{Ad Oblivione - Yu-peng Chen}

The night was cold, and the hunger was intense, yet after I was shown mercy, my mood changed. I could at least sleep knowing I had something to eat in the morning once the cold weather left. So I closed my eyes and slept for the night until the sun hit my face at dawn.

I immediately jumped into the food basket once I woke up and began eating everything the girl had got me. That girl's name was Alice, right? I will remember this, Alice. I promise I will repay you someday for this. I thought to myself as I ate the food peacefully at the forest's edge behind a tree.

The basket had sweet bread and some painful sourdough, which tasted stale and weird to someone with a modern palette like mine, but it was enough to fill me up with something other than air. Complaining about free food would be a crime, would it not?

{Small footsteps}

I was eating so joyfully that I didn't even hear someone approaching when the same girl who had given me the basket appeared out of nowhere from around the corner. The girl smiled when she saw me eating the food and then extended her hand while trying to introduce herself.

"I am Alice. What's your name, lil buddy?" Her hand was soft, and she had pearly white skin, long golden hair, and big brown eyes. Somehow, I felt ashamed to even touch her with my dirty hands, so I didn't grab hers.

"I'm Pan, the good goblin. I'm sorry I can't shake your hand when I'm like this." Alice retrieved her hand when she noticed I wouldn't grab hers since, ya know, I was still filthy and smelly.

"That's okay. My father says there's no such thing as a good goblin, so how can you prove it?" That was a good damn question. Was I naturally supposed to be violent? No, that was a myth. As far as my family and village went, goblins didn't seem irrationally violent.

"My word is all I can offer. You'll have to believe me."

"You'll have to prove it with hard work then. Papa agreed to let you stay if you worked on the farm. He said you speak more like us than goblins, which caught his attention last night."

"I'll greatly help you and your father, lady Alice. Thank you for, uh?" Out of nowhere, a green light began to cover my wounds and body while Alice chanted some sort of spell that closed my wounds instantly. Alice had healed me. An unexpected tear left my right eye while I tried to remain stoic.

"There you go. You should be all patched up." Alice smiled when she was done, and I immediately felt the difference. My body felt like it never had been hurt, and my pain was gone. There were also no scratches left.

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Alice let me stand up and then led me back to her home, where her father greeted me with his rules that were easy to follow. I would work every day from sunrise to sunset in exchange for a home and a plate of food. It was honestly more than I would've expected from any human.

I certainly would've never trusted a goblin, so what if the work seemed like slave work? All stories begin somewhere, and if this is how mine started, so what? I'll be the strongest and best goblin! I'll try to disprove the stigma between my race and humans step by step.

My first day of work proved easy as well. The farm labor the old man put me to do was hard but also satisfying. A certain level of joy came with each task being finished and well done. It felt like I had a purpose in life, something I had never felt before, not even in my previous life.

I tiled some dirt patches for future plantations and began to dig a water line from the river to the fields as instructed by Klevan, who also helped me now and then. Klevan clearly did more skilled labor, which involved casting cleansing magic on the crops against pests.

Yet Klevan did come to teach me the correct posture now and then when he noticed I was awkwardly working with a shovel. I was a city kid. After all, even if I had been interested in nature, I had never worked as a farmer, so I was still a rookie.

The first days moved on pretty quickly, and I adapted to this new lifestyle of waking up to work, working until lunchtime, having lunch made by the young lady, and then going back to work until nighttime to be met with another four-course meal made by the Queen of this land.

The labor was so intense and demanding that I gained levels from just tilling dirt and building things. In a week, I tilled an entire field by hand and finished the water canal that would irrigate the fields in a controlled manner thanks to a water wheel Klevan made.

Today was another successful day of work, ending like all the others with a hot meal made by that Alice angel. I wondered if her mother was working somewhere else at first, but I eventually found out she died when Alice was born, so that was not nice.

"Shesh, this hot weather drives me crazy; how about you, Pan? Is it driving you crazy, too?"

"Yes, but Alice's lemonade during the day keeps me going."

Klevan laughed at my words while he chugged a giant pint of beer like it was nothing. If Klevan were to be brought back to my world, he would easily pass as Irish, thanks to his bad habit of heavy drinking. Even so, Klevan never got aggressive or mouthed anyone when he got drunk. He simply went to bed right after.

Perhaps he tried to control himself every time he did for the sake of his daughter. If so, that would be a commendable man. Setting an excellent example for Alice of how a good man is supposed to be was good for her.

"Sorry for the wait, but this was harder than I thought. Well, here you guys go. I made lasagna for today's dinner."

Lady Alice cut off big chunks of lasagna for Klevan and me, and we both turned into animals once the smell hit our noses, just eating it like our life depended on it. I had worked the whole day, so I was starving, and I guess Klevan had, too, so he was probably also starving. So what if we burnt out mouths just a little.

"Good thing I made enough. I knew you would be hungry."

"Thank you for the meal! Ahm nam nam nam."