Chapter 15 Start To Train And Kobold Village

We all starting moving towards the exit of the cave. I sent a few Slimes to bring some heavy branches. While we were walking on, I could feel that the Goblins were anxious about something as they followed me. They fidgeted nervously and watched me, hoping I would explain. I suddenly felt a soft poke to my cheek and turned to see Gobuka.

-What are we going to do?

She sounded worried as she asked that, I focused ahead of us and continued to walk.

-Training

My answer gave her a perplexed look and I could feel confusion through the link from all the Goblins. We reached the small clearing in front of the cave and I started to have the girls form up in a line. The Slimes were still busily working on the walls of the cave and I nodded in approval before I looked to the girls. They were fidgeting a bit, but obediently stood in line and I gave another nod.
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The Slimes worked tirelessly on the walls as I began to train the Goblins. I stood back while they were training and started to look over the surveillance Slimes. I alternated between receiving reports from my scout Slimes and looking over the Goblins’ statuses to see who was good at what. Hmm? What kind of training did I put the girls through? Well, first of all I needed to create a crude hierarchy. I started a fighting tournament between the Goblins. There were a total of 12 people, making it 3 rounds. Currently Goboku and Gobura, who had recently ranked up, were fighting for the top spot.

-Haaah!

Gobura gave a very wide left hook, trying to catch Goboku with the powerful punch. Goboku saw through the attack though and ducked down. She took a deep step in and launched a powerful strike into Gobura’s kidney. The attack made Gobura wince and take a step back, but she grit her teeth and shifted her foot forward to counter attack. The spectators were cheering for the fighters, which was actually rather scary since the cheering squad seemed to be filled with bruises and cuts. I continued to monitor the Slimes after checking up on the girls.

Gobura’s counter hit Goboku’s chest. Goboku swore and jumped back, flinching from the sudden strike, and glared at Gobura. Gobura didn’t let up and gave a rough charge. She gave a yell as she launched herself at Goboku, trying to tackle her to the ground. At the last second, Gobuku took a step to the side and used her leg to trip Gobura’s foot. Gobura was quickly thrown to the dirt, but before she could even lift herself Gobuku gave a powerful kick to the downed Gobura. Gobura was instantly knocked unconscious. The rather painful sounding crack caused me to lift my head towards the fight once more.

The spectators cheered for Goboku, who was sitting on the ground, panting very hard. She smiled and waved at her fans. She succeeded after a hard battle, the bruises and cuts on her body could attest to that. I gave a small smile and began to prepare her reward.

Name: Goboku

Class: None

Species: Goblin

Health: 91

Mana: 460

Stamina: 124

Health Regeneneration :3/sec

Mana Regeneneration: 4/sec

Stamina Regeneration: 2/sec

Stats:

Strength: 18

Stamina: 21

Agility: 16

Intelligence: 46

Charisma: 20

Wisdom: 26

Willpower: 31

Perception: 8

Luck: 2

Unique Skills

<None>

Skills:

<None>

From investigating the Goblins statuses, I found out that Goboku held the highest intelligence. Gobura was physically the strongest, which got her to the finals, but unless it is overwhelming, raw strength only gets you so far. A little more than half of the female Goblins had a stat that was over 20, though all of them were close. Goboku and Gobuha both had over 20 intelligence. Gobura was the only Goblin with strength above 20. 3rd to 5th place were, in order, stamina, agility, and agility. My Slimes seemed to have more then less the same stats between them, probably because they typically came from a singular source. The goblins’ stats were much more individualized.

As I was thinking over these things, a voice suddenly intruded.

-Lord Sorron?

Goboku was approaching me with a satisfied look on her face. I could see the bruises on her body, they were blue under her green skin, but my eyes were drawn to another fact I had been trying to ignore. She, actually all the female Goblins, were basically in rags. Their breasts and nether regions were covered up, but the rags they were wearing was not created for modesty at all. It took all my willpower to hold down my blush,which made it only slightly easier by the fact that I prefer older women.

-Alright, since you won the tournament you will now get a prize.

I opened my storage and the particle effect lit up. I took out a set of clothes and an iron dagger for Goboku and put them in the female Goblins arms. Some of the other Goblin females were making strange sounds, looking at items a bit awed for some reason. I could also see a bit of jealousy in their eyes as they looked at the items, or maybe it was Goboku? Either way, this was a good thing, because they would train harder so they would have a better chance in the next tournament. Competition was always a good motivator.

Goboku examined the clothing with an ecstatic smile, holding them up to her body as if it was a priceless treasure. My only real problem was the clothing was of poor quality. It was roughly made. It was however sturdy, so doing activities in it was no problem. It was also better than staying half-naked and it would keep her warm. The dagger on the other hand was just a typical iron knife… She’d find a use for it.

-Wahh~ Hehehe~

She squealed and giggled as she hugged the clothes to her chest. She beamed a smile at me before she started to undress. I quickly turned around with a blush and took a few deep breaths to calm myself as my hormones tried to rampage. I’ll repeat myself once more at the risk of sounding redundant, I am not a lolicon!

