“Urgh...”

A few hours later, Yeung woke up to a throbbing pain from the left side of his head. He got up from the couch and touched the bridge of his nose.

“...Another dream... I've been having these a lot lately. Though it felt slightly different this time.”

Dreams that always seemed so vivid, but he couldn't for the life of him remember. Always ending with a lingering scent of iron, the feeling of the wetness of rain, and a heat on his chest and on the back of his neck.

However, right now he woke up to just the last one.

He tried to recall— but same as before, only glimpses and sensations resurfaced in his mind. There was never an entire picture.

“Hmmm?”

Yeung's nose twitched as it caught whiff of an entirely different scent. The smell of something he'd dearly missed— something that didn't exist at the far-off town he had been stationed at. He stood up and allowed his nose to lead him to the dining table.

“That Dokk... You don't feed something like this to a person that hasn't eaten for two days.”

On the table was a pot of instant noodles.

Touching the pot— it was already cold. The noodles had already swelled and absorbed much of the water of the soup. A sorry presentation for a meal, even Yeung didn't have much of an appetite for it.

“Heukk!”

While staring at the pot, a sharp pain suddenly spread across his body— a stinging sensation throbbing on the left half of his forehead causing him to grimace.

In an abrupt fashion, he took the pot off the table and emptied its contents into his mouth.

“—Something else!” He yelled.

...It wasn't enough, he scrambled to Dokk's refrigerator— scrounging for anything and everything edible. His body was furiously asking for something, an intense craving worsening the pain spreading across his body with each second he didn't fulfill its wishes.

“These aren't it either! Urgh...”

At first, Yeung thought it was food. He felt his stomach filling but groaned as there was a lack of reprieve.

“AAAARGH!!!”

The pain became worse enough to make him roar and grab at his chest.

“Dokk!!! Where are you!?” He called out.

“Aaaagh!!! The heck is this!?”

With no signs of his companions, Yeung rushed out of the house screaming. He ran to wherever his legs took him, paying no attention to his path.

At a certain point, the agony he was feeling had thankfully reached a summit. Unfortunately, there was an incredible discomfort that followed— an itch raging wildly across his wounds. Now, Yeung knew not to pick at them, but the sensation of ants biting on his bandaged head was unbearable, causing him to violently rip off his dressings.

“Aaaarghhh!!!”

“Guaaak?”

Then, a lone goblin made its way into his dazed view.

“Goblin!!!”

The stir of emotions within Yeung's only permitted him one word, but the expression on his face and the cold glow around his eyes spoke volumes to the goblin.

Prey— The one word in its language that it gleaned from Yeung's face.

“GUAAAAAAAK!!!”

The goblin quickly ran with its tail between its legs.

It kept running and running, slamming its feet against a few rocks and debris on the ground but ignoring the pain in fear for its life. A terrible feeling that disappeared and had no longer surfaced even once since its arrival in this world.

The human—! The human was looking at it like it was prey!

The dread of a lowly creature being hunted down slowly clamped onto its neck.

A few moments later, the goblin dropped down onto the pavement, snuffed of the light in its eyes. A weak, luminous cyan glow emerged from its unwounded body.

Yeung caught up to it and stared at the mist, before slowly hovering his hand and allowing it to seep into his skin.

“...This is what you wanted...?”

A weak growl persisted in his throat.

This was it. This was what his body was craving for— experience points, he called it.

“Not enough...”

The measly amount that came from this one goblin wasn't enough.

Bang! Gunfire echoed in the distance.

“They must've gone to rescue the kid without me...”

With a bit of his rationality returning— Yeung thought back to this morning at the bridge, how it was that he had defeated the first goblin champion.

“Alright... I know what to do...”

The weak growl in his throat slowly built up as he limped his way towards the sound of the conflict.

“Wah— Dokk went all out.”

With bodies of goblins littered across the road, Yeung arrived to the scene of a massacre. The numerous wounds on the bodies indicated they were cut down by a small blade.

Hand-to-hand combat was mandatory in the army and it seemed Dokk was making full use of his training.

“Thanks for the meal.”
Yeung clapped his hands together and absorbed the glow coming off the bodies. After devouring the last one, he was startled by an explosion from the other side of the wall.

“—Wahh! He sure is making one hell of a fuss.”

A few more explosions resounded behind the wall. Yeung guessed that Dokk must've been planning to be a distraction while the sister snuck her brother out of the school building.

“Ah? Didn't think I'd be glad to see you.”

Arriving at the second and much larger hole that he had made on the wall, Yeung picked up something from a pile of rocks.

“Now, to put you to good use. Huhuhu.”

In his hands once again was his trusty, goblin-slaying crowbar.

“Guaaak!!!”

“One!!!”

As a goblin spotted him and charged at him from the hole, he delivered a solid whack on its head, sending it flying back inside.

“This seems like a good spot for rule number one.” Yeung let out a ferocious grin as he absorbed the trail of its cyan glow.

After taking in the experience points from the goblins scattered about, his body was feeling great. It wasn't back to a hundred percent, but there was no longer pain nor any tingling coming from his wounds.

“Now— Two!” Yeung smacked another goblin that popped up from the hole.

”—Time for round two.”