~Chapter 1
Eliza awoke with a groan, everything hurt, from her tender bum to her sore throat and everything in between. Matters weren't made any better with just how filthy, heavy, and nauseated she felt. She groaned, tried to sit-up, and immediately regretted it as the world began to spin about her. She fell onto her back with a groan, waited a moment, and repeated the whole affair again.
It took what seemed like an eternity, each repetition feeling like shit as the world around her lurched, spun, and generally seemed to want to dick with her.
Eventually though, she managed to sit-up and once more regretted her decision as her stomach lurched and she threw up the vilest thing she'd ever had the pleasure of tasting or in her case re-tasting. It was slimy, transparent save for the specks of orange and green chunks that pepper the viscous fluid, it coated the inside of her mouth, and left strands of bitter mucus dangling from her lips and chin when she was done.
She panted, looking at what could only be described as a bucketful of vomit pooling at her feet. Wiping her mouth, she sat back on her hands, heaved a relieved breath, and looked up to the sky only to come face to face with her utterly useless familiar.
It buzzed and she rolled her green eyes.
"Some help you were," she muttered, turning her head to take in her surroundings.
A veritable heap of desiccated and most likely dead goblins lay scattered about, their gazes empty, their skin like prunes, and the stench of rot about them. A fly buzzed, landing on the lens of a glass-eyed goblin, and Eliza heaved, her gut threatening to revolt again. She shook her head, clamping her mouth with her hand as she attempted to swallow the rising bile only to panic when she saw her gut. It wasn't that she'd not seen it when she was throwing up, her mind had just washed over it, but now though...
She shook, emotions, anxiety, and a multitude of other sensations roiling about in her. She was... No, it couldn't be. It was impossible, gestation took weeks before anything started showing, even for people who'd fucked the little bastards non-stop. She should still have had time to get some sort of treatment once she'd made it back to town. It was after all one of the few thoughts that flittered through her addled mind during the whole affair, but now though.
She heaved, her familiar buzzed, floating a hand's span from her head as a sudden jolt shot up her spine. She doubled over, clutching her distended belly as agony racked her body.
The muscles in her core cramped, twitched, spasmed, and rocked every fiber of her being with pain and protests.
She gritted her teeth.
A jolt shook her, and she was forced onto her back.
She screamed as every muscle in her body seemed to want to tear itself apart. More sparks of pain ignited in her body and she was filled with a need to push. And, so she did.
Pushing with muscles she'd never used before as she felt her quim stretch unnervingly around whatever was emerging from her womb.
She screamed and her familiar watched.
She gritted her teeth, feeling her walls stretch painfully open as she pushed with all her might.
It was agonizingly slow and through it all, the horror stories she'd heard about goblin births rang through her mind. She'd have to...
With a sudden pop and a wet slosh, it ended. She collapsed to the floor a moment later, panting, sweat-soaked, and filled with a mixture of relief and dread.
A heartbeat later, her familiar floated up to her, glowing obnoxiously in the overhead sunlight.
It buzzed and she weakly swatted at it. She missed and it buzzed again, bobbing almost excitedly as it did so. She swatted again and mumbled," go away, what do you want?" She didn't have the time or the energy to deal with a useless piece of floating rock. She had to get back to town and as far away from whatever thing crawled out of her before it could do whatever it was that half-formed goblins did.
Her familiar chirped.
She blinked and it was then she noticed the floating display in front of her familiar's face and the silence. There was no blood-curdling cry of a goblin spawn or something equally dreadful. Other than the buzzing flies, a random breeze, and the chirping of her familiar it was silent.
She sat up gingerly, expecting to fall back as either vertigo took over or exhaustion slammed into her. Neither happened. In fact, she almost felt chipper. The feeling blossomed into outright astonishment as she saw the tuber-sized egg, that lay lazily in a puddle of mud and slimy fluid.
It couldn't be, but she'd seen enough of the damn things in her mother's study and had gotten in more than enough trouble to never forget what it was. A mana crystal. And, from its near transparency it was most likely a low-grade crystal. Still though, the things were worth a pretty penny, and she'd somehow managed to give birth to it? How that was even possible was beyond her along with its possible implications, because the only thing that was on her mind at that moment was just how much money she would make from selling the thing and possibly how she could get more.
Her familiar's chirp drew her back to reality. Squinting, she looked up and read the text plastered on her familiar's floating display.
~New Recipe Added.~
~Save?~
She furrowed her eyebrows, a question on the tip of her tongue.
The familiar's display flickered, and a set of new text was displayed.
~Recipe 001~
~Low-grade/low-density/mana crystal~
~Incubation time: 8 hours~
~10 gallons of goblin seed~
~Save? Yes/No~
She quirked an eyebrow reading the text then tentatively mumbled," yes?"
The display flickered and displayed.