After washing and drying the baby, the goblin waddled over to a dusty pile of scavenged junk stacked in the corner. She rummaged through it for a bit, then pulled out a large scrap of tattered, filthy red cloth, the sort of thing that had probably once been a proper cloak of a knight.
She cast the very same pair of spells as before, water, then fire, blasting the fabric clean with a burst of water and drying it off with a bit of gentle heat.
Satisfied, she wrapped the warm, soft cloth snugly around Magna, turning him into a small red bundle.
"Hurmm... gurr... chrek-kah..." She murmured away, looking down at him with a lovely expression.
To Magna, it sounded like utter nonsense, though the warm smile on her face made it clear enough she was rather pleased with it.
Then came the part Magna had both dreaded and, oddly, been waiting for.
Baring her small, leathery green breast, she offered it to him once again.
’I suppose I can manage this, so long as I keep my eyes shut,’ he told himself, squeezing them tight as he latched on.
[Energy particles detected...]
[Converting nutrients into energy...]
That same familiar voice rang through his mind again, and this time there was no mistaking it.
It was Gaia’s voice, without question, the very first AI he’d ever built.
What he couldn’t work out was how on earth she’d followed him into this new life, or what this "energy" she kept going on about actually was.
Still, as he kept nursing, filling his empty stomach bit by bit, the meaning of it slowly began to take shape.
It was hard to describe exactly, but with every gulp, some strange, glowing warmth seemed to gather inside him, spreading a little further with each swallow.
By the time his belly was full and that warmth had reached its peak, a fresh string of glowing text appeared before his eyes.
[Energy accumulation threshold reached.]
[Please select a method to utilize the gathered energy.]
There it was, at last. The cheat he’d need to survive had finally decided to show itself.
He hadn’t the slightest doubt it would turn out to be something magical, something extraordinary, exactly the sort of thing every reincarnation novel he’d ever read had promised him.
Then Gaia’s options flashed up one by one, and his excitement died rather quickly.
[Option 1: Expend 100% accumulated energy to double arm strength.]
He hardly had any arm strength worth mentioning to begin with. Doubling next to nothing wasn’t going to do him any good at all.
Disappointed, he turned to the second option, only to find it somehow even worse.
[Option 2: Expend 100% accumulated energy to grow hair by 20 centimeters.]
’My hair? Really?’ It felt like an option that existed purely to mock bald men.
Thoroughly annoyed and just about ready to lose hope on the whole thing, his eyes landed on the third.
[Option 3: Expend 100% accumulated energy to double vocal cord size.]
That was the one.
Not exactly thrilling, but leagues ahead of the other two.
For a newborn, Magna’s body was already rather more developed than most. His vocal cords could already manage the sort of soft babbling you’d expect from a baby two or three months old.
Doubling that wasn’t going to get him talking overnight, but as he grew, it would help him pick up proper speech a good deal faster.
And once he could speak, he could start working through spell chants, with any luck casting magic of his own or learning whatever this goblin mother might be willing to teach him.
He made his choice without a second thought.
[Option 3 selected. Utilizing gathered energy to modify vocal cords. Prepare for sudden physical pain.]
3...
2...
1...
Magna waited, barely breathing, until the count reached one.
Then a wave of agony tore straight through his throat.
His whole body locked rigid at once, the pain so sudden it very nearly frightened the mother goblin out of her wits.
"Skreew! Skreew! Kah! Grrok! Chruk! Chrak!"
Whatever was happening to the baby looked, to her eyes, horrifying, disturbing even for a monster like her.
Magna’s tiny body kept convulsing, spasm after spasm, each one making the pain plain enough. Even his tiny throat seemed to writhe, as though something alive were shifting beneath the skin, stretching and reshaping itself around his newly formed vocal cords.
Panicked, with no idea what was tearing her child apart and powerless to stop it, the goblin scrambled toward the far corner of the cave, where a stack of dust-covered, tattered books sat on the ground.
She grabbed one, her gnarled hands flipping frantically through the pages, hunting for anything that might help.
The book turned out to be a spellbook, looted long ago off some slain Witch’s corpse.
No one had ever taught her the human tongue, let alone the finer points of mana manipulation, and yet she’d worked out the secret of reading all on her own, painstakingly, over years and years.
Even so, her reading crawled along, nowhere near a human’s pace, let alone a Witch’s. Every dragged-out word only pushed her panic higher.
Cold sweat gathered across her forehead, running down her pointed nose and dripping off her chin as her whole body trembled from the strain.
Each glance back at Magna, still writhing, only deepened her terror.
Realizing she’d never find the right spell in time, she threw the book aside and sprinted back to him.
She gathered him up into her arms, holding him tight against her chest, and fell back on the only comfort she actually knew how to offer.
"Shh... shh... lil’ un... Yu no ’lone... Am ’ere... Mama fix..."
No incantation came from her this time, just soft, clumsy words and the warmth of her arms, though somehow they carried a quiet magic all their own.
As Magna’s consciousness slipped away beneath the waves of pain, he felt the agony slowly give way to warmth and gentle murmurs close by his ear.
At last, the pain eased, and the transformation came to an end.
[Utilization completed.]