As Kegan climbed back down into the Valley, he noticed the clearing where he had made his home. He had expected it to be empty. Any changes he made in one life had never carried over into the next life. He had always started at the exact same moment in time. This time it was different though, his cabin was in the clearing. And it looked like it was in good condition, not the shameful wreck that he had left so recently.

He spent a few hours trekking over to his cabin. He checked around inside and was a little dismayed to discover that barely any of his belongings were here. His best throwing spears: gone. His comfortable fur bed: gone. His perfectly sized bowl shaped heating stone: gone. Even the mud lined walls were only partially complete.

It was as if his cabin was only a year old, rather than the long standing structure he’d made into his home over decades of life and practice. Kegan felt a little frustration over having to rebuild so many of his best items, but at least he knew what he was doing now. He set off into the woods to get started.

A month later Kegan was feeling great. He had made a bunch of new throwing spears for hunting, and one very sturdy spear for self defense against the wolf pack in the valley. He had found his lucky bowl shaped rock in the river in the same spot it had been when he originally found it. His comfortable fur bed was still a work in progress, but he wasn’t in a rush since it was spring and he needed the bed most during winter.

His new perks had been amazing. He was eating a leaf wrap as a snack right now. The taste wasn’t good, but it would keep him fed. It had been weird not having hunger pains, and instead just having a loud rumbling stomach as his best indication of when he should eat. He had gotten more diligent about eating after he reached the point of starvation and his food coma perk had activated. After that he had made a plan for keeping himself fed every day. Part of that plan was to hunt for meat, or fish every 4 days, and berries and roots on the first and third day of his 4 day weekly cycle. The second day in the cycle he would eat leaves, and work on improving his cabin. Today was the fourth day in the cycle, and he was tracking wolf prints in the mud of the stream bank.

Hunting wolves for food was dangerous, but it was the only way to guarantee his long term survival. The wolves hunted the deer. If the wolf population wasn’t kept in check they would eventually hunt all of the deer in the valley. With nothing else to hunt the wolves would get hungry and start hunting him. Even if he survived being hunted by the wolves, there would then be no sources of meat in the valley other than squirrels and small fish.

He was broken out of his thought process by the sound of a high pitched wolf whine from up ahead. It sounded like an injured wolf. He crept closer to the sound. Eventually he could see through the trees there was a wolf lying injured on the ground, and whining. It would pick itself up and drag itself a little ways on its one working front leg, before settling down and whining again. The wolf was covered in bruises and cuts, its jaw was hanging loose, three legs looked broken and it was missing an eye. Kegan slowly crept up on it trying to be wary of his surroundings. He wasn’t sure what could have done this to a wolf, not even other wolves seemed capable of this level of mutilation. The wolf saw him approach and gave up on trying to move. It just kept whining.

Kegan was accustomed to animal suffering, he didn’t always get a clean kill when he went hunting. But this just seemed excessive. The wolf closed its eyes as Kegan drove his spear into the wolf’s skull, ending its suffering. Kegan followed the trail of blood back through the woods. He didn’t have to go far to find the site of a massacre.

He wasn’t quite sure who was the victim of the massacre though. The wolf den was attacked by a large number of small green skinned humanoids. The word “goblin” came to his head, out of the knowledge that the spirit had granted him. There were 8 other dead adult wolves, but about 20 of the goblin corpses strewn about. The goblins were mostly naked, a few of them had bit of shoddy leather. There were sharpened sticks and thick branches laying by some of the goblin corpses, probably what they had used as weapons. But it looked like the goblin’s main tactic had just been sheer overwhelming numbers.

The wolf pups that should have been here were nowhere to be found. One of the goblins stirred from the ground. Kegan immediately leveled his spear in the goblins direction. It slowly got up making grunting noises. It turned around to survey the area. When it saw Kegan its face immediately turned aggressive. It was baring its teeth at Kegan and growling. Slowly backing away.

Kegan had lived in the forest long enough to know how nature worked. There was a food chain, and you always wanted to be at the top of that food chain. Before now it had always been the wolves and him fighting for dominance at the top. These goblins were above the wolves on the food chain, and now he needed to figure out if he was going to be beneath the goblins as well.

These thoughts shot through his head in an instant, and a moment later he made his decision. He lunged out with his spear. The goblin tried to lean back out of the way, but that only would have worked if Kegan was aiming for center mass. Instead Kegan aimed for the goblin’s good leg, slicing its thigh open.

The goblin howled in pain and anger. Kegan took a step back and pulled a throwing spear out of the quiver on his back. He wound back and hurled the spear into the goblin’s chest, aiming for where he thought the heart might be. The goblin seemed surprised staring at the spear in its chest. It then fell over onto its back. The small hands were shaking holding onto the spear, its head was tilted up and its eyes showed fear. The goblin seemed to be dying and knew it. Kegan moved closer again and ended its suffering.

Kegan knew he should move quickly. The tracks leading away from and to the den seemed to go in multiple directions. He wasn’t sure if he should even follow them. Instead he decided to skin all of the wolves. Their pelts could at least be useful, and he could take the meat from at least one of them.

It had been almost an hour and he had skinned all 8 of the wolves in the clearing. He got a sled set up to haul all the pelts back, he’d just add the 9th wolf to the sled and do all the skinning and butchering for that wolf back at his cabin. As he was loading up he heard a crashing in the woods and the sounds of goblins approaching. He rushed and dragged the sled a little ways, out of sight of the massacre. He needed to observe these goblins, if he was going to be the hunter rather than the hunted then he needed to stalk his prey.

