Chapter 5

The four little goblings looked sickly and much too thin.

Human babies could already be pretty ugly and goblin babies were worse, but they looked kind of cute too. They had the inherent cuteness of babies, even through they were goblings.

'A mechanism of evolution that leads to things like the lion cub that gets raised by a wild hog or the human baby that gets raised by wolves.'

The goblings still couldn't crawl, but they already had their teeth.

Divine fed them little pieces of meat. The goblings ate happily.

'The best option would probably be Old Tooth.'

One of goblings grabbed his finger and tried to chew on it.

'If I want to stay with the goblins for now, the current state of the tribe isn't acceptable. To change the tribe I will have deform it.'

'I could just form these four and then they could teach others. It will form a chain reaction if they live better than the rest of the tribe. The other goblins are going to want that for themselves and that's how they are going to get hooked.'

'I am going to try that first and if they are too much of a hassle I will just give them to Old Tooth.'

Divine left his follower to watch over the goblings and went to the next cave.

That was Snarky's cave and it looked exactly like in his memories.

Only that a pair of goblins occupied it now.

The two goblins were laying together on Snarky's last possessions, some very old rags, when Divine arrived.

"Scram!" Divine bellowed and waved threatingly with his rusty knife.

The male goblin attacked Divine immediately.

Divine reacted on reflex, side stepping and driving the knife into the goblin's neck.

[+1 Blood Qi Essence]

Divine pulled his knife and the goblin went down coloring the cave floor bloodred.

After that the female goblin fled very fast.

'Great now I have two caves with goblin corpses.'

Divine quickly went back to get his stuff and came back to Snarky's cave.

He placed his wet doe fur on the ground and stuck the ends of his left over meat sticks into a crack in the cave wall.

Only then Divine dragged the fresh goblin corpse to the other cave.

The lackey was still there watching over the goblings.

'Having a goblin lackey feels comfortable. Maybe I should get some more.'

Divine grabbed the two goblings that looked a little cleaner and carried them in his arms.

"Follow with goblings." Divine indicated the other two.

The lackey did a passable job even if it held the goblings at their legs and swung them through the air while walking.

The two goblings didn't look worse for wear.

Back in Snarky's cave Divine and the lackey placed the goblings in the corner on some rags.

The lackey got a meat stick as a reward.

Then Divine sat down on the other side of the cave.

'Divine Demon System. Status.'

[Spirit Qi Cultivation: First Stage of the Qi Condensation Realm]

[Body Cultivation: First Stage of the Body Tempering Realm]

[Blood Qi Essence: 19]

'Nice. The first step on my cultivation path is made.'

'No wonder I felt so strong and fought so well earlier.'

'I can't wait to take the next step. I need to take out the scripture and the manual I got from the starter pack.'

'Problem is only I can't store them back into the inventory and have to keep them safe in the future.'

'I am not sure if I should try to hide my cultivation from the goblins.'

Divine contemplated.

'When in doubt listen to the interpretations of the art of war. If you are weak, and I am, then project strength. If you are strong lure them with a show of weakness.'

'Goblins fight and rob even without giving them much incentive.'

'If I can't even defend myself against weak goblins I won't survive anyway.'

'It's decided. Goblins, kneel down in awe of my otherworldly powers.'

Divine took out the Eternal Divine Demon Cultivation Scripture.

His lackey didn't even notice. It was sleeping next to the goblings.

The manual was a brand new looking leather book with around 200 pages. It was written in English.

'That is not alarming at all...'

Divine left his suspicions aside and leafed through the book.

Divine was thankful for the glowing mushrooms in the cave that allowed him to read.

The scripture described the cultivation into an Eternal Divine Demon up until the Heaven Immortal Realm.

Divine read the chapter about the Qi Condensation Realm three times after he had leafed one time through the whole book.

It described a meditation technique.

One that faciliated breathing in natural qi.

Then came circling the natural qi through the meridians in a specific way to refine it and turn it into his own Spirit Qi.

