Captive - 2

"Inari, my name's Inari." 

"Huh," The boy questioned, his voice turning quite quizzical, "What brought this on?"

I turned my head to look the boy straight in the eye, a roll of my eye and a scoff.

"Cause we're going to have to work together to get out of here, I at least want to know the name of the person that I'm working with."

"Oh, that makes sense, I'm Alexander, but you can just call me Alex."

There was a noise, the clicking of toes upon rough ground. I turned my head over to where it had come from and found myself staring face to face with another goblin.

He had a spear in his hand, but this one was not the rough things of the others. It was made of pure metal, with a blade that looked as if it was sharper than even the swords we were given.

I hid in the dark, but it was not effective, my bright golden hair was not conducive to stealth. As even in the dark it shone brightly.

"Kuak… ku" I knew nothing of goblin, only tangentially knew that they even had a language. But even if I could not understand what they had said.

It was easy enough to pick up on context clues, the snarl of their face, the glare they sent to the numerous prisoners that had somehow disappeared. 

'Fucking cowards…'  I thought to myself, this was entirely their fault, as if they had not left then it would not have been as suspicious as it was now. 

Now we had to deal with the consequences. Rather than the time that it would have bought if everyone was here.

Screech

It was the sound of metal grating upon metal. It hurt my ears and brought a smirk to my face, a moment of thought and contemplation before a plan formed in my head.

One that Alex found too.

We waited, ready to pounce at a mere moment's notice.

Second after second, moment after moment. The goblin stalked closer and closer only to come face to face with both of us.

I grappled the arm of the goblin and even with the force he was barely pulled to the ground. But the distraction was easy to fall to.

Which the goblin did, as with a rough punch he fell to the ground. All because he ignored the presence of Alex.

I smirked and pulled my legs over his back, then after a moment I found my hand over his neck. I grabbed it and pounded it into the rock.

Blood splattered, and in a mere ten or so pounds he was dead. It was not a clean death and all of the blood, the screeches that he yelled while dying.

It sickened me.

I found myself on my knees, my nonexistent food fell from my mouth in a mixture of stomach acid and water.

I felt a pat on my back, a quiet voice whispering into my ear.

"Just let it all out, all out…"

…

…

…

It was night, Alex slept beside me, his rough breathing an annoyance to my sleep.

I could not fathom why the goblins had not come to check up on their own. But because of that there was much tension.

For hours afterward and so on. It was only when night came that we finally tired. We agreed to take watches, to make sure that there really was no other goblin that followed after.

And it was also a perfect excuse to fuse some things and try out this system of mine.

It had been an itch that I had felt since the system had unlocked but some part of me told me not to do it right in front of Alex.

And my logic agreed perfectly with this sentiment. It was a secret worth keeping one. As the less that knew of it the better.

The first thing I did while he was asleep was gather the various things that I could find around the little cell we were in.

It didn't amount to much, a couple rocks, some dirt and other twigs and branches that had been dragged in. But there was also some cloth and the metal spear that I had liberated from the hands of that goblin.

The door was open and we could leave but the problem with that was that I had no idea where we were, nor where the exit would be.

So instead of rushing about and trying to find an exit, and because of that running into trouble. I found it more helpful to instead try and fuse some things around.

[Fusing rock & rock]

[Fusing…]

[25%]

[100%]

In a mere blink of an eye the rocks disappeared from my view and into some sort of pocket space. One that then spat out another rock.

This one was shinier and even if it was faint I could sense a tiny amount of mana.

[Mana touched rock]

[A sliver of mana, densely packed into a small rock.]

There was not much use for this… 

Right now.

But if I were to say, do this enough times then wouldn't I be able to get a mana stone. Something that I could then fuse into the spear in order to create something better.

However before I did that I wanted to find out if that would work at all.

And so I fused two more rocks. In my hand now were two rocks, each of them contained a sliver of mana.

One was just that slightest bit fainter but it didn't matter as this was just a test to see what would happen.

[Fusing Mana touched rock and Mana touched rock…]

[25%]

[100%]

[Mana Touched Rock]

[A sliver of mana densely packed into the rock.]

I sighed it was the same. But only in description as with a glint in my eye I found it to contain twice as much mana as even the two added together. 

'It worked' I could only shiver in excitement as I held the rock in my hand. It was smaller, about half the size of the original rocks that were fused together.

But that did not matter, as just by the slight glow that it held, I knew that it held value. Not only in my survival but financially too.