A couple of hours later, and covered in scratches, dirt, and even more bruises than before, I stumbled back toward the kitchen, dragging three sacks behind me. It was slow going, mostly because I was utterly exhausted, and the bags were unwieldy like hell.

But sometimes one just needs to push through.

Luckily there were no goblins in the kitchen area, so I was able to quickly cross right into the wide hallway that led to the room filled with the little savages. Anxiously, I listened to any noise that would indicate the goblins getting ready to move out, ready to bolt at any moment.

Not that I would get very far if that happened. I was realistic enough to know that my chances were close to nil if all forty of those savages or even just ten of them came out of that room chasing toward me.

Hell, even five might do me in.

That said, despite my exhaustion, I felt that my physical stats had improved further, continuing the incredible speed at which I was building up muscle mass and coordination after having been stuck to my wheelchair for four straight years. Once again, as I had done frequently during the last few hours, I raised my arm to just watch it move. Curling the fingers one by one, marveling at the movement of the muscles underneath my flesh. Granted, not that much in terms of muscle, but infinitely more than just a couple of days earlier.

Just watching the movement was mesmerizing and gave me a jolt of pleasure. And that positive energy was what allowed me to keep moving. Many times during the last hours, I had been tempted to sit down and take a break, relax for a while, or perhaps even sleep. But I knew that that was likely a death sentence. If not the goblins, then some other monster was probably going to pass by and gobble me up as a nice afternoon snack. Or an evening snack. I had lost track of time a long while ago, and who the fuck cared anyway.

Finally, about ten yards from the room with the goblins, I softly dropped the sacks to the ground and arranged them bottom-up next to each other. Slowly, I released the strings that were keeping the bags closed, careful to not leave any openings between the sack and the ground. Sweat started to appear on my forehead as I meticulously prepared my trap.

After an endless-seeming five minutes, everything was arranged in a way that I thought would maximize the impact.

Slowly, I made my way toward the double door, sword at the ready.

Heart pounding, and with a mouth that suddenly was extremely dry, I gently opened the door and peeked through the narrow gap.

And there the goblins were.

From the looks of it, they were having a feast. A giant bonfire was burning in a fire pit in the middle of the room, and about forty goblins were sitting around, mostly eating or drinking, but some also fornicating or sleeping. And over a spit turning over the fire was their meal.

Just one look brought bile up to my throat, and I had a hard time suppressing the urge to throw up. It very much looked as if they had a human as their entrée.

Seeing the nasty gobs roasting a human over the fire like some odd piece of meat, made me realize once more that any mercy or empathy I might have been feeling towards the goblins was surely misplaced. This was a scourge that needed to be removed from the face of… well, from wherever we were now. Probably it was not earth any longer.

Perhaps that was speciest, but so what.

Now how best to attract the attention of all of them? Kill them. Or at least one of them.

I patiently waited until one of the goblins came close to the doors. Once it had turned its back toward me, I quietly open the door wide enough for me to sneak through, and launched a lightning-quick sneak attack from behind. The goblin never knew what hit it.

My sword pierced its heart, and without much noise, the goblin fell to the floor and died.

I could make out a bit of commotion from the assembly of goblins and suspected that some might have seen me already, but I needed more of an impact. With a quick chop, I separated the head of the goblin from its body, grabbed it by its greasy hair and tossed the disgusting package in a wide, blood-spraying arc into the middle of the bunch of goblins, while screaming loudly that they should go fuck themselves. Not that I expected them to understand me… but style is style.

With that, I turned around, jumped into the hallway, and slammed the door shut behind me, before running down the corridor. It felt as if I was slower than a fucking turtle, but it seemed as if it was going to be enough, even if only barely. Seven meters in, the door banged open, and the previously muted blood-curling screams of rage from the goblins suddenly hit me full force.

I stumbled for a step, but then the feeling of imminent doom caused a huge adrenalin spike that supercharged my system and made me forget all about my pain and injuries.

With a quick couple of steps, I was next to the burlap sacks and tightly grabbed the rough material in my hands. I sharply kicked each bag, and then jumped forward, pulling the sacks along so that the content was revealed.

Not waiting for the effect, I ran a few steps further, before I turned about to see the result of my plan… to say I was nervous was an understatement. Either I was going to die a painful death within the next few minutes, or I would deal with most of the goblins with one simple little trap…

Sword in hand, useless as it would be if I ended up having to fight, I watched a cloud of amber, and purple-shining spores billow out from the newly revealed giant mushrooms, filling the width of the hallway with their calming dreams. The cloud was thick enough to almost wholly shield the crazed horde of creatures rushing toward me from my view, so all I could do was watch and wait.

And hope.

Idly, I wondered what the goblins would be dreaming about. Surely, it was not visions of a romantic outing with a sweet girl, hidden somewhere in the dunes…

And then the first goblin stumbled into view.

I grabbed my sword tightly, ready for a last stand; prepared for a last hooray of man against abhorrent monsters.

As much as I wanted to live, I knew that I was hopelessly outmatched. But I was going to be defiant to the last moment, ready to wet my blade in the blood of a few of the vile creatures, before being overwhelmed.

