Chapter 3

When Foraii walked out of the clearing, markings such as footprints on the ground, and cuts on trees started appearing, making it seem like a battle had taken place not too long ago. Foraii took note of this and took out his dagger in order to cut down some branches. He took these branches down and used his minimal knowledge of survival in order to create a small fire. He took a branch off of another tree, and used it as a crude torch, without cloth or anything, so it was barely burning. Time was ticking and Foraii needed to hurry up and find the goblins, so he started fast walking through the forest, not really caring about the amount of noise he made.

He started spotting footprints that seemed more orderly around him, like they had started walking towards something. Naturally, Foraii followed these and, eventually, found the small camp. It seemed that the goblins had drastically reduced in number and were feeling gloomy. Unfortunately, Foraii "didn't give a flying fuck", and continued onwards to take advantage of their misfortune. He noticed that their huts roofs were made out of straw and thatch, so he lit their roofs on fire. As Foraii watched these already mourning, down in the dumps goblins run around on fire, he felt this strange sense of familiarity with this fire. He remembered his tattoo and realized that it could control fire to an extent, as long as there was a source. When he noticed this he looked up with happiness and excitement in his psychopathic eyes. He used his brain in order to figure out how this could work, at first Foraii had walked up to the fire and attempted to touch it, but instead got a tad bit singed, and so he felt the fire inside his heart and said one thing, "Help me burn down this village, and I will help you become the hottest flame to exist." This caused the flame to stir inside and reply with a slight shrug of its shoulders and a flick of its hand, causing Foraii to focus up. Foraii noticed that he started to feel less and less hot, but instead of cooling down, his body was actually heating up and he could feel that the flame around him beckoned to be used. And as Foraii understood what they wanted to do, he flicked his hand and said "burn those green little bastards to the ground, leave nothing besides their ears." He knew that the fire couldn't understand him, but words carry a will better than any feeling can, and so the flames burned bright and chased down the goblins. He watched it happen with a expressionless face, this wasn't what he wanted. what he wanted was to do it himself, but learning to coexist with this flame in him and learning to coexist with the flames burning around him would bring a new power within him. So he used these flames in order to kill the goblins, but not all. He picked up all the goblin ears that the flames had left behind, although they were a bit charred, they were still identifiable. As he was wrapping up 15 goblin ears, he stopped the flames before they hit the biggest building, showing that although a newbie to this power, he had a certain dominion over these flames. He chose his favorite flame to coat one of the short swords left behind by a random goblin, although not the best quality, it was still better than a stone dagger. He had the flame wrap his sword and he entered the biggest building there. He looked around and noticed that the building was roughly the size of a bazaar tent, easily fitting him and the 5 goblins, all resting on chairs, seemingly too occupied to bother with their families and comrades screams.

He despised goblins the same reason he despised most people, their apathy. He hated that they could sit there and listen to their families screams like they were at an opera, seemingly unbothered and unperturbed by it. Foraii wasn't enraged, he wasn't happy, but rather sad that even mythical creatures were like humans in their own monstrous way. He thought these thoughts for a brief moment, and then decided to fight these goblins. Starting from Foraii's left, there was one male goblin in leather, carrying a short sword, another male goblin with cloth clothes and a simple dagger, this one was seemingly a merchant, another male goblin that was much more buff and burly than the rest. He was carrying a mace, it was a considerably sized mace for a goblin, and had a shine to it, different from the rest of the weapons. After the mace wielding goblin, there was a bow wielding female goblin, she was wearing similar leather armor to the first goblin, and finally there was one more female goblin that looked like a shaman, most likely an illusionist. Foraii looked at all of them and yelled at them,

"Hey."

They turned towards him and stared.

"Bitch."

This got the all of their attention, and the short sword wielding one got up and waved his hands at the people behind him, simply saying "I'll take care of this one." The goblin drew his sword in a silently fierce manner. The sword didn't make a sound as it was being drawn, causing a little surprise to Foraii and making him realize that he shouldn't use his swordsmanship. Instead, he discarded his sword and shaped the flame to his will, causing it to turn into a Guandao, or a Chinese glaive. This caused the goblins eyes to turn fierce and he charged at Foraii, yet with two slashes of his blade, the goblin fell. Foraii had managed to hit the goblins sword and then behead him. In a way, it looked like the fire was a dull cherry red blade that shone in the light, but after the goblins realized what had happened, they were outraged. The big one carrying the mace had his eyes wide and whispered a single phrase, "kill him."

