The night had deepened into a heavy, breathing stillness. The rhythmic moans that earlier spilled from the master's hut had long since faded, swallowed by the dark.
Yet Skarn's eyes remained open, fixed on nothing in particular, while his mind turned restlessly over the strange gift that had just rooted itself inside him.
The Invisible Breeding God System.
A name both absurd and intoxicating.
It granted him invisibility—true invisibility: no sound, no scent, no trace of mana, no echo of soul or body to betray him. At present the power lasted ten minutes at a stretch, followed by a thirty-minute cooldown. No mana cost. No complicated chants. Only will. A single, focused intention and the world forgot he existed.
And yet… that limitation was no limitation at all once breeding entered the equation.
Breeding. Females. Specifically.
The system had poured the knowledge straight into his skull, cold and clear: if he wished to grow stronger—truly stronger—he must use the invisibility not merely to hide, but to hunt.
To couple unseen. Each act of concealed union would feed the system, and the system would feed him in return. Stats would rise. Limits would peel away.
He called the panel again, the ghostly blue script floating before his open eyes like frost on glass.
----
Status: Skarn
Strength: 3
(Average adult human male: 5)
Agility: 4
(Average adult human male: 5)
Stamina: 7
(Average adult human male: 5)
Mana: 6
(Newly awakened human: ~1)
Willpower: 8
(Average adult human: 4)
Rank: F
Skill: Invisibility
Effect: Full invisibility of sound, smell, mana, and presence—erased from both the physical world and the soul's perception.
Duration: 10 minutes under normal conditions
→ Unlimited while in the act of breeding
Cooldown: 30 minutes under normal conditions
→ None while in the act of breeding
Cost: None
----
Skarn's gaze lingered on the translucent panel, its pale glow casting faint shadows across the rough, greenish tint of his own small hands—hands that were no longer human.
But for reasons the system alone seemed to understand, it measured him against the baseline of an average adult human male, as though his current goblin form were merely a temporary overlay on some older, discarded self.
Strength: 3.
A little below that human five. His wiry arms, thin and corded beneath leathery skin, lacked the raw bulk he dimly remembered he once possessed as a human.
Agility: 4.
Again, just shy of the human mark. Yet there was a quickness in his fingers, a jittery precision that felt native now, like the twitch of a creature built to skitter through cracks and shadows.
Stamina: 7.
Above the human average. His narrow chest rose and fell steadily, tireless even after the night's restless vigil; the goblin frame endured where bulkier ones might falter.
Mana: 6.
A number that startled him anew. He hadn't known the energy existed inside him until the awakening—hadn't felt its faint, cool current threading through his veins like distant moonlight—yet here it sat, already far beyond what a fresh human spark could claim.
Willpower: 8.
Double the human norm. That one burned quietly true.
Rank: F.
The letter stung like a fresh brand across his vision—the lowest rung, inevitable for a goblin fresh from whatever pit or womb had spat him out. Understandable. Expected. Still, it pricked.
His attention drifted finally to the skill description he already knew by heart. Reading it again felt like ritual now, a formality to seal the night's revelations rather than discover anything new.
----
Once the status panel dissolved into motes of fading blue, Skarn let his eyelids fall shut for a moment—only to open them again almost immediately.
Sleep refused him. The straw beneath his thin pallet had grown prickly, restless against his back, as though it too sensed the shift inside him.
He pushed himself upright in one slow motion, elbows braced on bony knees, the small green fingers of one hand raking absently through coarse, patchy hair.
The night air inside the hut hung thick with the scent of damp earth and lingering smoke from the cooking fire long since died to embers. Somewhere beyond the crooked walls a cricket scraped a single, lonely note and fell quiet.
His gaze drifted unfocused across the shadowed interior while the implications circled like smoke he couldn't quite exhale.
The path to strength lay plain enough—laid bare by cold system logic—but the how of it, the actual doing… that part resisted.
At the root of him he wasn't this kind of creature. Not truly.
The body might burn with its insistent, animal heat, might twitch and ache in ways that felt borrowed, invasive, but the mind still carried the memory of restraint, of distance from such urges. He wasn't the sort who chased every flicker of lust that crossed his path.
And yet here the flesh insisted otherwise, a constant low simmer beneath leathery skin.
A long, quiet breath slipped from him.
"Haah… just why is my life so fucked up."
The words barely stirred the air, more exhale than voice, heavy with the weight of things already known and still resented.
Of all the powers the old stories had promised—flames, lightning, dominion over shadows or time—this was the one fate had draped across his narrow shoulders.
A gift he would have refused in an instant if given the chance. A system built on concealment and violation, on taking what was never offered while no one ever saw.
He hadn't asked for it any more than he'd asked to wake inside this small, cursed frame, perpetually hungry in ways that shamed him.
And yet.
The collar of slavery still chafed at his neck—literal iron once, metaphorical now—of obedience, of bowing, of surviving.
The system dangled before him the slimmest thread of something else: not freedom handed over, but freedom that could be seized, clawed out one shadowed act at a time.
A chance, ugly and barbed, to break the invisible chain or remain forever its prisoner.
He sat motionless, the decision not yet made, only felt—coiling tight somewhere deep behind his ribs like a spring under slow, deliberate pressure.
Outside, the night held its breath.
A vast, patient stillness pressed against the crooked walls of the hut, as though the darkness itself had paused—listening, waiting—for the small green figure inside to choose.
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