Unsure how to start, I tried again to manifest my black mana outside of my body by pushing it into my fingertips and then trying to force it out, somehow.

But, as before, the black mana would just accumulate in my fingertips and do diddly squat beyond that. It was vexing, to say the least.

“C’mon, please,” I pleaded quietly, wiping the sweat off my forehead.

All I needed was just a freaking… whatever, like foam or something to push into the lock to ‘feel’ its contours.

“C’mon, you fucker… do something, just a cloud… or anything,” I hissed almost inaudibly while pushing with all the will power I could muster.

To my surprise this time something happened - I could feel the mana rushing down my arms, into my hand and finger and then pouring out of my body, in dark, inky tendrils that started forming a cloud of shadows in front of me. At least, that is what it looked like with my Mana Vision.

“Hell yeah,” I whispered, admiring the shifting tendrils of black energy twirling around each other. I was not sure what this thing did, but… for the first time, I had succeeded in forming mana outside of my body! And the key seemed to be the simultaneous exercise of intent and will.

Focusing on the cloud of darkness in front of me, I could feel… something, like a faint sense of touch? I was not exactly sure what it was, but maybe it would do the trick.

And best of all, I felt that I still had control over the black mana and was able to move it around, even though it was outside of my body. Gently, I prodded it to move into the lock and the moment the first tendrils touched the metal, I could… feel it. It was a strange sensation, to be honest. Like as if my body was there, yet not there. And the sensory feedback I received was extremely detailed. I could perceive the unevenness in the forged metal, the slight indents from a hammer perhaps, and even the granulation of the metal.

The moment I pushed the mana inside of the lock, a ridiculous amount of information flooded my brain leading to absolute sensory overload, perhaps comparable to multiple people speaking to me simultaneously, while watching several different movies at once and having hundreds of bugs crawling over my body.

Desperately, I tried to control the information entering the brain, like installing some sort of filter. I really didn’t need to know the composition of the metal or every little indent – all I needed was a three-dimensional map of the inside of the lock to identify the position of the tumblers.

And while that was hard, it got worse when I started moving the splinters inside the lock to try and lift those pins… talk about hardcore multitasking. The first couple of times I tried, I lost focus, and immediately the cloud of black mana started dissipating.

Eventually, though, I managed to somehow compartmentalize my brain so that part of it was controlling the mana cloud and filtered the incoming information, while the rest was dedicated to fiddling around with the stupid little sticks I needed to lift the tumblers. I felt like a freaking multicore computer, each part processing different things.

I was no locksmith, so it took me a bit of trial and error, and lots of swearing about the splinters that kept on breaking, to figure out how to actually open the lock, but ultimately, I succeeded – with a soft click, the last tumbler moved, and the door was unlocked.

After making sure that no goblin was in sight, I grabbed my trusty, bat-blood covered truncheon, and quietly opened the door. Cautiously, I closed the door and darted behind the crates. Luckily, the guttural sound of the goblins’ arguing masked the noise of my feet shuffling over the floor.

Carefully, I peeked through the crates to see what I was dealing with; five goblins, all a bit more runty than the ones that had left, were sitting in a rough circle, taking turns throwing bones on a small table in the middle. Goblins playing a game of dice… what the hell? Maybe they were more human than I had figured.

The moment I started humanizing them, two of the goblins began arguing about a particular roll of the bones. Quickly, the argument descended into a solid brawl, with one goblin grabbing the other one around the throat, while the other attempted to gouge out the eyes of its assailant. And it didn’t stop there. A third goblin got tired of the distraction, grabbed an ax, and hacked into the neck of one of the fighting goblins.

Blood spurting, the goblin collapsed to the ground and quickly stopped moving.

Just watching the scene unfold, I got sick to my stomach – the casual violence, the complete disregard for each other’s life… and then it got worse. The surviving goblin grabbed a dagger and cut off one of the ears of the dead body, only to casually chew on it with a savage grin on its face.

Bile rose to my mouth, and I had to suppress the urge to violently throw up.

Those little fuckers didn’t deserve to live. Bloody savages.

Maybe I was judgmental, no respect for goblin culture or whatever… but fuck that.

Making sure that there were no more goblins around, I grabbed my truncheon tightly and rushed soundlessly toward the group of four grey-green manlings.

Before they even noticed me coming at them, I bashed my truncheon with all the force I could muster on the head of the goblin with the ax. Its skull caved in, and the goblin collapsed on the spot. For a brief moment, the other goblins stared at me slack eyed, before starting to run screaming all over the place.

Cursing, I grabbed the ax from the floor and jumped after the goblin to my left, who had trapped itself against the pile of crates, desperately trying to claw its way through the boxes and barrels. With a shout I brought the ax down on its shoulder, partially cleaving him apart in a shower of blood.

Meanwhile, the remaining two goblins had used the opportunity to run toward the door on the other side of the room and slip out of the room, all the while screeching in utter panic.

Shit, that didn’t go as planned. In fact, there had been no real plan… but I had hoped that the goblins would stay and fight. Instead, they immediately ran off and were probably getting reinforcements.

For a moment, I considered running after them, but despite their small stature, I didn’t feel that I was their match in terms of speed, considering my still wobbly legs. Instead, I ran over to the fire pit, grabbed some of the giant bat roast and what looked like a gourd of water and made my way over to a weapon rack with a few rusty swords, daggers, and axes.

I dropped the ax and instead equipped myself with a sword and a pair of daggers, each coming, luckily, with a fitting sheath.

