So this is it. I'm dead. Well, I lived the way I wanted. Thanks, Dad, you may have raised me to be a sociopath, but you at least raised me to be a high functioning one.

After a quiet moment of reflection the soul became aware of a cartesian reality. He was a thinking conscious being.

That's right, the elixir!

Rather than fading away into oblivion, he found himself in an otherworldly realm. Around him was a brilliant white celestial plane. He took through wandering the empty void, casually taking in the experience like a tourist, until he came upon a large throne. On top of it was the goddess.

She was a fiery presence, a figure of intense light that he couldn't look at directly. There was no way for him to look at her face, but the nature of her feelings was made clear very easily.

"Intruder! How can you justify your crimes!?"

Right. This is where I get judged.

He knelt down, showing deference and lowering his gaze not to look at the blinding light.

I have to accept this new situation and roll with it. Just moments ago I had no idea of the existence of a higher power, but now she is the top priority for heels to lick.

The being on the throne gave a "ch" sound and the being in front of it quickly responded, not to wear down her patience too much.

"Your -eh- majesty. I come before you, humbled. Graced to live a life blessed by fortune and health."

In the stress of the moment it was hard to come up with a justification for his involvement with organized crime, embezzlement and blackmail. He was padding for time with some platitudes about gratitude.

"In my pursuit to make the most of this gift of life, I may have forgotten-"

"Silence, you louse!" The ethereal being had interrupted him.

"You are not here to answer for your worldly misdeeds. My champions saw fit to eliminate you from that miserable world and that's enough."

She stood up, he raised his head, shielding his eyes with his hands and not seeing anything in particular.

"HOWEVER! You have committed a grave offense against my order, imbibing the elixir and intruding upon my heavenly domain!"

The goddess was stepping closer, her radiant light enveloping his entire vision. Still holding up his arm he fell over and started crawling backwards. "Ah,, well. You see; I was only-"

"The gift of reincarnation is a power I grant to my servants, for them to inhabit the bodies I grant them and bring justice to the realms of man!"

Despite his crawling she was steadily coming closer. The backing away was a reflex, he didn't have anywhere to go and didn't work up the initiative to scramble to his feet and run. "Now that I understand that, I ca-"

"You may have found a way to obtain this power, but I still control the destination of your soul."

He felt his head getting grabbed by elegant, slender hands, and before he knew it his retinas were burned with the image of a beautiful woman's face, contorted into an expression of pure hatred.

"I have already thought of a fitting destination for the likes of you."

-

Suddenly it felt as if he was falling and he was enveloped in darkness.

The next sensation he felt was a slimy membrane covering his body. When he became aware of his limbs he was able to rip apart the constricting placenta and exposed himself to the cold air.

It was a disturbing sensation. His body was stubby and weak like a newborn baby, his ears were filled with the painful wailing of a woman and in front of him shone the ugliest face imaginable.

It looked like a child that had stopped growing and had started aging. Its face gaunt and malnourished, residual strands of hair sticking to the skin on top of its head and its mouth a wide grin of brown and missing teeth, exuding a rotten stench of decades without dental hygiene. But the most inhuman feature was the green hue of its skin, together with the putrid smell it evoked the image of mold and infection. Reflexively, the newborn smacked it with his stubby arms, its already pronounced fingernails scratching the dehydrated skin. This got him dropped hard on the humid moss.

"Scratch!" The creature swore at him, its voice thick from a diseased mouth and poor pronunciation. It was his new name.

The little Scratch found himself on a moss bed inside a stone cave. Looking at his own hands, stretched in front of his body he saw that his own skin was as green as that of the monster. There were other newborn around, superficially they were ordinary, healthy, babies, except that their skin was an inhuman green color.

Scratch looked up at the older monster, a grown male of the species. He was bend over a woman, not at all green. His perspective was a lot lower than in his previous body, but he deduced she had to be a human woman, perhaps one on the shorter side.

In a grotesque approximation of childbirth the woman was giving birth to the sacks of membrane that housed the monster children. The monster wasn't serving as a midwife to help her through the process, he was holding her down so she wouldn't be able to kick the newborn children to death.

The creatures around him seemed blissfully indifferent to the horror show and were content sucking their thumbs and crawling over the moss, becoming familiar with their own bodies for the first time. They were in a slightly inclined cave, just under the stone overhang to protect them from any rain should it occur, but basically near the entrance. It was an unnatural fissure in the earth, like a wound that had opened up in the forest and was now festering with disease, them.

