6 Escalation (2/2)

I smiled at Troik and began to speak to the little fellow. ”Here... why don't we try to talk like this?” I asked, hearing no difference in my words compared to before but hoping that it worked.

Troik began to smile a smile that not only curled his lips upward but went up to his eyes. He impishly clapped his hands together and laughed. The sound was as highly energetic as he was, and before he next spoke numerous peals of laughter escaped his lips.

”Yes, yes! The words of my people, not the words of big, mean humans. That is much better.” He said happily. I chuckled at his casual display of hostility towards humanity. That gave me one more question to ask him.

”So Troik... tell me about your tribe.” I said to the lively little thing. The goblin looked at me and there was a flash of fear in his eyes.

”My... tribe?” He asked, sudden apprehension blazing to life in his gaze. His voice was filled with fear as he said that, and it made me curious. I immediately wondered if his earlier anti-human comment indicated a fear of humans and thus of what I, a magic-user, could do to his peers, or if he had done something to merit being out here alone. And that inspired me to momentarily close my eyes.

I closed my eyes and left them shut. Darkness was all I could see, or rather I had willingly and temporarily blinded myself to be able to gain a bird's eye view of the demographics of the forest. In a split second the same massive map that allowed me to find Troik had reappeared in my mind.

I wasted no time, because I knew how odd this must have looked to my companion. ”Can I use this to search for specific kinds of creatures?” I asked the system, speaking solely in my mind.

Before I received an official response I heard a sound in my mind that was equal parts delighted and impressed. It almost made me smile. Almost. And then the system replied to my message.

[Yes you can. Just think about the species you'd like to find. For now, that's the only way you can track something on your mini-map but as you gain more tiers of influence in the right sorts of domains you'll increase the number of filters you can apply to this mini-map to make it even more useful. And yes, you can use it to find specific plants as well.] The system informed me, before telling me something incredibly useful that I didn't doubt I'd have asked it about later. I grinned.

I refocused after grinning like a dummy for two seconds and immediately focused on forest goblins. I put them at the front of my mind and made them all I thought about for a solid five seconds. And then the mini-map noticed and immediately made all non-goblin markers on the mini-map transparent. I couldn't see their colors due to their newly gained transparency.

The remaining fully illuminated and colored markers were various colors but all of them were circles.

Many of them, over two dozen of them, in fact, were clumped together in close proximity. That was revealing and allowed me to know with certainty that there was a community of sorts that existed in this forest for goblins.

There was something odd here though; the figure at the center of this cluster wasn't a goblin. Its marker was faded and transparent like all the other non-goblins' markers were. And it was located right in the center of a bunch of the little, beast-like humanoids according to my power.

Internally I grinned now at the fact that I knew the goblins had a community in the area, feeling much wiser already. This information would certainly be something I circled back too But my investigation wasn't done just yet. Something about the different colors that adorned the minimap was irresistibly begging me to investigate it.

Out of curiosity, I clicked on one red circle, one blue circle, and one green circle. These were not the only colors visible on the map at the moment but they were the most common. And the next notification I received was one that was apparently onto my extremely unsophisticated attempts at investigating how my powers worked.

[Alert:

Nearby entities detected. Confusion in *tremorsense* user detected. Multiple entities with different relational statuses to you detected. Creating a legend for your future reference and understanding...

Red: For any number of reasons this entity is either an active enemy of yours or would become one if they detected you. For sapient beings, this tends to be a convertible status but there are creatures in existence who will always be hostile towards you and thus will always be red when picked up by your mini-map.

Blue: These are entities that are neutral towards you at the moment. Or who would be neutral towards you if they detected you. These creatures can be transformed into allies or even friends if approached correctly.

Green: These are entities that are in need of assistance. Approaching someone who the map has identified in this way will present you with an opportunity for a new quest. The quest system is part of the grander system which is why we can detect if a creature has a quest for you or for someone else.

Enemy status identified.

