"Candy?" I ask. I am currently lying flat on my back, and I tilt my head to the right, eyeing my elf companion. I see her on her side, her head propped up by a hand, gazing back at me. At the sound of my voice, her pointed ears rise to attention and her golden eyes light up.

"Yes, King Ash?" she replies softly.

I stare at her for a moment, appreciating her beauty, the subtle way the sunlight peeking through the forest canopy glows on her baby-smooth skin, and the long, soft features of her face, framed by shoulder-length blue hair and pointed ears that remind me of a cute puppy in their expressiveness. "I-," I feel my heart skip a beat, and I look away, "-never mind."

A silence befalls us, and I lay on the ground quietly, listening to Candy's gentle, rhythmic breathing, feeling my own breathe gradually fall in sync. High overhead, a chorus of bird songs float through the air, carried by a soft forest breeze. I feel my eyes begin to droop, and suddenly, I want nothing more than to just take a long nap. I shake my head however, knowing that there is still much to be done. "Candy?" I ask again.

"Yes, King Ash?"

"Go get your armor, and let's collect the mob drops. Then we can head back to the castle."

"Yes, King Ash."

With great reluctance, I pull myself up off the ground. Then I begin walking around the battlefield, searching to see if there is any good drops worth taking. By this point, most of the goblin corpses have transformed into experience fruits, leaving just their weapons and armors behind as item drops, with the occasional loot crate mixed in.

The goblin armors and weapons I don't even bother picking up. They are of such shoddy quality that they're not even worth the inventory space they'd require. However, I do take care to pick up all the loot crates I find and store them into my inventory so that I can open them later, when I'm back at the castle. Maybe they'll contain something useful, though I don't get my hopes up. Given the level of the mobs, it's more than likely to be junk items.

Indeed, rather than equipments or loot crates, the real prize from this battle is the experience fruits that the goblins dropped. In this world, experience fruits are basically how you level up. By eating the fruit a mob drops, you gain the experience that the mob contained. I discovered that the fruits themselves work in the following way:

Each mob corpse, after some unique amount of time, will transform into an experience fruit. While the amount of time it takes, and the characteristics of the resulting fruit, differs from mob to mob, the general process remains the same. For goblins, it typically takes about an hour for their bodies to transform, turning into this putrid brown fruit sort of resembling a strawberry.

Goblin fruit tastes as you might expect from its appearance. It's disgusting, like eating rotten eggs, and I have to pinch my nose every time I eat one, lest my gag reflex kicks in. Unfortunately, it's also the only mob type that I have easy access to at the moment, given my low level. So I make do, quickly swallow each fruit down in rapid succession. I try not to think of the slimy bitter taste against my tongue or the acrid smell that reminds me of piss.

After eating more than forty of the things, and nearly vomiting, I am finally rewarded by a sudden warm sensation that courses through my body, accompanied by a burst of pale yellow light that emits from me like some kind of aura. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, clearing it of the leftover goblin gunk. Then I let out a wide grin.

"Level up!"