Chapter 19 - Uncustomary

T'lear observes his clattering surrounding, an amalgamation of goblins laughter and human cries. He sees those goblins drinking something while feasting with human flesh. They're cackling while listening to humans scream as they tore them apart, and then become their food.

These are disturbing sight even for him, but he understands these things is a norm mindset in every tribal society — other species life doesn't worth much as their own.

"This place is very unhygienic," T'lear only whines after seeing how messy this place is, it only makes his investigation harder with the amounts of blood spread in this place.

If only T'lear's noses work in this form, he'll smell blood mixed with many other foul odors. Only this time, he glads he can't smell anything.

He tosses his thought aside and starts searching while grumbling about Elias uses him as a scouting tool. However, even though he whines while exploring each room, he still prefers doing it rather than let Elias rushing towards monsters' lair alone. After all, he's intangible in this form. Also, if Elias lost his life, he'll also follow him soon, to the afterworld.

After finished examining every room on the surface, he mumbles while stroking his chin, "Hmm, it seems those goblins only has one leader."

However, he soon remembers his real objective and starts the search again, this time he dives to the ground — towards those goblins' basement.

***

In the lush forest, many goblin corpses spread in this forest. Near those bodies, two people are sitting facing each other — Elias and Nanako.

Elias gives some vague explanation to Nanako about his scouting ability, and give her some 'proof' of his power to ease her anxiety. He understands that system's skills are still a bizarre concept to a human who just transmigrated to this world, but she who already seeing stranger thing like those goblins can quickly accept it after seeing it herself.

After finishing his explanation to Nanako, Elias let her alone for a moment — give her time to think — and then finds someplace to sit down, wants to look at his harvest after killing more than a hundred goblins that he put inside Hansoo's pouch. Previously, he doesn't even have time to pay attention to their color when putting these runes into the pouch while fighting those goblins.

However, after the situation calms down, he finally has the opportunity to check his runes. He opens the pouch and looks at his harvest, one by one.

"Green, yellow, ugh, another red," Elias mumbles while checking runes' color, but soon he falls into silence after seeing one rune.

Without he realizes, he curled his lips upwards while gazing a violet rune on his palm, his hand's trembling while examining the rune thrice to make sure it's not his hallucination — which, of course, not his delusion. He feels ecstatic after certain this rune is the real deal.

He remembers to pick a rune with a slight violet color after killing one of the goblin shamans, but he thought it only just some reflection from something else and didn't think it anymore.

In his past life, this violet rune is seldom dropping in every level like agility runes, but when it is, the Mage Union immediately bought it at high prices which made it rarely go into the market -- their demands always high while it has low supply.

There are two pivotal runes for any fighters that focused on magic or skill — one of them is this rune. Whoever consumes this violet rune, can slightly increase their mana quantity. For any mage, mana is one of valuable gauge to show their worth. Some skill needs high amounts of mana to activate, and with high mana quantity, a mage can cast many low-level skills without the need to stop while fighting.

In the later stage, mages with high mana will play important roles and can turn the tide of wars if they used their skill correctly. However, the fact of how low the drop rate of this violet rune makes human race had great difficulty to keep up with the growth rate of dungeon masters.

At the end of the third wars, even with many strong people help by farming in high-level areas, the human race can only barely nurtured one mage.

Nevertheless, it's only problems of the past. With one of dungeon master advantage — its store — the disadvantage of rare drop become nearly nonexistent. As long he has enough points, he can buy many violet runes to increase his mana quantity, or even nurture his own mage.

As if don't want to waste another second or afraid someone will snatch it, Elias immediately clutches his hand, grabbing this rune and closes his eyes — hurriedly to consume it.

Comfortable warm feeling flows inside his vein and then it becomes warmer as his heart pulsating. This sensation is a familiar to him, the sensation of increased mana after using the mana rune. However, what makes him truly happy isn't his slightly improved mana, but the following notification sounds that ringing in his mind.

*Ding*

[Mana rune(Colorless-Small — 10 points) added to Catalog]

He startled after seeing this holographic sentences, but soon his smile grew wider, doesn't expect the store only put that amounts as its price, which equivalent to agility runes prices. He assumes it'll be more pricey, but this cheap cost is a pleasant surprise.

Although he feels happy after seeing this notification, he understands the importance of consuming many runes in this early stage. He doesn't protract his glee for long and consumes all the remaining runes. All of them only slightly increase his base stats, but it's still better than nothing.

Time passed more than half an hour to consumes those remaining runes, which is quicker than before.

"It seems my body started to get used with runes," Elias mutters after noticing an improvement at his absorption rate.

"Yeah, it seems so," a familiar voice enter in his ears.

"Oh, it's only you, T'lear. You're faster than my expectation."

"Their area isn't that wide, after all, it only a goblins' den."

"Well, you're right about that. How the situation?"

"They only have one leader," T'lear silent for a while and then look at Elias' eyes, "but, honestly, it's stronger than your current power."

"Ogre?" Elias asks.

T'lear shakes his head, "Goblin champion, my advice is it's better to forget about that kid."

Elias frowns his eyebrow, he understands that a goblin champion is stronger than him by miles, even if he uses all his current points to buy stat runes, it still won't be enough to battle with it straight on. If they fight straight on, he won't even scratch its skin. However, what attracts his attention is T'lear last sentence.

"Is your words mean her brothers still alive?" Elias asks.

T'lear grit his teeth after hearing Elias question, realizing his slip of tongues. He wants to lie to make sure he won't reach any stupid decision like rushing alone towards goblins' den, but one of his soul contract clauses forbid him to lie towards Elias.

"It's singular, but Yes, one of her brothers is still alive, and his condition is very unusual."