Norgolin sat inside his hut beside the Black-Sun rose, trying to discover a way to use his Mana and cultivate it. Laura often came here to contemplate and study the plant, but she was surprised every time she returned he was in the same position, seemingly making no progress at all. One hour, two hours, three hours, nine hours and all Norgolin could do was circulate Mana throughout his body. He couldn't find a way to absorb it from nature as everyone did, or make it grow. It was like his body didn't accept Mana that wasn't his and didn't have a way to increase it naturally.

After all this time and no progress, Norgolin got as irritated as possible. He tried to chill down and then, after relaxing he felt quite bored. Norgolin started to write on the ground with the tip of his fingers covered with mana. Right at that moment, an idea came to his mind. Our protagonist made a circle, and inside of it, started making some drawings, testing the results. His first circle had the rough drawing of a wolf, but when he put mana into it, nothing happened. The second was actually written; As Norgolin only knew how to write in the human language, he tried to write what the circle would do. Something like a description of the effect. The second attempt failed too, so it seems there isn't instant magic learning in this world. What bothered our goblin the most was that his Mana seemed to reject any method coming from this world, so if he wanted to make magic circles, Norgolin needed to do it in a way that used just himself, as even writing in the air wasn't possible. After pondering for a while, he decided to make something like a tattoo.

Norgolin used his sharp nails to start making a rune on his body, but he wouldn't cut his body without certainty of success, as he saw the big scar Carlin had given him with just one blow, and as he didn't know whether scars affected the success of magic or not, better safe than sorry. He thought about it for a while and decided on drawing the scariest being he had ever read about: A Dragon. However, he only read some descriptions on old mythology books, nothing much. So, he started with the most basic things.

He went to a nearby river (their village had two rivers, one to the east and one west, he had gone west when exploring, now Norgolin was going east) and used the reflex on the clean water to start drawing on the upper part of his head, almost at the forehead. He drew two circles of the size of a bottle cap, and did his best to make it clear that it should make a horn appear. Norgolin made a '' + '' sign inside the circle and cut four points on each side of the sign. The points were where he would concentrate his mana, to connect all four and make a square form, activating the rune. (This is what it actually looks like, before activating and after activating, respectively: https://imgur.com/a/cDCQfui )

Our protagonist wished all the blood coming from his head wasn't in vain. After the blood coagulated, he started canalizing mana into the entire drawing to make sure it transformed into a body rune, and this process was the most painful thing he had ever experienced. Two hours of agonizing in pain and his symbols shone a stunning blue light for some seconds, before returning to normal, just with the black tattoo standing.

''Please, make all of this be for nothing, please'' Norgolin thought.

Canalizing his mana on each point, he connected all four, and after that, finally, two horns grew! they had 35cm, and looked quite the bit like Armon horns, save for the fact that they were discovered to be thousands of times more useful.

After some testing, Norgolin discovered they actually could be used as Mana sources! The process was very, very slow but it was already a start! Now he could grow his mana, but there was another problem: He needed to enter a meditation state, concentrating entirely on cultivating to use them, otherwise they would just be normal horns, so he would need a lot of time to cultivate his mana, but that didn't matter, Norgolin was already very happy that he could now increase both Mana and Battle Power!

Right at that time, Alom called him with a strong voice, just to give Norgolin the worst news he could receive.

''Norgolin, the goblins we sent to collect vines brought us very bad news: there is actually a group of 20 orcs heading straight toward our village!'' Alom said, very worried, seemingly scared by the orcs. Of course, Norgolin knew that this was because of his trauma.

''Immediately call all goblins here, we need to prepare!'' Norgolin shouted.

When all of them gathered, Norgolin started his speech.

'' ALL OF YOU GOBLINS, LISTEN WELL! A GROUP OF TWENTY ORCS IS COMING IN OUR DIRECTION AND I DON'T HAVE EVEN THE TINIEST DOUBT THEY ARE COMING TO ATTACK US!'' All goblins were very scared after hearing this, but he continued ''WE HAVE BEEN TRAINING ALL THIS TIME, NOW IS THE TIME WE TRANSFORM ALL OF OUR SUFFERING AND HARD WORK INTO VICTORY! LET US OVERCOME OUR FEAR AND MISERY AND WIN AGAINST THESE DAMN PIGS! I CAN SEE FROM YOUR FACES THAT YOU ARE ALL VERY AFRAID, BUT FEAR ISN'T USEFUL RIGHT NOW, SO PREPARE YOURSELVES AND BE STRONG!'' He said in a strong voice.