He moved back closer to the wolf den and quickly climbed a tree that would allow him to observe the den but still hide him pretty well from creatures on the ground.

A group of 15 goblins entered the area. They all seemed to get excited and started shouting and screaming. Their screams were answered by other goblins deeper in the forest. This back and forth screaming didn’t go on for long. The 15 goblins started tearing and eating everything in the clearing, including their fallen brethren. Soon more groups of goblins joined them. In the end there were about 120 goblins that founds the clearing and had their fill.

Kegan was starting to reconsider whether he could be the “hunter” in this scenario. The amount that some of the goblins ate was amazing. He had thought some of them were pregnant, but it instead seemed that those goblins really just had a full stomach of food. Later in the evening he saw a horrifying thing that made both of his guesses correct. The group of goblins that had first gotten here were all napping off their big meals and full stomachs. They all started “pooping” at the same time, but instead of feces they each popped out a small miniature goblin. The whole group seemed to have slept through the act of giving birth.

The baby goblins seemed to be able to walk on their own. But none of them made it far, the other goblins that hadn’t fallen asleep snatched up the baby goblins, tore them apart, and ate them. This cycle of sleeping goblins and births taking place repeated itself a few times until all of the goblins seemed to be passed out. Now that all of the goblins seemed passed out and asleep it was getting dark out, and the newly born goblin babies were able to successfully escape from their cannabilitistic elders. They often ran off in a group together.

He saw one group of 8 baby goblins headed towards his sled, so he quickly shimmied down the tree and followed them as quickly as possible. They were following the trail by licking up the blood and eating some of the blood stained leaves that the wolf had left behind. Kegan was able to get closer and closer without them noticing. One of them must have heard Kegan and suddenly turned around to look at him. It made a high pitched noise. All the other baby goblins simultaneously turned around to look at Kegan. Each of them was about twice the size of a squirrel. Suddenly they all start screeching angrily and charged at Kegan. He was too stunned to react immediately.

They started scratching and trying to bite at his legs. Their fingers and teeth were sharp and some of them were actually puncturing his skin. He hadn’t planned on hurting them, he always tried to avoid hunting young animals, plus these things were almost cute in a very ugly sort of way. But when he remembered what they would grow up into, he lost all hesitation. He was able to crush them with his feet.

He thought he heard faint screeching off in the distance. He didn’t want to be be around if more goblins showed up, especially any adults. He ran to his sled and started quickly dragging it through the forest back towards his cabin. If he didn’t know these forest paths so well he was sure he would have stumbled and broken an ankle. Luck was on his side, the moon was bright and no clouds were out. He made it back to his cabin and quickly brought everything inside, and barred the door.

Kegan had quickly fallen asleep. He wasn’t sure how long he slept, but he knew that his sleeping perk for fighting off infections had activated. He was a bit confused about how these perks worked, but they seemed to either activate from his desire, or activate when they were needed. However, due to sleeping for so long his cabin now smelled terrible because the corpse of the wolf that he hadn’t skinned was going bad.

It was morning, Kegan knew from the direction of the sunlight filtering through the upper walls of his cabin. Kegan laid out the other wolf pelts to dry and began moving the wolf corpse towards the door. He’d do the butchering outdoors. Hopefully none of the goblin creatures were around and he could get a fire going to cook the meat before it completely spoiled.

He removed the barricades from the door. He cracked the door open to get a look outside. He saw a sea of ugly green faces staring at him. He hesitated for only a moment before cursing and slamming the door shut. He started trying to move the barricades back in place. His act of slamming the door had broken the goblins out of their stupor. They all began screaming and rushing towards his cabin.

Their bodies slammed into the cabin walls and he could hear their claws and teeth scratching at the wood. Others were slamming wooden clubs against his cabin. His door was the thinnest part of the cabin and he could see claws and wooden spears being jammed between the wood. The weight of their bodies was also pushing the whole top of the door inwards, even though the bottom of the door was solidly blocked. The woods was cracking and might break at any second.

Kegan grabbed his spear and quickly started jabbing it through the small openings that had been created. Goblins were crying out in pain. But he might as well have been trying to stop a creek with his spear. The tide of bodies was still pushing against the door, even if a couple of bodies at the front were now dead.

Suddenly the wood in the top left of the door snapped under the weight. It was enough room for a goblin to fit through, but it wasn’t enough room for the three goblin corpses that got shoved into the gap by the weight of the mob behind them.

The goblins behind them started ripping at the bodies in their way, and the bodies were less sturdy than Kegan’s former cabin door. Anytime a gap opened up and a goblin head appeared Kegan would jam his spear into the goblin and add to the pile of corpses. But there were over a hundred goblins out there and Kegan had only killed or injured about a dozen. Eventually the other half of the cabin door broke. A pile of mangled goblin corpses fell into the cabin forcing Kegan back. It was the last mistake he made. The gap was now large enough for three goblins to come in at once, and they were all rushing into the cabin.

He managed to stab one more goblin but then the other two were leaping at him. His last thought was “this will be a horrible way to die”. Right before the claws reached his face everything faded to black. He had that same sense that a perk had just activated … the instant suicide perk.