But then I noticed that the goblin was smiling stupidly, its grin splitting its ugly face into a parody of the Joker from Batman. Giggling, it sat down on the floor, picking its nose with one hand, while rubbing its tummy with the other.

And then I saw the mushrooms sprouting from its bald head, and out of one of its strangely elongated ears.

Soon, another two, then three, then five more goblins joined the first, sitting down without a care in the world.

Slowly, I relaxed my death grip on the sword and wiped my sweaty hands on my grimy pants. This had been a tense moment. Facing certain death, only to find out that, after all, the trap had worked as planned – not for the faint of heart.

As the spores slowly settled down, I had to chuckle. A huge pile of goblins was bunched right about where I had pulled off the burlap sacks from the giant mushrooms that I had dug out in a painfully slow process during the last two hours. Some of them were moving around feebly, while others were in a catatonic state, trapped in their own mind.

I had taken a calculated risk multiple times while preparing and springing the trap. First, when I dug out the mushrooms I assumed that there would be minimal spores when not directly damaging the stem of the mushrooms and the few that might be triggered, I had expected to be able to resist. And it had worked out as I had hoped. A few times, the spores managed to trap me in some type of memories for a brief time, but it was something that I could overcome, thanks for my skills and the title ‘Mental Bastion,’ I suspected.

The next risk had been whether the mushrooms would still trigger those spores, even if not in their cave surrounding, but I had taken a smallish one down first, to try it out and it seemed to work the same way. Lastly, I was not entirely positive whether the spores would be enough to take out the large group of goblins, but it seemed as if should not have worried too much. The goblins were sleeping peacefully, and I could already see roots starting to settle on their bodies.

What a lousy way to go.

Perhaps…

With a few quick chops of the sword, I cut holes into the burlap sacks at my feet so that I could put my arms and head through and cut another one to use as head protection. ‘Armored’ like that, I moved cautiously closer to the goblins and mushrooms.

I needed to take out the mushrooms eventually anyway because otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to pass the hallway later on. And if I was already going to do that, then why not now and take the mana from all those goblins that were laying around like forty-plus little Easter mana eggs. Perhaps a callous attitude, but hey, they were already basically dead. And they were eating humans, so…

As I neared the mushrooms, the effect of the mushrooms started setting in. I felt… I felt like that day in Belize, at the beach. Just me, the wind and sun, out there with a kayak, paddling to a remote island. The gentle waves lapping against my boat. Orange, floating roots fall- wait, what? Shit. This stuff was insidious.

But by now, I realized much more quickly that something was wrong. So, apparently, I had improved in resisting mental effects. Quickly, I checked my character sheet to see if this was indeed reflected in my stats or just a figment of my imagination.

And indeed, there it was… Mental Ward and Mental Fortitude had both increased by one. There were a ton of other changes as well, but I felt this was not the time to stare at a blue box in my head, while roots tried to dig through the canvas into my flesh.

That said… as long as I could fend off those visions and keep the roots from using me as fertilizer… this was the perfect training ground for me! If I was serious about getting stronger than I needed to take those opportunities.

So with some apprehension, I refrained from chopping down the mushrooms and instead got into a more comfortable position. Soon enough, I was hit by additional memories and dreams but, especially because I knew what to expect, it got easier and easier to resist the influence of those nasty shrooms. Not wanting to wait until the goblins all died due to root-infestation, I eventually got back on my feet and slowly moved from one Goblin to the next, ending each of their lives with a clean stroke of the sword.

Truth be told… it did not feel good doing that. It was too mechanical, too cold-blooded somehow to slaughter them when they were utterly defenseless. Not that they would not have killed me without a second thought in a similar situation… but I was not them.

Thank goodness for that.

But I steeled myself and finished the task, hoping to gain a ginormous amount of red and green mana. Mentally I was already dreaming about throwing huge fucking fireballs all around me, incinerating goblins, spiders, mushrooms and whatever other nasties there might be. And, a green… well, whatever green mana might be useful for.

Once I was done with my bloody task, I looked back at the mushrooms, considering my options. I could train a bit more my mental resistances, but I felt that at this point, it was getting too easy to avoid being ensnared by the visions sent by the spores. The effect on my skill leveling was, therefore, going to be limited. But perhaps I could…

After a brief hesitation, I let one of the remaining spores land on my arm, and I watched the root slowly dig into my flesh. It was fascinating to see that at the point of burrowing, there was almost no pain… the amber mana seemed to serve as a sort of local anesthesia. Once the root took hold in the flesh though, the pain was excruciating. Quickly, I proceeded to crush the root, just as I had done before and tried to absorb the amber area of influence that had ended up in my body.

Unfortunately, that did not work at all this time around. I tried all kinds of different approaches, with varying combinations of mana, pushing and pulling at the mana but to no avail. So apparently, subsuming mana that had become part of my body worked to gain a new core, but not to increase the amount of mana in my body.

Which was a bit of a head-scratcher, but good to know anyway. And secretly I was glad that this did not work… otherwise, I would have had to force myself to endure the incredible pain of being stabbed by those roots for hours upon hours, in the hope of increasing my amber mana count significantly.

Sometimes it is nice to have fewer options. Life is easier then.