- Hahahahaha!
The goblin leader laughed while hitting his subordinate.
At first all five of them had just spawned at a weird jungle-like place, and that was nice as it was.
How did it feel to be a goblin?
Well, not much different from being a hobbo on meth.
The little things’ bodies had an unnaturally fast metabolism, high blood pressure and small brains. They weren’t capable of speech and were a cold-blooded species, so the would become more active the hotter the place they lived on - like the tropical volcanic island they were currently living in.
A human mind being implanted on such a brain would receive a massive dose of energy and feel almost as if it lived on a perpetual roller-coaster, but without the fear.
It was like being an adrenaline addict all the time, for all the wrong reasons.
- SHIIIIIIIIIIAT! Come on suckers!
Or so the goblin leader tried to say, but he just couldn’t. His throat was only capable of producing a single kind of sound: A high-pitched “hiiiiiiiii”.
Of course, the other goblins under his command obeyed nonetheless.
Being a goblin leader meant being almost twice as strong and powerful as a regular goblin. On a tropical volcanic island, by its time, it also meant being the most depraved, aggressive and insane type of goblin - a “Crazed Maniac” one could say.
- Come, come, come! (HIiiii! Hiiii! Hiiii!)
The goblin leader ran and jumped through the forest, sometimes hitting a bug or a tree, just for the fun of it.
The insane, mentally-obtuse rush kept on for almost five hours, but then, as it would happen to all and any kind of body, be it a goblin or not, it stopped.
Instead, the Binge followed suit.
The leader was hungry. His subordinates were starving. Even his body showed signs of starvation.
Five hours for a goblin. That may as well be four days for a human. Without water, without food.
It was almost a miracle that they were still alive - the human mind inside the leaders’ brain just now realizing that his body had hit its’ limit.
Suddenly, one of its’ subordinates feel.
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Its body started to emit a foul odor as its insides started to swell.
Even in death, a goblin would go sour long before a human - after all, its fast-metabolism body would start consuming itself pretty fast, on a last attempt of the cells to survive - even if the brain had long since died.
- Food.
The goblin leader had no doubts.
Had it been a human on its regular body, and it would probably be extremely disgusted by the idea of eating a goblin of all things.
Not that it considered that as cannibalism - it was very well aware that it inhabited Another World, a game world made by squeam. So, it wasn’t that much of a problem to eat another one of its own race.
Instead, it was just gross to eat a goblin. Their thick skins were like green, putrid-smelling hide. Their flesh was unnaturally red, and the fat had a weird yellow color, almost to the point of being brown.
Their blood was green-ish, showing that those mutated freaks weren’t completely reptile, but rather a mutated child of some kind of reptile-insectoid with mammal birthing.
And its insides?
They smelt awful. It was like falling face-first to a dead dogs’ 3-day-old carcass on the street.
None of that mattered.
Even with the heightened sense of smell goblin, it still had a very impaired sense of taste - as well as a heavily impaired sense of vision.
Goblins were cave dwellers which usually came out only to hunt and bathe on the sun. They would eat anything - from worms to angel meat. Not that they could digest it - some kinds of food were too much for such a lowly lifeform to feast on.
But they would try, nonetheless.
So, their hearing and smelling would be heightened, but vision and taste would be heavily impaired.
If a goblin could see 30m ahead, that would already be a big thing.
- GET OUT! (HIIII!).
The goblin leader shoved one of his underlings away and began furiously chewing on the old underlings' dead corpse.
The other goblins, however, couldn’t just stand to the side. Their state was far worse than the leader. Their hunger was ten times more.
Their despair was enough for them to do something a weaker goblin wouldn’t dare to do in front of a leader.
Long before the leader could perceive anything, entertained as it was with its meal, a big rock hit his head, while a pointy stick crawled its path inside his swollen belly.
- HIIIIIIIII!
One of the things which minds could feel on Another World was the inevitable - pain.
The game devs did their best to avoid transmitting too much pain to the human minds inside the artificial bodies, but their research field was a very frontier-like one.
Also, goblins had virtually no pain-nerves on their bodies, so they didn't tone it down so much from the x10 scale of intensity.
The amount of pain the goblin leader felt from being pierced was no less than the one of being stabbed on the gut.
As the leader fell, its former minions began feasting on both the ex-leader and the companions’ corpses.
One interesting thing however, was how two of them were enveloped by a faint, almost indiscernible, yellow shower of little lights.
Those were none other than the devs’ A.I. exp mana points.
It was impossible to grow in this world by simply killing others. The common exp system didn’t apply for flesh and bone artificial bodies.
But an information-energy-complex, -or “fairy dust” as the devs called it - did.
So, through the influence of the devs’ exp-energy system, the goblins absorbed a certain amount of “fairy dust” from the environment around them.
As their bodies swell a bit, two goblins spawned right next to them.The process was, at the same time, wondrous and common - a huge amount of “fairy dust” gathered in humanoid forms and condensed to form their bodies.
Both were regular goblins, and both were furious. The ex-leader jumped straight into action, hitting and biting its older subordinates.
But in a four (soon five, as the newcomer realized what happened) - versus - one match, there was no way for a simple goblin to win.