"Cinnamon... ooh! Raspberries!"
Ryth looked at his filled... really at this point it's a wheelbarrow converted to a cart.
(I think the last thing...)
He took out a charcoal stock wrapped in wood grown over it by magic to create a clean writing tool[1], and checked off a few items from his list.
"Oh I'm missing cheese!" He shook his head and looked around.
(Surely there's a stall owned by a farmer of dairy products-aha!)
He grabbed the cart and tried to lift the rear off the ground... but it was really just too heavy.
"..."
He grabbed the 2 handles and pushed the cart of its one big wheel, and 2 tiny ones over towards the stall he'd noticed.
"Can I get a wheel of cheese?"
"Sure kid. Cheddar, Swiss, or Ayen?"
"Just cheddar, you think I can afford something like Aven?"
The man laughed, gesturing to the price written at his board.
Ryth waved Master Benedict's green crystal over a metal place with 4 crystals at its corners, and the crystals lit up as numbers appeared in the air.
Ryth waved his hand as he cycled the many zero's to other numbers to set the price he was paying, and then pushed the crystal against the plate to confirm the transaction.
"Thank you for your patronage!"
Ryth began arduously wheeling his food in the direction of the shop... only to pause as he reached the bottom of the incline.
"...I'm gonna have to push this uphill. Oh boy."
He paused, waiting to make sure he had as much mana as possible.
"This is gonna be risky."
He grabbed the bars and-
"Uuuugh!" He grunted heavily as he shoved it up, planting his foot with his knee braced against the back of the wheelbarrow as he got ready to do it again.
"Apprentice, let me handle this."
"WHA-!?" Ryth nearly let go of the cart as he was startled by Benedict's sudden appearance!
Master Benedict took hold of one bar from Ryth, and Ryth slowly moved away while still holding it with his knee, until Benedict had a hand on each handle, before removing his leg.
Then he watched as Master Benedict casually wheeled it uphill without any visible effort other than a slight creak from the cart and his arms tensing a bit.
(He could probably punch a hole in a stone wall with his bare fists.)
Ryth still didn't really know what stage or level his master was at, just that it was much higher than he'd originally thought.
And so they returned home.
~ ~ ~
"Mika! George has gone missing!"
"What?" Mika turned and asked the 8 year old.
"Where could he have gone?"
"He was with Daryl, and then he went to get a pack from the sewer hideout, but nobody has seen him since, and that was 5 hours ago!"
Mika looked up at the night skies above, more visible from the rooftops as the mist was thinner up here, though it wasn't really thick in the first place.
It had been near 12 hours since she almost got run over by a wheelbarrow...
"Argh... we don't have the light to search the sewers during the night, we'll use glowstones tomorrow morning."
"But George-"
"Olivia! George is okay. We just need to make sure everyone else stays safe, and we'll find him as soon as that doesn't put more of you kids at risk."
Olivia ground her teeth. "You're a kid too! What if he isn't okay?"
"He will be."
Olivia huffed, slumping a bit, and pausing for a few seconds...
Then with a slow, heavy nod she turned and went to where the others were sleeping all against one another for body warmth.
(I hope you're okay George... I'll find you as soon as I can, I swear!)
~ ~ ~
Boontho sniffed the air, and Layrs came up next to him.
A cascade of thoughts, images and emotion flowed from Layrs to Boontho as he communicated, and Boontho nodded.
"Yes... the scent of decay has gotten stronger and stronger these past weeks. The human settlement..."
Layrs continued, "...is dying, and they don't even know it."
Both looked up as one, separate yet bound together at some strange, unknown level, as a third goblin with colored extremities and a different body type appeared.
Boontho stood as a taller-goblin with his limbs no longer turning red a third from his torso, but paling to a pink that was near white. His nose and ears just looked straight-up white. He had the most intelligence of the bunch and was the head, or core of the shared mind the 3 possessed.
It could be said that all 3 were Boontho, but with separate personalities living in bodies still bound to his same mind, creating an independence that wasn't independent.
Layrs mutated very similarly to Boontho in color, with his color changing in the same places, but instead it just became a much darker green, near black.
However he wasn't as tall, somewhere between Boontho and a normal goblin, but his limbs were thicker and his muscle more prominent, showing himself to be stronger and faster than the average goblin.
Sil was the newest, born of feeding from a water mage's soul core.[2] She turned a light blue, and her body also had more muscles than a goblin, but more like Boontho than the definition of Layrs.
However, all the fat in the pot-belly that were characteristic of Goblins was gone, leaving her lean and FAST.
All 3 had lost their belly fat to the most part, but Sil truly seemed to have none.
Boontho lead the growing group of goblins towards a water source they'd stayed at during the last time they were in the area, and approached the stream with the ever-growing goblins that followed him.
Whenever they came across another goblin outpost or another tribe entirely, Boontho would prove his strength and take over.
As he did so, he noticed that most of the leaders he beat had a strange black collar on them, but every part of his growing soul magic warned him away from them, so he never even touched them.
Add to that the fast reproduction of goblins, and 3 weeks was enough for a new generation of tiny goblin spawn that half his group had to carry while the others hunted under his directive.
However, after staying the night at the stream, Boontho noticed a growing alarm!
One of the spawn had stopped breathing, dead in the night... and his lips were purple.
Memories not his own flickered through as human knowledge of medicine gleaned from the Dark Assassin Layrs and the Ocean Mage Sil cake to mind.
For obvious reasons, the memories of the human Layrs were much more helpful with identifying it as a poisoning.[3]
Layrs the goblin looked at the main mind and echoed his thoughts aloud for the mind without this information.
"The spawn is poisoned."
"Water?" Boontho asked.
"Water poisoned... spiders poisoned the water?"
Sil perked her ear. "Water leads to human. Decay?"
The decay, the scent of death growing on the wind and in the spirit of the land, which Boontho specifically seemed to become more and more sensitive to.
"...ki-ki-ki-ki, KAHAHAHAHA! Poisoned, and ready to die, helpless prey?" Layrs yelled in excitement, as the personality born of an assassins memories and Boontho's traits of aggression and sadism.
"We wait. The humans will slay the spiders, but the damage will be done. We will wait, and when the time comes, we can strike without interference."
The other two nodded, and they began to prepare to move to a water source not connected to the city, or the underground reservoir it sat upon.
The goblin tribe set out, and Boontho closed his eyes, only to "see" everything around him in every direction as a white-outline of the edges of an object on the shadows of his eyelids.
"..."
He turned, and left.
[1] Basically it's a charcoal pencil, instead of lead or graphite. Magic can grow wood onto it.
[2] Brain. It ate her brain.
[3] No shit, his class was ASSASSIN. Dumb author.