Bloodthrist

Standing in the middle of the pile of goblin bodies Alan basked in the sunlight, as it was just entering summer it was still relatively cool, and the occasional breeze would bring a sense of relaxation.

Standing in the pile of bodies Alan was enjoying a slight breeze as his calm was broken by the annoying voice of Jason "Alan, what did you do?" turning towards the pest, his good mood now gone, Alan tried to understand his question. Looking at Jason he seemed to have a mix of anger, fear, and annoyance. "I killed the goblins, what else?"

Hearing his nonchalant answer Jason pointed to the dead guard on the ground and said "We were here to help, now he's dead! How can you be so careless over the people who raised you?"

Tilting his head in genuine confusion Alan asked, "Why are you angry at me for his death? Did I kill him?"

Seemingly enraged at his questions Jason said "What do you mean? They fed us! gave us a home! He died protecting us! How can you not care?!"

Still confused about why he was so angry Alan looked to the guard to see that he did not recognize him in the slightest, "I do not know him, he did not feed, me, give me a home, or protect me, why are you angry about a useless death?"

Just as Jason was about to start yelling at him again, Alan heard a deep screech behind him. Turning around he saw what looked like a goblin but taller, a normal goblin was about the height of a 5 to 6 year old child, while this one was about the height of a 12 year old child, it also had considerably better gear than a normal goblin.

While normal goblins only had a loin cloth and crude spear that looked like a sharp end chunk of metal trapped to a random stick, this one had an actual spear, albeit rusted, along with a leather shoulder pad and cloth pants.

Just as Alan was about to kill it he heard footsteps behind him, looking behind him he saw that Abagail and Husten had just arrived. Seeing the pools of blood and piles of dead bodies Husten gaged before looking away, while Abigail went to help Jason who had frozen after seeing the tall goblin.

Hearing the tall goblin start to let out what Alan assumed was a laugh, he turned back around to see the tall goblin looking at Abagail while licking its lips, a small bulge forming in its cloth trousers.

Seeing that Alan was enraged, he did not know why, but he was furious. A new emotion started to form, a burning inside of his heart that demanded the death, no, the torment of the tall goblin. faster than they could react Alan dashed straight for it, grabbing the armored shoulder with his right hand and its arm with his left, and pulled.

As the tall goblin screamed Alan threw its now torn-off arm away before kicking it in the knees, a sickening crack as it fell to the ground, its legs bent the wrong way. Sitting on top of the goblin he began to beat into its face, again and again, and again, even as its skull caved in he continued to pound on its head until there was nothing left but a mess of blood, brain, and broken skull. Unbeknown to Alan, this entire time the remaining two guards, Husten and Jason watched as his eyes turned blood red and began to glow before he vanished from the spot and began to brutalize the goblin body and soon its corpse, all the while Steam role off of his shoulders and the tips of his hair became the same blooded red as his eyes.

However, as soon as he stood up from the dead goblin's headless body, his hair and eyes returned to normal as if nothing had happened as he walked past them and back to the cafeteria. The whole time Abalgail watched in awe at both of what he had done and that he had done it for her, as the small details of how the goblin had reacted to her and how Alan had reacted to the goblin were not missed by her.

Meanwhile, in the cafeteria, Alan was revising on the fight just now. What happened, what could he have done better, etc. One of his main worries was the 'hobgoblin', it was not just a bigger goblin, it was better in almost every way compared to a normal goblin. The only reason he managed to kill it so easily was because it was a 1 on 1 and he had vastly superior physical capabilities. If there was even 1 more hobgoblin it would have been much harder, let alone a horde of them.

He was worried about this for three reasons, firstly, it meant that there was a decently sized breach nearby capable of spawning hobgoblins. Secondly, the speed at breaches where growing, and subsequently stronger monsters were appearing, which was faster than he thought by about 3 times. Lastly, how the hobgoblin looked at Abagail, he did not like it, even thinking about it made him want to brutality that filthy thing's corpse even more.

The problem was, he was sure it wouldn't be the only thing that would want to take her from him, or at least try. And that meant he needed to get stronger, much stronger, not only for his 'fun' but so that if anything, tried to touch his Abagail ever again, he could put it through hell so that nothing would try again.

And the only thing he had that could allow him to grow fast enough to keep up was his trait, so far he had confirmed that he could 'assimilate' anything with less 'value' than him. A good way of knowing something's valuable would be what the 'system' sees, essence for instance, the hobgoblin had '5' while he had '60', his value was bigger so he could 'assimilate' the hobgoblin's essence. What he wanted to try next was 'assimilating' its other 'stats' such as strength or constitution.

The problem was that with essence he had something that he could actively control to take the dead goblins' essence, with something like hand-eye coordination, he did not have something he could touch or use to take the other creatures' hand-eye coordination.

And this problem only got more complex as more variables were added and different stats were used. Finally, he concluded that his way of thinking was wrong.

Instead, he came up with a different plan, he would 'assimilate' the creature's entire being and then 'wash' it of everything undesirable, and then he would use the raw clean energy left over to comprehensively enhance one of his stats. This way the complexity of balancing his stats and how to actually enhance them would go down considerably.

His next problem was how to get said energy, after more thinking he came to two answers. first, eat them, his body would 'digest' what he ate using the undesirable traits as fuel, and the clean energy would be used to strengthen them, this was the least complicated as it was just a variation of what his body already did.

The second answer was to actively use his trait and 'absorb' the raw energy then clean it passively over time with his trait, this was slightly more complicated as he would have to learn how to control his trait consciously, he also didn't know how long it would take to clean the energy this way.

Ultimately he chose to do both. For energy sources that could be eaten, he would use the first method, and for energy that couldn't be eaten, he would use the second method. This may have seemed like it didn't take long but this planning process took just over three days to finish, during this time that base had been attacked two more times, the first time with 20 goblins and 1 hobgoblin, just a few more goblins than the first attack, and the second time with 2 hobgoblins and 25 goblins, a considerably bigger attack than the first.

Alan had even been hurt in this attack after being cornered by both hobgoblins and 3 normal goblins at once while it was only a small scratch on the side of his face, it was a good warning, he was already reaching his limit, if the next attack followed the same pattern of more hobgoblins than he might be seriously wounded.

Currently, Alan was in a large freezer where they kept the goblin bodies, after the last few attacks there were many guards left so he and the others had been given mostly free rain to go wherever they wanted, bare a few places.

Raising his hand he put it just over the goblin's head before focusing on the feeling he had whenever he 'adapted' to something, taking deep breaths he cleared his mind and focused, and after half an hour of just standing there, something happened.

A faint glow appeared on his palm that formed illusory tendrils that started to spread out slowly, in search of something, they didn't really have a color and were merely the manifestation of his trait in physical form. Soon they reached the goblin's body, and like plague, they rapidly covered the goblin's body before contracting and squeezing down, when the goblin's body had been completed down to the size of a beach ball, the tendrils started to pull it back into Alan's body.

As the goblin's body had been converted to raw energy it just fazed into Alan's body like nothing. The undesirable parts of the energy were reused as fuel for his body while the useable parts were used to balance his stats, this is how the first few rounds of energy would be used, laying a stable foundation to build off of in the future.

As the goblin had been turned into pure energy that had later been cleaned, it didn't have any traits, therefore it could be used for any one of his stats, strength could be used for intelligence, Constitution could be used for memory, and so forth. This meant that he didn't need to worry about having a 'balanced diet' as to him, energy was energy, the only difference was whether could he use it or not.