Born A Monster, Chapter 17 - Humans are Tasty

Born A Monster

Chapter 17

Humans are Tasty

In retrospect, it took the humans all of two days to attack the nest. There had been four of them, and three had escaped.

The other had been butchered by the time I heard about it. The skull had been saved from the pasting process, and there was more than enough blood to go around. I made a meal of a bit of intestine, opening all kinds of things that I just didn't have the biomass for.

One of these was Better Digestion – Beer, that would give me a bonus biomass point for consuming servings of alcoholic poison. Really? For a people with so much food, they sure consumed some strange stuff.

But most of the materials made it to Master.

I helped with the ceremonial preparations for a variety of necromantic spells: Necromantic Omen, Infuse Skull, Preserve Blood Ink, Dead Earth, and Blood Lore. And that was all the necromantic mana that Master had, even borrowing my point.

"What happens when the humans send their heroes?" I asked.

"They won't."

"Why not?"

"Because, fearful Goat," he chuckled, "we are Goblins. The joke of the barbarian tribes. We just aren't worth the time of true heroes."

"But if they did send heroes?"

He shrugged. "We have heroes of our own. Quick, which element is necromancy strongest against?"

"Shadow?"

He hit me. "Shadow is one of the forces, not an element."

My System disagreed, but I kept my mouth shut about that.

"Water, due to Necromancy's strong ties to the Earth element." And yes, under different elemental arrays, you got different answers. Red Hare was a big believer in Quintessence Hermeticism: Fire dominated Air, which dominated Earth, which dominated Water, which dominated Fire, and when all four dominated in sequence, it produced Quintessence.

I knew that as Arcane Mana, which I had also worked into my daily Mystic Training Regimen.

I admit I've never been clear on the divide between Arcane and Divine, probably because it really is more of a matter of perspective. The elements in particular cross that border freely.

"Finally, a correct answer. And that makes it weak against?"

"Air." I said, but that again was only the right answer for Red Hare. For a long time, I worried that this inaccurate answer counted as a lie.

Master had conjured the Green Flame, and I served as balance for the Necromantic Omen. He seemed pleased with the future revealed by the intestines.

The infusion of the skull also went well, and Master had me mix the blood ink while he reported to Gorruk the Mighty and Sarsha the Ever Beautiful about the coming times.

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I knew Master would be upset if I drew any of the sigils on the skull, so I began the preparations for the ritual of Dead Earth. It converted Earth mana into Death mana. At best, it was a two for one exchange, but many necromancers just didn't have the Death pool to perform all the rituals they needed to.

And combat, the way it burns through mana, made certain that such conversion rituals were quick and reasonably safe. Remember what I said about magic? That goes double for the Death magics.

So I was extremely careful in siphoning mana from the Earth, into the ritual, and then into the skull. The System told me, again, that my protection had stopped me from acquiring Aura Taint.

When the mana began leaking from the skull, I knew that the sigils were an important prerequisite, after all.

There was no telling when Red Hare was coming back. I needed to inscribe the sigils. Now. So, Thulian necromantic constant on the forehead, that was the centerpiece.

The surrounding sigils were common enough, each pair reinforcing and refining the previous set. In the back, a simple mandala for cycling the Death mana and spinning it back into the skull.

I breathed out, and in that moment Red Hare snatched the skull from my hands. "Not bad work." He said. "Improvised, and not the sigils we discussed, but this is functional."

He looked into the skull, the dull purple glow from its hollow eye sockets lighting his face. "This will work. At least once."

Blood Lore is a simple necromantic spell, used to gather bits and pieces of a recently deceased being's memories. Master seemed less thrilled with the results of that, even as the necromantic energies drained off of him.

"Well, young Goat. You wanted to see how we deal with human heroes. It seems they are already on their way."

He looked down, set the now empty skull onto a table. "Narrow Valley. A village large enough, successful enough, to have vassal villages."

He seemed much older as he ran his hands through his long black hair. "They have a burner, a fire mage. Not an adept, but a full mage. We need to step up your magic counters. How is your Water mana pool?"

Countering magic is simple only in theory. Magic doesn't like you, whatever your affinity level. Using magic against magic is like walking into a household and asking two random members to fight each other on your behalf.

Shamans make sacrifices, practice their rites, and they never, ever rely just on magic.

There are those who summon spirits, who rack up favors in the other-worlds, those who store up one shot spell devices and mana batteries. We didn't have those resources.

What I did was grinding. Doing the same thing over and over and over again.

I stood in the river literally for hours, tapping mana from the river, and casting Move Water to attempt to raise a wall. Nearly killed myself several times. I coughed up water from my amphibian lungs, but the one that nearly killed me was when I dehydrated in place.

