Day 1 - 5

- Day 1

What the hell is going on? Opening my eyes, the first thing I see is a strange, old, green man looking down on me. Again, what the hell is going on?

[Old man] "From this point onwards, you will be known as Kei."

As the strange old creature places its hand near my face, I try to grab him, only to reveal that I seem to have shrunk. My tiny...green...hand? Is barely capable of grabbing a single finger of the old man's hand. Ah, I see now, I've been reborn as a lowly goblin, and to think, not too long ago I was a mercenary facing off against some asshole bodyguard. Thinking back, I'm starting to remember more about how I died in the first place.

I'm from modern day society. I was hired to take out some politicians' opposition and wound up meeting his bodyguard, an Esper. At the time, I thought I would be fine no matter what ability he had considering I too was an Esper. I had an ability called {Soul Eater} that let me devour the souls of other Espers and gain their abilities. I even had awesome powers like {precognition}, {flight} and {shadow form}. It's a pity the one I came up against happened to have a similar ability. We held nothing back and ended up levelling the building, with the target inside, of course. No one will ever say I didn't get the job done one way or another.

Collateral? You try killing someone when you're thirty floors above them and fighting off an insanely powerful enemy. Actually, don't, That is if you value your life. Eventually, my movement was restricted and my arms and legs were torn off, one by one, forced to watch as that bastard ate me. He even had the gall to mention about how my meat would taste better with some beer. What an asshole. After reminiscing so much, I'm starting to get tired. I guess I am a baby so it's not that...surprising...

- Day 3

After lounging around for a few days as a newborn, it would appear I'm now around the size of a large child. With my newfound strength, I wind up wanting to test its limits, so I do as any child would do. Run around like crazy until I exhaust myself, trip over and fall asleep.

- Day 4

I've been getting a few strange looks and chuckles from the older goblins but that's probably just because I was so hyperactive on my first day. I'm now being told by one of the older goblins that If I want any food then I'd have to go and hunt it myself. Fine. I'd like to see what kind of creatures this world has to offer.

Before heading out, I search the home cave for anything I could use as a weapon, stumbling upon what seems to be the storage room where they have...collected...a few human women. Their eyes look dead and their bodies are limp and ragged but breathing. It's unfortunate but one of these women is most likely my mother. Taking note of that, I offer them a silent prayer as I leave the cave, noticing another of the younger goblins born a day after me seems to be testing his body in a similar fashion to myself.

Wandering around the woods cautiously, I come across what looks to be a small rabbit with a horn on its head. Luckily for me, there's a relatively large and sturdy branch nearby that I'm able to grab without alerting the meal. I creep around it, making sure to be upwind of the creature. When the time is right, I leap out of the bushes with my branch held high, slamming it down on the small rabbit creature and killing it immediately.

After making sure the creature is dead, a strange, familiar scene reveals itself to me. From the carcass of the horned rabbit, a small, light blue orb rises from within it. Immediately realising what this is, I jump at the chance, grabbing it with both hands and dropping it down my throat. {Skill learned: Retreat} yes! I leap for joy at this new information. It would appear that my rebirth was not a total restart. The ability I had back in my old world , {Soul Eater} not only lets me eat souls to gain abilities. As long as I can obtain at least one a day of these lesser souls that small animals have, I won't have to eat anything else. Of course, I don't intend to remain satisfied with just this. There must be stronger creatures out there, with more powerful abilities and tastier souls.

That said, when I look at what {Retreat} does, it seems that when I'm in the process of running away, my speed increases. How much it does so, I'm unsure. Perhaps it'll improve the more of these things I eat; I never really got the chance to try that out in my old world because, even though Espers weren't shockingly rare, the chance to eat the souls of people with the same ability didn't really come up much. Regardless, this ability is sure to come in handy if I ever come across a creature I can't handle.

I pick up the horned rabbit and remove its horn, believing that it would make a rather good weapon for the short future. I'd say I was right since I have been able to kill and eat the souls of another three horned rabbits. I haven't gotten any new skills but {Retreat} has probably increased in level. On top of that, I've been able to gather two more small rabbit horns and two medium sized. I've elected to use one of the medium sized horns in conjunction with a smaller one for future hunts. The rest? Well when I get back to the cave I'm met with curious gazes followed by the sounds of starving stomachs so I throw three of four horned rabbit carcasses to the pack. I know I don't need to eat but I decided to keep one to at least keep up the illusion I do. I also decide to keep all of the horns, at least for now, since I don't really trust the other goblins.

On a side note, it seems that the goblin that was running around earlier ended his spree the same as I did. Collapsing and falling asleep.

- Day 5

The hyperactive goblin who's name I learned is Rou, has left the cave today to hunt alongside a rather dim-looking sidekick named Kichi. As I was about to leave today, one of the other goblins decided that they would try to do the same with me. That is, make me their sidekick. It didn't work, let's leave it at that, for his sake. I told him that if he wanted to learn to hunt properly then I would teach him tomorrow since he's, shall we say, worn out.

Today's hunt includes another three horned rabbits which resulted in earning the {Horn Strike} skill which adds a bit more power when using horns for weapons. Useful for now but unlikely to come in handy once I can get my hands on a better weapon. I also came across a snake and decided that the best course of action would be to drop down from a tree and stab it. This worked and when I ate its soul, I received quite a few abilities. {Poison Resistance}, {Venom Secretion}, {Shedding} and {Cold Blooded}. Two of these don't seem all that useful for the time being so I've sealed those away but as for the other two, they will be useful.