Gorn's shoves and kicks to get me going were less forceful than before. He still didn't like my ass, but it seemed he was smart enough not to fuck with the cook. I wondered ot the fact that the cook and the healer didn't care if he died registered in his bovine brain.

  We exited the shaman’s bubble, and it disappeared behind us. Whatever he had cast disguised the area completely. I was pretty sure that Sly and Pete were having a conversation when we exited, but all I heard was forest.

  “Do you know good wood from bad?” Gorn asked me. I simply nodded my head.

  “Good. You grab, and I’ll carry. We Bulkin aren’t great at bending down.”

  “Bulkin?” I asked

  “Yes, my race.”

  “Not a minotaur?” I replied. His moo bellow of a laugh echoed through the forest.

  “Gods no. Hopefully though. We are going to Avonsil, you might see an actual Minotaur there, and if you ever get to Har’at, you definitely will.”

  “What’s the difference?” I was genuinely curious.

  ‘Did you see Shy’rone’s tails?”

  “All seven.”

  “Fox kin get an additional tail for each Loci they aspect. Seven tails means six aspects. Ascended. That’s why she is the leader, not so much for Bulkin. When we Ascend, we become Minotaurs, though. I won’t ruin the surprise.” His answers were revealing.

  “I just have no memory of any of this. Is this common knowledge?”

  “In human lands, probably not, maybe amongst soldiers in the Everwar. For the beastkin? Yes. By the time most reach maturity, you learn how to spot Awakened and Ascended. You humans are tougher, though.”

  “How so, if you don’t mind the telling.” I asked as I handed him a few more sticks and small logs.

  “Humans don’t change forms. All beast kin do. It gives your Ascended an advantage in killing us.”

  “Why, though?”

  “The Everwar? At this point, I don’t know if anyone knows. We fight. It is what it is.” His answers were very forthcoming, unusually so. Then it hit me. He was probing. They couldn’t tell I was an outworlder. They definitely couldn’t tell I was ascended.

  “You are being unusually kind, why?”

  “I may have misjudged your worth, that is all.”

  “How much?” I had a hunch and I leaned into it.

  “How much what?”

  “Don’t bullshit me, you overgrown cow!” I may have pushed the explicatives a little on that one. Results matter.

  “So you know?”

  “Of course, I know you aren’t a subtle bunch.”

  “What do you want to know? Bet or estimated price?”

  “Both!” I laughed

  “I have ten gold says you are.”

  “With who?”

  “Rogan, of course. Shy and Pete are too pretentious to bet, and Kitty was gone when we discussed it.”

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  “Well, that should be money in your pocket.”

  He let out a victorious moo.

  “I knew you were royalty. Premium for binging you in.”

  I was what now? It didn’t really matter as his victory brought complications. A few snapping of twigs sharpened his gaze to the scrub around us. We were in a bit of a clearing with about twenty feet to thick underbrush in all but the direction we came. I looked back in that direction just in case I wanted to run, only to find it blocked by a muscular olive-skinned humanoid with pronounced tusks. Gorn noticed the creature and pulled out his axe. Looks like I had a fight on my hands.

  “Goblins! Great. Stay behind me and out of my way, human.” He turned, and I caught a familiar red haze seep into his eyes. His bellowing moo could have awoken the dead as he charged the goblin.

  Correction, Hobgoblin. Regular goblins erupted from the bushes. They were the size of small children and frail. Not especially threatening until you got them in numbers and armed them to the teeth with sharp objects. Speaking of teeth and sharp, they had at least two rows of them, and they looked very sharp. Honestly, they looked like the bastard offshoot of a frog and a great white shark taught to walk upright. And in true gobbo fashion, they swarmed the giant bull. This meant they had to get through me, who was armed with a stick. I was kinda worried.

  I punted the first one to approach me with a soccer kick. His dagger was somewhat useless since he had it held above his head when I delivered the kick. The others actually paused for a second. My soccer kick may have kicked him clear through the bushes. Gorn’s back was turned, so I wasn’t worried about adding a little umph to it. I felt a weird sensation. Like someone poured a mojito into my hot tub, I ignored it and engaged the now wary goblins.

  After seeing me punt one of their brethren, assuming to death, they were very wary of me and my stick. They were smarter than I expected, and they did their best to evade me while attacking the bull. I may have pulled a few shots and let a few goblins get a shot in with his back turned. He was a slaver; could you blame me? I still managed to keep the majority of the little one off of him as he fought the big one. It seemed that the change on Ascension was the rule in this world, and humans were the exception.

  In the end, he killed the Hobgoblin with a solid slice of his axe. After that, it was me playing at fighting the goblins until he had a chance to dispatch them. I pretended to be winded; he wasn’t pretending.

  “That was amazing. You killed so many of them.” I was lying. I think I accidentally killed as many as he did.

  “It is my job. You did well for a mortal. Are you hurt?”

  “No, I don’t think they saw me as a threat and went after you.”

  “I saw you kill one. Good job.” He praised me. I almost vomited at my fake appreciation.

  “They had almost no potential, though. Must have been freshly spawned.”

  I took a look at my hot tub of potential, and I figured I might have enough for another skill. I guess the system saw this as power leveling and awarded me the lion’s share accordingly.

  “You may never be an adventurer, but I’ll at least teach you the best part.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Looting the bodies”

  Gorn walked over to the hobgoblin and grabbed its sword, only for it to disappear into a cloud of mana.

  “Well crap. I was hoping it would stick around. Sometimes mana-created monsters like goblins will drop their weapons. They ain’t much, but it’s better than a stick.”

  Oh, I had better than a stick, I promise you that.

  “How do you know when you got it all?”

  “When they poof into a blue cloud of mana and you get to gather their potential.”

  We started to search the dozen or so goblins that remained. I touched the first one and felt a few items enter my inventory: a silver coin and a crude knife.

  “Aw, that’s too bad. He had nothing on him. At least you get the potential, though.”

  He was right, I felt as more and more cocktails were dumped into my hot tub, turning it from a place of pure relaxation to a bucket of fuck punch. I didn’t like it. I dealt with it, though. As for my looting power, which I didn’t want to make public. I pantomimed. I acted like I was looting, only touching the corpse after making it look like I searched it. Using my inventory power judiciously to produce items from corpses, rather than from previous ones, helped sell it. In the end, the slaver attitude reared its ugly head.

  “Alright, give me any items you got, especially any weird-looking orbs.”

  Truth be told, I’d been absorbing the orbs as I found them. They were the cocktails polluting my hot tub. I kept a couple out only because I was tired of the mire I was creating. A few of the clear ones didn’t give me an option and plopped themselves in regardless of my will.

  I handed over my loot. It wasn’t much: a few coins, a potion, and several small knives. That didn’t count the five greenish orbs he stuffed in his mouth to absorb.

  “No unaspected potential at all? Impossible! There is always a little. Aw, shit, you are a mortal, you can’t help but absorb it, can you? Well, it will just fatten you up for sale. This is all pretty good potential. I can use most of it.”

  This clarified Mord’s lectures on aspected and unaspected potential. I absorbed at least half of what was available from the killing and any of the unaspected as I looted it. The rest I was able to hand over. I felt a little bad at its loss, but the dumb cow was right; it wasn’t much. I just hoped it was enough. I knew where I was going to cycle it, and I knew what power I needed. I had the mark rune, but I doubted that any of them would let me carve it into them.