I felt so sick in the mind, having to see this disgusting looking creature give birth to its disgusting children. Horrid smell invaded my nostrils. My view of goblins changed at that moment, when before I thought they were just small terrible creatures, now they were purely disgusting as well. Never having seen even human birth, this traumatised me.

The matriarch commanded a goblin by its side to attack me, so it started running towards me with nothing but hands as its weapons. As the attacker reached my vicinity, I grabbed it and threw the goblin behind me. Slamming my feet on the ground, stone erupted out of the ground and began surrounding the goblin like a snake strangling its victims, although I just trapped it, since my plan was to have all of them alive.

The problem was, how do I deal with the goblin mother that just gave birth. It stood up from its nesting place, standing about two meters and a half tall. It was one and a half meter longer than the other goblins.

The matriarch started coming towards me, thinking its size would best me, while my eyes witnessed horror. The umbilical cord wasn't cut off and the matriarch was dragging its infant goblins on the floor while coming towards me, bleeding the ground itself red with other fluids mixed in. I couldn't take it anymore.

My mind didn't even want to think about capturing that thing. I completely shut off mercy.

"Fuck this!" I yelled and reached out my palm towards the matriarch. Intense heat started gathering and I shot out fire like a flamethrower. The intense flames were thick and burning bright. I didn't hold back one bit.

"BURN!"

I put out my other palm and initiated burning with it aswell. The matriarch screamed while being flamed alive.

I had no damn care for anything except making the creature burn into dust. I was feeling the heat aswell, but I continued burning the living fuck out of it. I almost exhausted my entire mana supply.

I let out a breath as I looked at the cave room that was melting. There was no sign of the matriarch. Everything was torched, with lava oozing down from the walls.

Now that I let out my emotions in the form of a furnace, I released the serpent formed stone around the goblin and grabbed it, walking away.

Once I reached outside, I looked at the sky and let out a sigh, "Goblin caves, never again."

I handed the goblin to a skeleton at the cave entrance and commanded them to follow me. We walked towards the place where the other goblins were held captive. It seemed like they had given up on futile struggling and are now sitting the dormantly, but that couldn't be said the same for the new goblin addition. It was screaming loudly and biting the bones of the skeleton holding it. For a moment, it saw its kin and started telling them something, which riled up the entire hole. They were now more passionate than ever about struggling, even if they realise its useless. I speculated that the new goblin might have told the others that I had incinerated its... mother.

Now that they were aware of me murdering their matriarch, it was tougher to get them to submit to me. There was no hurry though, since they didn't have anywhere to escape to.

I used my sixth sense in a wide radius to scan for any other creatures near here, but the results were miniscule. Few results came back with small mana amounts. Looks like the goblins did a good job of marking their area, only for me to claim it for myself.

Indeed, the thought of building a new base of operations outside crossed my mind before. Now that the chance arrived, I got excited.

Looking at the sky, there were no clouds to be seen and the sun was bright as ever. Where did the goblins get their water supply from? I stroked my chin while looking at what to do with all this infront of me. Bunch of goblins in a hole and a group of skeletons. I would have asked the goblins, if only they could speak. Well, there was the thought of integrating with one of them, but after experiencing the horror in the cave, it was still a disgusting thought. It was quite the dilemma, since it was useful to integrate with souls, but my ego was holding me back. I decided to think about it later.

I went into a lotus position and started cultivating. My mana supply was reduced a lot after using most of it on burning the matriarch, so before I would start any work on building a base, I thought I'd recover some of my mana, perhaps even advance to the next level.

The energy in the savanna was dry, like the mana I sucked in had an aptitude for fire. When focusing on meditation, my mana regeneration was many times higher when compared to just doing something else. The hole in the stomach of my soul became slightly larger the last time I was meditating. It would be hard to suck in more mana from the surroundings with a smaller hole, but there was also the speed rate of suction, which made up for a smaller hole. Mine were matched evenly with eachother, I had thought.

