005 Setting the Graveyard

Upon entering the Goblin Forest, Karen immediately sprang into action. Today, aside from hunting, Karen had an even more important task: to begin preparations for activating his domain.

To activate a domain, one must fulfill a particular condition—constructing a graveyard with ten buried corpses. As for corpses, Karen currently only had a rabbit skeleton, and he wasn’t even sure if that counted.

Yes, precisely! The reason Karen had Nieve collect the rabbit bones was to test if animal carcasses would suffice. Even he felt this idea was rather perfunctory and absurd, but who could say for certain? The system didn’t specify that human corpses were required; if animal bodies could do the job, activating his domain would become much simpler.

With this thought in mind, Karen hadn’t even bothered to collect the three animals he’d caught the previous night—he dove straight into the Goblin Forest at dawn. Of course, Karen didn’t dare venture deep into the woods; he only intended to find a suitable spot on the forest’s edge for his graveyard.

Although he hadn’t yet begun activating his domain, Karen had clearly studied the requirements thoroughly. While the system didn’t strictly dictate graveyard placement, it did provide some guidance: a basic graveyard was best located where sunlight couldn’t reach. The darkness of the site was vital for the domain’s future development.

This wasn’t a difficult condition to meet in the Goblin Forest—such places were everywhere. And since this was merely an experiment, Karen didn’t search too carefully. On the outskirts, he found a low-lying area thick with vegetation, untouched by sunlight. He tidied it up, buried the rabbit remains, and designated the spot as his initial graveyard.

A system prompt chimed: “Ding! Your initial graveyard has been successfully set. Activation in progress. Current activation progress: 50.5%.”

“What’s going on?” Karen was dumbfounded by the message. “Burying just a two-pound rabbit skeleton pushes the progress to 50.5%? Activating a graveyard is this easy?”

Of course, it wasn’t that simple. The real reason was that the ground Karen had chosen already contained the remains of five goblins; the rabbit contributed only the final 0.5%. Karen realized this only after the fact—not because he was quick-witted, but because the domain interface provided details about the graveyard, listing the corpses it contained.

“It seems my luck isn’t too bad. Who’d have thought I’d pick a spot that already had five goblin corpses buried beneath it? More importantly, this data shows that animal bodies can indeed be counted. That’ll make my work much easier!”

For Karen, the rabbit discovery was excellent news. Though the rabbit’s contribution was small—twenty rabbit skeletons equaled one tier-zero corpse—it was still much easier than using human bodies.

Because the villagers avoided the Goblin Forest, small animals were abundant on the outskirts. The three traps Karen set yesterday had yielded prey in less than a day.

Given this, Karen realized that hunting a hundred rabbits might not be as difficult as he’d thought.

With hope in sight, Karen’s motivation soared, and he set straight to work. First, he collected the three animals from his traps: one rabbit, two mountain rats, and 1.5 points of energy.

Since Karen didn’t eat rats, he killed and buried them. To his delight, the two mountain rats contributed 2% to the activation progress—double what rabbit bones had provided.

It seemed that intact carcasses advanced progress more than mere bones, bringing Karen closer to activating his domain. With this rate, he’d need only fifty or sixty more rabbits.

Encouraged, Karen threw himself into his work, spending the entire day setting up seven more traps for a total of ten. He didn’t plan to add more—traps had to be placed where animals frequently passed, and he’d already covered all suitable locations nearby. Traps elsewhere would be pointless.

Besides, Karen noticed the animals in the Goblin Forest were unusually foolish.

They kept walking straight into his traps. By the time he’d finished all seven new ones, four had already caught prey.

At this hunting rate, ten traps were more than enough. Maintaining them all kept Karen busy; any more, and he wouldn’t be able to keep up.

Karen collected the animals from those four traps: another rabbit, three more rats, and two points of energy.

As usual, he buried the rats, gathered some firewood, stuffed the two rabbits into the bundle, and headed home.

When Karen returned, Nieve was already waiting for him. Seeing her small figure huddled in the corner of his cabin, face full of worry and arms wrapped around her knees, all of Karen’s fatigue vanished—his heart filled with warmth.

In that instant, Karen even thought that perhaps this kind of life wasn’t so bad—hunting by day, sharing supper with a proud, adorable little girl by night. If she grew up, maybe someday… Well, best not to pursue that thought; even if this world didn’t care, Karen didn’t want to become a degenerate.

But if this life could continue, it would indeed be happy and cozy.

Still, Karen knew well that this world wasn’t like his past life, where people were criticized by online busybodies and self-righteous crusaders. Here, without strength, peaceful living was impossible.

So Karen shook off his wandering thoughts, strode into his cabin, set the firewood aside, and took out the two rabbits to surprise Nieve.

Instead of delight, however, Nieve’s face went pale with fright. Clearly, she knew exactly where Karen’s prey had come from—she didn’t want him going into the Goblin Forest.