Kegan found the new material attachment items outside of his cabin. The iron ingots would be the most useful in the long run, but right now he had no forge set up. He needed to make a bow to get any use out of the arrows.
The javelins and pemmican were immediately useful and for the same reason. Kegan needed food. Lots of food. He had long had the perk to not experience hunger pains, so it wasn’t a normal hunger that he felt. Instead, it was a hunger fueled by his perks. He always intuitively knew how to use his perks and how to get the most out of them, and his new perks were telling him he would need a lot of calories. The fat storage perk would allow him to keep any excess calories, and the muscle improvement perk would be a greedy consumer of all those excess calories.
He’d eaten plants on his way to the cabin, but it almost wasn’t worth the effort to consume them. If he ate only plants he got the sense that he would have to spend every waking moment consuming plants just to keep up with his new perks
Kegan grabbed ten of the javelins and then broke off the ten iron arrow tips to carry in a pouch. On the way to his destination, he carved some slots into a piece of wood and attached the iron arrow tips into the slot. It was a crude knife, but it would work for now.
Just as he was finishing up with the knife, a low growl interrupted him. Two female wolves were baring their fangs and growling at Kegan as he came closer to the den. Two javelins quickly ended the wolves' lives. The puppies slowly came out of their den to see what was going on. Kegan would have liked to have another wolf companion, but he couldn’t afford to feed a wolf. He ended the pups' lives swiftly.
He was done skinning the two wolves and setting up a campfire when the other eight wolves of the pack returned with a fresh kill.
His javelins flew and wolves fell. Four of them managed to close the distance, and a scuffle ensued. Kegan was deceptively strong for his size, even without the new effects of the muscle perk kicking in. His skin was also far tougher than it should have been. The wolves were unprepared for Kegan and he finished them off with minimal hassle.
Over the rest of the day, their hides joined the others, and the meat and fat were added to a cooking fire. Parts of the deer they had brought back were also salvageable, and Kegan added what he could to the fire.
Kegan didn’t take pleasure in having to kill the wolves. But with how much he needed to eat, there was no way he could share the valley with another set of predators. His options were to either kill them now or subject them to starvation as he hunted all of the deer before the goblins would arrive. A quick death is what he would have preferred, so he granted it to them.
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The first two weeks were a hunting frenzy for Kegan. After the wolves were dispatched he tracked down and killed most of the deer in the valley. He learned that his material attachments perk would not work on just cooked meat alone. He had to do more to alter the end product for it to be considered something he ‘made’. Pemmican counted, so he made massive stockpiles of pemmican. Then he immediately ate all the pemmican he made. It felt weird making food that was meant to be preserved for long periods, only to immediately eat it. However, this wasn’t the first time his perks had him doing strange things, so he shrugged it off and kept eating.
The next task was creating javelins. Hundreds of javelins. He did end up creating a basic forge to make a few iron knives and axes since these tools would allow him to drastically speed up his javelin creation.
Most of the finished javelins were spaced in a growing spike pit area around the cave exits. Kegan left a single winding path through the spike pit. If he didn’t leave them an option for escape they would just push each other onto the spikes until there was a path out.
The spikes were also a trap for the brood mother goblin. Initially, she should have enough room to maneuver through the winding spike path, but the path would narrow until she was wading through sharpened sticks.
As a last resort, he added as much flammable material as he could to the spike pit. The fire would be effective, but he was hoping to keep the broodmother corpse mostly intact. Goblins had very little meat on them, but the brood mother would probably provide as much meat as twenty deer.
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Two waves of goblins had come screaming out of the caves. And both times Kegan’s trap had worked better than he expected. A few would follow the winding path, he would take out the leaders and fastest goblins with javelin throws. The goblins following would stop to consume the corpses. They gave Kegan plenty of time to keep hurling javelins until none of the goblins were alive.
The second wave of goblins was even easier. With a bunch of corpses in front of them, they immediately started eating the goblins from the first wave. Kegan wasn’t even sure if they noticed him lobbing javelins into their ranks.
The third and final wave of goblins was a day late though, and Kegan was starting to get worried. This had been way too easy. He’d forgotten just how mindless these goblins could be. The goblins in the bone knight army had been smarter and had a better sense of self-preservation.
Early in the morning on the fourth day, a goblin elite had appeared at the tunnel entrance. Kegan hid himself to see what the goblin would do. It poked around at the traps and the dead bodies before heading back inside the cave.
Around midday, the ground burst open from one of the closed cave entrances. Goblins started pouring out of the hole. Kegan began tossing javelins into the goblins as they came out of the hole. The goblins coming out behind them started eating the corpses. But the thirty goblins that were already outside zeroed in on Kegan and began screaming and running towards him.
Kegan moved to the exit of the spike pit. He used his extra javelins, and any nearby javelins from the spike pit to fend off the goblins as they attacked him. The narrow path only allowed two to attack at one time. Kegan was easily able to hold a javelin in each hand and stab the goblins as they came up. If the javelin got stuck in a body he just let it go and grabbed another one from the spike pit around him.
There were only five goblins left in front of him when he felt an impact on his back. He was wearing leather and bone armor made from the deer. Whatever it was hadn’t penetrated the armor. He felt three more impacts on his back and then saw a few of his javelins flying past him and skewering the remaining goblins.