And then I heard the noise - shouting, the clanging of metal on metal or on stone and the trampling of boots on the ground coming this way rapidly. Looking longingly at the crates chock full of useful stuff, I turned around and dashed back to the door I had come through and off into the dark hallway beyond.

While running, I drained half of the gourd of water and immediately felt immeasurably better – dehydration is no joke. Tearing into the skewer of giant bat meat, I almost couldn’t suppress the moan of pleasure the fatty meat elicited. It was tender, succulent, and … just heavenly. Who would have thought that a bat could taste that well?

I would have loved nothing better than to just sit down, rest, and slowly eat the rest of the meat while occasionally sipping from the gourd. And sleep. Oh my god, just a good rest after stuffing my face... that sounded so tempting.

But I could already hear the door to the corridor bang open, and furious screeching echoing down the hallway. In the distance, I could see the flickering light of torches coming down the corridor into my direction.

Cursing, I tried to speed up, but my legs just wouldn’t do it. My body had taken a significant amount of abuse during this past day, and it was a miracle that I was even able to run at all - but my body could only take so much.

A couple of seconds later, first one, then a second torch suddenly flew past me and skidded along the ground for a couple of yards, spraying sparks all over and releasing a cloud of thick, oily smoke. Before my exhausted brain could comprehend why the goblins were throwing torches down the hallway, the guttural shouts changed in pitch and suddenly sounded a lot closer. Stumbling on, I looked over my shoulder and saw one of the goblins, barely ten yards away raise its arm to throw a spear at me.

Immediately, I threw myself to the side, avoiding the spear by mere inches, at the cost of a bruised knee that further hampered my movement. While the weapon slid over the tiles of the hallway into the dark, another three goblins raised their melee weapons, and, torch in hand, raced closer to me, screaming wildly.

I put my head down and ran as fast as I could - overtaxed muscles protesting and partially cramping up, but fear propelling me forward. I might be able to deal with three or four goblins, after all, they were like oversized children in stature… but I was afraid that more would be joining in soon and perhaps even those oversized goblins. The further away I got before I had to engage in a fight, the better my chances.

Clearly, the goblins were catching up to me. I could hear their boots and bare feet slapping against the stone and their eager grunting. My shoulder blades started itching, as I was expecting the piercing pain of a spear in my back any moment.

I had to change something and fast.

When we approached the four-way crossroad I had passed on my way to the kitchen, I spread all my remaining black mana evenly over all of my body, right underneath the skin, just as I had briefly experimented with in front of the door.

Would it do anything? I had no fucking clue. But it couldn’t hurt either.

Abruptly, I turned to the right and immediately flattened myself against the wall while pulling my sword. Maybe the black mana would give me some type of camouflage, perhaps it wouldn’t – for all I knew, it just made me look funny... but either way, I had to fight; otherwise the goblins would just slaughter me from behind.

The goblins skidded around the corner, each one eager to reach me first. Their bloodthirsty expression turned to one of confusion, when they stumbled into the new corridor and, apparently, couldn’t spot me right away. Their eyes darted from left to right, but, somehow, skipped over my body without realizing that I was there, right at the edge of the light of their torches.

Rather than wait for them to find me, I jumped forward and stabbed the first goblin in the chest with my sword, while kicking the second one in the groin. Despite their obvious surprise, the two remaining goblins recovered quickly. The shorter of the two dived toward my legs, brandishing a long, wickedly sharp looking dagger, while the other one raised its spear and stabbed at me from a distance.

I managed to deflect the tip of the spear to the side but was a little bit too slow to entirely evade the dagger of the smaller goblin – the razor-sharp edge slid along my leg, cutting a long and deep gash into my upper thigh that immediately started to bleed heavily.

“You fucking little runt,” I cursed while slamming the pommel of my sword on the back of the head of the goblin. With a sickening crack, its skull caved in, and the goblin dropped to the floor like a stone. Distracted by the gory sight, I failed to deflect the second stab of the spear, and I suddenly felt blinding pain from my stomach.

With almost detached fascination, I looked down and saw the tip of the spear buried deep inside my gut. With a gleeful cackle, the goblin first twisted and turned the spear inside of my intestines, sending flashes of pain through my whole body, before it slowly pulled the spear out of my flesh, almost as if it was savoring the moment.

When the tip of the spear emerged, blood squirted out from the hole that the spear had left behind, quickly drenching the tattered remains of my t-shirt and spilling down on my pants.

The pain was unimaginable.

My knees buckled, but I refused to go down.

I took a step toward the goblin, clenching my jaws and grinding my teeth to distract myself from the pain.

The gleeful expression on the face of the goblin partially disappeared, and a look of uncertainty crossed its ugly visage.

And then I took another step.

Maybe I was going to die… but I was not going to go quietly.

The goblin took a step back, its mien showing first traces of fear.

Quick as lightning, my hand shot forward and grabbed the spear, immediately jerking it toward me. And the poor goblin, holding on tight, was pulled right along. When the goblin was in reach, I slashed down with my sword, severing its right arm, right at the elbow.

With a shriek of pain, the goblin stumbled backward, but I was not going to give it the chance to escape. A sideswipe of the sword cut deep into its thigh, causing the goblin to fall to the ground, whimpering, before a downward chop cut off all noise forever.

Panting heavily and barely standing I surveyed the carnage – three goblins dead, and one scarcely conscious, both hands pressed against its groin. Slowly, I made my way over and, with a quick cut of the sword, ended the nasty business.

I had triumphed… but at a high cost - two painful injuries, one of which deadly if left untreated. If any more goblins were to show up before I could work some healing mojo, I was in big trouble.