MT Chapter 10

I woke up that night covered in sweat. My breathing was rapid and something was muddling my thoughts. I cast quick heal on myself trying to keep the light down but it’s bright enough for it to wake Aki up. She gets one look at my condition and walks out the door.

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Aki ran through the forest looking for something. She was driven more by instinct than knowledge as the senses she had ignored until that day guided her towards the place they killed the wolves. She collected as she went anything that felt like it could help with infection. She knew what had happened to Kai. She had some training as a goblin assassin before she had to run away and one thing they taught her was to coat her weapons in shit to cause infections and diseases.

Healers needed specific healing spells or the help of an alchemist to cleanse the wounds otherwise they would just trap the bad bacteria inside with no solution to fix it. She grabbed a half dozen dandelions, a sprig of nutmeg and a red tickle plant to help with the nausea he would feel. She  collected a bit of sage and mint to help it go down easier as well. She kept collecting as she went picking up calendula, aloe vera, hyssop and dragonsweed as well.

If she knew this would have happened she would have collected the ones she felt healing effects from but couldn’t remember where any of them were. One plant she felt she could have made a very basic healing potion from but didn’t bother at the time. Another could have made an antibiotic concoction but she ignored it as well. She hoped that these would be enough for now.

Aki made it back home and split the two plants into two separate piles. One would be the base for the tea she was going to serve him while the other was going to become a salve she would rub on the wound. Without a mortar and pestle Aki grinded the herbs in her mouth before spitting them into the pan and boiling them.

Everything came to her naturally as she adjusted the pan so she wouldn’t bring it to a boil too quickly. She flipped him over and looked at the wound on his back where he was stabbed. It was completely healed over but the skin had a brownish hue where she thought the stab was. While the tea came up to a boil she went outside to find a circularish rock and cleaned it to crush the remaining herbs. She kept crushing and rolling the herbs between the rock and a bowl he had made until the tea was ready.

She blew on it waiting for it to cool enough to not burn him. She could drink it after a few moments from it coming off the fire but that was a particular trait of goblins. She was driven by instinct and her instinct had told her that humans couldn’t drink boiling liquids without causing them extreme damage. A brief thought passed through her head at how ridiculous it is she’s helping this man.

Those feelings quickly went away. If her mate died she had no idea how long it would be until another man came who could satisfy her. She was doing this more for herself than for him. She knew he cared for her as well by never using their connection to force her to do something she didn’t want to after the first time he proved he could.

She coaxed the liquid down his throat with him barely being conscious enough to swallow on his own. The delirium from the septic wound had caused him to start hallucinating already. His constitution wasn’t good enough to shake off the effect. He was unfortunate enough to get stabbed by the stronger assassin, the one who most likely made the stronger poison as well. The goblins had deemed them a big enough threat to send out kill squads now.

It had only occurred once since she could remember. Another adventurer like him had shown up but she was still too young and weak to do anything about him. The adventurer was so strong he wiped out dozens upon dozens of groups of goblins before the king ordered the hit squads to start chasing him down. Even then a group of eight goblin assassins were cut down to two before they finally felled him.

She ripped the remains of his shirt off fully, it had slowly become more and more useless over time and Kai had only kept using it to stop the plant rope armor he was using from rubbing against his skin. After picking some of the more clean shreds she got to work. The wound needed to be reopened unfortunately and that’s why she had cleaned the dagger. If she used her own it would cause far more damage and would hurt more than it would help.

She cleanly sliced the skin open, amazed at how easily the dagger sunk into him again. She couldn’t believe someone so weak was still alive with how dangerous the area was. A good portion of it was down to her saving him but at the same time it also came down to his luck. After cleaning out the bulk of the puss left inside she put the salve on before binding it.

A portion was most likely in his blood by now but the brownish blood that poured out when she pierced the wound let her know that she made the right choice reopening it. She couldn’t sleep the rest of that night and had to re-bandage the wound once as he reopened it, tossing and turning in his sleep.

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The next few days I spent recovering from an infection. The first day after waking up I knew something was wrong by the fresh unhealed wound on my back. It took me another day with Aki playing charades before I realized the weapon was coated in some type of poison. To my surprise Aki had found some mint and sage to help flavor our foods from that point onwards.

Being stuck in bed while only being able to talk to pass the time made our communication abilities shoot forwards at a dramatic rate. At some point I gained the monster language skill and like a dam bursting I could understand far more than previously. By the final day of my sickness I was communicating with her in one and two word sentences.

She told me how great it was that I could finally speak the good language so she didn’t have to learn the dumb language I spoke. I told her she still needed to learn so she could speak with other humans when we went back to town and after talking it over I convinced her by telling her people would think she was a Jeffrey if she couldn’t speak our language.

With so much free time I went through my menus and deactivated the alerts for gaining points in both skills and stats. It helped at the beginning but I was driving myself somewhat crazy with how much I had been focusing on leveling them. One of the stories everyone is told growing up is of Ballad the bard. Ballad wanted to go on an adventure but was so afraid he wouldn’t have the right skills to succeed that he tried to gain and level everything. He spent his entire life acquiring and leveling as many skills as he could that he never went on his adventure.

