I pushed on hard through the night. Not only were the humans obviously settling in for the night, they’d also inadvertently confirmed that this road wouldn’t hit human civilization for a while yet, freeing me to take the road proper. Whatever my disdain for the human constructions, it was the clearest path I had.

I maintained a light jog for an hour before I relaxed to a walking pace for another and cycled between them. I wouldn’t be comfortable on the open road for more than another day or so, but it was important to secure my lead until then. It was something that I might have been able to pull off a month ago, if at the cost of collapsing exhausted at the end.

That wasn’t what happened today. I was tired to be sure, but little more so than if I’d been walking all night and I’d never really felt the same burning in my muscles that I might have expected. In the darkness of the Dungeon I’d gauged time only on the responses of my own body. I wondered how far off I was?

It was almost tempting to push on, both to better calculate my time beneath and simply test my limits. But in the end I knew better. If you ever pushed yourself to your very limit when you weren’t threatened you faced the very real risk that something might actually start threatening you and you’d have nothing left to give. Better to wait. Life would push you plenty hard on its own sweet time without any need to do it yourself.

I hopped off the road and climbed beneath it. The animal at the back of my brain demanded that I seek security in distance, put a little space between me and the road, only to be overruled. The solid surface of the road offered more concealment than the thorny jungle and the odds of the humans wandering off for a piss were probably higher than them checking the very ground beneath their feet anyhow.

I bundled up beneath and drifted off to sleep. I awoke to a grey dawn.

I sat up and stretched after my customary minute of faked sleep. I hadn’t heard anything through the night, so the humans were probably still behind me. I’d need to hurry if I wanted to keep it that way, so I had a quick breakfast of cold tack and salted pork before getting on the road.

I got moving still chewing. I was under no illusion of beating the human traders forever, the unfair length of their legs made that impossible, but if I kept up the pace it would take them ages to catch up. Long enough for night to fall and me to pull ahead again.

It took three days more before I saw the trees start to thin and I abandoned the road. As convenient as the human creation had been my past experience had implied that the humans were comfortable living right up on the edges of the Deep Woods. The road could burst right into one of their villages at any time.

Instead I trailed the road through the thinning jungle. The overgrown thorns weren’t gone completely, but they were fading and I could pick out solid earth between their roots.

Given its name, I took this as a sign that the Deep Woods were well and truly behind me.

An almost melancholy thought. I hadn’t entered it by choice, but I’d gained much from it either way. Maybe I’d visit the tribes there again one day.

But not any day soon. First I had to figure out which way was fucking north. If I was parsing the merchant’s route correctly, I should be somewhere on the north side of the Deep Woods, but a bit more info would help stop me from haring off to the east or west.

So I stuck to the road for now. As it faded out from boardwalk into more normal, if overgrown, dirt road I got closer to human settlements. And why would you bother navigating yourself when someone else had already done it for you?

In short, I needed to find a sign. Neither my Seagri nor my Devlo was all that good, I could barely read them at all really, but I did know the symbols for the cardinal directions at least. They were the same for both languages, which made things easier.

I shadowed the shadowy remnants of road till it intersected with a notably better maintained road. Despite the crossroads there wasn’t a sign in sight. Not important enough to merit one, but crossing human lands by daylight wasn’t my kinda stupid, so it’d be night before I saw one.

I took a nice little nap hidden well off the side of the road and came out safely after nightfall, taking the left hand path. A handful of miles later I hit a more significant crossroads with the markers needed. From there it was an easy task. I could simply head off parallel to the north most path and correct my drift whenever I stumbled on another road. Eventually I’d hit the foothills and I knew the way from there.

I doubted it was the fastest method, but the most efficient route would likely have a trail blazed over it already. Human villages were but dots across the wider landscape in all but the most heavily inhabited areas, so the circuitous route I’d end up tracing could avoid ever passing directly over their farmland.

Some country bumpkin had little odds of catching me of course, but small odds added up. Better to have no odds at all.

As I spent my days traveling I spent my nights meditating. It was only a few hours every night, but, well, small things could add up. I took the relative safety of the road for all it was worth, advancing in both soul manipulation and body sensing. There might have been little to level up from here, even if I did kill a few rabbits and squirrels to pad out my supplies, but raw levels weren’t all that mattered. Not only was I more proficient at [Soul Sense], but by taking the time to examine my levels and polish out inefficiencies I managed to wring out a few more Stat points from the levels I already had.

I hit a wall with that quickly enough. I was sure it was still somewhere short of full efficiency, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to make the containment any better without needing more divine energy, and that would defeat the point.

Still, a whole extra Stat point a level was nothing to scoff at.

Speed: 13 => 15

Agility: 12 => 13

Dexterity: 12 => 14

Constitution: 11 => 12

Toughness: 9 => 11

Metabolism: 15 => 16

Senses: 18 => 20

Optimization complete, that left me a more promising project.

