Planning

In the lonely jungle, three goblins can be seen walking around and having a conversation. Their words are intelligible to human ears. 

If a person were to hear them, they would think that they were kids speaking gibberish. Unfortunately, they didn't notice a shadow lurking in the dark.

A pair of eyes emerged from the impenetrable dark as a heavy aura fell on the goblins. They tried to run away, sadly, it was too late.

Soon screams of pain and agony reverberated in the forest before their voices were drowned by the silence of the jungle.

***

Lock wiped the blood off of his axe using the clothes of the dead goblins. He couldn't help but sigh at his state. His clothes were riddled with blood and guts, and he needed to wash them again. 

"How troublesome," Lock muttered. 

Lock took the body into his inventory and left the scene unseen. He has been hunting on the outskirts of the camp for a while now.

Lock used to hunt inside the village after his level up, but recently, the goblin shaman seemed to have noticed the decrease in the population of the goblins. Because of this, the camp has been on full alert lately. 

With no other way to enter the village safely, Lock had to change his approach to the situation. 

Lock worked his mind as he gathered intel in the village. The goblins took water from their storage deeper in the village. Low-ranking goblins would be the ones in charge of gathering water from the rivers. 

Lock planned to poison the water by using the corpses of the dead goblins. Once the poison takes effect, the goblins should have at least a week or two before dying out. 

But for Lock, that simply wasn't enough. The shaman would've noticed the problem like they noticed the population decrease. thus sabotaging his plan.

Lock also planned to trim out the scouts outside the village. In his recent observations, the scout seemed to be the only way they gathered information outside. Other goblins were too dumb for the job, and the other elites have their own jobs to do. 

Lock couldn't help but laugh at the thought of it. Goblins had a lot of members, but barely anyone had a use in the camp. 

A few days ago, Lock got a bit braver and tried to infiltrate deeper into the camp. When he saw what was inside, the difficulty of the mission increased. 

The king had a fortress deeper in the camp. By the looks of it, it was a rather old castle, which was confusing as goblins were too stupid to build something so intricate. 

The fortress was heavily guarded by shamans and champions, and there was no way Lock could enter without getting detected. 

The king also had a different food and water source, so the poisoning will only work against the common people. 

"I wonder if it'll give me mastery if I kill the goblins using poison." Lock thought. 

Aside from that, if Lock were to commence his plan, he would have to deal with the goblin riders. The goblin riders were exclusive to the king, so Lock didn't notice them before. 

They were good at tracking, which made his job even more annoying. This was also another reason why he had to stop his killings inside the camp. 

He has also been making his own preparations. He refrained from leveling up and kept it at max for now. The instant recovery was useful if his life was in danger. 

He also gathered some plants in the forest and experimented. So far, he hasn't found anything useful in his plans, as most of them were weak poisons at best. 

Without anything else to do here, he went back to his base of operations. On his way back, he also took some weird-looking plants to test out later. 

His base of operations wasn't anything extravagant. It was a simple cave hidden in bushes deeper in the jungle. 

The place was filled with the scent of flowers, piss, shit, and the occasional rotten smell. He has been busy finding out the effects of the plants and making poison from the dead goblins. 

He tested them on the animals he captured when hunting. The goblin poison was already lethal, so Lock didn't need to experiment on it further. However, the same cannot be said on the flower side. 

The most promising results that Lock got were from yesterday's test subject. The horned rabbit he experimented on was paralyzed for 30 minutes straight. 

This was a great find, as most of the poison he found either took too long or didn't even work. He only needed to find a more lethal combination to finally succeed. 

Lock opened his system panel and took out four different flowers he found today. One was green in shade, and the other had red polka dots on it. The last two had a more pinkish hue. 

Lock tested the green one first. He ground it on a smooth stone he made and transferred the liquid to a wooden cup. He then took a weird-looking bird and fed it the substance. 

Lock waited a while, and eventually it put the bird back inside the cage. Perhaps it needed more time to finally take effect. 

Next, he took out the red polka-dot flower and did the same process. This time, he took a wild boar and fed it the substance. 

As usual, Lock waited for a while and eventually got bored. He was about to put it back in the cage when the boar started to convulse on the floor as blood streamed out of its orifices. 

Lock immediately stepped back as he watched the whole process unfold. He then wrote the effects on a leaf with a huge grin. 

Lock looked like a mad scientist right now, but being alone in a jungle with constant threats in your life can make you a bit mad. 

"Bleeding and obvious signs of poisoning It took around 2 minutes before it fully took effect." Lock said as he wrote on a leaf using burnt wood. 

After a while, the wild boar started convulsing as it eventually died. Lock sat down and heaved a sigh of relief. He has been experimenting for the past few weeks, and it has been honestly tiresome. 

"So it seems that killing other beings with poison doesn't increase my mastery. What a shame." Lock thought. 

But now, Lock has finally found what he's looking for. He only needed to somehow mix the two poisons and get a good concoction. 

Lock planned to mix it with the goblin poison to make it take effect faster. Lock was paranoid that the shaman might notice, so he wanted it to be quick and efficient. 

With this, his plans are nearing completion. All that was left was fire. Lock needed to burn the camp down. The structure of the houses didn't escape his eyes. 

"Wood and straw.." Lock said with a grin. 

All that Lock had to finish now was gather enough fuel and coal to start the main event. 

The coal was easy to collect, but the gas—that was the hard part. In the last few months that Lock has been stuck here, he has yet to find a good fuel source. 

No matter how far he traveled, all he would see were trees and more trees, but Lock can't just remove the fuel from his plans. While coal was good and all, it wasn't as fast as liquid gas. 

Aside from that, he was pretty much set. In the next few days, he would prioritize exploration, with flammable gas as the main objective. Unfortunately, Lock didn't know what awaits him in the deep lonely jungle.