Stomping was of course a figure of speech, thrusting my spear, I drove into the still stumbling goblin whose skull had only partially reformed. As the blade burst through his back and the boar stop made contact, I lifted the haft up and continued to drive forward until I pinned it to the ground.
Taking up my ax I swung it as hard as I could into the neck of the pinned monster. Although it was a good strike, it still took two more swings until the little green man was fully decapitated. Pulling my spear up out of its back, I used the blade to lever it over. Then driving the blade into the chest, I gouged open a hole until I started seeing the green glow that indicated I had finally found the core.
Using the tip of the spear to flip the glowing rock out of the chest cavity, I managed to keep my final set of clothes blood free for the moment. When I felt the kill energy start to appear I breathed a small sigh of relief. Even though this new cloud of kill energy was only being divided into two, it felt much smaller than the previous two. If I had to measure it I would say that the total amount before division was equal to the part I had gained from killing the first of the three. I had to wonder if it was diminishing returns from killing them or if this goblin just didn’t have the experience to be worth as much.
Looking over to the bear I saw he was panting and struggling to reach his feet. “Easy boy,” I said. “It’s okay, I managed this one on my own, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but let’s get you healed up before you go back to stomping down goblins.”
As he fell back to his side with a moan, I realized I wasn’t going to have much more time to go hunting for answers on how to use the cores to solve our problem. I mean the simple answer is just to swallow the damn thing, but the first goblin I gave a junk core to didn’t so any signs of changing. Also if swallowing the core was the answer, why did I find the goblins carrying some of the cores around, shouldn’t they just have immediately eaten them?
Picking up the new cockroach core, I held it up to the light. Feeling relieved when I didn’t sense any of the yellow Qi trying to find a way to make the jump inside of me. I tried looking for similarities and differences that I might find to give me any hints at what to do before I made an attempt at using them to gain power.
The original bad boy, which was now finally cleared of its yellow parasite, was much smaller than the new one. Almost a quarter of the size, it was almost a perfect sphere with just a small amount of flattening on the top and bottom. The new one on the other hand was almost as flat as a perfect skipping stone and much larger, almost the size of a half dollar. I actually had no idea how anyone would manage to swallow something this large.
Holding them both up to the light, I saw that they both had darker green energy flowing up from the center before coming back but it was clear that despite the smaller size, the troll’s core had ten times the pathways coming out of the center and they were much more intricate in their swirls and whorls.
Putting the troll core into my pants pocket, I focused on learning about the goblin regeneration for now. While I really wanted the troll one for myself, in the end, I knew I was going to have to leave that for Gaian. If we were going to team up, I knew that he was going to be on the front lines of any fight which meant he needed the better healing. Ideally, I would be behind him sniping anything with thrusts of a spear, or sneaking around to the rear once he had managed to pull aggro, so my chances of getting hurt were going to be much slimmer.
Yeah, the selfish part of my mind said that he had thicker skin so he shouldn’t need to heal as much, so on that logic, the faster healing should go to the one whose wounds would be worse. But I just couldn’t bring myself to take it from him. Yes maybe he would eventually wander off or even turn on me, but I never like living a life where I couldn’t trust the people, or in this case beings around me.
Looking at the slightly thicker half-dollar more closely, one of the first things I noticed was that it wasn’t perfectly round, it had a lot of indents on the edge and also some bulging to one side like it hadn’t been formed properly. There were maybe eight pathways coming out of the center reservoir, all of them were thick lines with minimal looping to them as they made their way to the edges but as I looked closer, two of the lines had much smaller loops coming out of them and running to the edges.
These smaller lines had much more intricate looping and turning and as I looked at the third center line next to the two anomalies, it looked like it was in the process of growing its own smaller feeder lines before it had been cut off abruptly. Whether that was because I had killed it at that point or it had been using the yellow Qi to supercharge its growth, and the evil juice had run out, I doubt I will be able to figure that mystery out for now until I find another portal monster to take out. Because that was the farthest thing away from what I wanted, I was sure the universe would be sending one my way in the next couple of days.
