Why did no one ever lock their doors? I wondered as I slowly inched the bedroom door open. Still, I couldn’t afford to let my guard down at the blatant lack of security. This man had to have stats, and I had no idea what any of them were. If there was any chance he had some kind of ‘Senses’ stat I couldn’t dismiss him as being as deaf as humans generally were.

I finished easing the door open and slipped inside. The room was dark, but, thankfully, carpeted. Truly a strike of luck. The thick, fluffy flooring absorbed the sounds of my footfalls flawlessly, allowing me to creep right up to his bedside without any sound reaching even my own ears, let alone some human’s.

I checked under the pillow first. A mace? A literal, flanged mace, designed for smashing armor and breaking bone. Some priest. I let the edge of the pillow back down, then hesitated. That was a nice mace.

No. That wasn’t what I was here for. I mean, I was already in here. It would be a shame not to take advantage…

No. Priorities. God given superpowers first, then other stuff. I could rob this fool blind later. I left that lovely shiny mace behind me, moving to look under the bed instead, and found a chest tucked beneath it. Bingo.

I ran my hands over the smooth wood, searching until I found the clasp. My nimble fingers fiddled with it, but it wasn’t about to open anytime soon. Unlike the doors, this actually was locked.

Inconvenient, but ultimately a good sign. Considering the kind of valuables I’d already left in the open, from the gold candlesticks on the altar to the quality mace under his pillow, anything he considered worthy of locking up had to be good.

Hopefully divine gift good. I squirmed under the bed and lied on my back next to the chest, where I could fiddle with the chest in peace.

Unfortunately that didn’t help as much as I would have liked. The chest was quality wood, not something that I could carve through with my claws, and the lock was top notch as well. I’d thought my practice sneaking and stealing back home would help me out here, but this made the finest locks I’d ever picked look like child’s play in comparison.

Although considering how early I’d begun my life of crime that was quite literally true. I had broken through quite a few of those locks as a child, even by goblin standards. This lock was no crude assembly of scrap metal, but a carefully machined device designed with precision specifications. There was no way I could contort my claws into the correct shape to turn the right tumblers.

And that meant I needed the key. To steal the thing I needed to steal a different thing.

And I had a terrible premonition of where that key might be.

I crab-walked out from under the bed and climbed back to my feet. Swallowing, I leaned over the sleeping man, so close I could feel his breath on my face, and I confirmed my worst fears.

A leather thong was tied around his neck and deep under his nightshirt I could see the outline of a key.

Crap. I reached out and gently tugged at the leather string, trying to pull the key up with as little force as possible. The human snuffled, breaking the rhythm of his snores.

I froze.

The human rolled over onto his other side, and I barely managed to snatch my hands away before he brushed against me and gave the game away.

I took a deep breath, brushing cold sweat from my brow. Damn, but this was stressful. There was a world of difference between stealing the odd egg from a human’s backyard and trying to steal something from quite literally under his nose. Worse, he was sleeping on his chest now, completely blocking off the key I was trying to get.

I… could just kill him. It wouldn’t be too difficult, just a quick pop over to the kitchen to grab a knife followed by lining up the point and leaning in. I’d barely even feel the effort before his throat was split wide open and he bled his last.

But I couldn’t help but feel that was a terrible idea. Humans were vindictive bastards, and killing someone significant was the single fastest way to get on their bad side. Insignificant people were another matter entirely, but this man clearly stood tall in the community. His death would be noticed.

And if murder wasn’t an option… I eyed the sheets. I’d just have to put him in a somewhat deeper sleep.

I grabbed the sheets and bunched them up in my hands. The human might be stronger than me and this could very well lead to my death… but I hadn’t gotten where I was today by stopping to think about my actions.

Was that a good thing? Well, it didn’t matter, cause I’d already jumped on the human’s back.

The old man jerked in surprise and the second his head came off the pillow I looped my stolen sheet around his throat. I fell on my knees, driving them into the old man’s back with the full weight of my body. So, you know, not that much force, but I did my best. When you combined that with the cloth pulling upwards on his neck it was wasn’t actually half bad.

The human flailed randomly with no real force, but I could already tell he was far stronger than I was. I squeezed tighter, bending his body backwards and denying him leverage. By the time he fully registered what was going on it was already too late. He did his best to pry his fingers under my improvised garrote, but it was his fingers and hands against every muscle in my entire body.

And, terrifyingly, it was still close. This scrawny old man was unnaturally strong, even with no leverage, even half suffocated, it still took everything I had just to hold on. But hold on I did, and eventually his movements stilled.

I yanked the key off his neck and dropped back down beneath the bed. I needed to hurry, who knew when he’d wake up. My hands fumbled at the lock, struggling to line up the key. Before had been different, not all that far from what I’d been doing all my life.

But now? Now I was committed. I could search a house and be out with none the wiser, but, needless to say, assault didn’t work that way. Even a goblin like me could be a stranger to straightforward violence, and the idea of confrontation was nerve wracking.

I finally got the chest unlocked, only for the top to slam against the bed when I tried to pry it open. Piece of shit. I crawled back down there and wedge myself between the chest and the wall, planting both feet on the wall. I heaved with all my strength and slowly slid the heavy chest out from under the bed.

