I spent the next few days building up my food supplies again. I did some hunting while I tried to tame my goblin but two mouths to feed ate through most of my smoked meat. I figured out a way to cook the food near the house without having a pillar of smoke give away my location. The solution was pretty obvious, I needed to block it off from rising with the smoker.

 

Unfortunately, I didn't have a container. I overlapped several branches thick with leaves on top of each other over and over again to slow the escape of the smoke. Some could be visible if you looked very hard for smoke but it wouldn’t be a beacon for my exact location now. It also let me smoke much more meat at one time if I needed to.

 

That hasn’t been a problem yet but if I managed to kill another wolf having an area to smoke several weeks worth of meat at once would be a godsend. Once again I wished I was more prepared for this trip. A pot or pan to cook with. Some actual rope or canvas, anything I could cut with or just better clothing or armor as well. I dwelt on my situation feeling sorry for myself for another few minutes before I had to get up and find some more small animals to kill.

 

I spent the next four days just killing small creatures. At one point a pack of six wolves passed close by but if they noticed me they didn’t bother hunting me down. When I went for water one of the times a huge fish the size of my arm jumped out at me and I managed to kill it, letting me change up my diet for the next few days. Another time I was close to the river I spotted a goblin filling up a container. My heart skipped a beat at the sight.

 

I got to the exact opposite side of the water and started to rush across to limit the amount of time he would have to react to me. He noticed me when I was about halfway through the river and the look of shock and fear crossed his face at the same time. He had no weapons with him but it looked like he was the water carrier for the entire goblin clan. He was loaded with different types of containers for holding water.

 

He had an extremely long leather storage container already filled around his waist wrapping up clinging to his body all the way above his shoulder. Around his neck were several leather bottles, five to ten gourds, an adventurers canteen and metal flask. He stood up and started to run screaming from his location. My heart pounded in my chest as I closed the distance and grabbed him around the neck.

 

As stinky as goblins were I held my breath and tried to squeeze the life out of him. Whoever sent him made a huge mistake giving me this chance. Not only was he the smallest goblin I had seen but he was weighed down with all these flasks giving him no chance to escape anyone who wanted to hurt him. He soon fell unconscious and I stripped every container I could from him.

 

I decided not to kill him because I was in such a good mood. Not only did I just suddenly get all these containers for liquid but I also got the leather straps and strings that helped the small goblin transport them. I washed the stink from the goblin off my body and finished filling the containers as quickly as I could before rushing back home.

 

Like waiting to open my presents until Christmas I made it inside the house and started looking over the spoils of my adventure. The body sized water skin held about four gallons of water. Pretty exciting stuff since it meant I wouldn’t have to make multiple trips every day for water. Seven new water skins and five gourds for storing water. I also had a metal cup and a flask from the haul.

 

This really expanded the distance I could travel from the house now. A huge problem with leaving the house is I could only travel so far away without needing to come back for water. If I decided to walk around the village and head to a different one I could do that now. To be honest though, I wanted to come back to the village and prove I had changed. I wanted to prove I could come back stronger than before and make up for my previous mistakes.

 

Also I sort of enjoyed this type of living. Sure in a few more weeks I might start to go crazy without speaking to another person but I’ll leave before it gets too bad. I finished separating the more smelly liquid vessels from the others. Everything had the faint smell of goblin but some of the vessels stunk so bad I had no plan on using them. Most of the stinky items were the leather waterskins. I’ll have to think up a use for these since I didn’t plan to drink water from them.

 

I was bored. I was so bored I started rubbing the head of my axe just before it broke my skin. I tried to waste time because the sun hadn’t even gone down yet. I muttered to myself as I tried to think of something else to do. That’s one thing they don’t show in those survival shows. If you ran out of things to do your mind was your own worst enemy.

 

I sat down and tried for the third time to learn a meditate type skill. So far I haven't had any luck with unlocking skills besides stealth. I tried to clear my mind but it kept wandering. Both of my previous selves had heavy problems with wandering minds. Without any luck I gave up. At least that’s what I tried to do. Just before I quit I felt something try to force itself to the front of my mind.

 

Memories came flooding back. Waking up early as a child, it was the first time I had determination to become good at something. Every day I would wake up before everyone else in my family and start jogging around the neighborhood. I think I was only six when I started doing this without telling anyone what I was doing. I would run around for fifteen minutes then practice throwing the ball. I was my own trainer.

 

With all my practice on top of what we were doing for baseball I slowly became better than everyone else on the team. Every day or so I’d start practicing more and more until I was practicing over four hours a day before going to practice with the team. It made me wonder. Why wasn’t I made the pitcher of the team even though I was the best on the team?

