My eyes flashed open. My resistance has increased?! How was that possible? I quickly opened my status to look for changes. The resistance has indeed increased. The other stats didn’t budge, but there was one other discrepancy that was even more jarring.

My vitality showed 132/165 (175).

I gazed at the numbers incomprehensibly.

It was down to 113 after the fight with the dungeon monster, I was positive I was remembering that correctly. Yet even though I was later thrashed by Khar, instead of dropping further, it actually went up? Did his kicks carry a healing touch?

I exited the status window to inspect my condition the old fashion way. The scratches on my chest were pretty much healed. Even my broken ribs have almost returned to their normal condition. Only the fresh bruises from the sparring session continued to trouble me.

How is it possible?

Was it the stew? It did taste like manna from heaven when I ate it, but that was mostly because of the hunger I felt.

I gulped and almost choked on something hard in my mouth. The stone. I spit it out and observed it carefully.

It was a miracle in itself that I didn’t swallow it with the stew. By then I was too distracted to remember about it and if it hadn’t hidden itself so snuggly under my tongue, it would’ve already landed in my stomach.

Were my wounds healed by this little thing? I futilely tried to curb my enthusiasm. The feeling of resignation that had sunk into my bones wasn’t just kicked into me by Khar. This whole time I tried to raise my stats without any progress and the later beatings only fueled the dread I was already sensing.

Without being able to raise my levels I would never have the strength needed to escape from here. If the food continued to be monopolized by Khar, let alone getting stronger, maintaining my current condition would be difficult.

The anxiety I felt was replaced with giddiness. I popped the stone into my mouth and watched my vitality attentively. After about 5 minutes elapsed, my vitality once more increased by one point.

This proves it. The stone greatly sped up my recovery. And the stats could be increased without spending any points. It was even possible that if you raised them enough, you would trigger a level up.

I didn’t sleep a wink that night.

My mind was abuzz, furiously analyzing my situation and churning out plans for the coming days. I admit I was frantic, but now that I had found a ray of hope, I felt all the more terrified of losing it again.

When the next day began, I was the first to rise and woke everyone else. The concept of a new day was a bit of a misnomer in this case, since there wasn’t any difference between night and day here, but goblins followed some sort of an internal clock and you could hear increased sounds of activity coming from the outside.

My vitality continued increasing throughout the night and only slowed down when it reached 170/170 (175). As far as I understood it, the number in brackets designated what my vitality would look life if my condition was perfect. Should I suffer some permanent or incredibly slow to recover injuries, my real vitality would drop, leaving the number in brackets as a signpost. Without using a potion or, in my case, the red stone, it could remain at that level permanently.

The other goblins stared at me, clearly aware of the different aura about me. Still, no one said anything, they were all too hungry and bruised to spare the effort.

I walked to Alpha, who stood unsteadily.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.” He hissed back. There was something to be said about the strength of his spirit. Looking at his barely healed wounds, I couldn’t say I would be able to show similar determination. Though one of my plans required exactly that.

“Great.” I replied, smiling at his battered face. “Stick it in your mouth and suck it.” I said, giving him the stone. “If you somehow swallow it, I won’t wait for you to shit it out, I’ll cut you open and pull it out of your stomach.” I didn’t growl or bother to display any menace, but the calm certainty that resounded in my words still made him flinch.

“The rest of you” I turned around and faced them. “Gather as much of that glowing plant growing on the walls as you can and bring it here. Alongside a canteen of water.”

“We don’t have a canteen.” Bob said.

I thought for a second. Didn’t one of the other goblins have one? They shouldn’t have left by now.

“Then we’ll borrow it from someone else.” I said. “Gharak, you stay here, the rest of you, follow me.”

They followed me outside. In the anteroom the other group of goblins was already waiting for Kharak’s daily announcement.

I didn’t bother saying anything and simply walked up to their leader and before he managed to put up his guard, I punched him square in the jaw.

The other gobs were taken aback by this unexpected act of aggression and were stunned for a second before they reacted. I managed to land one more hit on their leader, when the other red goblin of their group took a swipe at me with his claws.

