'I'm glad water bullet worked, if it didn't I probably would have died,' he thought to himself as he groaned in pain.
'This is either due to blood loss or I remembered something. From what I remember about the game, goblin hearts are used for healing items, and you can also eat them raw to heal for less...' he groaned in pain as he sat up weakly.
'If this doesn't work, I'll die of blood loss.' He then picked up the dagger next to him and did his best to cut open the dead goblin's stomach so he can get to its heart. But due to being really weak and shaky, it was difficult to do.
'I really wish I cut its stomach open when I was stabbing it.'
After a few minutes and almost passing out from blood loss and the awful smell of the monster, he managed to get its heart out, although it was in terrible shape as this was his first time taking a heart out of something.
'I'd be more disgusted at this if I wasn't on the brink of death.' With little choice, he bit into the mangled heart and coughed as he had to force it down and stop himself from puking it up.
'There are no words to describe how god awful this is,' he thought to himself as he passed out.
As he passed out, he remembered a phrase from the game he and his friends played. "In the face of death, all living things will struggle to live, even if the only way to live is to take from another."
...
..
.
'Who said that sentence? I can't remember.'
He woke up an unknown amount of time later, but the sun was now high in the sky. He moved sluggishly as he tried to gather strength in his arms to sit up, making what's left of the wound on his back hurt.
'Fuck, this hurts like hell. I wish it healed more, but what can I expect from low-grade material,' he thought, tears in his eyes.
'And here, I thought the pain from earlier was bad.' He stopped moving as he endured the pain.
'Ow, ow, ow, ow. This is probably the worst pain I've ever felt in my entire life, and the taste in my mouth makes me want to puke.'
He then managed to sit up after resting a bit more.
"Sigh, I don't feel thankful for being alive right now."
'Anyone who goes to a different world and becomes a battle junkie is completely insane. Like, who the hell from the modern world actually becomes like that unless there's something wrong with their heads?' he thought as he looked at his shaky hands.
'Even after death, I still fear it and would rather just stay home and sleep... But I'm here, and if I don't want to experience death again, I need to get up and find food and also get stronger,' he thought as he looked around for his water staff.
'There it is...' He picked it up and used it as a crutch to help him stand up. Because the staff is made of water, it bends as he leans on it for support.
'Now that I think about it, I could eat the goblin... Sigh, why do they have to taste so gross?' He then picked up his bag and other daggers, then cut some meat off the goblin and put them in the bag.
He walks shakily to the broken gate and stared at it.
"...Hmmm." 'How am I supposed to get back in?'
After a moment of thinking, he gave up.
He made shelter under some large broken pieces of the giant and sat there and rested for a few minutes. 'I guess I can just sleep outside. What I really need right now is more goblin hearts.'
'If this world is anything like Stones of the Divine, there should be other goblins in the area. And since I wasn't jumped by a large group of them after the fight started, they probably won't come here because their nest is further away. If I remember correctly, you will find one to two goblins on the far outskirts of their territory. Here's hoping game info can be applied here.'
'Let's go over what I've discovered so far,' he thought as he looked at his water staff.
'This weapon is what will help me survive in this place.'
Organizing his thoughts into a simple list looked like this:
1. I got Isekai'd probably into the game world of Stones of the Divine.
2. I now have the body of a green-haired, grey-eyed child.
3. I found a Divine stone and accidentally awakened it into the same weapon I had in Stones of the Divine.
4. This place is creepy and has monsters and stone people. Even the armor and weapons of the stone people are stone.
5. Need food and water.
6. My current Divine Weapon is rank 0, and I no longer have any of my skill proficiency.
7. I can't drink from the staff as it has a rubbery consistency because it's an elemental weapon that takes the form of a staff. The only way to get water from it is to use water bullet, but this uses mana, and I have very little at the moment. However, you can drown enemies with it.
8. There is probably a goblin nest nearby.
Looking at the list he drew into the ground with his staff, he let out an annoyed sigh.
"Come on, why is my second life so annoying? It's barely been two days, and I already almost died, and now I need to survive here in this creepy-ass city with monsters around in a wakened state with the body of a goddamn child."
"Sigh... Let's look on the tiny bright side. I have a Divine Weapon. The only problem is getting magic stones to level it up, and goblins have a very low chance of having one next to their hearts."
"Sigh," 'In conclusion, Isekai isn't meant for pessimistic introverts that like staying home and playing games and watching TV. I was never a fighter IRL. I mean, I can fight in a VR game just fine, but games and reality are vastly different, no matter how close they can seem to be.'
'Well, I can't just sit here all day. I need to hunt some goblins and eat their hearts.' He got up, still in pain but able to walk, using his staff as a cane.
...
..
.
He looked around as stealthily as he could for a few hours and eventually found two yellow-skinned goblins.
'God damn it, the first goblin I see is a pair of them.'
'Well, at least I have the element of surprise this time. If I got ambushed as I am right now, I would die.'
He spent the next few hours stalking the goblins and thinking to himself out of boredom and to help him ignore his hunger and thirst.
'Back when I played the game solo, I needed to kill goblins to hopefully get a low-grade magic stone to upgrade my weapon... I don't remember how many I need to get for it, and finding low-grade magic stones is not easy as you need to kill a lot of them just to get your weapon to rank 1.'
'Also, because of how leveling worked in that game, there were no Rank 0 monsters that drop the magic stone for leveling your weapon, so you can't farm slimes for exp like in other games. Instead, you needed to hunt rank 1 monsters and pray to God you get one. If I remember correctly, it was 1 in 20 for goblins if you're lucky and I am not, but that was in a game. It might be completely different here.'
'And the drop rates for higher-grade magic stones went down as the difficulty increased, so that slowed leveling at higher ranks and was really annoying.'
He followed the two goblins far from the city, and they made "camp" at some trees that looked like they might fall at any moment.
As he was waiting for the goblins to go to sleep later that night, he was annoyed as one of them kept watch.
'Hmm... How should I go about this?' he thought for a moment, then picked up a rock.
'This usually works in-game. I wonder if it will work here?' he thought as he tossed a rock into some trees to lure the awake goblin away and into striking distance. He hid behind a tree with a dagger in his right hand and his staff in his off-hand.
He then waited for it to get close enough and performed a flawless assassination, something he wished he could do.
As the goblin got into range, he readied his staff and made a quiet sound to get its attention. As soon as the monster saw him and opened its mouth to yell, he thrust his staff into its open mouth. Since the staff is made of water, you don't choke on it, you drown. As it was drowning on his weapon, he moved as quickly as his small body could go and stabbed it in its large ear, killing it instantly.
'Heh, and people say you don't learn anything from video games.' He knew of the goblin's weak spot as It was the same one in-game. That, and stabbing something's brain would definitely kill it.
The second goblin was still asleep and was easy to kill with a well-placed stab. He then cut out their hearts and reluctantly ate them, healing his body. Sadly, he didn't find any magic stones.
'God, why this god-awful taste?' *sigh* After a few minutes, he let out a sigh of relief as all his wounds healed.
'Much better. I thought I was gonna have to sleep with a hurt back. I guess a child's body needs less to heal completely. From what I remember in the game, you needed at least 7 at rank 0 for a full heal.' He left the arena and returned to the broken gate and entered the city.