Thankfully, my worries about Bob being mistaken for a demon in my stead proved to be groundless. The little brat wouldn’t shut up when the caretaker came to feed us again, but she didn’t pay much attention to his excited yelps.

I returned to my routine. Every day after being fed, I’d fight against sleepiness and traverse the nursery, slowly adding to my repertoire. When I mastered the art of walking without faceplanting every few steps, I began running. Then I started doing jumping jacks. I wasn’t really trying to build up my muscles, which struck me as a ridiculous goal for a young child, but I never stopped improving my mobility and coordination.

We were all developing at a rapid pace. It seemed that every few meals the ground would distance itself from me a little more and the same was true for the other goblins. At some point, when I stood up, my head reached the caretaker’s waistline.

I still had no idea what my actual height was. Goblins in my world were supposed to be on the short side and transforming into a child messed with my sense of scale even further. I could only compare myself to other objects in this world, without ever knowing how it translated to good old centimeters.

One day the caretaker brought in with her a large trough filled with gruel. Having spent all of our lives locked in this dark room, we were extremely sensitive to anything that broke the usual routine. We all sat up, eyeing this new development with great interest.

The aroma wafting from the trough was overbearing. It quickly permeated the whole room, sticking to the walls and assaulting our nostrils.

It was extremely harsh, to the extent that it even irritated the eyes. But even more so, it was intoxicating. It carried traces of things tangy, hot, and sour. For children who had only ever experienced the mild taste of breastmilk, it seemed to expand our senses, forcefully opening up taste buds we never knew we had.

Seeing our group of five little monsters all flushed and breathing heavily, the caretaker seemed to be satisfied. She simply placed the trough in the middle of the room and left.

The atmosphere in the room grew thick. It wasn’t just the heady aroma of the gruel that suffused it. There was a rising tension in the air and a sense of instincts that were previously buried waking up.

The first goblin to act wasn’t me or Bob. In fact, I didn’t readily recognize him. In the beginning, I tried to study my other cohabitors, but they all looked fairly similar to each other in my eyes, and since they spent all of their time sleeping, I never learnt to distinguish them properly.

The one who stood up was even taller than me. There was something discernibly grander about him than the rest of us. His eyes were sharp and domineering.

He bared his dark teeth and let out a deep growl.

Some primal part of my being faltered at this sound. It seemed to scream at me to obey and step back. This effect was even more pronounced in the other goblins, they halted their advance and started reluctantly moving back. Bob seemed to be the most affected and retreated to the corner of the room.

Only, there wasn’t such an option for me. I could vaguely sense that this was a test I couldn’t afford to fail. It was a tragedy in itself to end up reincarnated as a goblin, I definitely wasn’t going to make it worse by staying at the bottom of the ladder.

I took a step forward, pushed my chest out and gave a growl of my own. It didn’t have quite the same innate power like my opponent’s, but it helped me shake off the wariness I was feeling.

The aroma permeating the room seemed to be stirring something deep inside of me and when I stood up to fight, I could feel the blood in my veins growing hot, and my heart pounding vigorously. Even if the goblin I was facing was an Alpha, I wouldn’t falter.

My opponent seemed enraged that someone dared to challenge his authority. He roared loudly and charged at me. I tried to take advantage of all the effort I poured into honing my coordination and sidestep him, but it was still a little too much to ask from a young child.

He threw himself at me and we both fell to the ground.

The fight devolved into a chaotic mess. Neither one of us knew how to fight, so we just continuously pummeled each other with our fists, not caring one bit about defense.

We were both learning on the go. When we discovered that hitting with fists wasn’t enough to seriously hurt the opponent, we started using our claws, carving bloody wounds all over each others bodies.

In the end, my victory came from having more experience. Betraying the rules ingrained in every boy who went to elementary school, I used my elbow and struck with all my strength at the spot between his legs. His mad roar suddenly turning into a falsetto was music to my ears.

Without a shred of guilt I hit him again in the same place. His claws finally stopped tearing wounds on my body and relocated to guard his nether region. I took advantage of his brief immobility to stand up and began savagely kicking and stomping all over his body.

I didn’t stop until the former Alpha turned into a sobbing, whining mess, writhing helplessly on the floor. Seeing his state I felt a little sick. In reality, I hadn’t done any permanent harm to him, but when the rush of the battle subsided, I did feel disturbed about being so merciless towards what essentially was a child.

I have also never imagined that hitting a boy in the balls would be the manner in which my supreme otherworldly knowledge would reveal itself in this new life.

I used my hand to wipe away most of the blood covering my face and shook it, spraying scarlet droplets all over the ground. This action struck fear into the hearts of the goblins who were thinking about taking advantage of my weakened condition. I growled at them menacingly and felt deep satisfaction seeing them retreat under my gaze.

