I wanted to dash out there immediately, with all of the deaths from the rabbit’s overpowered defense, I was sure there was a massive haul to gain. Even if all of the goblins that were killed by the rabbits were just from the fodder class it was still a resource that I hadn’t had to risk my own tender skin to gain, and that green energy was the only actual defense I had found from the evil exp that seemed to want to try and take over my body.

When I saw the funnel touch down, I looked into the distance and saw that I couldn’t see any more of the waving spears. Asking the bear if it was okay that I went out to gather some resources it growled a question to the rabbits and one of the purple eyed ones turned to look at me. Not bothering to reply he just hummed lightly and when I turned to look a path had appeared among the thorns.

Dashing out, I headed for the body of the fallen evolved goblin, I was sure that would be the richest source and I wanted to claim it before the funnel gathered it all up. Reaching him, I saw that there was already a thread that had attached itself to the green pool over his heart. Slapping both of my hands onto the insubstantial resources, I used my larger channels to begin sucking it dry before looking around to plan where I was heading next.

I noticed that all of the dead goblins that had fought the champion looked to have pools that were two or three times as big as the smaller ones over the goblins that had died in the rabbit’s strike. Sure here or there in the mass casualties, there was the anomaly that was as big as this, but for the most part, they were centered here. That couldn’t be a coincidence! These goblins had to know they were close to being able to evolve which was why they were so easy for that last little power up to push them over the top.

That was insane, if they were so close then the smart thing to do would have been to wait eventually, they would gain the exp they needed to evolve so why not just do it that way? I pondered to myself. With this pool almost drained to the last, I moved over to where two had died right next to each other. The smaller threads coming from the funnel had probably only managed to take ten percent from both of them. Trying to take a page from the sky gods, I put a hand into each of the pools and started trying to collect from both at the same time.

In the beginning, I was only able to focus on one or the other, but as I fell back into my trusty breathing pattern, I found that I still could only take from one of the pools at a time. Apparently that life hack wasn’t good for everything. Focusing on the energy that was coming in through my channels and being drawn into my core, I put my thoughts to increasing the flow. When it got to my core I tried to swing it around the entrance and keep it moving in the outer channels.

At first, it didn’t seem to work, the only thing I noticed was I was gaining less of a soothing feeling in my muscles. I’m guessing that speeding up the movement was letting a smaller amount of it fall off and it was interacting even less with my body. You know I really hope this was improving me, it felt like it was, but that would really be an extra kick in the nuts if I found out later all I was doing was giving myself alien cancer. I found myself thinking.

Eventually, I was able to get it to loop past the core and continue rotating around my body, faster and faster. Finally making progress, I noticed that the pool I hadn’t been able to draw from was beginning to get drawn in by the vortex that was forming in my channels. As the two pools began to run dry, I took a deep breath and focused on continuing to spin the energy as I moved on to my next spot, two pools that were half empty. Shoving my hands into them I gasped for breath as I had kept all of my focus on keeping the spinning going.

Immediately both of them started draining down even faster as I began to claim my share. But quickly I found that between my increased pace and the smaller fodder pools being drained, the sky gods were able to increase their gathering speed as well. Looking around, I saw one more pool that had a little bit left, and after shoving my arm into it I was able to snatch the last little bit. As the funnel began drawing back up into the sky, I released my focus and let the energy continue with its natural inclination and get drawn up into my core.

Thinking to myself, I really needed to figure out a way to measure my strength, it was probably a good idea to confirm that the energy was actually improving me, not just causing me to randomly mutate. Well, I will at that to the ever growing list of things I’m trying to remember, god I really need to invent paper! Of course, then I would just be hauling around pounds of paper, which will no doubt swiftly become wet and ruined with my no longer having any kind of shelter thanks to our monstrous overlord of the skies.

