After a few minutes of a quick jog, and a few stops to gather some herbs that Goba pointed out nicely, we arrived in some bushes where we stop.
"On the other side is our pray, a bear, a six-legged earth bear to be precise. It stands on his four hind legs which keeps his two front paws free for combat and gathering. It's an omnivore. A monster in touch with the earth element which gives it great power and defence when in touch with the ground, but an overall low speed." Goba gives a quick introduction of the monster we're hunting.
"But can you take it?" I ask Goba the important question.
"Of course." He says so perfectly calm as he's standing up, standing in plain sight of the big brown-red bear.
The bear growls wildly at Goba, Goba just stands there and a scythe appears in his hand.
The bear runs at Goba, his four legs moving quickly and his chest lowered to be in a good pose to hit Goba with his claws. Goba spins his scythe to the right while dodging to the left, hitting the bear on the back of his head with the back of the spear. The bear stumbles forward but stays upright, probably due to his extremely stable base.
The bear turns to its right, where Goba dodged towards, but there's nothing there! Then the scythe came from behind him and bites deep into the bears right arm that he pulled up to protect his vitals.
The bear moves back to escape the blade, but Goba is persistent. His blade doesn't leave the flesh of the bear, and Goba holds onto the staff of the scythe, not letting go.
While the bear is flailing his arms around, trying to get the blade out, Goba pulls something out of the lowest end of the staff of the scythe. A small dagger appears in his hand. The daggers blade black in the center but the edges are white. It the waves in the edge make it a beautiful blade.
With a pull on the staff with his free arm Goba shoots forwards, plunging the blade right in the bear's heart. No blood escapes, but the bear falls to the ground after a hollow roar, showing his regret.
"Great bear, king of the forest, I sacrifice you body and soul to my master Gosamu. That you may build the foundation of his power." Goba gave a quick prayer as he closes the eyes of the bear.
I come out of the bushes and put my hand on Goba's shoulder. "Thank you. I know this is hard on you too, but you did great." He nods at me and closes his eyes. After a moment Goba pulls out the dagger from the bears heart and the bear disappears.
"Can you tell me what's happening now?" I ask Goba as I look at the empty spot where the bear was just a moment ago.
"I killed the bear with this dagger. It's my ceremonial dagger, if I kill with this the most of the pray gets to be used by the tower. Now"
"Wait, let's discuss this when we're back, we should be moving back now."
And so we did. Goba grabbed some wood along the way and I collected more herbs. Goba also pointed out some herbs that 'lit up', or so he said. I don't know what he means, but I'll find out later.
Just as I made a place to light a fire the hunting party returned. Vothe jumped into my arms right away, rubbing his head against my chest. "Now now, you missed me so much?" I pet his head as I talk to him with a smile on my face.
Jack is carrying a big animal on his back, its skin is bloody and its head, insides and the lowest ends of its legs are gone. "Quite a catch, isn't it! Your hare helped a lot, these dumb cows are quick, but with your hare making those cuts and bleeding it out we got a nice chance to kill it! Normally I let Henry lure it while I'm in ambush to get a single good cut in, but he's never to happy to take that role! Hahaha"
Jack keeps elbowing Henry who in turn gives him an angry look. "Just help that kid light the fire in stead of talking nonsense, prepare something so we can get on the road again!"
Jack comes close to me and whispers "He can never get the jokes I make, they always make me laugh though..."
"I heard that! Your jokes are always trying to annoy or downright hurt me, maybe that's why?" Henry's voice gets calmer at the end.
Did Jack just shiver?
"You know what Henry, you're right, I shall light the fire and cook the meat. Why don't you see what kind of herbs the kid brought."
And like that Jack started lighting the fire and cutting the cow up in smaller, lunch sized, pieces, while Henry starts explaining what kinds of herbs I brought after I told him that I just brought what smelled good or made me feel like I needed to bring it.
Most of the herbs were just tasty herbs, some, mostly those that Goba pointed out, were quite special apparently. "I don't know what kind of gut feeling you have kid, but these are quite nice. It's a shame you didn't know how to harvest them, so after today they're all useless. These plants are special, but they wither quick when handled wrongly, so I think we'll just have a nice lunch today."
He didn't go into detail about these herbs, just saying that if I'm interested I should follow herbology in the Collage if I'm interested.
About 20 minutes later I had the tastiest, most tender stake I ever had and probably will have for a lot of time to go.
~~~~~~~~~
"So, can you now tell me what happened to the bear?" I ask Goba as soon as I stand in front of him again.
"It was sacrificed, its soul entered the cycle of reincarnation and its flesh is ready to give a body to new life. You should be able to start making a new body through your connection with the tower."
My connection with the Tower? Well, it is true that I gave my blood on the altar, and my memories for the flame, so there should be a connection.
I close my eyes and after a few minutes trying to find something I know is there but don't know what I'm looking for I find it. A subtle but clear pull on... just everything in the direction of the Tower, and I also feel it pull on me. It's a weird feeling that I didn't notice before, but now that I do it's unimaginable that I didn't before. It's even slightly similar to what I feel with Vothe.
I walk up to the tower and put my hand on it, to let the parts that pull to each other touch. Kind of like Vothe does to talk. But there's still a bit of a distance. I don't ask Goba for help because I want to figure it out on my own.
I focus on the pulling sensation, and imagine it touching, becoming one. And it helps, slowly at first, but it gains speed quickly. The distance I felt even when touching disappears and the Tower 'talks' to me. But after the first rush of information it stops, waiting for me to reply.
What it told me, in short:
[Body materials:
Earth element saturated flesh/bones/blood ≈ 400kg
Body designs:
Potential - number available
1 - 57
2 - 7
3 - 1
4 - 1
5 - 1
Souls
Potential - number available (being cleansed)
1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 0 (1)
4 - 1]
So, the body material is the bear, and it still keeps its elemental affinity, I'll need to watch that. The souls are also straight forward, it's Pridove's soul and the bear's soul that's still being cleansed.
But the body designs are equal to the wishes I fulfilled, yesterday it was only 3! But when checking out the wishes I see what happened, something logical that I haven't even thought about before. Wishes aren't all as drastic as saving a life and taking revenge on your families killer!
All the rank ones and twos are from small animals and insects. Things like "Killed a threat to me and my family." and "You destroyed the web of the spider that ate my 87th brother.". There are also 3 different ranks of wishes I can see, an ordinary wish that makes the body rank 1 rank lower than the original. An important wish that keeps it the same. And a life's wish, which in turn upgrades the rank by 1.
The terms aren't literally there, I just named them after the feeling the Tower gave me about it, so I must not forget I might be wrong!
A soul can be inserted in any body, but if the soul matches the body the highest efficiency in talent and means to act upon its talent is achieved.
One last function the Tower told me about. For a lack of a better term, I'll call it Splitting. Splitting let's me take a rank 3 soul and turn it into two rank 2 souls. But there's no way to rank up souls by merging them, this is something the Tower stated specifically!
After catching Goba up with what I learned I ask him "I'm tempted. I can just use the rank 4 soul on the rank 4 Goblin, but I think it would be a waste now. Wouldn't it be better to split the soul to create a rank 3 goblin and 2 rank 2 creatures with high reproduction rates? Then send the 2 creatures out into the world and let them reproduce, like that they could all collect more low rank souls and flesh, maybe even wishes! Like that you'll have your first true follower and we will get a steady supply to create even more followers!" I'm baffled by my own idea, there's nothing to hesitate about anymore!
"I'm not hesitating anymore Goba! Let's create a goblin first!"