61 Strength

Jim gathered the wood he could find nearby, he began carving it into small birds. 'With Detection not working, I need a way to scout. Let's hope puppeteer still works...'

Unfortunately, it didn't. Sighing, Jim wondered what to do. 'Is there at least something useful nearby?' Jim activated appraisal while looking at some discolored grass. Nothing happened. 'What? It worked fine before.' Trying repeatedly, appraisal activated on the 4th try. 'Wait, maybe...'

His guess was correct, puppeteer and detection still worked, but there was now a large chance of failure. After some testing, he found his success rate in activating skills to be approximately 30%. 'Is it the lack of the system? That I'm a goblin now? Or is it that Chaos Seal? I can't do anything about all three of these right now though.'

After completing his 3rd bird puppet, Jim felt extremely tired. Hardly able to keep his eyes open, he passed out from exhaustion. After waking up, Jim activated Mental Map to review the area. To his surprise, there was a large area filled in to the south. 'This is...Verdana? Amgula? Okay, I have a destination.'

A month passed, Jim sighed at his slow progress. 'Appraise'

[Goblin]

[Level: 0]

[Strength: 1]

[Dexterity: 1]

[Vitality: 1]

[Agility: 1]

[Magic: 0]

Despite training hard every day, his status had not improved whatsoever. 'Something is seriously wrong, Celes was able to improve rapidly despite not having the system. The other goblins had leveled up and had increased stats. It must be Chaos Seal blocking my progress. I can't gain experience or stats.'

With his body still terribly weak, Jim prioritized saving his very limited stamina. Jim could now cast 1 Flame spell or 3 Lights Orbs before now running out of mana. Unfortunately, it took him a full day to restore his mana to maximum, and it wouldn't seem to increase at all.

He still couldn't cultivate, but Reiki could activate for about 10 seconds, it took 3 days to refill his Qi, and similarly to mana, his qi reserves just wouldn't seem to grow. 'This must be due to that bastard Karna.'

By his estimation, he was now about 2 days travel from Verdana. 'I could have crossed this distance in less than an hour back then. There's a more pressing problem in front of myself right now though. With the appearance of a goblin, won't the elves just kill me on sight?'

Jim had buffed his stats with equipment along the way, he was covered in leather armor, wooden accessories, and held makeshift metal weaponry, all of it infused. He at least wasn't completely helpless now, a random monster wasn't a problem, especially when stealth was used. But his stamina ran out too quickly to handle a group, luckily he had puppets to cover this weakness.

It wasn't only the success rate of his skills that had been reduced, the effects were too. Jim could only reach detection out for a few miles, a far cry from the continent-spanning range from before. His mental boosting skills were similarly reduced, Jim could only handle controlling 23 puppets now.

'Mm?' One of his scouts spotted a battle going on nearby. A large lightly dressed rotund humanoid creature was swinging around a crudely crafted club at a group of 5 elves.

Heading over, Jim found the elves didn't seem to be doing very well, most of them were injured and exhausted. 'That's...Talia?' Celes' friend that he had met before when responding to Verdana's call for help was here fighting the large beast. 'Wasn't she the governer's aide? Why is she here instead of in the city?'

[Ogre]

[Level: 10]

[Strength: 82]

[Dexterity: 41]

[Vitality: 105]

[Agility: 50]

'Alright, I can take this guy down. I need to be prepared in case they turn on me though.' Rushing in, Jim stabbed his makeship blade into the ogre's back, two wolf puppets bit into the ogre's ankles to hold it in place as Jim drew a knife and jumped on the creature and began stabbing the creature's neck.

A few seconds later, the creature tumbled over, dead. Wiping off the knife, he sheathed it and pulled his blade from the ogre's back. 'Damn, fell apart. I really need facilities to make better gear.'

Turning to the elves, they were on guard but didn't seem ready to attack.

Jim: "Talia, it's been a while."

All the elves were startled and began talking among themselves. "A goblin that can talk?" "Am I dreaming?"

Talia: "How...do you know my name?"

Jim: "It's Jim. Celes' teacher, remember?"

Talia: "Jim was human."

Jim: "Yeah, long story."

Talia: "..."