Bob looked at me.

"Cause I'm a girl."

"Oh."

"You didn't know?"

"No."

There was a moment of awkward silence as we looked at each other.

"I wouldn't have given you a boy’s name if I did." I added.

Smack.

Now, I feel I need to explain that at this point my mind was still groggy. The advancement ceremony alone had been enough put me out of whack and that was followed by two fights, the second of which culminated in some extreme noggin abuse. I really wasn’t at my most clear-headed.

“Listen, Bob, I…”

“Don’t you fucking speak to me!”

Still, that didn’t explain how I could confuse Bob’s gender after being quite literally locked in with her for several months. Yes, our facilities, which amounted to a hole in the ground, were obfuscated by a sprawling bush of vine. And it’s not like I made an effort to spy on the children when they went there to do their business. Still...

“Couldn't we just change your name, how about Mary, or Rosie?”

“My name was bestowed upon me by the Mother!”

That was a problem. It also reminded me that after all this time I still haven’t had the chance to actually check my status window. I guessed that must have been what Bob was talking about and grew quite interested, only it wasn’t the time to ask about it.

“We could just call you by some other name. Between each other. And if it was Mother herself who named you this way, I don’t see how I’m responsi-”

This cop out earned me another smack on the head. Even not knowing a thing about the system, I realised that the odds of her being named Bob not having anything to do with my previous actions were pretty much nil.

The situation was growing dire. There really wasn’t anything I could say to defend myself, safe for the fact that I’m a human from another world who got reincarnated as a goblin child with all my former memories intact, and that wasn’t a road I was willing to take.

Bob stood next to me fuming, her face no longer pale but swelling with deep shades of green. Alpha stood beside her, clearly playing the support role, his eyes full of righteous indignation mixed with a distinct trace of schadenfreude, oh my God… Don’t tell me Alpha’s a girl too. If these two joined forces with each other, there really wouldn’t be a future left for me.

It was chief’s announcement that the final contest for the leader was to commence that saved me. I jumped into the ring, ready to face anything if it let me escape Bob’s righteous fury. This elicited cheers from the spectating goblins. My act of cowardice luckily misunderstood as youthful bravado.

Truthfully, I wasn’t in a state to do battle. My left arm was still busted and the previous two fights cost me a significant amount of blood. In fact, I could claim with some degree of confidence that close to half of the fluid splattered around the arena came from my own body. My head felt woozy. It was an achievement in itself that I was still standing. Especially since I’ve never even been in a fight in my previous life.

I couldn’t tell if I was getting swept in the atmosphere of the ceremony or if the system had made some alterations to my psychology after all. One thing was for sure, in my previous life, the pain of getting my arm mutilated alone would have been too overwhelming to bear.

The goblin who received my challenge came from the group that didn’t have any other colored goblins. I tried to size him up and only now I realised the sheer difference between the two of us. He was about a head taller than me. When I looked up I could see two tusks jutting out from between his lips. His skin was red like Alpha’s, only its hue was much deeper. There wasn’t any hair on his bald scalp. Only the flecks of white light from the burning pyre reflected of it in a hypnotizing manner.

I found it incomprehensible that he could be a newly advanced youth like the rest of us. He looked more akin to the chief than anything else. It wasn’t just that he was taller. He was larger too. Goblins didn't really boast a chiselled physique, you could tell if one looked stronger, sure, but they never were bulky. He was.

When the fight began, I planned to create distance between the two of us, only it didn’t quite work out. My opponent didn’t charge at me like Alpha, but when I swiftly retreated, the distance between us instead of growing, shrank. His movements were unhurried, but they carried within them a sense of inevitability.

When the first blow came flying my way, I couldn’t even dodge it. A massive fist crashed straight into my chest. The sound of breaking ribs was instantly followed by a wave of excruciating pain and a horrifying sense of something being very wrong with my body.

Earlier I was surprised how I could continue fighting despite my injuries and now I understood the difference. Only I wasn’t in a state to really understand anything. This one punch completely debilitated me. I was reduced to a spasming ball of hurt, unable to move at all, even if my life depended on it.

“Pathetic.” the red goblin uttered his first words since the beginning of the match. He walked up to me and possibly considering using his hands too troublesome, straight out kicked me in the face. And then again. My body kept erupting in pain until darkness enveloped me, as the true leader of our generation claimed his rightful place.

