious injuries to the thunder-bird as his attacks barely scratched its body. The only way he had won was due to it being a mentally disabled bird, alongside the fact that it had already been weakened by the other baby thunderbirds. Otherwise his spine would have been snapped from a bite before he got anywhere close the eyes.
Despite his exhaustion, he had stayed awake by staring at the corpse. It brought up feelings of pride and confidence in him, something he had never experienced before as it made his body feel lighter and stronger. It felt like the control over his body had exponentially increased as the scrawny arm of yesterday felt like an object of power in his eyes now. Nevertheless the losing battle against sleep came to an end as he collapsed onto the now- shattered rod.
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He had volunteered as guard while the other goblins slept alongside the chieftain. He had been the other goblin the now-chieftain had been with when they had visited the blood-valley for the first time in desperation for food. They had been the same then, two weak goblins and yet in the space of a day the chieftain had distinguished himself from the others through bravery to fight such a monster while he had ran away alongside the rest of the goblins despite having a rod. The guard didn’t understand the feeling in his heart but it felt bad, his attention kept wavering as he constantly though back on the moment when he had chosen to run instead of face the monster. If the other goblin could do it, how could he not have done the same? And yet he had ran away from his path to glory while his counterpart had rushed up it.
The more he thought about his choice, the worse he felt about it and yet he couldn’t just ignore it. His lamenting came to an abrupt close as he heard a loud monstrous roar, from inside the cave…
It was as if God had been reading the guard’s mind as a similar situation was repeated, he was once again given the choice. His feet staggered, his hand clenched the rod with fear, but he still walked towards the cave.
“Wragggh!”
What came next was a groan of pain: more specifically a goblin’s groan of pain. It seemed to consolidate the guard’s will as he broke off into run into the cave. The monster he saw was something he had never expected: nothing. There was no massive monster roaring like he expected, instead all he saw was the other 7 goblins groaning in pain, as if in a chorus, while the chieftain roared in pain. It was also the first time he experienced it, that is to say the “pressure”.
Several blood vessels expanded and exploded around the guard’s body as he felt something pull at his heart. Nevertheless the fear and trepidation he should have felt turned into something else as he ran towards the chieftain, unwilling to cry in pain as he gritted teeth. But the steps that started fast slowed down even faster as he felt the “pressure” increase the closer he got near the sleeping goblins. Inside the cave were the roars and the echoes of cries of pain, and yet none of this entered the guard’s ears as his collapsed onto the floor, unable to control his body as it twitched rapidly in pain. He joined the chorus of cries with the chieftain as the choir leader, roaring as others cried. Only the gods knew how long this continued on for as all the goblins felt their minds overwhelmed.
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The chieftain opened his heavy eyes in fear as all his body could feel was pain, a pain he hadn’t gone to sleep with. An overwhelming desire crashed into the pain in his mind, and it seemed to consume it as all the pain he felt was suddenly replaced by an intense desire of food. Thunder rumbled out of his stomach as his body instinctively leaped at the body of the thunder-bird before he could even think, though his leap must have been too powerful as he smashed into the wall of the cave instead. Nevertheless the wall did little to deter him as he instead ran this time, only to find himself head-butting the floor. The balance over his two feet seemed completely wrong as he couldn’t even walk, and thus instead crawled towards the delicious food.
Previously in the fight even his splintered rod could do little to damage the thunder-birds skin, and yet now it just seemed barely tough as his claws ripped through the skin after 2 tries at tearing it apart. They say hunger is the best spice, perhaps too good a spice as the chieftain felt a pleasure so strong he groaned in happiness the second he ate the bloody flesh. Nothing else mattered as he went into a parallel to a drug-induced rampage; swimming through the flesh with his teeth before swallowing all the blood and meat without even chewing. The minutes felt like seconds as the chieftain quickly found his lust for flesh sated. What he seemed to ignore was the fact that he had eaten several kilograms of meat during that loss of control, enough meat to last his goblin-self around a week previously.