I decided to name the hole in my soul stomach, Soul Fountain, and the soul tubes from which mana flows through, Spirit Veins. I picked those name out from novels I had read.

As more mana started gathering around me, the soul fountain was able to take in less and less, due to my soul filling up with mana. Energy started accumulating around me, almost even being able to be seen physically. It had no color, yet distorted the air around me. The goblin that was being held by the skeleton felt a pressure around me and looked towards me with awe.

It wasn't enough. I was hungry for more energy. I wanted to reach the next level, so I began sucking in more and more energy, pushing my soul fountain to its limits, forcing it to expand larger and open up more. Not only did the fountain feel pressure, my entire soul was getting mana from the outside. I was directly forcing mana to integrate with my soul externally. It felt like being crushed by intense pressure. The surrounding air swirled around me. I began sweating as a result of the hot mana absorption.

Around me, grass tore off and stuck to onto my body. I was like a black hole. Even the skeletons started to feel being pulled slightly. The bone armor that I had built started to crack under the pressure, like breaking plastic forks in half.

I gritted my teeth and tried a new tactic. I let out all the accumulated energy for a split second to allow the mass of mana to group up into a single surrounding area and with all my willpower took all of it in at once, placing a great deal of pressure on my soul and forcing it to integrate, like being mashed together with a hydraulic press.

The technique came at a cost. My physical body suffered pain and bones either cracked or moulded in abnormal shapes. It was out of proportion of my soul. I repeated this process few more times, enduring the pain it brought, until I finally ascended. As I did, a shockwave spurted out of my body, repulsive force pushing away anything in the vicinity a few metres.

I opened my deformed eyes with a profound shine in them. I felt the changes very quickly, noticing how fast my body began regenerating to its original form after almost being plummeted to a mushy sludge. Struggling to look around, I saw that my skeleton still held strongly onto its task of holding onto the special goblin. I thought of giving the skeleton a reward for that, but for now, I closed my eyes and let myself return to my indigenous form.

After proximately half an hour, I was back to my healthy-self. The goblins had quieted down for the moment and the special goblin looked at me with esteem. I smiled at it.

Since I was twice, perhaps even more, powerful than before, I went away from the location of the others. Decided on starting with simple physical tests, I began running. Even running at a slow pace was quite fast, with breeze running through my hair. Turning it up a notch, I sprinted with 80% of my maximum speed. I was running at least 40 kilometers per hour.

It was amazing. Every step I took, every muscle I moved, every little movement. I felt everything. I had full authority over my body and was able to act out however I wanted. The ground beneath my feet flew as I pushed away. 

At one point I stopped, looked back and scanned with my sixth sense, focusing specifically on the area where the others were situated. I saw even tiniest of details the goblins life essence were putting out. It was like I was near them. The mana threads attached to me were stretched very far, but they had no chance of breaking. 

I looked up next and thought how far I could jump. I squatted down and with full might I pushed upwards like a spring. 

"Ah... Ahahaha!" I let out an amazed laugh. The view was glorious, with my improved eyesight. The freedom I felt at that moment was the best I had felt since coming to this strange world.

I began ascending down and panicked a bit, noticing the ground was pretty far away. I commanded mana to form an energy pillow under me for softer landing. I still landed quite hard due to the velocity, but due to almost perfectly utilizing my movements, there was no pain at all. 

"This... This is great!" I felt invincible. Compared to the old world where the limits were too great, it felt like I was limitless here.

"Alright, time to test out the real thing." I said while looking at the savanna plains. I reached my hand out towards the empty target and shot out a concentrated air bullet.

Like a grenade exploding, the ground blew up with mud and rock flew everywhere. 'Holy shit...' I thought.

I held myself back from testing anymore, excitement ran through every inch of my body. I was afraid over overdoing it, so I ran back to my skeletons and goblins.