Goblins are an interesting “monster” as many define them though within modern academic circles that designation has been greatly disputed on the efficacy if its true or not. Much of goblin history has been forgotten as goblins have a more oral tribe related history that makes it hard for historians to put together the history of the goblin race. What we do know however is that goblins are actually a type of halfling, but unlike normal halflings which organize themselves into tight knit family units, goblins actually separate themselves into larger tribes which act similar to the smaller families of the greater hobbit race.

Goblin historians theorize that they have always been a race that separated themselves into more village communities building larger “warrens' ' as they are called colloquially when compared to the normal hobbit underground dwelling for their entire tribe to live in. Through combing through the rare historical record about goblins often made by other races we do know that they used to look far more similar to the average halfling then their current more barbaric appearance might suggest.

The main distinction for ancient goblins that set them apart from halfling society was their sharp pointed ears, and green tint to tell them apart from other halfling communities. What is known about these ancient goblins before they devolved into their more barbaric feral origins is that this regression was somehow caused by the other halfling races setting goblin society back many years in both technology and understanding. This successful betrayal has led to all goblins feeling an inherent hate for all halflings and goblins will usually attack any halfling on sight. Despite this betrayal and reversion to a more feral nature goblins actually can sometimes still be found in cities and behave in a more civilized manner then most of their kin often being called “city goblins' ' colloquially.

– A short history of goblins by Garmshul Glittergold (Introduction)

I had not been able to return to the body for a few days as I was forced mostly to keep to farm work, mostly only finding time at night and short breaks throughout the day to continue my magical practice. As I continued deepening my knowledge of magic through contemplation of the events I had also begun meditating and gathering magic within my body. While you could cast by converting and manipulating mana within the environment this often took some time to do so most mages also accumulated mana within them as it was easier to quickly use when in combat to cast spells.

How much mana you kept within and how much time you spent on accumulating this mana often depended on what you wanted to do however if you wanted to be a combat mage then usually you would spend a decent amount of time on this, but if you wanted to make potions or do other more ritual related activities often you wouldn't spend much time on this as you mostly were not in a rush to cast your spells. Similar to the person within the visions I didn't really know what I wanted to do yet so I spent about a third of my available time meditating and pulling mana within my body holding it in to form a kind of pool except the mana worked like a smoke so it was a three dimensional pool.

This mana for a while took conscious effort to contain within me, but eventually like wearing clothes you are able to subconsciously hold the mana in you without much effort. My body would become accustomed to this and unless I for some reason stopped holding the mana within my body for a extended amount of time it would refill to that point as a unconsciously hold the mana within me until it reaches the point I am accustomed too. After a few days of analyzing the dreams I thought I would finally try to do some magic, and since fleshmancy was the magic I currently knew the best I decided to try a simple spell I saw within my dreams.

Using my own mana as that's supposed to make the first cast at least marginally easier I imagined a finger nail of mine to grow longer. Through my study I had learned some biology and I knew the finger was made out of small little things that also made up your hair and some animal horns. While this wasn't much information it should be enough to have a marginal effect on my fingernails.

As I willed the effect into creation pushing mana from my body out trying to cast the spell my first try resulted in a failure. As my mana left my body doing not much my mind subconsciously refilled the held mana within me back to previous levels as I continued milking the sarlix for a short while waiting for it to refill before trying again.

After my mana was back to full I attempted it again, failing again and returning to my chore this cycle continuing for some time. After many attempts I had tried again focusing my intent into the casting like I never did before willing with the mana infused into my intent to get the fingernail to grow as I channeled my mana in the specific way the spell and my knowledge of the humanity supported into the cells forcing them to multiply like they wouldn't usually. After absorbing a small section of my mana my fingernail finally grew slightly.

At first it was hard to notice and I had to look closely to see if it had grown but after confirming it had I was excited. I knew that I would have to practice casting to get the motions correct and be able to do it consistently but any success was enough for me who just recently didn't even have a clue how magic worked beyond from fairy tales.

After performing the spell on each fingernail it taking less tries and thus requiring less time between each one, but still requiring enough attempts that I had to take multiple breaks I had finally finished one full hand and was confident enough that later in the day I would attempt to begin casting without internal mana so I may also cast out of combat spells.

With that I was also planning to return to the body tomorrow to further my knowledge, so far happy with the results I had gotten from the last vision and ready to continue collecting more. Tomorrow I would also have an almost full day to myself as it was the day after each week I was allowed to rest for the entire day.

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The few children my age I had interacted with (usually at family gatherings) whose parents had the same job often were jealous of my parents giving me the day off as theirs usually made them work all nine days, never giving them a break.

As the day finished I ate dinner with my family and this time with how my parents treated me earlier I had decided to maybe try to connect with my parents more. I had slightly realized at the time that I might have been acting childish when I thought my parents mostly didn't care what I did. Of course at the time that thought was mostly subconscious and I had just been trying to connect with my parents a little more than I had been.