The last child was taken from the human woman, immediately named "Runt", for its small size. After the litter had been delivered the mother crawled into a corner to cry, while the monster went on to pay attention to the children. Scratch had to accept the reality that it was their father. It had used a human woman as a broodmare to produce more of its kind. That was the kind of creature they were. A fitting destination for the likes of you. It made him want to cry. As an infant, in wouldn't have been particularly inappropriate.

Scratch had been the second-to-last child in a litter of six. Their given names were:

"First",

"Teeth" (who had the tip of his future dentures already crowning out at some places),

"Yeller" (who had been loud during childbirth),

"Quiet" (who hadn't),

"Scratch"

and "Runt" (the smallest).

All of them were male. They came to be familiar with their names as the older monster pointed at them and barked orders. "Teeth. Stop.", "Runt. Eat." The newborn were instructed to play nice and fed a mush of gathered roots and bugs in various stages of decomposition, dumped on the ground. There was no nursing with the mother. Scratch wanted to complain about the quality of nutrition being forced upon a newborn, but his throat and mouth weren't sufficiently developed to accommodate speech. He was able to properly convey his feelings with a well-placed "bleh", though. This got him a firm knock on the skull from the father.

Ever the individualist Scratch excused himself from the feeding pile and went to explore. He managed a clumsy waddle despite his infant body structure, although he noticed that he was born with a body that seemed to have an age of a few months from the get go.

The cave went on for some distance, despite the light not reaching very far it seemed like his eyes were perfectly capable of making out the rock wall and floor. Yet, it gave him an ominous feeling to go towards the depths, so he stayed around the opening. The human woman was sobbing on the floor, she wore cotton or linen clothing, a dress and undershirt stained with the various excretions of monster birth. It was hard to deduce the time period the clothes mimicked, somehow the styles of different eras and European countries were mixed to produce a generic medieval peasant.

Instinctively Scratch had waddled closer. His mother had noticed him and started kicking her legs, she was having a mild panic attack. He could feel himself getting lifted off the ground, two boney hands had grabbed him at the waist.

"Human Bad. Stay with Drool." Drool must have been the father's name. Don't blame me, she's your girl. Scratch wanted to retort. But he couldn't. And she probably wasn't anyway.

The next day the children had grown to twice their previous size and grown a head of fluffy brown hair and a full set of adult teeth, which were too big for their mouths. "Say, aah." Scratch tested out his throat and mouth. "Do-Re-Mi~.

Excuse me, not quite used to the canines yet." He said to Quiet, who gave him a non-comprehending look.

"Scratch. Come. Yeller. Come" Drool called over the two children with the most aggressive sounding names and put a rock in each of their hands. "Go hunt."

"Are you kidding? With a rock?" But Scratch's complaints were drowned out by Yeller's enthusiastic shouting. He hadn't developed much of a vocabulary but he was capable of animalistic roaring. He grabbed his weapon and ran out of the cave. Scratch stayed where he was, looking up at Drool. "How do you hunt? Do you hunt? Have you ever hunted anything? And I mean, like, caught something?" He got another knock on the head. "No talk weird."

Scratch resolved himself to his new mission and sauntered out of the cave. A thin watery sun shone from behind a gray mat of clouds, it still managed to somehow hurt his eyes. He found Yeller chasing some bird, which simply flew away. The image wouldn't have seemed out of place in any modern setting, a small child being overly enthusiastic and running after wildlife. Of course Yeller possessed some inhuman features and went about completely naked. When he saw his brother approaching him he ran up to him. "Hunt! Hunt!"

Look at that. His first word. And he isn't 24 hours old yet. Scratch was legitimately impressed.

"We're not going to catch anything running around screaming. How about we hunt for some edible plants first?"

Suddenly it seemed like Yeller was about to hit him with the hunk of stone still lodged in his tiny fist. Scratch flinched, but he was merely miming the action of hitting something. "Hunt!"

"Hmm. Looks like you've got your mind made up. You know what? That's fine with me. It's probably just to keep us busy anyway."

The two made their way through the sparse trees, making way too much noise to sneak up on any animal. Trashing through the grass, shouting and yelling.

I feel so light. It really is like being a kid again.