The spirit qi was stored into the dantian.

A cycle of cultivation was finished after breathing out turbid air.

The book described everything very detailed and it even contained illustrations of a humanoid body that actually could be a goblin's. And illustrations of the meridians that were built by Blood Demon Yin Spirit Roots.

In the beginning came meditating, but before Divine could learn to breath in natural qi, he had to learn qi sensing.

Divine sat in the described meditative pose and concentrated on his breathing.

At first he couldn't calm his mind at all. When he managed to just let his thoughts pass by, he felt all the little aches in his body from sitting in the same pose for too long.

After what felt like hours Divine could feel something in his body.

It felt like a well of energy inside him. Actually it was only a tiny whisp of energy, but it felt very strong.

When he touched it somehow he immediately got a rush like a strong caffeine dose.

Suddenly he was completely awake and ready for action.

He calmed himself down. Divine wanted to capitalize on his success and tried to circle the qi in his body.

His spirit qi didn't react according to his intentions. He just let himself drown in the heavenly feeling of touching his spirit qi.

When Divine stopped, his body didn't ache from sitting in the same position for so long anymore.

Especially his mind felt rested but his body felt very stiff even if it didn't ache when he stood up.

The goblin lackey and the four goblings were awake but didn't make much noise.

Divine gave the lackey from the rest of the meat sticks with the order to feed itself and the goblings.

Divine ate some meat and drank some water from his gourd.

The others needed water too, but Divine didn't want to share his. There were still some drops of spirit water mixed in.

So he send the lackey to get water. Divine was a little worried that the goblin wouldn't come back, but if the goblin really wanted to leave, there wasn't much Divine could do.

The Shining Blood Demon Body Cultivation Manual was the next thing he got out of the system inventory.

The first realm of the shining blood demon body alone was very complicated.

One had to do incredibly difficult stances and movements.

When one held a stance and then flowed into a new one, one had to adjust his breathing accordingly.

And after that came the nourishment of the body with the own spirit qi, where one had to control one's qi to flow into different parts of one's body.

Divine tried some of the stances to lose the stiffness in his body.

The stances were hard to get right and harder to hold.

The lackey had been gone for some time now.

Divine ate two of the last four meat sticks. The other two he fed to the goblings.

He drank some of his precious water and even shared some with the goblings.

What he didn't do was clean up their filth. Even if he had wanted to, he didn't have enough rags or water to wipe them down.

And Divine couldn't express how much he didn't want to change the nappies of goblings.

Divine extracted the The Demonic Path of Immortality, a Cultivation Journey from the system inventory. It was a really big and fat book.

Bigger than Divine's new goblin torso. And much heavier.

With Divine's strength he couldn't hold it up for long. He sat it down in a relatively clean corner beneath a cropping of glowing mushrooms.

The book described many basics of cultivation. It was like a cultivation encyclopedia.

He leafed through the massive book and found texts about the Divine Demon System and the things in the system shop.

It had little explanations on almost everything, but only the absolut basics.

It had been quite some time and the lackey still wasn't back yet.

Divine kept looking through the book until the goblings grunting turned into a more annoying crying.

Now that he thought about it Divine was hungry and thirsty again too.

He drank something and gave some the goblins. His gourd was already half empty after that.

Divine sighed and took out three nutrition pills. Only six left now.

One nutrition pill he ate himself and he halfed the other two and distributed them between the four goblings.

The goblings approved highly of the nutrition pills by babbling happily at Divine after their meal.

Their bodies were still smaller than a regular newborn human but the goblings were already trying to crawl.

They managed to wiggle around a little.

The biggest of them even managed to sit up. It stared at Divine.

"Good work little one. Not bad." Divine talked to the gobling in English.

"Grr... bad..." The gobling copied the last sound and that gave Divine an idea.

'I'm going to shape this wretched goblin society to my liking. Starting by teaching these goblings English.'