With the body he had now, and the low requirements he had for feeding himself and sleeping he was able to quickly complete all of the projects. His main limitation was daylight hours to work with. Even then he had resorted to using fire for the artificial light. That was a luxury he had never had before, but the fire starter perk had made it easy.

Kegan no longer had memories of the days he spent surviving. They had all faded from his memory. He wasn’t sure what he had done back then once he had gotten everything done that needed to get done. Right now he was just laying on his back in the grass outside of his cabin looking up at the night sky filled with stars above him.

At the edge of his hearing he thought he heard the sound of some creature or creatures crashing through the woods. If there were any deer left he would have guessed that a pack of them were running from something. The noise got louder, and Kegan was suddenly very concerned that there were more goblins in the woods, nothing else was alive and large enough to make those noises.

He went inside, and got his gear and weapon carrying packs ready. He came out again and the noises were louder. There were a lot of creatures out there, whatever they were. He stood still and listened as the noises grew louder, he was ready to act, whether that meant fighting or running.

The noise reached a crescendo, but it seemed to be that the stampede of creatures was not going to pass directly through his cabin. They were passing to the West. Soon after the noise started dying down, but he could hear the stampede heading off and getting further away.

Kegan headed West to see if he could find the path and determine what kind of creatures they were. He reached a section of the forest about 20 feet wide that had been absolutely devastated. Trees were ripped and clawed up, the leaves that made up the forest floor were both shredded and pushed to the side, and the ground underneath had been churned to mud.

Kegan was quickly able to find out which creatures had passed through here, because every once in a while there was a small corpse that made it obvious: baby goblins.

He knew a bunch of baby goblins had survived. They always tended to run back to the cave system where the goblins came from. Kegan had wrongly assumed that most of them would just get eaten by other goblins, and the few left would die of starvation.

The trail had a clear origin and destination. They had come from the goblin caves, and they were headed straight towards the path that lead up the mountain to the shrine. Kegan started sprinting after them. He had no idea what they were up to, but he doubted it would be good.

It was easy enough to catch up with the trailing end of the horde, and it was a horde. It looked like the ground itself was moving along. There were easily hundreds, maybe thousands, of the baby goblins running through the forest. The tail end of the horde was composed almost entirely of baby goblins that had sustained some kind of injury that made them move slower. Occasionally one in the back would collapse and just not get up. Those must have been the corpses he was seeing along the way.

He caught up with the injured ones quickly. He was able to just swing his spear and whack them to kill the baby goblins. They were only about a foot tall if they stretched out, and all of them tended to be very frail. He would have felt bad killing the young creatures if it wasn’t for the fact that the parents of these creatures had wiped out the entire ecosystem of this valley.

Kegan started swatting at the back of the procession of healthy goblins. They seemed to be just ignoring him. Up ahead he could see what looked like the front of the horde. A bunch of them were clinging onto some enormous creature. Occasionally they’d fall off and get trampled, but others would quickly jump onto the creature, clambering over their siblings for a better spot. The creature itself might have been about 10 feet tall, but it was hard to tell since it was covered in a layer of baby goblins.

There were also four large goblins at the front of the horde. All of them were carrying weapons, two carried spears and the other two carried clubs, and they also were wearing what looked like bone armor. They were only a few inches shorter than Kegan. The baby goblins kept their distance from these four goblins.

The horde as a whole was moving at about a jogging pace for Kegan, so he was easily keeping up. There was now a trail of dead goblin babies behind him, but he had still been playing it safe and keeping his distance.

Kegan stopped to secure his spear to his back for carrying, and pulled out his club. He caught up with the goblins again quickly, and instead of being cautious and keeping his distance he starts taking big swings of his club through the throng of goblins.

This was definitely progressing faster, but once he got ahead of some healthy goblins they finally stopped ignoring him. A few swings in and he realized the baby goblins had started jumping on the back of his legs, clawing and biting at him.

None of them were strong enough to break his skin so he just ignored them and kept trying to kill as many baby goblins as possible. His walking expert perk was activating almost constantly to keep him tripping on the piles of baby goblins at his feet. The number of goblins clinging at him and biting had started to get annoying and slow him down. He stopped running forward to try and remove some of them. This was a mistake.