The selected enemy is a level one warrior. The enemy is a forest goblin. The enemy is currently out on a patrol and is hostile towards any non-goblin humanoids she sees believing that confronting and killing them would net her great honor in her tribe.

Individual in need of assistance's status identified.

The selected individual in need of assistance is a level one alchemist. She is a forest goblin. She is currently out scavenging for rare ingredients for the assortment of potions and other handy magical items she creates for her tribe. If approached intelligently she may offer a quest to help her acquire rare ingredients in exchange for a few samples of her goods.

Neutral individual's status identified.

The neutral individual is a level one ranger. He is a forest goblin. He is currently out on patrol but he has better sense than to be needlessly aggressive. He is one of the older goblins in the area.]

Though what I had just learned was incredibly useful it didn't give me any answers on its own. So I opened my eyes and refocused on the goblin in front of me. Only a handful of seconds had passed so I didn't feel like me doing what I did was all that suspicious.

”Yes Troik. Your tribe. I want to learn about them.” I repeated, smiling at the end of my statement in an attempt to placate the fearful creature.

”My tribe is big! And strong! And... scary!” The goblin said, almost mewling at me while he did so. I pretended to be surprised and to believe this, nodding at him as if to showcase that I knew he meant business.

He studied my face, skeptically narrowing his eyes as if making his vision worse would help him determine how sincere I was being. After he spent a few seconds applying his own version of studious skepticism to me he nodded in satisfaction and appeared to believe I was sincere in my reactions. He quickly kept talking, all while gaining an undeserved bravado.

”Yes! And our orc chieftain is powerful. Even his pet panther, Hunahpu, is mighty!” The goblin warned, evidently assuming that I knew far more than I actually did including, more than likely anyway, the name of this orc chieftain since he did tell me the panther's name but not the orcs. But for now, I knew better than to correct the little guy.

He seemed happy to talk and assume I knew enough about what he was saying to make sense of it. I didn't. That said, I carefully played along and let my newest friend talk.

But I know knew two things: Troik's goblin tribe was ruled over by a strong orc chieftain, and this chieftain had an intimidating looking panther pet. I also had a feeling that I now knew the general location of the goblin's lair, but I didn't know that for sure, at least not yet.

And while I was lost in thought, thinking about what I knew for sure, I heard something change in the goblin. I heard him sit upright, correcting his impressively bad posture, and up-close I could have sworn I heard a subtle sound of his tiny bones creaking.

That was when the goblin opted to take control of the conversation. He locked eyes with me and used the same bravado from earlier, but less false this time while asking me a personal question.

”What are you?” The goblin asked, showing uncharacteristic bravery. There was an edge to his gaze and his question that didn't befit someone who had just gotten healed, and it annoyed me a bit. It was also completely new and unlike the fearful little creature he had been before he was healed. I smiled politely at him and responded as civilly as I could.

”Do you mean 'Who am I?', I'm Althos.” I explained, my lips contorted into a civil and perfectly passable smile fit for high society. I even extended my hand forward for a handshake. The goblin's lips edged upwards but not into a smile. The expression on his face was a lot closer to a sneer than a smile and his eyes began to flare and transform.

His eyes, which until now had been the yellow eye color of a cat began to change and shift under my gaze. The yellow remained unchanged, it was the dark little slit in the middle of the gaze that transformed. That black slit went from being a thin line of darkness to a blood-red and bold line that parted his eye down the middle, like a snake.

”Hello Althos. It's nice to meet you. Why are you healing a goblin? That is... very unlike a human. Are you a human?” The goblin said, speaking to me in a voice that was very clearly not Troik's. I was silent for a few moments while I considered what to say.

A small part of me wanted to lie and say that I was, while another part of me wanted to be bold and tell this strange creature what I was just to see its reaction. I carefully considered what to do in this situation, all while I kept my eyes locked on my companion. I had just healed him and I didn't want the little guy to get bruised and beat up just because some enemy wanted to use him as a meat suit.