Syl

Chapter 36: Essence

Garz only approached me once I started to shift back into my goblin form. He no doubt had complex emotions about this outcome; the humans were dead, but the loss of goblins was over sixfold. I felt oddly calm about being surrounded by death, and I thought my first time killing a human would have affected me. But if anything, I felt more upset about the dead goblins, which still couldn't even compare to Sylthaeryn. I decided to break the silence.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes. No." He was looking at all the corpses with a resentful expression.

"What happened to Zizz? I thought all the humans were dead or incapacitated."

"He... Wanted to stab axe human. Kill him. Get glory. When he stabbed human. Suddenly human come to life," Garz said bitterly, "Human killed Zizz. Then human die."

That was a horrible outcome. He was on the verge of death and still managed to claim another life. It reminded me of the last burst of life from the Rage Boar, and looking at the notification, maybe the Barbarian class was the reason.

"Sorry Garz. At least we protected the rest of the tribe."

He nodded but didn't say anything. I walked over to where the cleric and barbarian corpses were and started dissolving them through tendrils, depositing what remained of their equipment in my storage. Everything went inside except for a backpack belonging to the barbarian - it absolutely refused to be stored. I opened the backpack to look inside, but it was empty.

"Storage bag," Garz suddenly told me.

He had walked over while I was looting. I handed it over to him, and he turned it inside out. Suddenly, various contents spilled out from nowhere: bottles, food, sleeping bags, and a few copper and silver coins. However, what startled me was when a bunch of goblin ears fell to the floor.

"Chief says they collect ears. Proof to other humans." Garz explained after seeing my confusion.

"You take the bag, I don't need it."

Garz nodded and started to collect the goblin equipment. I took the copper and silver coins, leaving everything else from the pouch to him, and then started to help collect all the goblins together. I was tempted to absorb them, but Garz mentioned something about essence and plants and requested that I don't eat any goblins. I complied, half out of respecting his wishes and the other half wanting an excuse not to be called a glutton.

Garz left the party while we worked. While doing the monotonous task, I could spend time thinking; I had two trait points to spend after all. I had previously peeked at the partially complete badger profile and surprisingly found one trait that ignored my lack of organs.

Survive lethal damage a number of times equal to trait level.

Refreshed daily.>

It sounded perfect, although the method of potentially leveling up the trait was a terrifying thought. Putting myself in an actual death scenario was not on my to-do list, but perhaps through willpower and a serving of masochism, I could inflict lethal damage on myself before sleep.

The human profile was strangely more similar to the goblin profile than the elf profile. They had a chance to be born with a random amount of random traits and only a single exclusive trait, which they were born with.

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Greatly increase the speed and ease of learning new traits and skills.

This trait has no levels.>

Getting that first level could be painfully long, and by my estimation, it was easier to get a skill to level two and most of the way to three than it was to learn a fresh skill. While browsing, I found something familiar in the list of random traits.

<>

Receive extra experience towards improving traits and skills.

This trait has no levels.>

It sounded amazing. No wonder my past self bought it, and now my present self was going to.

'What...?' I thought and tried again.

"What?!" I questioned and tried again.

I was frowning now, and Garz had approached from my outburst.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm trying to purchase a trait, and it won't let me."

"I've never heard that before."

"Neither have I. When I tried to purchase something incompatible previously, I received an entirely different message." I explained and tried to purchase [Untapped Potential] to confirm.

I tried to purchase [Prodigy] again.

"Dammit Gramps..." I muttered, causing Garz to raise an eyebrow in confusion.

I moved to another trait I had eyed out earlier and tried to purchase it.

Allows increasing or reducing the elasticity of slime mass.

This trait has no levels.

Compatible with other slime traits.>

"Ugh... Don't worry, Garz." I sighed in frustration.

After waiting around, a group of goblins arrived to collect the dead. I still wasn't sure what they were doing, but I held my questions until I saw the Chief. The goblins were a strange mix of mournful but celebratory, and by asking around, puzzled together that the death toll versus humans were usually far worse.

Back in the cave, I finally met up with Krutz. He thanked me for my contribution, and we exchanged some pleasantries before I asked about the dead.

"When a being dies, we receive only some of its essence for the deed. The remaining goes to the Gods, with a leftover portion feeding the land itself."

"But what is essence?"

"Our levels, traits, and skills. Everything that makes up our being and that we've earned."

"So you bury the dead near the crops for the essence to leak into?"

"Yes. In the human lands, they have beings they call Heroes. When a Hero dies, it is almost a worldly celebration, and they entomb the Hero surrounded by crops and far away from spawns."

"That's rather grim... What are spawns?"

"Areas where monsters can emerge. When an area is overly saturated in enough essence, then monsters can magically spawn. My original tribe was from a spawn. If we left the dead out in the forest, chances are wolves and boars would spawn."

Krutz was happy for the tribe to have another storage bag and agreed with Garz keeping it. After saying farewell to Garz and Krutz, I was about to leave for my abode when I remembered the last adventurer.

"One more thing... The last adventurer screamed something about a guild knowing of their death."

Krutz looked deeply troubled after I told him that. He started muttering to himself and then sighed and shook his head.

"We will need to prepare. We will need to kill the matriarch as soon as possible. We need to gain more strength."

I nodded and went home when it looked like the discussions had ended. I tried out my human form, and thanks to the complete profile and my high trait levels, it was a first-try success. When shifting over to my elf form, the knowledge of a similar humanoid form was quite compatible, and after only a little more effort, I had finally completed my form.

I then started looking over the loot I had taken from the adventurers, consuming the weapons to add to my existing profiles and adding a brand new profile.

I found bottles containing pinkish-red and blue liquid that glowed from my [Mana Sight] and decided to devour some of them.

"Health and Mana potions... Interesting." I mumbled to myself while looking over the details, "Wait... aren't Mana potions made from blue slime?"

I frowned at the remaining mana potion and deposited it along with the remaining health potion. The only other things that glowed with mana were four necklaces with an attached crystal. When I tried to absorb one, I felt immense pain in my mind and spat it out. I gave up on trying to eat one, so I tried wearing one instead, and strangely got a notification.

Identification attempt blocked.

Please return this ID to the nearest Adventurers Guild.>

"Well... That's something."