A bunch of goblins must have been trailing behind him. They immediately added their weight, trying to crawl all over him. Kegan was strong, but he couldn’t do much against the weight of a couple dozen baby goblins piling on top of him.

He was ultimately not in much real danger, even as he started falling to the ground. He had to fight his way out of the pile very slowly. His hands could squeeze a goblin and crush it, and he resorted to biting some of them. But the goblins themselves did most of the work. In their attempts to bite and claw at him, they were just as likely to inflict some accidental wounds on other baby goblins. He wiggled his way slowly out of the pile of bleeding and dying goblins. There were some live ones waiting on top of the pile once he made it out, but they were easy to handle. He had to dig his way through the pile of corpses to find where his club and a spare javelin had fallen off of him and become buried.

Kegan re-approached the horde of baby goblins. He had killed over a hundred of them so far. It didn’t look like it affected their numbers much, but he could just wear them down. After all, he had nothing else to do right now.

He took a more measured approach this time. Still using his club instead of his spear, but he made sure to stay at the back of the horde, and not get swarmed too badly.

The horde had been making it up the mountain at the same steady pace. Thanks to Kegan They were leaving a steady trail of bodies behind them to mark their path. But they had reached an area where Kegan normally had to climb. Up ahead he heard the four large goblins roar and start attacking the baby goblins surround the largest creature. The baby goblins backed off a little. Kegan got his first look at the massive creature, it was some kind of huge fat goblin. The baby goblins all seemed to be fighting to get access to some of the tits that were growing haphazardly out of the creature’s body. It would occasionally pluck a baby goblin off of its body and shove the screaming goblin into its mouth.

The lumbering ugly moma goblin seemed only able to climb the cliff because it had such a large height advantage. Her four large goblin guards kept the rest of the baby goblins from swarming her while she made her way up the 30 foot cliff face. Once she made it up they all quickly followed her, leaping onto the cliff and displaying a large amount of agility as they quickly climbed the rock face.

The rest of the baby goblins didn’t wait long before they tried to follow. They started swarming up the cliff face, but they weren’t making a ton of progress. The rock face was rough so there were good handholds everywhere and some larger outcroppings that Kegan would use to rest. The baby goblins had to basically jump from one handhold to the next. If they failed to get a good grip they would go tumbling back to the bottom. If they got a good grip but weren’t fast enough, another baby goblin right behind them would try and use the first goblin as a handhold.

Their bodies were light, and there was a swarm of goblins at the base of the cliff to break their fall, so most of the goblins that fell down would just get right back up and try again. Kegan was hesitant to attack the horde right now, because they were much more bunched up. He might cause them to swarm him, and he didn’t know if he could dig his way out of a couple hundred corpses.

Kegan knew of another way up, it was a much more difficult climb, and he would have to backtrack a little, but it might allow him to get ahead of the horde of baby goblins and face those elite goblins without being swarmed.

He made up his mind and started racing towards the alternate way up. Kegan had always re-remembered this cliff, because before his suicide perk this was his best way of ending a life that was going badly.

Time was against him so he immediately started making his way up the cliff as quickly as he could. About 15 feet up the rock he was using as a handhold came loose. His other hand was in the process of grabbing for another handhol. Nothing was holding him against the cliff, and before he could grab something else he fell.

The cliff raced away from him, he was only glad that he didn’t have to watch the ground rushing towards him. He hit the ground hard and his world went dark.

Kegan had half expected to wake up in the spirit realm after falling. He wasn’t sure if his perks would be enough to save him from that kind of fall. The answer turned out to be yes, they would save him, but it still hurt like hell. Like always with his perks he knew intuitively that they had activated, or at least been used. The back of his head had bled a lot, but he miraculously had no broken bones. He had a massive headache right now, but he thought he could power through that.

He started moving towards the cliff again, but a wave of dizziness and nausea hit him. Kegan realized he was in no shape to climb this cliff, and also no shape to fight any goblins. They were leaving his valley so what did he really care about chasing them. He turned around stumbled his way back to his cabin.