Though he could ignore the mental changes, it was impossible to ignore the physical changes. The previously 70cm goblin was now 1.5m, dwarfing the baby thunder-bird body that had towered him previously. His stick like legs had become tree trunks, wide and muscular while his skin seemed closer to a reptiles than ever before as it essentially became tanned leather, though green. His arms had been elongated as they were no longer stubs on his torso, and instead were so long that he could reach his knees while standing tall. Only the torso in question didn’t fit the body as the well-defined upper torso followed onto a bulging out stomach, filled with his recent superfluous meal.
With his own body and its needs checked for, he decided to finally look at the bloodbath that had a few hours ago been just a few goblins sleeping. All of them had veins protruding out, though some had deflated of blood after bursting. He was sure they were dead, after all he had woken up in a literal bath of blood, though he had been too hungry to care. He even saw the one that had lied closest to him had actually had more than just his veins explode, his corpse looked like it belonged on a trampled over war field rather than in a cave. It looked like the ones closest to him looked the deadest, thus he decided to check the ones on the edges in case any of them had luckily survived.
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It wasn’t all gloom as it turned out 4 goblins had survived the ordeal, including the goblin who had been guarding. Perhaps survived was an overestimation as most of them were barely identifiable as alive. Confusion was painted all over the chieftain’s face as he thought of ways to heal them. The confusion wasn’t from lack of ideas but rather from an extremely prominent one that he couldn’t understand: to feed the goblins with the bird meat. It was as if his body had reacted with something while he had eaten it, since his mind now valued the bird meat well above the blood-berries.
Thus he ripped some of flesh the off and fed it to each of the goblins that had “survived” and it seemed to work as it alleviated their conditions. Mostly anyway, as one of them passed away even despite the meat, perhaps he should have felt sad or powerless but the chieftain felt nothing as he saw the goblin slowly pass away. It was just simply another process of life to him but perhaps the bigger point was that goblins didn’t have the same amount of sympathy a human had.
Though no longer in danger of death, he doubted any of the injured goblins could move for a while. Thus after putting the recovering goblins to the side, through which he noticed how light and short these scrawny goblins were, he piled the dead goblins alongside the dead bird as food. Goblins didn’t do this due to religion or superstition, they did it because their bodies functioned as food so it would be a waste to not eat the corpses.
Since the messy business was done, he decided to walk outside the cave only to notice a full moon was out. He looked over the day’s event to discover it must have been either the blood-berries he had eaten or the fight with the bird that had caused his body to change. After all he couldn’t eat any of the bird’s flesh after the fight and rest of the things he had done that day was nothing of importance.
Confusion seemed to be the only answer he received as he couldn’t discover the origin of his change, furthermore the confusion only grew when he thought at why the other goblins had been injured. It was clearly his change that had caused them harm, after all the closer ones had worse injuries but no matter how much he thought, he couldn’t figure out the reason for either of the day’s mysteries. A piece, it’s what he felt he lacked, a piece that could connect all the mysteries together.
Eventually giving up, he decided to walk further into the valley.
Most the birds were sleeping, this wasn’t because they couldn’t hunt at night or such as they had great nocturnal vision, but rather because during the night they would no longer be the predators. Thus they preferred to conserve their life at night, when the forest became the playground of proper monsters. He walked all the way to the cluster of caves in around 25 minutes, this was how far he had come last time with the other goblin and it was here where they had watched the human fight several adult thunder-birds. Deciding the risk wasn’t worth it, he walked backwards to the cave, but not the one he stayed in. In fact the bird they had killed wasn’t the only weak one, just that it was the weakest of the bunch, thus the furthest away from the others. On the way he had seen a few a caves which piqued his interest. After all, he knew his changes had made him powerful now, but how powerful?