I nimbly ducked under his attack and punched him in his unprotected gut. The force sent him reeling, which allowed me to deliver a quick kick to his nethers.

The difference is incredible. During the night I decided that it was high time to spend my unassigned points. Saving them for later would only hamper my future growth. I put one point into Strength raising it to 7 and two of my skill points into Unarmed Combat. That felt like a massive waste, but I had little choice when there was no way I could get my hands on a weapon and even if I managed to, it’d probably end up being taken by Khar.

The three green goblins started surrounding me. I literally grew stronger overnight, but it wasn’t to the point that I could take on their whole group on my own, especially if they all threw themselves at me.

“What are you waiting for?! Help me!” I shouted at my own entourage who was even more stupefied by my actions than the group I attacked.

My words finally woke them up and they joined the fray. Bob went for one of the red goblins whereas Rubi and Trax focused the two green ones.

This allowed me a nearly unobstructed access to the leader of their group. The lone green goblin who still tried to assist him was dispatched with a single kick to the chest.

The leader’s eyes blazed with fury as he charged at me, employing the standard goblin maneuver of tackling your opponent to the ground. This didn’t faze me. My speed remained the same, but the instincts in my body reached a new level. When he got close, I easily sidestepped him and then gave him a good kick in the back.

He fell to the ground with a loud thud. I gave him one more hard kick to the head and moved to help out the rest of my group.

The whole fight probably didn’t take more than three minutes. Bob was virtually unscathed while her opponent moaned on the floor, his hands tightly clamped over his eye, some blood pouring from between his fingers. Trax and Rudi fared a bit worse, mostly trading injuries with their enemies until I came along. Still, I could feel their renewed enthusiasm, the gloom that started shrouding our group had mostly dispersed.

I grabbed the canteen from their fallen leader, his hateful gaze not souring my mood in the slightest.

“Trax.” I said. “It’s time you chose your new wardrobe.”

We left for the dungeon about an hour afterwards. My canteen was filled with water mixed with the glowing lichen that grew on the walls. So long as I vigorously shook the canteen beforehand, the liquid I sprayed worked like the glowing dye I saw the goblins paint their bodies with during the ceremony. My plan was to use it to mark our path. I didn’t know how long it would emit its light, now that the lichen was ripped from the walls, but it was worth investigating. At the very least it struck me as a much better solution than the ivy leaves.

Which didn’t mean I gave up on the ivy. When we reached the dungeon, I ignored the shocked expressions of my group and started smearing the juice from its crushed leaves all over my body.

My skin quickly became inflamed as a burning sensation started radiating from the affected areas. At first, the pain was noticeably lower than before, likely due to increased Resistance, but that quickly changed as I continued smearing the juices over my arms, chest, and legs.

“R-Rhys, what are you doing?” Bob asked, visibly unnerved by my spectacle.

“Raising my resistance.” I answered through gritted teeth, tears welling in my eyes. I looked at them. “You’re next.”

The party took a collective step back.

“Listen, we’ve noticed that you became stronger, but this is insane, the elder instructed us not to touch these-” I didn’t wait for her to finish and jumped her. She screamed pitifully and tried to disentangle herself from me, but as my skin was already covered in poison, any contact she made with me also spread it to her.

A burden shared is a burden lessened claims a proverb and in this case I couldn’t agree more. Especially since some of the burning juice literally moved from me to her. I didn’t torment Bob for too long however, just an hour ago she nearly plucked an eyeball from that red goblin and I wasn’t sure what she’d do now that she was really pissed off.

I quickly moved towards Rudi, but Bob actually followed after me. Her claws kept cutting into my already inflamed skin, as I was trying to spread the poison over Rudi, who also started screaming. We turned into a tangled, bloody mess, all of us shrieking in pain and trying to wrestle free from one another.

Thankfully, Bob noticed that while attacking me only increased the amount of the poison that would get on her skin, the opposite would happen if she focused on Rudi. This gave me a chance to grab a bit more of the ivy and pull the terrified Trax into the fray.

In the end, the only one who got spared was Alpha, who possibly for the very first time seemed to be glad to not be involved in an activity involving Bob. He merely watched from a safe distance, rapid clicking of his teeth somehow reminding me of a drum solo during a jazz concert.

