8 Chapter 7: It ain’t easy being green.

Coughing echoed in a small cave that was covered by grass and other plants as Luciel sat up, taking in his surroundings. The smell of vegetation and wet soil filled his lungs as he took in a breath. He didn't seem to be bothered by the change in surroundings, and pushed away the greenery covering the entrance to the cave.

"Okay, now it's time to freak out." He sat back resting his shoulders against the wall of the cave, and let out silent curses to the dwarven race, and Torag which he swore was a god to their kind.

Calming his thoughts, he moved forward silently and peeked out of the plants once more. What he saw was an army of green, little creatures about as tall as him, with heads that were about twice as big as their bodies seemed to be able to hold. "Goblins?"

A blood screen appeared in front of him confirming his thoughts, and gaining him the skill monster identification. "Yep, goblins. Why couldn't it be slimes?" He thought about it, and without offensive magic goblins were actually easier to kill than slimes, though their numbers were annoying.

One of the goblins came close and started lifting his loincloth, giving the bushes some watering his voice sounding like marbles stuck in a vacuum but he seemed to be singing. Sliding behind him, Luciel stood there looking at his knife wondering how to hold the goblin's mouth shut but waiting here behind him would be more dangerous, so he stabbed the knife into the neck several times before the goblin fell over grasping it. Gurgling sounds were heard, and ignored by him as he dragged the struggling body into his cave.

"Filth, record and analyze corpse of goblin as I begin dissection. On other goblin's bodies please mark spots to instantly kill them." Using the knife on the still struggling goblin he started to carve off the skin. He didn't have time to wait for it to die, and he didn't want to ruin his results, though the dying goblin made his stomach clench almost puking up everything in his stomach. This was his first kill of something humanoid and that made the process of cutting open the body a hundred times worse.

With the taste of bile in his throat, the knife danced expertly along the body of the goblin slicing skin from muscle, muscle from bone, bone from joint. Black blood littered his body, as new data came in with each twist of the knife, the knife slowly repairing itself and never getting dull. Luciel had learned this trick not so long ago, apparently healing magic was considered something along the lines of mending things, which happened to include the human body. It wasn't exclusively for healing, but could be used to restore an object such as his knife so long as it wasn't too destroyed.

When he was done the body parts lay in separate areas, and Filth cheerfully spoke, 'The stomach of the goblin seems to have innate magic in it, allowing it to not only eat ten times its interior, but allow it to digest almost anything nonmagical. If you eat five to seven of them you should get similar effects.'

This pushed Luciel over the edge, the food from his stomach spilling across the ground as his head felt dizzy. He might be able to carve open something humanoid, but eating it was out of the question. His stomach getting butterflies at the thought that one day he might do it just because the benefits would be too great, but he hoped he wouldn't lose that much of his humanity.

Letting his stomach settle, he prompted Filth to go through the goblin body finding it more or less like a human's except in certain areas. It didn't have a liver, the stomach providing enough filtering for the body, it had two hearts smaller than a human's that beat twenty times as fast.

He didn't know why a small goblin like that would need basically forty times bloodflow than an average human, but he didn't question it. This allowed poison to circulate through their bodies much faster, so killing them with poison would be the easiest way, sadly he lacked any on his person. Even if he did, he'd need to find a way to spread it.

The amount of white blood cells told him that diseases, and plagues couldn't be used as they had really good immune systems. Also judging by their environment, they most likely were exposed to quite a lot of diseases as is. This limited his choices to stabbing them as the quickest form of death he could administer. At the very least the goblin had provided him with a sizable upgrade to the kitchen knife he had at the moment.

Picking up the knife, it seemed to be made of bone that had various holes inside of them, finding five on the body he could see that they were disposable. "Filth, why are their holes through the blade?"

'High possibility the bone has been coated with an anticoagulant to make sure the victim bleeds out from the wound, draining out like a straw.' Luciel looked at the knife and nodded, it would kill the goblins faster if he used these on their necks.

He spent the next two hours taking out goblins one by one, but abandoned the idea when he noticed this would take years considering the number of goblins. These creatures were like mice, hundreds of them jumping around and chuckling. With the AI, the simple language was already translated in those two hours.

"Shit, I must shit, give me the shit stick!"

Their language was crude, and so were they, but there seemed to be bigger fatter ones that were actually smart. These ones actually had things added to their race, like warrior goblin, or priest goblin.

Slowly making his way along the hill he found that his hill was sitting in the middle of their encampment. Stealing a chicken from the goblins, he ate in darkness of the cave until the sun went up to see if they were nocturnal. Sadly, they seemed to be awake during all hours of the day in cycles.

Making a diagram of the camp that he had already explored, he started to make a plan, skinning the goblins while the skin was still not rotted. Using the healing magic here and there to mend things together. He knew that the goblins had some sort of archaic religion, and had many superstitions, one of them being the fear of words for some odd reason. They thought that writing would put some of your soul into the words, and since goblins could be influenced by words written that part of the soul infested any goblin who read the words.

Burning symbols into the skin as a way of very simplistic writing that he was sure anyone could understand he began making something that disgusted him. He knew it might save him from being murdered by the goblins later on, so he continued on with his work, his survival was the most important thing right now.

As he worked on the goblin skin he stayed near the entrance, picking up more words, hoping that Filth would translate the words he needed before he was done. The sun was setting when Filth finally learned the word for Bane.

Taking the knives and putting them onto a loincloth bandelier, he stood up, now clad in green leather. Black blood was soaked into various places making crude pictures as he practiced his goblin speech, "Ick nok meniou nnnneg ru roth." He smiled a devilish smile as he dipped his hand into the black blood of his enemy, and used it as war paint.