Hobhood. Joining the goblin elite wasn’t something most goblins did on purpose. Surviving life was the more common goal, and if you were lucky enough to hit that lofty goal than good for you. There were a handful of goblins who did try of course, inventing magical rituals, gorging till they burst, diving headlong into danger, but everyone dismissed them as nuts. Hobhood was a fact of life much like death. It either happened or it didn’t, and there was only so much you could do to effect that. A full stomach helped for both, but guaranteed nothing.

With my newfound ancient knowledge, I could now dismiss them as only mostly nuts. Their actions were broadly stupid and life endangering, even if they were right in a technical sense. The Hob transformation was far from random. It simply had enough moving parts to make predictions difficult and intentionally controlling the process by guesswork or experimentation nigh-impossible.

My training from Kimakt meant I didn’t have to do that. With a little adjustment of my hormonal secretions I could eliminate enough variables to essentially pick any end form I wanted.

Within limits. But if I’d refused the mild risk of pushing my limits running, I intended to do the opposite here. A greater risk to be certain, but so much more to gain. Slow and steady wins the race was a lesson my mother taught me well, but when something would be my defining factor for the rest of my life I couldn’t afford half measures. A properly managed risk here would multiply my effectiveness for years to come.

Intentionally triggering the transformation might be widely considered a fool’s errand, but how to control it once it started was the exact opposite. Everyone and their grandmother ‘knew’ some killer technique that would guarantee a perfect transformation if only you followed their advice. Luckily Kimakt helped me with that too.

There were essentially four factors that played into the transformation process, both in triggering it and in directing it. The hormonal and chemical factor was by far the easiest variable to control, at least after Kimakt’s training. You could get every other factor right, but if your body wasn’t in the right state you’d still get nothing.

The second factor was behavioral. It was one of the key factors that shaped what kind of hob you’d become. It could also indirectly influence hormones, but that wouldn’t be an issue for me. Behavior would only matter on a deeper level. Kimakt had assured me that even with hormones taken out of the equation with conscious control behavior would still play a role. The Hob transformation was a naturally flexible process, but certain forms had been locked behind specific actions or achievements.

The third factor was environmental. Next to behavior it was the most coveted of any factor, at least by surface tribes. It included everything from the light shining on your cocoon to the quality of the air, but by far the most influential was ambient mana levels. There was a reason why monsters were drawn to dungeons, and goblins were no exception. It was a huge risk for any tribe to take, but the unassailable position of such a Hob-heavy tribe wasn’t so easy to resist.

Tragically, it was also the factor I’d shape the least. There was a reason that Dungeon tribes were legendary, and it wasn’t because they were common. Any tribe, or even any individual, who sought that advantage would have to journey there as a normal ass goblin. I had something of an edge with my Levels, but Dungeons were dangerous and sitting around as an undefended cocoon was a bad idea. I wanted the best I could get, but that only moved the dial on my constant cost-benefit analysis, not broke it entirely.

The final, and least impactful, factor was the more mystical element. Blood pacts, spirit-bonds, and other such things could massively shift the results of a transformation, but the vast majority would happen without any such magic support. Mine would fall into that category. As nice as it would be to get another set of kickass powers, blood pacts rarely came without a price. Never, actually.

That left me with only two factors to maximize my benefit from hobhood. That being so, I was damn well gonna wring them harder than bleeding stones. To do that I would have to start early, and that meant now. I spent my nights working my way up north and my days split between sleep and meditation. As I laid the groundwork for my transformation I could already feel my body changing. Notably, I put on a lot of fat.

The sight made me more than a little anxious, but that was the sacrifice I made for power. Still, the thought of losing my ability to squeeze through cracks, sweating and panicking as hounds scrabbled at the outside…

I shook off my fear with a growl. I was still smaller than a human and you never had to be the best. Just better than the other guy.

It took nearly a month before my feet trod on the foothills of the Devain again. By that time I’d done so much prep I’d had to start circling around stuff I’d already done. I even corrected a few mistakes, if small ones. Nothing that would have put me at risk, but it was good to see them fixed, even if I couldn’t help but wonder what mistakes I could have missed…

No important ones, I told myself. I’d been over things a dozen times. My body had been hard at work stockpiling all the necessary hormones and packing on the fat to fuel the whole process, all while I carefully monitored and fine-tuned as required. If an unguided idiot could blunder their way through this with coin flip chances than I had to be all but guaranteed success.

If anything was the matter, it was my own hesitancy. The process wasn’t really meant to be dragged out this long, and I was starting to get weird joint aches and headaches. The hormones I was secreting could only be stored for so long. They were meant to be used.

It would be just a little bit longer.

The Devain mountains were just as I remembered them, jagged peaks reaching to the sky. Mana flowed like rivers through the valleys, giving birth to a thousand hungering beasts, but they no longer invoked the same terror they once hand. I was possessed of a real mana sense now, and even the simple insights it gave me were enough to tell how much thinner the mana was here than in the Dungeon depths.

Nonetheless I kept to the old traditions, tracing a line on the mountain slopes well above the thickest mana. It was just safer that way. As a tribe we clung to the slopes and the caves within them, darting down in brief forays only. If we were lucky they might come back laden with meat and herbs unique to the valleys, if we weren’t they’d never come back at all.