Holding the core in my hands, I tried to get a feel for it, I wanted to send my energy into it and see if I could command it. So I went back to my basic breathing pattern that I stumbled upon in my efforts to fight off the kill energy. I focused on trying to either send some of my energy into the core to activate it or pull the energy out of it to use for myself. As I started to sit down and get into a meditative posture I quickly jumped to my feet and grabbed my spear dropping the goblin core in my haste to arm myself.
Swinging my spear around in a circle I looked for any signs that I was missing something. Despite not seeing anything, I turned around in a circle slowly, ignoring the looks the bear was giving me, wondering if I was crazy and going to attack him next. Another circuit where I didn’t see anything in front of me I wondered why the funnel hadn’t come down from the sky. Looking at the goblins on the ground, I saw that they didn’t have any green energy pooling up out of them for me to harvest.
Sure that I hadn’t felt any vortex come from the sky to take it away, I again felt the urge to swing my spear around to see if I could hit any invisible creatures that might have stolen the energy from the gods in the sky.
Not feeling any contact, I wondered if I had gone crazy, was I imagining that I hadn’t felt the vortex? Or, conversely was I imagining that I had ever seen a green energy above creatures that had died? Apparently, I was wrong in my years when I wished I had been taken to a fantasy world. All of the years I had spent yelling the answers into book at foolish MCs and I am here swinging a spear around looking for invisible creatures.
I know the problem is that I don’t know the rules, where before reading books the rules were all laid out for me, nice and simple. Here I have no idea what the rules are and my paranoid side is having a field day thinking up impossible scenarios to torture me with. No sleep and a brain full of crazy is just a recipe for disaster. Thinking back that these kills had all resulted in an incredibly low amount of kill energy, I had to wonder if that correlated to a lack of green aftermath.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Looking up to the sky and seeing only about three to four hours of daylight left I realized I was going to have to camp here another night. Even if I figured out the core problem right now, packing everything up would take more than an hour. Forget trying to find another camp. Also, I’ve got sixty plus pounds of water and another ten to fifteen of dried fish I’ve got to find some way to transport.
Needing a break to let my mind relax and stop pushing me in multiple directions at once I wanted to get a drink. If there was an invisible creature here, it was obviously to smart to be hit by me, so I needed to ignore it and focus on what I could for now and get something to kill the rumbling in my belly. But my fastidious side wouldn’t let me go for it until I had cleaned up the camp first. Picking up the tongs and the core that I had dropped, I put them in my pockets for now.
Taking up my spear, I again used it to dig the cores out of the other two goblins before dragging them off to the body pile that was starting to get an additional odor to it. Apparently, dead goblins will start to smell worse than live ones, I had thought it would be the case, but hadn’t been able to see how the smell would get worse. Shaking my head, I undid the knots, put the rope back into my pockets, and headed back to camp to get a drink of water.
Checking on Gaian’s bucket, I saw that it was empty, walking it over to the five gallons of reserve water, I poured about a gallon in while managing only to spill a little out on the ground. Replacing the lid, I brought it back to him and scratched his ears before going to get my own and sit down with some dry fish.
Sitting down with the poorly made basket to my right and holding my water, I alternated handfuls of the bland meat with sips of water so I wouldn’t start coughing with how dry it was.
Needing to take some time to clear my mind and stop just going from task to task, I was burning myself down and it was taking a toll on my ability to process and understand what was happening. “Everything has a solution, some stuff has multiple solutions, all you have to do is take the time to think about it. All running yourself ragged is going to do will just make sure you die exhausted,” I told myself.
Of course, the counterpoint was, that if you sit too long trying to figure out a solution to important problems, people can die or bombs can go off if you spend too long working out the solution. Identifying the type of problem you’ve got and deciding how long you can give yourself to work on it should always be a key in your decision process.
Chewing some more on the bland flakes of fish, I wished I had added a little bit of salt, but held with my determination to save it for later. Picking up one of the other two cores I had harvested, I saw that this one seemed to be of the blue variety. I thought this one came from the goblin that had tried to snatch the core from my hand with its tongue. Which meant the red one still on the ground was from the one that started running faster.