The moral of the story was don’t live to level, level to live. I spent so much time focusing on surviving that I didn’t realize I could probably have gone back to town by now and would have been welcomed back. I had the resources that even if they didn’t let me back in I could make it back fine and that’s without foraging and hunting along the way. Just this short amount of time to rest and I realized I have been in survival mode since I took over this body.

Once I was feeling a little better I made small improvements I had put off because exploring, leveling and making weapons was more important. The house was expertly built but there was significant wear and tear from hard living and it needed to be thoroughly cleaned and fixed. I cleaned while fixing the broken and squeaky floor boards around the cabin while patching the few remaining openings on the walls. We had destroyed the bed frame at some point so I built a new one more sturdy than the last. I built up the fire pit encircling it in rocks and made a makeshift stove to cook on in the center.

I did all that and a few dozen other little things that would improve the quality of life. In that time I unlocked the aphrodisiac resistance skill. I made many changes that would remove something that bothered me or made something that we needed or would make me happy. After close to a week I started to feel antsy again. I had a choice to make. The choice would determine what I would do in the future.

I don’t think I would be happy living in a town for the rest of my life. It would be fine for a year or two but the boredom would eventually catch up to me and I had zero faith that Aki would be fine in a town for any long length of time. What did I want to do in my life? I like getting stronger. In a world where as you get stronger you live longer it made no sense to me to sit around not focusing on that for the first fifty years of your life. 

It would be nice to have a home to come back to when I had burnt out on fighting. The main question now is the route to getting stronger. I could become a ranger and continue hunting monsters outside the bounds of the kingdom but that would be extremely dangerous. I could head further into the kingdom and look for a city with a low tier dungeon but then I would need to find a party to join.

My class would let me bring Aki without her counting towards the group count in dungeons too. She would fit the qualities of a D rank adventurer by herself. Joining the adventurers guild wouldn’t suit me very well as I would need to start at rank F since I was a healer meaning it would be better to join a higher ranked party again. It would take months of doing fetch quests or killing low ranked monsters to reach E rank and by the time I reached D I could have gained dozens of more levels doing anything else.

I think the first thing I needed to do would be to repay the ten platinum I still owed the village. Out of all my skills, my astronomy and enchanting are my two most important skills and would make the biggest difference in my life improving. Working with the healer and enchanting gear for the village would go a long way for my future. I make a mental checklist before searching through my menu before finding a notepad like tab I unlocked by going through the options.

• Pay back the money I owe the village.

• Get more tames to fill out my party.

• Become a member of the adventurers guild and become a D rank so I can delve dungeons.

• Look for more information about the world I’m in and any books on skills and classes.

• Develop the village into a place I can call home.

I cooked the wolf steak I got from the boss. Even though it was almost a week since we killed it, it still seemed fairly fresh. I think because it came from a strong monster it would last longer before it would spoil. After finishing it and plating my portion I get another prompt for gaining the cooking skill. Doing so allowed me to see that the food would give a strength and endurance bonus for eight hours after eating it with a small chance that both stats would increase permanently.

After eating I loaded up the supplies and me and Aki headed out towards the village.

Name: Kai Ise

Race: Human

Age: 15 Years

Class: Monster tamer

Title: Deviant

EL: Low tier 1

Level: 25-30

Stats

Strength: 78-84

Agility: 71-78

Endurance: 74-83

Intellect: 130-140

Wisdom: 120-126

Skills

Monster taming 15 Intuition 11-15 Tactics 05-08 Monstrous 05-10 Forgotten knowledge 01-03 Axe specialization 14-16 Damage resilience 07-09 Astronomy magic 20-22 Enchanting 14-18 Light armor specialization 03-05 Stealth 11-15 Mace specialization 04-08 Pitching 03-05 Projectile deflection 01-02 Fatigue resistance 16-18 Sleight of hand 01-02 Sexual taming 20-27 Marathoner 11-14 Spell alteration 05-06 Flare magic 01-02 Tinkering 5 Monster language 01-04 Aphrodisiac resistance 01-02 Cooking 01

Subskills

Pleasure sense Overwork Set creation

Racial traits

Diplomatic

Personal traits

Tenacious

Ambidextrous

Expanded mind

Statistic adjustment

Well rounded

Name: Aki

Race: Goblin

Age: 2 Years

Class: None

Title: None

EL: Mid tier

Level: 55

Stats

Strength: 154

Agility: 216

Endurance: 115-116

Intellect: 37-38

Wisdom: Locked

Climbing 10 Shield specialization 02 Starvation resistance 35-36 Running 31-32 Sneak 23-24 Dagger specialization 15-21 Alchemy 01-02 Aphrodisiac secretion 08-10 

Subskills

Iron stomach Assassination

Racial traits

Nimble feet Pack tactics Creative

Personal traits

Masochism

Statistic adjustments

Agility based