Deep in the forest, keeling over, a young boy was sitting next to a fire with what looked like crab legs roasting, and clearly in pain.
"I thought that it said slightly toxic, it feels like it's eating me from the inside."
What he didn't know is that the toxicity of chima depended on their size and color. The larger and more red it was, the more toxic, and the one that he was trying to eat was almost as large and as red as they get. While cooking it can make it less toxic, just putting it over a fire wasn't going to do anything.
"What do I do, what do I do? I don't want to die like an idiot." Chima poison is extremely lethal and if not for his relatively high vitality for his size and the small amount that he had eaten, he would have been a bloody puddle the moment it entered his mouth.
Before he could finalize his funeral, a warm feeling accompanied by a golden light came from his stomach, taking the pain away with it.
"Huh? What just happened? That golden light again, first in my soul sea and now for the poison. I thought that was part of the spell, but the inventory spell wouldn't detox my body."
Quickly looking over his stat screen, he read his talent information properly for the first time in over a month.
"Purifies the body. It said 'Purifies' and not 'Purified' so I can assume that it's not a one time thing." What he assumed that meant is that his talent would keep his body pure, preventing things like poison, rot, curses, disease or other similar things from affecting him.
While a valuable benefit, potions to cure such ailments were cheap and easy to produce. While more advanced potions to cure deadlier effects are more expensive, it wasn't very likely for him to come into contact with them.
Like Guild Master Fey had told him, if he could make it to the top, then his talent would give him endless benefits, but that wouldn't matter if he died along the way because his talent didn't help get there.
With his stomach still pestering him the ant legs were looking more and more appealing now that he knew that it wouldn't kill him.
"Just a few more bites to quell my hunger wouldn't hurt right? Only a little." With almost no effort he convinced himself to continue to partake in the forbidden crab legs and started to wolf the rest of it down. A little pain wouldn't deter him if it wasn't fatal.
Thankfully, after a few more of the golden flashes, the poison seemed to have lost its effectiveness. What once was a blinding pain was now a slight tingle, and even that was getting better the more he ate.
"Now that it doesn't hurt, ant meat isn't so bad." As he moved onto another piece of the almost finished chima carcass, he quickly retracted his hand and jumped into the forest behind him, activating the stealth spell. Unless one was especially sensitive to mana, he practically disappeared.
Almost instantly, an arrow logged itself deep into the ground where he was sitting moments before. Just as the arrow landed, 4 more hobgoblins riding chimas rushed into the clearing he made, clearly ready for a fight. Crushing not only his fire pit, but destroying the chima carcass in its entirety.
Not seeing the human that was their target, they looked at each other with confusion plastered on their beautiful faces and talked to each other in a language he didn't understand.
He thought to himself that hobgoblins seemed rather aggressive, attacking him on site not once but twice, but quickly withdrew that thought when he saw the head of the hobgoblin he killed earlier hanging on the side of the chima of the largest and strongest looking hobgoblin.
'Ah, guess that makes sense. Even if I was defending myself I doubt that they know that and doubt even more that they would care if they did.'
Not underestimating intelligent enemies, and not letting the chance to eat more delicious meat, he analyzed the 4 goblins to see just what he was up against.
"3 male, one female. 2 with spears, one with a short sword, and the last with a curved great sword. All made out of strange looking bones. If I take this one at a time, I should be fine." The largest one, which was just taller than him, was the one with the heavy looking great sword and clearly the strongest.
Unlike before, he wasn't going to just rush in, according to the encyclopedia a lower hobgoblin's stats hover around 100 give or take a few on average and he was well aware that he caught the first one off guard. He wasn't going to surprise any of them, they were looking for him and knew that he was close.
He was prepared to wait hours to wait for a proper opportunity to ambush them as stealth didn't cost much mana, but fortunately they didn't let him wait for long. After the biggest of them told them something they split up and moved in different directions, the two with the spears together, the female with the short sword by herself and the leader going back the way they came.
After a bit of deliberation, he decided to go for the two spearmen, he was sure that the leader was many times stronger than the others and for the female to go out by herself then she should be fairly strong as well. He didn't want to get caught up in a battle with either of them and have to deal with the spearmen at the same time.
The two of them going together must mean that they were either weaker than the other two, or stronger when fighting together. As to which one it was, he would only know after starting the fight.
Chima weren't particularly fast so with his enhanced stats it didn't take long to catch up. Breaking his stealth, he appeared behind one of them, but before he could take his life, a stab from the spear came flying towards him.
Bending his body in an unnatural angle, he skillfully dodged the spear and before it could be drawn back, he grabbed onto it. Unfortunately for him, he underestimated just how strong 100 strength is so the hobgoblin pulled it back even with the weight of Ray's body without breaking a sweat.
Caught with his pants down, the other hobgoblin took this as an opportunity to get revenge not only for his friend, but for almost losing his life and attacked Ray. Due to the close proximity he could only use his fist, but that would be more than enough to leave Ray crippled.
Sensing the incoming attack, Ray activated steel skin to the best of his ability, increasing his weight by multiple times while increasing his stats to an impressive 80. The weight and sudden appearance of the shining black body on the end of his spear shocked the spear welding goblin so it naturally dipped, making the punching one miss the original target of the center of his chest and hitting the shoulder.
Even under the increased weight of steel skin his body was still sent flying, straight through several trees only stopping when he collided with a massive boulder. The legs of the chima the hobgoblin was riding were shattered after the attack and fell to the ground.
Abandoning the crippled chima, the goblin jumped onto his partner's steed and chased after Ray, not giving him any time to breathe.
Unfortunately for them, his body was long gone by the time they caught up to him.