Scratch made a big jump and let himself tumble into a pile of leaves. With the large heavy body of an adult such acrobatics would carry the risk of serious injury, but with this tiny frame all he needed to look out for was sharp objects and not landing on his head. Then again, sharp objects wouldn't be rare on a forest floor.

What am I even doing? There's tons of ways I could have hurt myself doing that. Why am I running so carelessly through unmanaged woods?

-

As he was having his moment of self-reflection Yeller dove after him, cheering loudly.

"Ouch. Hey, haha. Watch where you're going!"

He tried to put up an angry scolding voice, but he couldn't quite stay in character. In any case, his brother didn't stick around to listen to him and ran off further to find more leaves.

"Hey, don't run off too far."

What a bother, having to watch over a kid. I suppose I need to keep him out of trouble. Since his father won't.

He looked at the rock in his hand. Hunting. The family seemed like a primitive species, although the mother had clothing indicative of a more advanced society, she seemed to be a captive. Drool had had a loincloth, a piece of rancid fur, but besides that no fabrics were used by the creatures. No tools for plant gathering or fire hearth to cook.

Did drool really expect them to carry back some animal's carcass? What was he going to do with it?

It's not even a hunter-gather civilization. It's a hunter civilization. One without real tools. On the level of common animals. No way I'm sticking around. No goddess can decide what life I'm going to live.

He heard Yeller shouting a little distance off so he stepped through a faint use trail, avoiding sharp branches with his feet. When he looked around he saw plenty of materials to be used for basic tools. The bark of willows lends itself to ropes, he also saw pines and various plants that normally grew edible fruits and berries. All in all a rather welcoming temperate environment.

He was now close enough to Yeller to notice he was freaking out about something, despite having to shield his eyes from the piercing sunlight. The little creature was jumping up and down, grabbing his head and seemingly not too far away from crying. He was looking at some sort of object, laying between the leaves.

"Hey, what's wrong buddy? Are you alright?"

Upon approach the cause of the spectacle was laid bare. The bled out body of a green-skinned child.

Scratch raised an eyebrow. "Well, it's not one of us."

Although obviously the same species the child had a face distinct from any of the six siblings. Yeller jumped excitedly around the corpse while Scratch crouched down next to it to examine it.

It seemed about their age, another male. More than one animal had already gotten to it and disfigured the child post-humously. To test his theory Scratch pulled on the eyelids, revealing the advanced size of the maggots eating the eyeballs.

"Hmm, this has been here at least a few days. Cause of death?"

Now Yeller had entered the game too. He had understood the gist of what Scratch had been saying and moved the corpse to reveal a large wound, slicing open the torso from hip to rib.

"Whuu-aah" He gasped.

"Yup. That'll do it. What could have caused a gash like this?"

With that response Scratch scraped his hands between the leaved, feeling the dried up blood in the earth. Then he pulled out a yellow curved object, shattered on one end, pointy on the other, about the length of his fore-arm. "This is the weapon that killed him. A tusk of some kind. The poor fellow must have managed to bash it with a rock after it had already been lodged into his abdomen."

He showed the tooth to his brother. "What creature do you suppose wields dentures like this?"

Yeller raised his rock above his head and started chanting again. "Hunt! Hunt!" He ran off looking for the creature.

Scratch was left behind in a serious mood. He looked down at the little fallen soldier again.

"You don't hurt kids." He murmured to himself.

"You. Don't. Hurt. Kids." With every word the thug drove his knuckledusters into his stomach.

It was Earth, several years earlier. To show his competence and loyalty to the syndicate he had expanded their business into work with certain underground medicine development facilities. The kind that use human testing. He had promised them a yearly supply and set up special canals for embezzling foster children, that was supposed to be his specialty, infrastructure. Sure, it broke the syndicates rule against harming the underage, but the profit margin was so big he had expected that to go ignored. It wasn't the kind of rule that upheld the power of the don, it was just some mad sentimentality by one of the founders. So why did he find himself tied to a post in the boxing school of a syndicate enforcer?

"Look, Butch. I'll make it right-"

This time the hit was directly to his jaw, dislocating it with piercing pain.

"I work with scum like you every day. Every day I deal with sick shit like this. You. Don't. Hurt. Kids."

He had begun his earlier routine again.

His victim vomited up blood. "Ah-m S-awwy."

"Yeah. You will be."

The beatings had continued for at least an hour and had left him with a chronic pain. The arbitrary distinction between the lives of children and those of adults was of course completely irrational. It was a pride thing, as long as they had some code of honor they could claim to live by they could pretend to be righteous people.