Eventually everyone grew too tired to continue fighting. Bob just laid on the ground quietly weeping. I knew that the poison didn’t really damage ones vitality, but from the looks of it, our group seemed to be in a worse state than after our fight with the monster.

I stood by my decision. I didn’t know to what extent that ivy contributed to levelling up the Resistance stat, but it almost certainly helped. Also, if I said something like “I guess I might have overdone it a bit, let’s just forget about it.” the rest of the group would probably tear me apart.

“Let’s go.” I said. They all cast me hateful glances. “It doesn’t hurt as bad when you take your mind off it.”

My words didn’t seem to convince them one iota, but there really wasn’t anything else to do, so they followed.

I kept using the glowing dye to mark our way every time we came across a diverging path. The best thing would be to carve notches in the bricks themselves, but I didn’t have anything sharp and hard enough to do that.

Our excursion proved to be far less eventful than yesterday's one, if one were to discount the scuffle at the beginning. We haven’t met with any new monsters at any rate.

Along the way I kept picking up different species of mushrooms and plants that we came across. Testing them on oneself would normally prove suicidal, but with the help of the red stone, I figured I could afford to risk it.

Memories of poisons that could kill a grown man with a single drop flashed through my mind, but I was determined to gather strength at any cost. My XP bar still hasn’t gained even a single point after all.

I could theoretically test it on other goblins, but I felt a deep aversion towards the notion. I was also fairly sure that if I happened to accidentally kill one of them in my experiments, the tribe wouldn’t take it very well.

Before we returned to the tribe, I got my stone back from Alpha. His condition has recovered spectacularly during our hours long excursion. In the beginning, we had to slow down to match our speed with his, but on the way back, his brisk pace almost left us behind. Though that had something to do with Bob still being unreconciled with the poison smeared on her body.

Every now and again I would hear a litany of somewhat confused yelps coming from the red brute. Since he was the only one to be spared my resistance training, Bob would completely wrap herself around his poison free body and rub vigorously against his skin. I silently prayed for the poor bastard. One would have to be blind not to notice his obvious attraction to the girl, even if he was probably too young to realise it himself, but you could only shake your head at the target he had chosen for his advances.

Somehow, Bob had a talent for making their interactions a hotbed for new traumas. First she smashed his teeth and now even something as innocuous as cuddling would form a connection in his mind with the sensation of having your skin lit on fire. If there were therapists in this world, Alpha was steadily growing into one of those subjects ready made for a juicy paper that could secure you a tenure.

At least the glowing dye turned out to be a success. Our way back was lit with drops of brightly glowing liquid. While I grew even more convinced that there was little chance of getting lost in the maze like corridors of the dungeon, possibly a boon from my dungeon species trait, I had other plans for it. If it continued to emit the light, I could use it to mark out the layout of this place in its entirety.

Being able to sense which path to follow wasn’t exactly the same as actually knowing what was where. I was no longer afraid of getting lost, but if someone asked me to draw up a map, I would be left completely clueless. This way we could at least be confident in exploring a new section of the dungeon every time we set out to scavenge for food. If that strange monster really came from the outside, we were bound to eventually find the entrance it used to get in here.

With my arms full of possibly poisonous mushrooms, and my ears tuning out the disturbing noises coming from behind, I ventured forth, still energized by the small progress I was making.

STATUS

Name: Rhys

Species: Azure Goblin (youth)

Health: 171/171 (175)

Mana: 0/0

Level: 1 (0/1000)

-Attributes-

Strength: 7 [+1!]

Dexterity: 7

Agility: 5

Constitution: 6

Intelligence: 13 [+1!]

-Secondary Attributes-

Perception: 9

Focus: 10

Willpower: 10

Resistance: 10 [+1!]

-Skills-

Hand to hand combat (Basic): 3/5 [+2!]

Sneaking (Basic): 1/5

General melee weapon proficiency (Basic): 1/5

Goblin tongue: 3/3

[2 unspent skill points remaining]

-Traits-

Awakened monster

Lowlight vision

Variant species (goblin)

Dungeon species