I opened the chest with trembling fingers. Inside was… a waterskin.

I honestly don’t know what I was expecting. Really would have figured it’d be fancier, ah, there it was. As soon as I’d picked up the waterskin I’d revealed the elaborate goblets and pitchers beneath it.

I wasn’t sure how important those were, but it wouldn’t hurt to use them. Without more information in was impossible to unravel the ceremonial aspects from the actually important bits, so I decided to go through the motions as closely as possible. This was my only chance, and I had no illusions about getting a second chance. If the humans caught me stealing something this valuable I wouldn’t last out the night without the power to escape.

I hooked my arm through a pitcher, grabbed a goblet and the waterskin with my free hands, and waddled out of the room burdened beneath a pile of goods that were very much improperly sized for goblin use. Damn inconsiderate of them.

I awkwardly dropped the goblet and pitcher onto the altar. I set down the waterskin with considerably more care, then rearranged the goblet and pitcher neatly. So, what came next?

I looked up at the great window that let in streams of moonlight. The ritual was administered by a priest, so it’d probably involve prayer in some capacity, but I somehow doubted that whatever god the humans worshipped would care much for me, so I just flipped off the sky and hurried through the rest of the ritual.

I emptied the waterskin into the pitcher, the pitcher into the goblet, and the goblet into my mouth. I gulped the elixir down as soon as it passed my lips, and my entire body tingled.

I paused. Was this it? I just felt kinda funny, no subtle enlightenments or great epiphanies. Maybe I needed more. I slurped down the remnants left in the pitcher, and, encouraged by the intensifying feeling, followed it with the entire waterskin.

Ah, this was better. Something was definitely happening. The tingly feeling had become an overwhelming pressure, pushing past my skin, through my body, and into my soul. I fell screaming as the intangible became tangible and a part of myself I’d barely been aware existed was forcibly wrenched into the spotlight.

My forehead cracked against the altar before I slammed into the floor, but I could barely feel it. Pain of the body was nothing to pain of the soul, and my soul was in agony. A foreign force drove into it, cutting through my metaphysical self like a knife through butter.

I’d never felt anything like it, nothing even remotely close, but somehow I knew I really should be dead. This kind of spiritual damage should have reduced me to a quivering corpse, blessedly unaware of what I suffered through.

But no, that would have been too easy. Instead I had to bear this torment, awake and alive, aware through it all. It only seemed to grow worse, deeper in its mutilation of my inner self… until it stopped. Stopped growing worse, and plateaued into a never ending plain of constant agony.

I lay there, going over everything I’d ever done in my entire life, every mistake I’d ever made from drinking the elixir all the way back to that fateful choice that had sealed my exile.

No. That was no mistake. That had been worth it, was still worth it, even now. I’d owed it to Mother to try, even if it had been doomed to failure from the start.

I go through all that misery to free those slaves, even seeing them safely back to human lands, and in the end it had been the humans who’d killed them. Seriously, I couldn’t understand those fuckers. They had an entire over complicated Adventurers Guild system to protect people from ‘monsters’, but then they just slaughter whole villages themselves?

And this fucking elixir, why was a torture device masquerading as an empowerment method? All it did was hurt, and I hadn’t even started with the stat meditation stuff. If the beginning was this painful, what was the rest like?

Wait was that the problem? I’d stopped half way through, no wonder shit was going wrong. All I had to do was finish it.

It was simple they said. All you had to do was envision your stats they said. They hadn’t covered the excruciating pain.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to look past the pain and envision the powers I wanted, like shooting lasers out of my eyes and having a funny frog tongue to eat bugs with.

Instantly the pain got worse. Somehow. How could the pain always get worse? A mystery, but much like life itself, no matter how terrible it was, there was always somewhere further downhill to go.

At least this mistake was relatively easy to correct. The pain returned to its previous levels pretty quickly after I stopped. Returned, but not vanished. So. How did I fix this? I still needed to do something with the divine energy let loose in my soul, or who knew what the fuck it would do.

I’d have to go with some more conventional stats. It was clearly possible to do weird shit with this Soul System nonsense, like shooting blinding venom out of your hand, but if I couldn’t make that work, so be it. I’d have to satisfy myself with the kind of blanket physical enhancements that the priest’s lessons had covered.

I centered myself once more, focusing on what I had to do. I had a far better image of it this time, and the difference was stark.

Feet pounding the dirt as I ran, torches and pitchforks at my heels.

Speed.

Leaping from alley wall to alley wall, reaching the rooftops just ahead of the guard’s blades.

Agility.

Arm snaking at impossible angles, painfully contorting to reach the door handle from the open window.

Dexterity.

Writhing in pain as the poison coursed through my veins, unable to move, but too stubborn to die.

Constitution

The razor’s edge slamming through muscle and bone, only to fall just short of the heart.

Toughness.

Shoving bark and dirt down my gullet, desperate enough to wring sustenance from stones.

Metabolism.

Detecting the slightest noise on the move, evading ambushes with ease.

Senses.

The divine power slammed shut on my soul in on last moment of transcendent agony, and then it was over, every piece falling into place within a new equilibrium.

I passed out.