As we ate dinner the conversation my parents were having was mostly mundane stuff about work and such, and I was actively trying to keep up trying to find a place I could join in but at the time I never quite got the courage to enter into the conversation that day.

I had never quite been good with interacting with people partly because other than occasional discussion with my parents I didn't really meet many people, and partly because I had usually kept to myself. It seemed that this tendency of mine to stay mostly too myself had come to work against me now though.

Anyway it seemed my magic practice at night had been far more successful than my attempts to further connect with my parents. Casting with ambient mana took more time to do what I wanted then my own personal mana needing more time to fully infuse what I wanted to do with it into the mana and making it be manipulated how I wanted but after that it worked mostly the same.

My success rate with ambient mana was slightly less than with my personal mana but I knew with practice in its manipulation I could improve its rate similar to how I had increased my success with my personal mana.

On the bright side since it doesn't use my own mana the attempts at casting could be done without resting it only costing mental strain to continuously attempt to cast the spell. I had successfully cast the spell an additional five times on the rest of my digits, but due to how much concentration the casting took on me I had a massive headache and didn't think I would continue practicing for the day knowing that rest was required to continue casting successfully as it became harder to concentrate.

As my exhausted mind slowly drifted into sleep I contemplated what would happen in the future as I mastered magic imagining the adventures I would possibly go onto in the future and everyone knowing my name.

I awoke the next day rejuvenated and looking forward to what I would further be able to learn for the day. As I did some of the few things I had to do for the day, mostly it was just helping make breakfast then eating it with my family. I left the house for the forest after breakfast was over telling my parents I was leaving something I had done often already.

As I went back to the body I saw as I approached the hole I had buried the body within had been dug up and some animal had gotten to the body. The body was still mostly together, the scavenger probably finding little left on the body to eat and eventually just leaving the body, but I still knew I would have to bury it deeper henceforth to avoid this happening again.

I have been trying to mostly avoid touching the body like most people feeling disgusted by the dead only touching to bury it and to see the visions but I had resolved to also be less afraid and disgusted of touching the body knowing that if I wanted to continue pursuing magic like I saw the person go through I would have to be able to dissect and study people and animals.

As I moved the body against a tree resisting it weakly willing me to see the visions further as I moved it. After setting it against the tree I looked around nearby from the body to hopefully make sure none of the animals that had found the body remained so I wouldn't be eaten as I continued experiencing the visions.

While I doubt I would have actually found the creature, my foresting skills being middling at best, it did give me some peace of mind as I sat down and put my hand near the body to see the visions again. They began directly where the other left off the teacher coming in and seeing what was going on dismissed the student from the room and told them to go to their room as they discussed with others what would happen.

This was a mistake as the student used the opportunity to run into the city away from the institute to hide themselves and continue their research. To them necromancy seemed like a magic that could allow them greater heights than others that pursued more mainstream magic and they knew their formal magic career was over right when they were found out attempting the art so being fueled by a mix of conviction and spite they hid.

Being wealthy which allowed them to originally enter the academy they were able to successfully hide relatively easily, and have dead animals brought to them to be experimented on to continue their necromancy studies. Through this vision I had learned that different magic schools required different methods of knowledge to cast spells successfully.

This was mostly due to the nature of the subject necromancy to cast would be helped by a knowledge of the dead but any spell that raised the dead and created undead required knowledge of the magic itself and usually this magic manifested in rituals and magical symbols as representations of the knowledge.

Unlike the magic of flesh which has ample room to allow for study without magical assistance due to flesh being a physical natural phenomenon undeath inversely was unnatural and thus had a somewhat different learning method though similarities with flesh magic did still exist which allowed the caster to have a small head start.

They continued their research on dead animals they were able to acquire as they hid slowly expanding their craft from barely letting the animals fingers twitch in response to the magic too having an animal move one of its legs.

As they progressed in their magic something they had really only started getting formally educated in for a few years before entering this situation they slowly ate through their money luckily while the magicians had been looking for them they did not have a way of freezing their assets something that has been keeping them afloat.

They continued practicing their magic imbuing the dead creatures brought to them with concepts and failing to do anything more than allow them to move some on the ground before the twitching stopped as if electrocuting them.

As they went through bodies they also studied the creatures that had the greatest reaction to their attempts to see what they could learn which was a worthwhile endeavor as they had successfully learned the effects the necromancy had on their body furthering their knowledge of what exactly necromancy itself did.

As the vision continued it fell into a pattern as time passed by quickly. The same routine continued for a while. I couldn't tell how long exactly I knew it was about half a year too a year had passed in the vision before a breakthrough happened.

Through the routine while no major breakthrough happened they were able to slowly get the captured creatures to do more and more as time had passed at first completely moving a limb, then having them move their entire body a little, and finally they were able to get a mouse to fully stand up.