Giving up on that train of thought before I began to get depressed, I really did need to start having some kind of list that I could use to keep track of the important things I could learn. I would hate to make a mistake later on just because I had misremembered what had happened in one of my eureka moments. As I let the hamster go for a second I pondered how I might go about it. Perhaps if I took some of the pig skin and burned some letters into it. Hopefully, that wouldn’t look bad when I eventually found civilization. I would hate to be thrown in jail or summarily executed because they thought I was a warlock and had a skin bound grimoire written in some strange evil language because they can’t read English… You know what on second thought, maybe I will avoid the note taking for now.

“God damn it,” I said out loud under my breath before thinking to myself. I left my spear over with the bear in my anxiousness to get out here. I’m guessing that the rabbits are being kind enough to keep it open for me, but they will most likely close their barrier back up once I get back, so if I want to gather any of the cores, I need to do it now before I go back. Pulling my knife I walked back over to the evolved monster, and working my way up using the holes in the abdomen that had been eaten out of him, I was quickly able to find the glowing core with minimal gore splattered on me.

Again I found another green core, it seemed like they were the most prevalent of the colors and I wondered if that was because I had only been collecting them from goblins or if there was some other reason. So far I had found five main colors with the outlier being the yellow energy that I had been forced to drain from the troll’s core, but even that had an original hue of green. I knew the main thing that my brain wanted to jump to was the obvious answer for me and I kept having to consider if the fact that I didn’t want to say it out loud was merely because it was the obvious answer. Obvious answers always felt like a trap to me. Nothing in my life has ever come easy, always it has been multiple failures that have led to my successes.

On the other hand, if I ignored the obvious answer while continuing to hunt for something more convoluted, how much farther behind would I find myself? Most cultivation novels agree that cultivating is for the young and that if you aren’t able to quickly move through the stages you will find that you stagnate before too long. At forty-five years of objective age, I am certain I am already past the golden years as they are termed and I would hate to find out that I had wasted even more of my time because I was too pigheaded to accept the obvious answers.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Leaving my arms dripping in monster blood now, I wanted to get two other cores to compare and contrast things with before I got myself cleaned up. Going to one of the other failed attackers that were nearby, I dug into one of the ambusher’s bodies and this time pulled out a red core. While I was wishing for another gold or brown, I wasn’t going to dig through a multitude of bodies looking for them. I was more planning on looking at the shapes and comparing them with the evolved monster’s core. I needed to compare and contrast them to see if the evolution did anything to the core and while three cores weren’t going to be anything conclusive, I also wasn’t going to spend hours taking up the rabbit’s time while they held the door for me.

Going over to the smallest goblin that I could find that had died from the tremor that the rabbits had produced, I pulled out yet another green core. Wiping all of the cores, my knife, and my arms off on the surrounding grass, I cleaned up as best as I could before adding the cores to the three I still had and returning my blade to its sheath. Rolling down my sleeves, I headed back to join my companion. I was unsurprised when as soon as I had passed through the barrier, it was quickly reformed by several of the rabbits working in unison. Reclaiming my spear, I found myself wondering why the initial barrier had only been grown by two of the magic users, I guessed that it was either a test for them or they had been preserving their strength, and now that the attackers had departed were feeling a little more generous.

As Gaian and I followed a guide back to our designated area I found myself looking up to the sky. It looked like we had a good two or three hours before nightfall and there was still a lot of work to be done before we could get some sleep. As soon as the rabbit led us onto the soft turf where the few supplies we had been left behind, I was happy to see that the two pigs we had killed were lying there waiting for us.

Going through my mental list, I decided to empty my pockets and pull off my belt first. Dropping the cores off next to the bucket I left them in a pile that hopefully wouldn’t be taken in the night. While I left my belt and weapons next to the shield. Judging by the fact that the rabbits had left the multitude of dead alone, they were happier with the flowers and didn’t need the gemstones I had dug out of such disgusting creatures. Thinking back to earth at how poorly people were exploited to gain control of diamonds and other minerals. I had no doubt that had a monster population had made it back home, they would soon enough find themselves in cages, bred and harvested for the shiny rocks…

Wondering if I would put myself on that level, I pulled out the ammunition I had still been carrying around that I hadn’t found a use for yet. Dropping the rocks, next to the bucket, I figured I would at least use them to make dinner for tonight… Looking up to the sky, I put a pin in that, rock soup took way too long to make, so I guess that was a tomorrow project. Fortunately, it was looking like I finally had enough work to do that I wasn’t going to have to make another trip to the goblin woods to gather supplies, so hopefully, I could start making some progress on travel supplies and stop waiting so much time walking between here and there.