A body can only re-hydrate so fast, even a body such as mine. But after four hours, vision returned. The next day, I could stand. I was even able to climb out of the Spore Pits.

"What. The. Seven. HELLS!?" I asked Red Hare.

"You should add a Master at the end of that."

"Master."

"Better. Okay, so you survived that. How far down is your health?"

"It's at under a quarter. Red."

"Keep up your daily regimen. You get to try again when you're at full."

"That could take a week."

"Then it takes a week."

We didn't have a week.

#

When the centaurs struck again, the tribe should have known. And they did, when one of the distant cave entrances lit up with a bright blue bonfire, wider than a longhouse, and rising sixty feet into the air.

Master and I didn't need to see it.

"What was THAT?" I asked.

"That," said Red Hare, "was the magical equivalent of banging two pots together and demanding any other mages come out and face you. If we were witch doctors, we'd need to worry about that."

"Who is the tribal witch doctor?"

"We don't have one. Haven't since the last one got herself full of arrows."

"What is the plan for dealing with them?"

"Plan? A good mage can use only two or three spells like that a day. Not the one we need to worry about."

I sighed. "Two or three of those will cut through our entire youth."

"And? Young Goat, we are Goblins. We die in droves to wear our enemies down. It's what we do. No, we don't worry about the mage. We need to worry about the warriors, the hunters, the ones who are already wading through the dead at that entrance into the nest."

"Wait, they're inside the nest?"

"Do you think they made that big noise to stay outside and get worn down by goblin arrows?"

"They keep alcoholic poisons in their house. I'm only certain I don't know how humans think."

"Fair enough. Think like you were two, maybe three times larger than you are. You've lived and thus cultivated longer than any goblin in this nest. Can you think like that?"

"I'd be a monster. If I've done nothing but train to kill things for that long, I'm good at it."

"Yes, and what else are you good at?"

"My stamina and health meters are so high that no mere goblin can take me down. I'm not worried about fighting dozens of goblins, I have the fatigue to activate combat skills several times per day, and the daily uses to do that."

"And? Your equipment?"

"I have weapons capable of killing goblins in a single hit, and armor making their weapons useless."

"Next to useless. Some classes work on increasing the odds of a critical hit, increases damage."

"But – humans have access to those same classes."

"And they have them at higher levels. As you said, more abilities and more uses. Deadlier abilities, as well. Then throw in the fact that they've got at least some magical training, if only to resist being brought down by spells."

I fathomed what such a monster would be capable of. "How are we not doomed?"

He threw a pebble at my head. "Hey!" I said.

"Good. Now how many times can you dodge before I hit you?"

"Maybe twice."

"Maybe none, but let's go with that. One in four times, I can hit you with a thrown rock. Let's say I use fist sized rocks instead of pebbles. One point of damage each."

"Okay, with twenty hits, you could kill me. Eighty thrown stones. But in that time, a human could kill either of us eighty times over."

"Sure could, in fact let's be conservative and say they can kill eight of us per stone we hit them with, and that the average human has thirty or so health points."

"We could, that's easily the entire tribe, for just one human. I already don't like the exchange ratio."

"Too bad, kid. Ask math no questions you don't want the answers to. So, our tunnels keep the humans from killing us more than eight at a time. How would you win?"

"We'd have to lure them into the caverns, where more than eight of us could attack them at a time."

"And the humans could fight us more than one of them at a time. How long could we sustain those kinds of losses?"

"Is there an eighth hell for mathematicians?"

He shrugged. "Do I look like I can summon anything all the way from any hell?"

"So what's the answer? Even if we trap them in a tunnel, that's still two of them. One in front and one in back."

"Uh huh. So sixteen goblins are getting murdered per thrown rock."

"We don't use rocks. We have to use bows."

"Good. Why bows?"

"The tunnels are a goblin and a half tall. That means the upper third of the tunnel has only human targets in it."

"Right. So let's say four archers on each side have clean shots. Each of them has a full quiver of ten arrows. It still takes two teams of them all their arrows to kill a human."

"We'd need ambushes and traps. Ways of damaging them without first taking damage ourselves."

"Things like blinding flash powder, or smoke powder, both of which our alchemists make."

"So what happens is we don't fight them fairly. We make them pay for every step into our caverns."

"Well, not at first. First we just let them hack apart the youth. Then, once they get in deep enough that we're sure they can't fight their way back, that's when they hit the first traps, and when we start hitting them with everything."

"But – it takes two years for a goblin spawn to become a youth, and – " I waved a hand, " - however long after that for them to become an adult. Even if it's only two of them, that sets the nest back… four years."

"About that much." Said Master.

A warrior came to our small chamber. "Master Red Hare. Sarsha the Ever Beautiful requires your presence in the cavern of warriors."

"Does she, now? Well, come along, young Goat. This is going to be educational."

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