Born a Monster

Chapter Six

Bulking Up

I had found an issue with my System. Specifically, the subskill Forage/Forage Stone seemed to be the exact same subskill as the Quarrying/Forage Stone.

Oddly, the Work Stone Node/Harvest Stone was an entirely other skill. Go figure.

I was searching my system for other information duplicates and trying to figure out what to do with them, while letting my System auto-forage in the plains for me. I know, it seems lazy, and the auto-forage just wasn’t as efficient as foraging on my own.

But what it did do was allow me to think, and plan, and do other things. From the time I started moving Might up, my consumption increased. But even on auto-forage I was getting around a point of biomass every fifteen minutes, or four an hour. It was ridiculous how much sheer volume you could build just by eating wild grains and grass.

.....

I wasn’t a fan of the blunt teeth that made that process faster.

I didn’t eat everything immediately; four Inventory slots allowed me to store four “stacks”, or groupings of similar materials. I foraged into inventory, and then just pulled out to one of my new prehensile claws, popped it into my mouth, chewed for way too long, and swallowed.

Chewing seemed like a waste of time, but sped up the digestion process. But it was another boring thing that I just automated. I’d have done it in my sleep if I could.

My skill usage suffered; many of my Might skills just defaulted to the new base statistic. But that included the sub-statistics governing health, digestion, body size, and stomach size. The net gains weren’t close to double, closer to an extra third or so.

The notable exception was my Biomass meter, now maxing at 480. Actually, that may also have been a combination of my size and my Might. But, given another week or so, I could actually make Might level three. After that, the costs skyrocketed.

Before you think that alone gave me hope of becoming a mass slayer of goblins, realize that the rapid gains of both size and weight resulted in having to re-learn all manner of tasks, including walking. Focusing on these consciously meant (I hoped) less time adapting, but meant I needed to use the System to automate other things.

And my System just kept trying to evolve literally everything. Twenty-four thousand points of evolutions came to roughly sixty times my biomass limit. Every night, as I dreamed, those priority settings got flipped to adapt to whatever my dreams were. I couldn’t remember my dreams more than a few minutes after waking, but I could take guesses based on what evolutions had priority.

I had been wishing for just a reset button, and learned about default settings. I saved my list of things I needed prioritized, and just set that as my default. Returning to default evolutions every morning (after taking a look at what had changed) became routine.

And, as a bonus, I had two to the power of my Insight other lists to divide among my other settings. I hadn’t really found anything to use them on yet, but with a progression like that, I was sure I needed more.

I just didn’t have the sheer nutrients or spare evolution track to work on both Might and Insight. Besides, I wanted Agility for balance (Climbing trees is SO MUCH easier with prehensile claws!) and Valor for the combat skill increase.

Oh, and I picked up Fleet of Foot, a Hunter power that used my stamina to buff my Running Speed even more than sprinting did. I couldn’t use it at the same time as sprinting, but it was still treetops higher than crawling had been.

I moved upriver, to a raised area that I created a burrow in. Now that had been work, before I realized I could just move entire handfuls of dirt into my inventory and carry it back to the surface. I still needed to pay attention to the edges, or my burrow collapsed.

With my new goblinoid eyes, I could still see the forest at night, and a short run there satisfied over half my Physical Training Regimen. Throw in climbing trees, rolling rocks, pulling plants up to eat the tasty roots – my Strength and Stamina sub-statistics filled in even faster than my Health.

Eihtfuhr made comments on my progress, but it took him three days to reveal the next stage of his plan. The goblins hadn’t returned to the wood, but I found signs and scraps that they were active in the plains. With my new size and strength, I felt that I could match them in terms of raw muscle.

I just needed to refine, well, every other statistic as well.

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“Hrm, well I guess we’ll need to do this with you only having two Might, then.” He concluded on the third day. “Gather what you think you’ll need to make healing potions.”

I gathered a goblin helm that may once have been a pot, a long shin bone that I used to crush and grind herbs, garlic, and comfrey. And that was it for my inventory. I needed to expand my capacity.

He started out slow, but then sped up. “You have improved your running from when we first met. Eight times faster than you are now, and we’ll be on the way to you not slowing me down.”

“No need (huff) to hold (huff) back the (inhale) criticism.”

AMUSEMENT. “Come on.” He led me directly toward the lair of the Gordvork. “Sleep here tonight. In the morning, approach the gordvork. I recommend after he eats. Run if he decides to eat you.”

“Uhm?”

“What is it?”

“So I just walk up and ask him to share healing potion recipes with me?”

“That might work. He hasn’t spoken to me, yet. Just try”

And then he was leaping away among the trees, leaving me with dark thoughts and croaking frogs.

#

I was nearing exhaustion when morning rose; the sound of frogs and insects and other noisy things that just weren’t in Eihtfuhr’s section of the wood had kept me up.

So I had prepared in the only way I knew how. I had gathered every herb and mushroom I could find, arranged a bunch of leaves, and mashed each up in the pot until both of my foreclaws were blistered. I lay there, just wishing I could close my eyes, feeling my palms beating counterpoint to my heart.

I never heard him approach; I just blinked my eyes against the bright light of dawn, and suddenly he was there. I made no sudden moves, as his spear was held directly above my neck. Even with my new strength, I had no delusions that I could stop the spear tip from descending.

I just looked at him, my black eyes holding his yellow ones.

He spoke first, in a rhythmic tongue that my System didn’t know. Well, that was going to complicate things.

“I’ve got no clue what you’re saying.” I sent to him, through thought speech.

He blinked at me, but sent no response.

Had he heard me? I sent him a party invite.

He backed up a pace, and declined. He croaked at me again, and then leaned forward to evaluate me.

“Your breath smells like fish. You should probably eat a vegetable.”

He blinked, and said nothing. He went back to his camp, and returned with a fish skeleton, which he placed into my pot.

Gripping my highly worn thigh bone in my hands, I leaned into the act of crushing the fish bones. It was an act of physical weight more than strength of arms. In retrospect, I couldn’t have done a good job of it, tired as I was.

But it seemed to meet with his approval.

I barely resisted as he picked me up by my tail and carried me back into his camp. He took the bone from my grasp, flinging it far upstream. He sat me down by a fire pit, placing twigs and two grey stones before me.

I formed a tepee of the twigs while he used his spear to recover two mudfish from the river.

I struck the stones together, but could not produce a spark from them.

He produced flame at the tip of one of his fingers, and used that to light the fire. He had a store of firewood nearby, and had soon cooked the two fish.

He ate both, and tossed me the heads.

Well, I don’t normally eat fish heads, given the difficulty of eating and digesting them versus the nutrients they provided. But it had been a while since I’d eaten anything, so I went ahead and gnawed on them a bit before swallowing them.

I was so tired that I almost missed the party invite when he sent it. Almost.

CURIOSITY, he sent, and croaked at me.

TIRED, I sent back.

He kicked me hard enough that I landed in the river, a good twenty feet away.

He then kicked me from the party.

But he neither ate me nor made me leave camp, even when I fell fast asleep.

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