Comparing them both they were also flat, but these two both looked rounder and somewhat smaller than one that had the regen ability. Holding them up to the light I saw that they also had a small amount of large lines with minimum twists and turns running through them, with the red one looking more like it was swirling with a purpose as opposed to the blue ones that seemed to be flowing from one side to the other, neither seemed able to stay still like the green one’s had done.
Several of the lines seemed to have smaller finer ones coming off of them which seemed to confirm that is what the yellow Qi had focused on building and improving. Sliding them into my pocket for now as I needed to focus more on the ones I thought would induce healing powers. I started feeling the ache coming from my leg wound, I don’t know if it was trying to carry multiple goblins or just all the walking around I had done today. Either way, it couldn’t have been good for me.
Undoing the bandage, I looked down to see that the wound was starting to look red and inflamed. Cursing I could only hope my constitution was enough to fight it off, I thought about adding the flowers I had collected to the bandage before rewrapping it. But without knowing what the goblins had needed them for I wasn’t anxious to just add anything random to the equation. Tucking the end of the bandage in to secure it I looked at the holes I had glued shut on my arm. These at least seemed to be healing on their own, rewrapping them to be safe, I brought out the two green cores again now that I wasn’t being distracted by my hunger.
Holding them in my hands I ignored the urge to look at them and try and divine their secrets. Sitting still and just focusing on my breathing I tried to clear my mind and repeat what was quickly becoming a mantra for me. Courage and Serenity we all have those virtues inside of us and yet so few of us are able to have the wisdom to accurately choose which one of them to show to the world. I know I have been overrun with courage for the moment.
I continued to breathe slowly and listen to that inner voice in my head, trying to understand what I should be doing. Was going out into the world the wrong answer? Should I have meditated and tried to destroy or use the yellow Qi myself? What was wisdom? Unfortunately, the situation wasn’t far enough in the past for me to easily recognize the answer as hindsight also didn’t have enough information yet to crow forth how brilliant future me was in comparison to present Jack.
Looking down at the two cores I knew I wasn’t going to figure out the answers just by holding them, the goblins had shown me that they needed to be swallowed, but I just really didn’t want to do that. I don’t know if I was against it on principle or because some part of my brain just didn’t want to have any kind of connection with the little green horrors. But either way, I was going to have to get over it and get mine down as this was getting me nowhere, and judging by my leg I would soon be in the same position as Gaian.
Sighing, I got up from my stool and went over to the bear who was lapping up his water. “Alright brother, here’s the situation,” I said as I sat down next to him and leaned against his bulk. “We are both fucked.” I cursed, letting out the word without my normal filters that had been built up after years of being around my kids.
“We are looking at long painful deaths from infections and I don’t have anything in my bag of tricks that will do anything about it.” I continued on. “The only option that I am seeing is the two cores from the monsters that seemed to have conquered death. I have no idea how they work, but all of the little green buggers seemed keen to eat this little bit of magic. So if you want to try it and see if it gets you better, it’s all yours.” Rubbing his ears again, I set down the smaller troll core in front of him and walked back to my stool to ponder the one still in my hand.
Looking at the bigger core I was really hoping that I shouldn’t worry about the fact that it was so much bigger than the more powerful core. When I was in the ball I had basically let the energy run around and build to its heart’s content, thinking I was getting the OP treatment. Now I was getting a nagging thought that I might have made a mistake. Shaking my head, I forced myself to look down at the core I planned on trying to swallow. One impossible problem at a time.
Sitting down in my chair again, I looked over to the bear and saw that he had rolled over to sit up and was staring at his glowing green rock. Watching him focus on it, I got distracted looking at his paws, they seemed to be swiping at the air in front of him. Looking like he was trying to kill an invisible mosquito, my first thought was he had finally sensed whatever got the after death energy from earlier. But looking back at his face I didn’t see any indication that he was upset or angry.
Wondering if the infection had made its way to the brain and was causing him to hallucinate, I kept my seat as I didn’t have a chance of doing anything to help a hallucinating bear. After a while, he stopped swiping at the air, lowered himself down until his chin was on the ground, looked me dead in the eyes, and sticking out his tongue… he lapped up the glowing stone.