Chapter 1: The Gutter and The Gaze
The transition wasn't seamless. It was a fracture.
One moment: the shatter of glass, the crumple of steel, the fleeting regret for a life of quiet mediocrity. The next: a suffocating, liquid darkness, followed by a violent, compressive expulsion into a world of stench and sound.
Pain. Cold. Hunger.
The instincts hit first,primal and overwhelming. Then, the memory: Leo. My name was Leo. It was a raft in a storm of alien sensation.
I was upside down, dangling from a clawed, green fist. The face leering into mine was a nightmare of warts, yellowed tusks, and eyes gleaming with stupid malice.
"Puny!" it grunted, its breath a fog of rot. "Skinny! Good for nothing but screaming when the orcs come!"
It tossed me. I landed on a mound of refuse and damp moss, my new body—small, scrawny, green—protesting with sharp, bone-deep aches. Around me, the cavern thrived with a kind of vicious life. Goblins. Dozens of them, cackling, squabbling, picking at vermin. The air was thick with the smell of unwashed bodies, wet earth, and searing meat from a spitted, unrecognizable creature over a central fire.
Despair, thick and tar-like, threatened to drown the spark of Leo. This wasn't an adventure. This was a sentence. Reincarnated as the universe's cannon fodder.
[System Integration Complete. Welcome, Host.]
The voice in my mind was neither male nor female. It was clarity itself, a crystalline structure of information forming behind my eyes. The chaos of the cave gained a silent, blue-tinged overlay.
[Initializing Core Functions: Analysis, Devour, Shop, Evolution.]
[Granting Initial System Resource: 10 Essence.]
Essence. Not points. Resource. The term felt more fundamental, more real. As the spark of my human intellect wrestled with the goblin's base urges, I focused on a brawling pair of kin over a gristly bone.
[Analysis Engaged.]
A stat sheet unfolded:
Subject: Goblin Grunt
Race:Goblin (Lesser)
Rank:Micro (Tier 2)
Vitality:11/15
Arcana:0/1
Physical Vector:0.008
Kinetic Vector:0.007
Endurance Vector:0.009
Cognition Vector:0.003
Traits:[Night-Eye (Crude)], [Pack-Skulk]
Talents:None.
Threat Assessment:Minimal.
Vectors, not simple stats. A more complex, measurable expression of potential. And my own?
[Host Status]
Designation:Unnamed
Race:Goblin (Lesser, Neonate)
Rank:Micro (Tier 0)
Vitality:4/5 (Bruised)
Arcana:1/1
Physical Vector:0.003
Kinetic Vector:0.004
Endurance Vector:0.005
Cognition Vector:0.7 (Anomaly: Retained Psyche)
Traits:[Night-Eye (Crude)]
Essence:10
The Cognition anomaly was my lifeline. My mind was my own. Now, my body had to catch up. I willed the [Shop] open. Not a catalogue, but an Archive. An infinite, silent bazaar of possibility. I filtered for costs under 10 Essence. The options were brutally humble: a shard of flint (3E), a handful of nutrient-rich grubs (2E), a tutorial on Ambient Arcana Resonance (8E). Survival first. I purchased the grubs. They materialized in my palm, plump and wriggling. I swallowed them fast, ignoring the taste. Warmth spread.
[Vitality: 5/5.]
[Endurance Vector: 0.005 -> 0.006.]
Incremental. But it was a change I had wrought. A sliver of control.
Days blurred into a cycle of abject survival. I learned the tribe's rhythms—their petty cruelties, their fear of the dark beyond the cave, their worship of raw strength. The chief was a hobgoblin named Vorg. I analyzed him from the shadows.
Subject: Vorg
Race:Hobgoblin (Common)
Rank:Ordinary (Tier 5, 3rd Stage)
Physical Vector:0.85
Traits:[Thick Hide], [Brawler's Instinct], [Dominance Aura (Minor)]
Talent:[Forceful Blow (Low)]
Threat Assessment:Lethal.
He was the apex here. To him, I was less than the rats we ate.
The opportunity came not from ambition, but from calamity. A hunting party returned, battered. They'd brought down a giant forest badger, but it had cost them. The beast lay dying at the cavern entrance, a hulking mass of fur and fury, its side pierced by crude spears. Vorg claimed it, beginning a loud, messy butchery.
The tribe's attention was a physical thing, a wave of hunger focused on the chief and his prize. I saw not meat, but a fading constellation of traits. My [Analysis] locked onto the badger.