This was a spark that ignited the first true fight Foraii had gotten into. As it started Foraii took a one armed stance with the Guandao, while uncomfortable, it was his best stance to use in this situation. The mace goblin took the charge while the merchant goblin stayed back for a bit and disappeared out of the tent, then the bow and illusionist goblin took their stances behind the mace goblin. When the mace goblin charged, the illusionist started to cast a blinding spell on Foraii, so Foraii simply closed his eyes and used his ears to guide him. The bow goblin knocked an arrow and waited for a chance to shoot, and the merchant goblin was gone. The mace goblin rushed at Foraii in order to avenge the short sword goblin, and to end this as fast as possible while Foraii was blinded. The mace goblin struck down at Foraii in a overhead strike, making it difficult for Foraii to sense where he was coming from so Foraii kicked his leg out and hit the goblin, and slashed in a diagonal uppercut, which nicked the mace goblin, but then an arrow whizzed by his forearm, cutting it a little bit. Foraii couldn't see anything around him so he used his hearing, but the arrows that she was using were too quiet, so Foraii steeled himself, with a single plan in mind. He rushed forward to the downed mace goblin and crossed fire-steel with metal twice, the first with strong resistance from the mace goblin due to the slice coming from the right, and the second was less. This was due to Foraii using the opening he had when the mace goblin blocked his strike to spin using the recoil of the strike and attacking the left side of the mace goblin. The goblin staggered and Foraii heard it, the whistling of an arrow. "THERE!" Foraii spun and threw his fire, splitting the arrow and impaling the archer. Now he went back to the mace goblin and grabbed the goblins face while it was still staggered. He shoved its face into the ground, knocking it out due to the adrenaline "supercharging" his muscles. Now the only one left was the illusionist, and he could easily hear the rustling of her clothes, because she was shaking in terror. Foraii walked up to her, and crushed her hopes of living by crushing her hand with tattoo's, causing the blinding spell to dissipate, and then Foraii took her dagger and slit her throat. She made a final sound, and the life left her eyes. Foraii took their ears and butchered their bodies in order to eat it for their power, he ate their bodies, all of them, he left out the crotch area. He felt like he could be 50% faster than how fast he was originally.

After eating, Foraii felt something weird, it felt like a cold steel in his stomach. As he looked down he remembered that not all the goblins were dead. He said one word simply, "Shit". He saw a short sword protruding through his left stomach area, and then it was pulled out. As Foraii turned around, he saw the merchant goblin smiling in a satisfactory way, this pissed Foraii off and so Foraii grabbed him and grabbed his neck. Foraii squeezed and squeezed until he heard a *snap*. And so Foraii fell forward onto the ground, bleeding out of his stomach area, he needed immediate medical attention, or else toxins would flow into his body. He couldn't move though. Instead of moving, Foraii willed the fire he through to come back to him, and to enter his body. The fire came back in the form of a snake and crawled inside of Foraii, causing Foraii to grind his teeth in pain, the excruciating pain that he experienced from his body burning from the inside was indescribable. But instead of fainting or going into shock, he absorbed this fire, he absorbed it straight into his heart, and his heart beat at an incredible speed, causing his cells to speed up to an extreme speed, giving him a temporary superspeed metabolism, consuming all the proteins in his body and killing all of the bacteria and toxins inside because of the heat. He writhed in pain for an hour, and afterwards he looked at the goblin lying next to him, with a smug smile still plastered on its dead face. Foraii looked at it, grabbed it, and ate it like a rabid hyena that had been starving for weeks. After consuming even the ear, he was still hungry, but not starving.

Foraii got up and looked around the camp. It was mainly charcoal and was falling apart as he looked at it. Foraii willed the fire in his body to come out and it did, the snake was coiled around his arm like a elemental of fire. Foraii looked at it with pride and decided that he would name the snake "Zyxedre". It was a name that came to him because the snake reminded him of a female dragon. As Foraii stared into the ruby red eyes of Zyxedre, he realized that it was time that he returned to Brian, considering his quest was nearly overdue.