So far all of my time had been spent wandering between my camp, the goblin’s area, and the rabbits. Finding myself constantly going in circles I realized that my actions had been mirroring my thoughts. I need to stop being so indecisive! Come up with a plan, stick to it, and stop getting so distracted by shiny little puzzles. Who is in charge, you or the hamster in your head?

Deciding on my tasks for the rest of the night I was determined to stick to them for once and not get distracted no matter what! “Build a fire, make some rope, hang the hogs, and clean my clothes.” Saying it out loud, I repeated it multiple times to really get it stuck into my head. Stripping out of my clothes and boots, I dumped the clothes into the wash log to soak for a bit. Examining my feet I was happy to see that they still were blister free, although all the exertion did have them a little wrinkled. Hating the fact that I had lost every other pair of socks, I started to think of how I was going to replace them. I had no desire to find myself wandering the woods barefoot, that was not a trope I wanted to find myself following.

“No, no, no! Bad jack!” I exclaimed. “I literally just got done telling myself that I wasn’t going to get distracted and here you are planning out something else…” Trailing off I rapped myself on the head a couple of times and walked to the edge of the glade to gather some branches for the night fire. After gathering up several almost log sized branches and dragging them over to near the salt, I luxuriated in the feeling of the turf on my bare toes. Feeling brave, I decided to brave the woods barefoot just to try out the trope to see if it was feasible for me, but after stepping on several sticks and other assorted pointy objects hidden under a carpet of leaves, I found myself quickly heading back to put on my boots.

Finally having gathered enough wood in the minefield that was the forest, I removed my boots to resume airing my feet out. Moving on to my next task, I had to make a decision. The easiest way to butcher the hogs was going to be to hang them from a frame or the branches of a stout tree. Unfortunately, all of my cordage had gone up in smoke when the dragon took offense to my leaving man-made objects where he could see them. Knowing the bare bones of the theory I had never had the opportunity to roll my own ropes before, so I was sure this was going to go swimmingly.

Sitting down next to the pile the rabbits had gathered for me, I was pleased to see that all of it was several feet in length. While I would have been happier with the full length grasses from the plains this was bladed and I’m not sure if the stalk like, seed laden grass, would work as well for rope making. Taking three of the blades in each hand, I ripped the tips off to give me varying lengths for the start. Pinching the end together I worked on twisting them first one way for several twists before pinching it and twisting it back the other way.

As I continued on I quickly found it unraveling and breaking apart. Taking a breath, I worked on trying to make several different starts of it, varying them in small ways while I tried to remember the relevant articles I had once read when I was bored. I knew the method shouldn’t be that hard, humans had been doing this crap for thousands of years, and I should be able to figure this out. After several more false starts, I eventually thought to myself, Screw this, I’m just going to braid it! While it might be slower, I have braided my daughter’s hair enough I can make it work, Braid three ropes first, and then braid those together and I should have something strong enough to hold the hogs.

Grabbing a new set of three blades, I again made sure to vary the length and quickly pushed a small twig through the ends of all three to join them together, I quickly started going through the over under motion braiding them together, adding a new blade of grass to the end of one when it was down to a couple of inches left. After several minutes, I had a good four feet of braid. Taking the small branch out, I tucked the ends back down into the braid to keep it from unraveling. Making another eleven of the ropes the same length only took me about another twenty minutes as I got faster with the task. I know that actual rope making wasn’t supposed to take that long. Wishing I could remember the trick of it I was sure that I would eventually get it, but for now, this longer way would just have to do.

Taking three of the smaller versions, I quickly was able to braid them to form a slightly shorter rope. Repeating the process three more times, I soon found myself holding four pieces of braid about three feet long. Hoping it was enough and I wouldn’t have to repeat the process tonight, I picked up my knife and headed over to the hogs.