Chapter 70

Rain stood tall and tried to judge how much he had grown by. He towered above the ground, of course, but furrowing his brow and trying to measure how much he had changed by, well, he didn’t think he had changed by as much as he would have expected. Eight foot five inches, and a little bit perhaps?

It wasn’t the kind of growth that eating hundreds of animals would have caused him to expect. He thought about that, rubbing his paw pad against his chin. If levelers caused more growth than monsters, and plants caused very little growth then that suggested there was some maybe kind of hierarchy with how much could gain from eating. A hierarchy that put levelers at the top as being worth the most, below that monsters with slightly less, further below that animals, and finally right at the bottom, plant mass, which was worth very little.

It made a certain amount of sense he supposed, monsters were different from animals, there was a clear line drawn between the two, everyone knew that, so why not here too?

It also explained why he had needed to eat so much to sate his hunger. He had been running around trying to put out a fire with a cupful of water, a fruitless endeavour, it was only when he had started to eat the cultists that the tide had turned and he had managed to regain control of himself. The cultists were just that much more filling than livestock.

He had questions. Was he going to enter a comatose state every time he killed one of his killers? Would he wake up as a starved near mindless beast then too? That could be a problem. Finding a lot of livestock to eat was one thing, but if that wasn’t enough what was he to do? Have a number of levelers or monsters prepared to eat for when he woke? He didn’t want to be a danger to Lyra or Opal or ... Red ... He had almost eaten Red, the hunger had made him mad, irrational.

This complicated things. He didn’t particularly want to go on a mindless rampage killing indiscriminately every time he got his revenge, in fact he very much did not. He had earned his control in the dungeon, overcoming the wild nature of what he had become in allowing a few of the prisoners of the Half-Goblin tribe to go. He wanted the choice, the ability to choose what he did at the very least. Being at the mercy of his own hunger did not allow that ... Perhaps somehow filling a warehouse with food as a just in case emergency measure would be the simplest answer. Some way to keep the raw predator at bay.

He held up his paw and rolled his digits, flexing his claws. The claws of a predator. There wasn’t any getting away from what he was, although one thing was missing since he had left Lynthia that reflected on his nature, and that was the copious amounts of blood he had been covered in. As soon as he had woken he had gone to do one of his most favourite things in the world, and one of Opal’s absolute least favourite things: a nice relaxing warm bath. He had even added bubble bath this time. It had been nice. He made a mental notice to ransack the mansion for the stuff before they left.

Relaxing baths and eating, two things he had been starved for in his past life. He was now enthusiastically making up for that as much as he was able. If he was to be what he was, a monster, a predator, he intended to at least have regular baths. He didn’t want to completely lose his sense of civilization.

His eyes moved to his wrist where the hem of his shirt and coat began. The clothing had seen better days. There were many small tears in the fabric, not to mention the puncture holes the arrows and bolts had left dotted across his back, but it still didn’t look bad on him due to how close it fit, especially now it had been cleaned of blood. He had tossed what he wore aside when he entered the bath and the cloth had floated off toward one end of the pool unnoticed. That is until Opal had asked him to retrieve it. He had done so and found that the same magical filter that cleansed the pool water of dirt had cleansed the clothing thoroughly.

When the clothing dried he had reluctantly put it on at Opal’s insistence, reluctant because he still couldn’t say he particularly liked the feeling of fabric against fur. The clothing had held up despite his growth, just, although he doubted it would be able to hold together if he grew any further. He knew he would soon out grow it, maybe he could ask Lyra-

“It’s ready!” called out Opal behind him. He turned to find her standing there, her hands on her hips.

She looked ... markedly different.

The Goblin girl was wearing a clean white blouse, a well fitted one at that. She had clearly found the clothing of one of the mansion’s previous occupants, a Halfling if Rain had to guess, and had gone to town making herself look, well, like a leveler, a wealthy one. She wore a frilly light white skirt that hung down to her ankles and had carefully tied colourful ribbons into her hair. She had also found a wide brimmed hat from somewhere and had delicately perched it on her head.

“ ... What are you wearing?”

“Do you like it? I wanted to dress up like a snotty leveler! It was hard finding something that fit me though, you would not believe how much stuff I threw out.”

“And you dressed up like a leveler ... why? What for?”

Opal tilted her head and smiled sweetly, holding her hands behind her back as she rocked on her heels. “Well, if we’re going to have a tea party like a bunch of levelers then I thought I had better go all out.”

He looked at the smiling Goblin, then he turned and looked behind her at what she had been doing. A part of the Ranker’s quarters had been set out with a pair of sofas and a coffee table in the middle. The coffee table had a tea set on it along with a gently steaming teapot.

“We’re monsters Opal, doesn’t this seem, I don’t know, strange?”

“And who said monsters weren’t allowed to have tea parties? We can steal anything from levelers and make it our own! If I want a tea party then I have a tea party, nobody can stop me, and if they try I’ll kick them in the knee.”

Rain opened his mouth to say that it made no sense, but then seeing a certain look in Opal’s he slowly closed it. For some reason the goblin girl was set on having tea and if that made Opal happy he wasn’t going to stop it from happening.

After a moment of hesitation he moved toward the coffee table and the sofas, shuffling by the table. He then gingerly lowered himself down, his massive size taking up most of the sofa and causing it to creak desperately under his weight.

He watched carefully as Opal hopped around the table and patted her dress down then carefully perched herself on the edge of the opposite sofa. She seemed inordinately excited to be having tea, more than Rain would have expected ... strange.