The prize was mine.

I walked up to the trough, lowered my head, and took in the incredible aroma rising from the gruel. It was even more powerful at close distance. Beads of sweat started running down my face, mixing with blood and irritating my wounds.

My mouth began to water and unable to wait any longer I dipped my cupped hands into the gruel and brought the mixture to my mouth. It was scalding hot. I drank it greedily.

My mouth erupted in an explosion of contrasting flavors. Unrelenting heat contested with sourness and piquancy, neither yielding an inch. It should’ve been the most foul and repulsive thing I have ever tasted, but my body reacted to it like a dried shrubland to a lit match.

The gruel was extremely thick. I couldn’t readily recognize any of the ingredients. There were various roughly chopped bits of something squishy and gooey, squirting savory juices when I chewed them. They floated around in a brown liquid of extreme viscosity. It stuck to my hands and behaved like molasses, forcing me to expend a bit of effort to raise my hands when I dunk them into the trough.

I only stopped my frantic feast when my belly visibly expanded and I physically couldn’t stuff more of this pungent delicacy into my stomach.

I licked my fingers. My muscles were completely relaxed as a deep feeling of physical satisfaction spread throughout my body. My immediate instinct called on me to quickly go to sleep and focus on digesting this heavenly meal, but there remained one thing to take care of. There was only about a third of the gruel left. It obviously wouldn’t be enough to feed all of the remaining goblins.

I could already see the recently defeated Alpha standing up and trying to intimidate the other children.

Allowing him to eat the leftovers didn’t sit well with me. The lethargy I was feeling wasn’t like that caused by physical exhaustion, but rather a sign of my body beginning to absorb something extremely rich in energy. I could sense the hidden potency of this gruel, and sharing it with someone who didn’t bother hiding his hostility whenever he looked at me was suicidal.

“Bob.” I said.

It wasn’t just that he happened to be the only goblin here I developed something of a connection with. Throughout the whole fight he proved himself to be the most cowardly. Whereas the two other goblins remained on the sidelines, their greedy eyes searching for an opportune moment, he scurried away to hide in his corner from the get go. Already resigned to meekly observing the situation and not showing a trace of aggression of his own.

The fact that he was unlikely to later turn on me was only one part of the equation. The truth was, he was a typical runt of the litter and whenever I looked at him, he reminded me of my old dog Bernie. I could only hope that my girlfriend took good care of him now that I was gone.

The scaredy cat didn’t react when I called him and I had to actually walk to him and pull the brat myself towards the trough. He just sat there, staring at me.

Looking at his hopeful eyes I almost burst out laughing. He really was similar to Bernie when he was just a pup.

I was about to gesture to him that he should just dig in, when something hard struck me in the back.

It was that Alpha goblin again. It seemed that even if he might have submitted to me, he clearly wasn’t about to do the same for Bob.

I was already pretty banged up after our previous scuffle and this sneak attack made me furious. I quickly turned around and smacked him hard in the face. He fell to the ground and I stomped on his hand, till he let go of what he was holding.

A rock rolled down the floor. I was surprised. I have studied our room fairly exhaustively and never found anything that could be used as a weapon. He must have snatched it pretty early on and hid it on his person all this time.

This only confirmed my suspicions that restricting him access to the gruel was the correct choice. This quick bout revealed that even in this short time, my strength has increased by a small margin. Letting him eat it would be akin to giving steroids to a vengeful monkey.

I confiscated his stone and then finally convinced Bob that it was okay for him to eat. At first he was still wary, but as soon as he took his first gulp, his expression became so fierce, I thought he’d actually fight me if I tried to stop him.

The gruel was gone in no time. Bob went so far as to even lick the trough clean.

I was finally able to rest. I took a last look at the remaining goblins. Alpha was in the worst state, but the other children didn’t paint a happy picture either. They were still drawn to the aroma left behind in the trough, futilely trying to find a drop of gruel that Bob might have missed.

If this continues they will all starve to death, I thought. As desperate as I was to get stronger, visions of the other goblin children slowly growing emaciated and finally perishing in front of my eyes filled me with dread.

Only, there clearly wasn’t enough gruel to go around. I even suspected that if it was Alpha who got to it first, there wouldn’t be anything left for the second person.

Furthermore, distributing it evenly between everyone wouldn’t just hamper my growth but also attract attention. If all the goblin children had to go through this sort of survival game, then who knows how the caretaker would react when she discovered a child immune to his instincts.

In contrast to the dark thoughts in my head, my body was completely relaxed, radiating nothing but pure bliss and satisfaction. At some point I was finally unable to continue agonizing over my situation and fell into a deep sleep.

I awoke when the caretaker returned with another trough full of steaming gruel.