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Kegan didn’t bother to look back and just started running away from the entrance. Once he was 50 ft away from where he had been he turned around. Six goblin elites were organizing the feral goblins and had gotten them to pick the javelins out of the ground and hurl them at Kegan. Now they were trying to get the goblins to stop eating the corpses and charge after him.
Before they could get the goblins organized Kegan started hurling javelins at the goblin elites. It kept them preoccupied with dodging his javelins rather than issuing orders. And every time one of his javelins missed and killed a nearby goblin they all went crazy trying to eat the newest corpse.
As the goblin elites managed to get behind cover, or just started holding up goblin corpses as shields then they started to get things back in order again. Kegan couldn’t let that happen. He hefted a four-inch-thick wooden shield that was as tall and as wide as he was. A normal human wouldn’t have been able to carry this, and only Kegan enhanced muscle perks allowed him to lift it and carry it closer to the goblins.
He felt a javelin thud into the shield. That was his signal to pull a few branches from the back of the shield that allowed it to be propped up on the ground. More javelins began hammering into the shield but it was solid.
Kegan began throwing javelins back at the goblins. With a smarter enemy, this would have been suicide, they would have pinned Kegan down and broke off some troops to flank him. Goblins were not smart. It was hard to get them to start doing anything. And once they finally were convinced to do that thing, it was even harder to get them to stop.
Five minutes later of trading javelins back and forth, Kegan noticed the elites were nowhere to be seen. He cursed the blue spirit in frustration. A roar echoed out of the cave. A few seconds later the goblin broodmother came out of the cave. Kegan was stunned because the broodmother had come out of the entrance full of his spike traps, and not the safe exit. Two of the elite goblins were in front of the broodmother, shouting and trying to push her back inside.
Baby goblins were scrambling all over the broodmother, and threatening to overwhelm to the two elite goblins. As Kegan’s javelins began thudding into the broodmother they gave up on trying to convince her and instead just started rushing down the winding path towards Kegan’s position.
The other four goblins also made their position known as he readied to throw another javelin at the broodmother. They had flanked him in the woods and were coming up behind him. They screamed to get his attention, so he gave it to them. His javelin went through a goblin torso being used as a shield and into the armor of the goblin elite. The elite had to toss the body aside after another javelin did the same thing. With nothing to protect him Kegan’s third javelin broke through the bone armor of the elite and pierced its heart.
Kegan only got a knife and club out as the other three goblin elites closed in. There was a time when these three might have been a death sentence for Kegan. Not anymore. He had fought thousands of goblins, dozens of bone knights, and sparred with great human and orc fighters alike.
The clash was over in just moments, Kegan had skewered one goblin in the eye with his knife. Clubbed one goblin in the head hard enough to break his wood club. And simply grabbed the remaining goblin, disarmed it, then twisted its neck until it snapped, and the goblin fell limp to the ground. Each of the goblins had managed to land a blow before dying, but none of them broke through Kegan’s armor.
The other two elite goblins fell to multiple javelins before they could get out of the spike pit. The goblin broodmother fell into the spike pit trap just as planned. A javelin to the brain finished her off. The baby goblins scattered, and the remaining feral adult goblins chased after them into the woods. Kegan killed any that stayed behind to eat.
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Kegan cooked up and ate the goblin broodmother. Despite the meat looking perfectly fine, the taste was somehow terrible. Kegan’s Iron Stomach perk had activated multiple times while consuming the broodmother just to keep the food in his stomach. The experience points from killing all the goblins would be valuable, but he decided he wouldn’t bother trying to eat the broodmother again.
After all of the remaining groups of adult goblins were dealt with Kegan cautiously made his way through the cave system. He had a fear of getting lost down here, even with his access to the fire starter perk that ensured he would never be completely blind.
He found the same square blue crystal that he remembered from the last life. The same thing happened when he touched the stone. A light enveloped him and he was back in the dream world.
Not trusting the spirit, he immediately demanded that he be returned to the same life. Sure enough, the spirit tried to convince him to buy some new perks, but Kegan was having none of it. The spirit asked three times if Kegan was sure, before allowing Kegan to return.
When Kegan returned the square crystal had changed to a dark green color. He placed his hand on it again. This time he felt his mind expand, just like it had in the world editor. The expansion wasn’t as big this time. He could still feel the different possibilities of changing the world emanating from the stone, but there was also a different sensation. It was what the stone had already done in this world. The stone had been spawning groups of goblins for millennia. It gave the goblins mental instructions to find food, leave the valley, and spread.
The stone needed energy to create these groups of goblins. It was empty at the moment from having recently spawned the goblins. But it gathered this energy slowly over time. It was the same energy that Kegan needed for his perks. He was able to direct the crystal to stop saving energy for goblins, and instead send the energy to Kegan.
Once he was done with the crystal, Kegan began the slow process of moving all of his stuff out of the valley. He had considered settling down for a few months and building a forge to deal with all of the iron ingots, but there wasn’t enough food in the valley to sustain him.
He carried most of his things out of the valley and then built a large sled on the other side of the mountain. The blue spirit kept talking at him every time he passed by. Congratulating him on fighting off the goblin menace and finding a save point. Kegan just ignored the spirit. He was glad to be putting some distance between himself and this spirit. He’d kept some of the knowledge from using the world editor. There were other crystals out there. The power they contained called to him.