 

Over a year later I still wondered why I wasn’t made captain. No matter how much better I was than everyone else, the coach's son was made captain. It made me jaded and I started to practice less and less. That year we made it to the state playoffs and came in second because the coach still wanted his son to be the pitcher. I didn’t understand that the coach put his son as pitcher out of sheer nepotism and favoritism. It didn’t make sense to me. I got so mad I ended up getting in a fight with his son after we lost.

 

When the coach finally broke us up he did so forcibly towards me. I was thrown to the ground and hurt far worse than what I did to his son. I was kicked off the team and not allowed back after that. The next year I mercilessly bullied the pitcher in school. The team went from being a state contender to being below average. It made me incredibly happy but I was also sad I couldn’t play the sport I had come to love so much. I stopped training some time during that year and slowly started to put on weight.

 

Looking at the outside now it all made sense to me but at the time I felt so betrayed. If that coach put me in I had no doubt I’d have become a famous baseball player. I lost my love for most sports and didn’t do anything until highschool where I joined the football team. I stopped training so I was at a huge disadvantage compared to those who played for most of their lives. I ended up becoming a lineman and ended up quitting halfway through the season.

 

At some point in highschool I got into reading books and that was the end of my sports career. It’s funny now how differently I would have done things seeing the full picture. My love for sports and training was crushed by someone much older than me. If I would have gone to anyone and said the coach hit me he would have probably been fired. 

 

I couldn’t help but chuckle that my story sounds like Uncle Rico’s from Napoleon Dynamite. “I bet I could throw a baseball over them mountains.” No it was my own misunderstanding of the situation back then and my rage that made me get kicked out. Every negative interaction I ever had was because I got so mad I’d see red and do something I’d regret for the rest of my life.

 

I ended up becoming friends with the pitcher at least for a few years. The coach's kid ended up getting into hard drugs the last I heard. I hoped he got the help he needed… The memories started to fade back and become fuzzy again. I tried to think of what happened before or after that time period but couldn’t. As I came back to myself. I felt an extreme rush of energy flow through me. I checked my stats as I knew something about me had changed.

The next day I started to fully dedicate myself to becoming stronger. I had focused primarily on surviving but now I was in a good enough spot to start actively training. After waking I did as many pushups as I could before hitting my limit at 64. While not much it’s still far more than I could have done a few days ago. I ran laps after that followed by sit ups which I could do plenty of. The fatigue resistance was already working overtime.

 

I could tell that if I didn’t have the skill I would have been done for the day instead of it only being to start. I do burpees next and stop after about four when I feel something pull in my arm. I cast moonbeam to heal myself and sat laying on my back with the beam of light shining down into my eyes. 

 

Fuck that’s bright. I try to will the moonbeam to dim but it doesn’t. I try even harder and still nothing. Finally I go all out struggling to weaken the light or just make something happen and I feel a pop in my head. Intense pain flows through me before all the orifices on my face start to leak blood. In a panic I checked my stats.

Fuck me that hurt. No, it was more than that. I had the sense of dread for only a few seconds and I knew if something didn’t change soon I’d have quickly died from pressure in my head. I take the admins' words to heart for now. I think as long as I don’t actively focus on doing something I can’t do it should be fine. So it’s fine to go super Saiyan just not try to go even further beyond or I might die. I take a look at the new skill I gained.

That makes two upgradable skills now including the marathoner. It led me to believe I could possibly gain more or I already had skills that could potentially become better if given enough time and acquiring complimentary skills. I started to get a picture of how strong someone could be.

 

If someone were to have a complimentary title with a class and several upgradable skills they would be much stronger than someone with a wide variety. I don’t think that is the path for me though. I had several traits and skills as well as a title tied to unlocking more skills. I think a jack of all would be my best chances for survival.

 

The next week I took things slowly trying to expand my stats and skills while picking very few fights. I focused on a routine to work out as many skills as possible, especially the under leveled ones. Monster taming and intuition passively leveled while outside in the forest with monsters nearby. I couldn’t level tactics yet but I tried monstrous for the first time stealing a goblins trait.

While not a significant trait it was still better than nothing and let me know I could potentially steal traits from unaware monsters. Forgotten knowledge also couldn’t be leveled. I made a makeshift plant rope bracer to try and start leveling my skill and kept up the workouts I started while adding in extra bits whenever I had energy left at the end of the day. My goal was to fall asleep exhausted.

 

Before I went to bed I made sure to use my mana and shape my axe. Slowly but surely I could see small changes starting to shape the weapon. Slowly it became less maul like and started to resemble more of a fireman's axe. Whenever I had free time I had started to whittle a large branch down in the hopes to eventually make a bat. I instinctively knew that I could use a bat for my mace specialization. At the end of the week I started to feel better about my stats and skills.

 

 

Tomorrow I put my plan into work. Tomorrow I will try to hit level ten. Tomorrow I will try to get another monster.