The ferocious beasts native to the valleys were a blessing in their own way. We might have made good prey to the worst of them, but we were still familiar in a way that strangers weren’t. Any substantial intrusion would rile up the wildlife and their predations created perfect cover for our raiding parties to tear apart organized human assaults. We knew these mountains better than the faces of our own children and no one could take it from us.

Was it strange to take pride in that still? I could call it my tribe all I wanted, but they’d not welcome me back. I didn’t want them too even if they would. I’d spat in their face with my actions, and I had no regrets.

My spite was as strong as my pride and neither emotion negated the other.

Perhaps it was foolish to even expect them too. Skill and power were on a completely different axis than morality. I could delight in one and be disgusted by the other.

Tragically, using the established paths came with a cost. Running into people. For that reason, I eventually left them behind in favor of the the thicker forest below. More dangerous to be sure, but I’d tread this loam long before I’d gained the powers I had today.

It wasn’t long before I began picking up signs of goblin life. Scratched trees, the subtle marks of the gob paths, but also more recent traces. A churned up cathole, the burnt remnants of a shallow fire, rumpled leaves that smelt faintly of sex.

Forest goblins. The less fortunate cousins of cave goblins like myself, forest goblins were those too stupid to find a good hidey-hole like a sensible person. They lived nomadic lives of constant fear and violence.

Well, everybody did, but their fear was greater and their violence more frequent. Hobs were a bit more frequent among them, as befitted a more mana-dense home, but there were so much fewer of them it hardly mattered. Even in the days of Drakul’s thousand tribe alliance nine in ten of us had been cave goblins. A surface tribe might have a dozen members compared to the hundreds of even a modest cave tribe, and they had to trade with us if they wanted any weapons worth a damn.

I steered around those signs. What I was looking for wouldn’t be found out here. I kept moving until I found signs more familiar still. The tribe sigil adorning the traditional markers changed, being replaced with one more familiar. Carved into the tree above the directional markings on the underside of branches too low for humans to see, it looked like the mark of a three-clawed cat to the unperceptive.

To the perceptive, it looked like an idiot with a knife trying very hard to be a three-clawed cat. I shook my head. Standards had really lowered. Why, I remembered back when the trail markers carried around actual cat claws, just to hide their marks better. It had been a mark of honor too, a sign of pride that denoted the pathfinders from the rest of the tribe.

Something was wrong, and that sense of trepidation only got worse as I got closer. We didn’t venture into the woods all that often, but I still should have seen somebody by now. What was going on? I’d left a while ago, but after Drakul’s death things should have been moving back towards normal, not changing even more.

I didn’t like it. I’d been planning on just sneaking through one of the more overlooked entrance, but if they’d really changed up stuff this much could I really rely on that old knowledge? I had plans, and those plans absolutely did not permit me to get spotted.

Not to mention getting killed.

I redirected my course. If I couldn’t count on the mostly overlooked entrances then I’d have to go for a completely overlooked entrance.

To be fair, calling it an entrance at all was charitable.

My skin itched as I climbed up the mountainside and left the obscuring foliage behind me. I shivered, but worked through the anxiety with a few adjustments to my camouflage. Over the course of a brief break I worked the rocky mountain grit that passed for dirt here into the woolen fibers of my cloak and threw out my leaves and branches in exchange for a few bits of the scraggly shrubbery that managed to grow where I was headed.

Then I went up. There were plenty of forest gullies where the shadows deepened till you lost the sun entirely, and many of them could be taken to the warrens, but they were never the preferred entrance. The life of the forest was a little too happy to carve out little dens and warrens of its own down there. Still, some did still use it, even if I called them fools for doing so. Forest goblins would use it occasionally, for trading and raiding alike.

The standard entrances were higher up, more isolated. Lonely caves and tunnels that could be guarded against the beasts. I’d try my luck at sneaking through them, but I was no longer confident in my ability to predict the alacrity of the guards. It was usually whichever Hob had pissed off someone important most recently managing a half dozen of whatever ‘volunteers’ they’d managed to scrounge up. But now? If the competency of the pathmarkers was so radically different then my knowledge couldn’t be counted on.

The tribe had stayed much the same for all of my life, but all that uneasy stasis had been completely annihilated with the arrival of Aras Drakul. No prior chieftain had been as strong, but that weakness created a sort of paradoxical stability. With a mind as limited as their strength they’d had neither the ability nor the ambition to do more than stubbornly cling to power until they got challenged and replaced by someone no different.

Drakul was different. Drakul had hope, damn him. He had a fire to him.

I shivered at the thought. I’d wish for him to suffer all the wrath of hell, but everytime the thought rose it brought the image of the last time I’d seen the once-fearsome chief of chiefs. Whatever his crimes, he’d suffered enough. I could only hope his grave brought the peace his life hadn’t.

It had been foolish of me to assume that his death would end his disruptions of the status quo. No, once you shoved a boulder from the cliff face it clung too there’d be no stopping until it hit something.

I just had to get in and out before it hit me.