Righteousness. If there was ever anything more despicable. That day, he vowed to bring down the old guard of the syndicate, one way or another.

"I think we need to face reality, Yeller old friend. That boy there was our older brother."

Yeller looked at him uncomfortably. He could more or less make out what his brother was saying.

"Seeing as how quick our growth is, gestation is probably taken care of within days too. That kid died while we were conceived."

They were walking calmly now. There was a wide use trail leading away from where they were born, it made for comfortable walking.

"Is that how Drool survives? Breeding new children and throwing them at the forest to get him food? For how long has he been doing this?"

"Nu-uh" Yeller made an angry grunting noise.

"Well. What's your theory? Because from where I'm standing it-"

"NU-UH!" Yeller grabbed his face and directed him towards what had made him react like that.

Past an old oak tree the use trail ended in a small clearing where a smattering of piglets where hobbling over each other.

-

"Food!" Yeller grabbed his rock tightly and began running towards the creatures, wanting to smash their heads in. The piglets exploded into every direction squealing loudly.

"Argh. No! You're just scaring them away. Besides, what about their mo-"

As he said it the aspiring hunter was flung into the air by a large pig-like creature that had jumped out from between the bushes.

Despite the speed and suddenness of of the being's appearance and its attack on Yeller, Scratch could see the creature clearly. An oversized boar with one tusk broken off at the base. Luckily it had hit Yeller with the de-tusked side of its face, merely sending him flying into a hazel tree. It set its sights on goring the kid immediately and trashed through a bramble-bush unfettered to get to him. Without thinking Scratch gripped with rock tightly and threw it into the direction of the monster. It hit it in the hind leg, seemingly doing no damage. But the creature stopped its advance and abruptly turned its gaze towards its attacker. Nervously Scratch moved the tusk he had picked up to his dominant hand, he tried to make himself seem large, standing next to the sturdy old oak tree. Not intimidated, the created accelerated towards him with a loud screech, determined to use its tusk this time.

Time seemed to slow down as the beast reach his position, the deadly weapon pointed directly at his naked stomach.

He froze up, but at the last moment moved from making himself tall to curling up as small as possible and turning partway behind the tree for cover. In his outstretched arm he pointed the hand held tusk at the underbelly of the monster, assuming that that was the most vulnerable spot. The creature screeched again, from pain this time. It swerved away from the source of the pain, but the sheer force of a creature that heavy colliding with his arm still made Scratch tumble to the ground.

He got on his feet as quickly as possible, by the time he could get his bearing the boar was already dashing into his personal space. With no time to react he stretched out his arms blindly, his empty palm enclosed around the creature's remaining tusk and he managed to push the rest of his body away from it as it drove into a tree. He quickly stabbed the weapon into its eyes before he was flung away by the mad thrashing of the monster's head.

As he fell to the ground time sped up again. His tusk was on the ground. The beast was rolling on the ground in pain, it had been slashed open at its throat and face and was bleeding heavily. Yeller entered his field of vision as he walked up next to it. The kid probably didn't understand most complex language but he still explained the situation to him.

"If we let it bleed out like this it'll die eventually. We can mercy kill it, but it's probably dangerous to go near it right now."

Yeller just sat down next to him. As they watched the beast agonize together Scratch could only reflect on the little death-defying stunt he had made moments ago.

What the hell made me think that was a good idea?

Goblin

Family: Subhumans

Threat Level: F

Reward: 1 copper piece

Goblins are fodder. They are one of the few monsters safe for rookie adventurers to face. A fully grown goblin has the strength of a child and can live up to 30 years. They're an all-male race, identifiable by their short stature, green skin and ugly features. They bother human settlements by attempting to kidnap young girls or even women, with whom they breed to create more goblins. Exterminating a goblin nest that has grown too large is a party quest of level F that can result in promotion to level E for the party that completes it.

Goblins posses the Fearless nature, which means they are immune to spells and effects that cause fear, but they will also attack opponents far greater than themselves with no hesitation, which is why their average life expectancy is very low. Despite being humanoid and belonging to the family of subhumans goblins are considered to have the intelligence of animals, they have no toolmaking or planning capability.

Their main weapons are numbers and their ability to see in the dark, when they are defending their nest they will use both of these weapons efficiently and pose a bigger threat than they do outside their home, which is what makes a goblin clearing quest a mission that can result in promotion.