****

I woke up on the ground in a cramped, dimly lit room. The same type of lichen that grew in our nursery covered the walls, its fibrils pulsating in a faint blue light. Memories of the ceremony came back in flashes. The white of the blazing pyre in my mind clashing with the calming glow which surrounded me now.

I tried moving my body. That action must have sent a signal to my pain receptors, cause suddenly numerous regions flared up in pain simultaneously. I paused shifting, but that couldn’t stop the flow now that the dam had broken.

My whole body appeared to be staging a violent protest against the abuse I had put it through. Sore muscles teamed up with lacerated flesh while pulled tendons coordinated with broken bones - all of them united to give me a thorough understanding of all the subtleties and multitudes of meaning hidden in the simple word hurt.

I began regretting waking up. Even as weak as I was right now, I couldn’t imagine being able to fall asleep again when tormented by this level of pain. The efficacy of the healing potion that I was so impressed with before must have a sharp drop-off point. If I was given one to begin with.

My mind started churning, the distraction bringing me a slight relief from pain. I skipped past the flashbacks of my battles, they were too directly related to my current condition to offer much reprieve. Instead I thought further back, recalling my advancement process. Wasn't it high time I checked my status window?

I didn’t know where to start, so I simply concentrated, trying to will the status window into existence - only it appeared on its own as soon as I thought about it. It didn't exactly materialise itself per se, I would rather compare it to a very clear and direct awareness of my whole being. Still, if I were to share it, it’d look something like this.

STATUS

Name: Rhys

Species: Azure Goblin (youth)

Health: 87/140 (175)

Mana: 0/0

Level: 1 (0/1000)

-Attributes-

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 7

Agility: 5

Constitution: 6

Intelligence: 12

-Secondary Attributes-

Perception: 9

Focus: 10

Willpower: 10

Resistance: 9

[2 unspent attribute points remaining]

-Skills-

Hand to hand combat (Basic): 1/5

Sneaking (Basic): 1/5

General melee weapon proficiency (Basic): 1/5

Goblin tongue: 3/3

[4 unspent skill points remaining]

-Traits-

Awakened monster

Lowlight vision

Variant species (goblin)

Dungeon species

It was… brief. It really didn't sit well with me seeing my whole person reduced to some rows of arbitrary numbers. Especially the skills category. Maybe it could suffice for a young goblin, but my body housed the soul of an adult man, how come none of my abilities carried over?

Not that I had any real fighting skills to begin with, this being the one category the system was most interested in. It couldn't escape my notice that if transplanted to my previous world, the status of an accomplished scientist wouldn't look too different from that of a random schmuck.

I was at least glad that I still had my unspent points. If I wanted to, I could instantly max out any of the three skills I had. I wondered if that's what Bob and Alpha did. I may be wrong, but their improvement in technique struck me as much more pronounced than my own.

What about the attribute points? Had I raised my strength to eight, would have I been able to turn the tables on that red monster? The answer… probably no. I was completely spent when we faced each other, but I still didn't believe that even if I was fully recovered, increasing a single attribute by thirty percent would've been enough to give me an edge in that fight.

That is as long as the attributes scale up linearly… The greatest hurdle I am facing right now is the lack of information. Coupled with little to no leeway for experimentation. Are these points the only method to increase my stats? Do I receive them every time I level up or is it a one time deal? Should I save them for later to instantly raise a useful skill or will this sort of greed lead me to a premature grave?

Countless questions with no easy answer. The one attribute I was eyeing with most interest was intelligence. It was clearly an outlier when compared to my physical stats. It reminded me of the message that ran past my eyes during the advancement ceremony: “Some attributes exceed the limits of the current race.” This alone had nearly spared me from my goblin fate.

Yes. Breaking the mold was the simplest way of escaping my current predicament. Earlier I had mused about the possible existence of some miraculous, life-extending medicine, but now I had an even better way. Changing my race altogether.

The process got interrupted back then, but what if I pinned down the requirements, wouldn’t it solve all my problems? Could I return to being human? Or even go a few steps further and transform into a dragon?

Images of my bright future ran past my eyes. I saw myself as a human warrior, charging bravely on my loyal steed and skewering that red bastard with my lance. My mind then filled with visions of me as a massive black-scaled dragon, lazily picking out the remnants of a certain goblin from between my teeth.

I broke out of my brief reverie and turned my attention back to the status window. Without waiting any longer I focused and thought: Add one point to Intelligence.