His feet whispered as he began to tip-toe his way into the cave. It was wider than the cave he currently stayed in but not by much. Echoes rang from inside which made the soft snores sound more like a song, not a very beautiful one mind that. His eyes adapted to the darkness as he saw a fluff ball curled up in the corner, though this one also had a few feathers near its head, showing it was close to maturity. It was clear that he had underestimated his own abilities as he suddenly found himself next to the fluff ball’s head without getting mauled, though it wasn’t a flawless journey as it turned out the bird wasn’t a very still sleeper. Standing near the helm of the ship, the big birdy fleshy ship, he felt the urge to kill it. Although not a strong urge, the goblin embraced it as he reached out to the “pressure” in his body. He had first noticed after killing the first baby thunderbird that his body felt lighter but stronger despite looking the same.
He had no answers then but now he had a vague guess.
This “pressure” wasn’t the same as the other pressure, where your body felt stifled and locked up due to the anxiety and stress. Rather this one was much better as his body fully embraced it. The only reason why he called it a “pressure” was because the more he focused it on a body part, the more fatigue that body part would feel afterwards. His arms, more specifically his claws and muscles, seemed to grow as he focused the “pressure” into them. Sweat dripped down as his concentration grew, alongside the size of his arms. In fact it felt like the air itself seemed to part as his claws sliced through it, almost like water as he could now feel the fluidity of air.
“CRAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!”
Nothing like thunder yet, but the echoes amplified the noise making the goblin stumble backwards. His mind seemed in disarray as his ears still rang but the bird seemed not to care as it pecked forwards. The goblin knew the danger of his arms when “pressurised”, and so instead of blocking his ringing ears, he had actually put them in front of him in an x shape. After all, one doesn’t simply scratch their nose when holding a chainsaw.
The peck aimed at the claws did damage, big damage but not at a low cost. It had met one claw and went through it like a hot knife through butter, leaving a bleeding stump but the other claw had actually stabbed towards the beak during the time and somehow penetrated it to stab the bird’s tongue. Imminent death disappeared from the goblins view as the bird slightly retreated and screamed in pain.
Ignoring the sliced through arm, he instantly jumped at the bird stabbing towards the bird’s head once more. He had focused all the “pressure” into the remaining arm instantly, though it would turn out to be a double edged sword.
Due to the pressure in the arm, it easily smashed through the brain’s skull, ramming into its brain just before the arm itself exploded in the bird’s head due to the overwhelming “pressure” inside of it. It was further unlucky that the bird had a post-mortem spasm, a violent one as it smashed its whole body into the goblin just as it died. While both were similar heights, the bird weighed about double and had quite a bit of momentum due to the small charge, resulting in the goblin being driven into the wall. The strain on the wall was clear as cracked lines now decorated it.
It was said that sometimes people breakthrough in times of pressure, due to how hard they strain in order to succeed. It was certainly true in this situation as the pain he felt completely blanked his brain of any thought or action but his body instinctively sent “pressure” over, cooling it down and maximizing performance. It was a few seconds later his head was cool enough to think, and suddenly realised the severity of his situation. Turns out that the bird didn’t just have one post-mortem spasm but many as it kept bashing against the walls, spreading the cracks even further. Increasing the amount of “pressure” over his whole body which in turn lowered the pain, he contracted his legs before leaping out of the cave, leaving behind his embedded image on the cave wall and a dead bird. The run, which should have been about 7 minutes, somehow felt like eternity as he kept forcing “pressure” into his legs in order to keep them moving, in fear that a thunderbird hearing the commotion would come outside its cave just in time to see a very suspicious bug running away.
And yet he didn’t release the “pressure” even when inside his cave as he foreboded the debilitating hunger he would feel afterwards, and thus gorged on some of the dead corpse of the thunder bird. It was then that he finally released his grip over the “pressure”, though the second he did was the second he crumpled onto the ground, collapsing within a second due to the amount of strain he had put on both his mind and body.