Subject: Ironclaw Badger
Status:Mortally Wounded
Traits:[Tenacious Vitality], [Earth-Scent], [Tunnel-Sense]
Talent:[Burrow (Dormant)]
[Devour] The function pulsed in my mind, not as a command, but a hunger. I had to touch it. To claim what Vorg could not even perceive.
I moved like the shadow I was, using the crowd's press, my smallness an asset. As Vorg raised his arms, roaring over his kill, I darted to the badger's flank, away from the spears, and placed my palm on its heaving, blood-matted fur.
[Activate: Devour.]
The world narrowed. The cave's noise faded. A silent, voracious channel opened from my core. I didn't consume flesh or blood. I drew in the fading essence of the creature—its inherent nature, the blueprint of its power. It was a torrent of raw, chaotic energy: the stubborn will to live, the keen sense for the hidden paths of the earth, the instinct to dig and persist.
My body became a battlefield. My bones vibrated. My fingernails thickened into stubby, tough claws. My senses reeled as a new dimension of smell—the deep, mineral scent of soil, the faintest trails of roots and worms—overlaid the cave's stench. I collapsed, convulsing, as notifications seared my mind.
[Devour Successful.]
[Essence Absorbed: +22.]
[Traits Integrated: [Earth-Sense (Low)], [Tenacity (Low)].]
[Vectors Adjusted: Physical +0.03, Endurance +0.04.]
[Warning: Genetic instability at 4%. Evolutionary pathways stirring.]
I was still on the ground when the shadow fell over me. Vorg. He'd finished his first feast and his beady eyes, sharp with a predator's instinct, found me. He sniffed the air, his broad nostrils flaring.
"You," he rumbled, the dominance in his voice a physical pressure. "The quiet runt. You smell… wrong. Like stone and blood that is not yours." He kicked me, a casual blow that sent me skittering. My new Tenacity trait flared, absorbing the impact that would have broken a rib yesterday. Vitality: 8/10.
I scrambled up, meeting his gaze. Not with a goblin's cower, but with the cold, evaluating stare of a human. I saw his vector readings, the minor flaws in his stance, the way his weight favored one leg. The analysis was instantaneous.
"I took a lesson from the burrower, Chief Vorg," I rasped, my voice still foreign to my own ears. "It died. I learned. That is not wrong. It is… efficient."
The logic, spoken in the guttural tongue, confused him. His rage was simple; my calm defiance was not. With a roar, he swung a backhand meant to crush my skull.
But my Kinetic Vector was higher now. And I had [Earth-Sense]. I felt the minute shift in the cave floor's vibration as he moved. I didn't just duck; I dropped and rolled toward him, under the swing, coming up inside his guard for a single, impossible moment. My new claws, fueled by a desperate surge of will and a shred of absorbed strength, raked across his thigh—not to wound, but to push off.
It was like scraping stone, but it gave me momentum. I shot away, not blindly, but toward a fissure in the wall I now sensed led to a narrow, unstable tunnel. The badger's knowledge whispered to me.
Vorg bellowed in shock and pain, more insulted than injured. "KILL THE THIEF! HE STEALS MY POWER!"
The tribe erupted. But I was already gone, vanishing into the earth's maw, my Night-Eye and Earth-Sense guiding me. Their cries faded behind me, replaced by the drip of water and the beat of my own heart.
Alone in the consuming dark, I breathed. I had escaped. I had grown. I pulled up my status.
[Evolutionary Threshold Approaching. Unique Path Available.]
[Path: 'Goblin Progenitor' requires integration of 3 distinct non-goblin traits. Current: 2/3.]
[Essence: 32.]
[Genetic Instability: 4%]
Progenitor. Not just a devourer, but an origin point. A maker of new lines. The name resonated deeper than 'Devourer' ever could.
The [Shop] beckoned. I could buy a weapon, a spell. But a new option, unlocked by my increased Essence and instability, glowed: "Symbiotic Crystal Shard (Lesser). Cost: 30 Essence. Stabilizes genetic flux, accelerates trait synthesis."
I purchased it. A warm, pulsing crystal the size of a pebble appeared in my hand. As I clutched it, the volatile energy in my veins settled, harmonizing. The whispers of the badger's traits grew clearer.
The road ahead was not one of mere survival. It was one of usurpation. I would not just climb the ranks; I would redefine them. I would turn this wretched goblin flesh into a crucible for a new form of power. And it would all start by becoming the king of this filthy, forgotten hole.
From the deep dark, Leo, the goblin with a human mind and a system for a soul, began to dig his way not just to safety, but to sovereignty. The first step to godhood, it seemed, was to master the dirt from which you crawled.