“Good riddance.” The human cast me aside like so much trash and I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. There was no paralytic in the venom, but I had too much sense to move now. Movement I could do, but breathing I very much couldn’t. No sense in wasting air.

I lay there in the dirt, strength slowly leaving my body, too terrified to move. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, I could only lie there and hope. What I was hoping for I didn’t know.

“OHMYGODTHATWASAMAZING!”

I almost winced at the sound of the human brats fawning over him. The entire village seemed excited at the prospect of the cloaked human and he seemed happy to preen at their praise.

“Well, of course an adventurer like me can exterminate a goblin problem. One must eliminate these before they become a full-fledged infestation.”

Interesting. His kind of strength wasn’t normal for a human. I’d already been able to guess at that, given what I’d seen from the villagers, but it was nice to know for sure. The more relevant question would be-

“Why yes, I am one of the more powerful adventurers in the area. All the result of hard work and strong faith. Pay attention to your preacher and I’m sure you’ll get great Stats yourself one day.”

That particular overheard tidbit piqued my interest. Whatever secrets the humans used to become so strong, to overrun the surface world and put fear into the hearts of even Hobs, they taught it to their children.

I wanted that power. I needed it and I was already scheming how I could take it for myself. I knew a lot of goblins who wouldn’t plan at the best of times, let alone when they were dying, but it wasn’t like I had anything better to do at the moment. I would live or I wouldn’t, at this point my survival depended on whether my body could work out the poison before I suffocated to death, not on my own actions. Flailing about would only destroy whatever miniscule chances of survival I had left.

Eventually the humans wandered off to celebrate the adventurer's ‘vanquishing of evil’ in the comfort of their own homes, but not before I gleaned a few more morsels of information.

The humans viewed the ‘Soul System’, as they called it, as a divine gift, something to even the odds between the so-called civilized races and the monstrous hordes of ravenous goblins, orcs, and wargs. Amusing to think that they humans feared us when they had monsters like that cloaked human on their side. Even ignoring him, they were three times the size of us!

Cowards.

At any rate, the gods didn’t seem to believe in a free lunch. Their Soul System didn’t give you power for free, it was ultimately only a mechanism for removing someone’s natural limits. The manners of using it were unclear, I was overhearing offhand mentions, not a lecture.

That would come later. For now it was enough to know that the System worked in levels, with each level functioning as a stabilizing factor that allowed a mortal soul to contain drastically more magical power than normally possible, which could be used for... things? Chasing goblins and being really annoying I guess.

Clearly more research was required, but I’d be damned if I was going to spend anymore time around that adventurer. I gradually regained my ability to breath and control my body, and as soon as I was sure no one was looking. That was quite a while, but once the raccoons started sniffing around to see how edible was I figured it was time. I really didn’t want to be here when the sun came up.

I did managed to snag a raccoon through, so that was a plus. I got a few scratches, but raccoon’s had nothing on goblins. I broke its neck after a brief struggle and retreated to the safety of the trees.

I spent the next three sunrises in the forest, subsisting off of berries and the leftover nutrients from my raccoon. Raccoons weren’t terribly large, but it was still a hell of a meal to eat by yourself, so when I headed back to the human village I was reasonably fit, a far cry from what I felt like most days.

With the luxury offered by my current state of non-starvation, I stopped on the edge of the forest, perched in a tree, and watched.

Humans were funny creatures, strange and bizarre in more ways than I could count, and their structures were easily the most obvious one. I’d always had trouble wrapping my head around their separate exposed dwellings, especially when I knew they were fully capable of far superior constructions.

Though I suppose a species that could rely on the protection of adventurers didn’t need the security of a good hole. Indeed, the village was far more focused on convenience than security. The separate dwellings made it perfectly clear who lived where, and the spread out buildings let them live right next to their gardens.

But not all of them housed small families, as was the norm. One only seemed to contain a single elderly man, with far fancier clothes than anyone else. He was clearly important, with a larger house that the villagers sent their children to each morning.

Some form of tribute, obviously. Children had nimble little hands, so he probably had them working on something, the only question was what, and what he did for the villagers in return.

I initially disregarded my curiosity, it would only put me at risk, but… didn’t I want to learn their secrets? I could hardly do that without learning to understand them, and this completely baffled me. I needed to find out the root of this.

And that meant putting myself at risk. I didn’t like sticking out my neck, but for the potential benefit, it was worth the risk, and that meant going back into the lion’s den.

I didn’t need long to scope out the settlement. I’d already been intermittently stealing from them for weeks, so I had a pretty good idea of the layout (simple) and security (nonexistent). The only risk was that adventurer, but the odds of him actually sticking around in some tiny village was miniscule.

I waited for nightfall before I made my move, and by the time the sun rose I was safely hidden. The building was already the largest in the village and most of that was taken up by a single room. Strangely it didn’t have any workbenches or tools, solidifying the mysterious nature of the place. Instead the place was lined with pews all facing towards an altar.

But the true nature of this place would become evident soon enough. What was most relevant was that a wooden building of this size needed equally sizeable rafters to support its roof if it wasn’t going to have any intervening walls to hold up the weight, and that gave me plenty of space to hide and gave me a great view to boot.

I’d expected to be crouching under some furniture and relying largely on hearing, so this was a welcome surprise. It wasn’t easy to climb up there, but it wasn’t like I had the same kind of dead weight dragging me down that a human would. I managed it without too much trouble, and once I was up there it was downright simple to get around.

I clambered up to the very peak of the rafters, sandwiching myself between the heavy wooden beams and the thatched roof above, and finally let myself fall asleep.

I blinked my eyes open to the painfully bright light that the humans were stupid enough to let into their building with their massive windows and saw the robed man speaking before a loose mass of human children. “...so who can tell me the methods of stat generation?”