Gobuku got dressed fast and I finally turned around. She was twirling in her new outfit, dagger hung from her waist. She looked just like a ordinary village girl…if you ignore the barring the green skin and white hair. Hmm, I wonder if oddly colored hair will be the norm here? Anyway I let them rest for a while longer and finally clapped my hands to get their attention.

-Ok, listen up everyone! Training begins now. I want you all to do push ups ’till I say stop.

I heard a lot of groans coming from them. Even Goboku looked a bit worried. I did not lighten up on them however, they needed to get stronger so they can protect me. My life was on the line here. It wasn’t even an hour before the girls’ arms started to give out. Once the final goblin, Goboku, fell I had them do sit ups.

It was slowly getting dark now, for hours they had been at it. Actually, only Goboku and Gobura were still going at it, the others were literally unable to move. I don’t know how it turned into this, but Gobokus and Goburas expressions looked very tense. I must admit, I was impressed, these girls were a lot stronger than probably 90% of the humans back on earth. Goboku was the last man… Goblin, standing in the end. I finally walked over to her as she collapsed panting.

-Very good job, you can stop now.

She looked at me, nodded and gave a weak smile. I looked over at the passed out girls and crossed my arms a bit. I looked at her again… I wonder why she was the one who lasted the longest… I figured that either the stamina Goblin or Gobura would last the longest? I looked over her status window and her stamina bar was not quite at zero… How come? On a related note, it seems that emptying your stamina will force you to pass out?

I looked over her stats one more time and tried to reason out the difference? The only discernible difference was, that out of all Goblins, she also had the highest willpower stat. While rest of them had only something in the range of 5 to 15, hers was a whooping 31… Hmm, does willpower add to your total stamina, or does it reduce the rate at which you use stamina?

I let her rest for a while as I went through stats and once more cycled through my security Slimes. The cave was coming along nicely thanks to the Slimes. I gave a small smile at that and finally returned my attention to Gobuku.

-Alright, carry your sisters into the cave.

She started to nod, then looked at the Slimes with a small glimmer of hope. She looked at me, I already knew what she was going to ask though.

-It might be more efficient if the Slimes carry them.

That was, of course, another option and if she had passed out I would have used it. She did not pass out though, so…

-Aren’t they your companions? As companions, you need to learn to cooperate and make up for what the others lack. Companions can easily save your life or assist you when you need it, but to do that there needs to be trust.

She didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about but didn’t object anymore. She stood with a groan and started carrying each one of them. Due to her small size, and the fact she was still exhausted, she could only carry them one at a time. It took a half an hour for her to finish. Instead of going to bed though, she came back and sat next to me. The sunset this evening was very beautiful, and we watched it in silence. The Slimes also finished building the makeshift walls and were currently trying to hide it using giant leaves and vines. The security Slimes had nothing of note to report. Luckily, other than a few night time predators waking up, nothing of interest was happening. The Slimes I sent out to harvest also returned with a rather large haul of food and herbs. I looked at the herbs and realized that I didn’t know how to identify them. I knew a few from the rabbit but otherwise I was in the dark. I fed one of each herb that I didn’t know about to the Slimes out of curiosity, but other than some jiggling, nothing interesting happened.

-Lord Sorron?

I actually jumped a little as Gobuku snapped me out of my thoughts. I was really out of there wasn’t I? She was staring at me curiously and I stared back for several seconds.

-What is it? Ah right! I had forgotten but I wanted to ask you.

I opened my inventory, it is such a useful skill, and pulled out a book. One of the things I did today was sort through the things I had gotten from the Goblin cave. One such item, was the book currently in my hand. It had a blue cover and the title of the book was written in a language from this world. I really enjoy books, and it is one of many things I miss from Earth. I was feeling a little homesick already as I looked over the book. I showed the book to Goboku and she lifted it from my hand.

-It’s written in the Human language

I smiled and once more looked at the meaningless lines and nodded.

-Can you read it?

I asked, knowing it was a bit too much to assume a Goblin could read, even one with a lot of intelligence like her. She pleasantly proved me wrong though.

-Y-yes, I am not very good at it yet though.

She actually sounded a little disappointed and I started to pet her head and asked her to read it to me. She brightened up a bit and nodded quickly and opened the book.

The title of the book was ‘The Adventures of the Hero’. It read a lot like a light novel or a fantasy from my world. It was about a hero who started off as a simple soldier. Through luck, chance, and story clues given by the author, he became a hero. Imagine that, Hero is actually a class… anyway. He continued his journey and wound up fighting against the forces of the ‘Demon King’. He eventually overcame the Demon King and was able to return to his family where they lived happily. It was a well written story, and I enjoyed it, it wasn’t an amazing epic that would stick in my mind though. Nonetheless, it was refreshing and Goboku told the story well. She stumbled a lot over pronunciations, and sometimes she had to skim over entire sentences. I helped where I could, pretty hard to do when you can’t read the language.

-The end…

She closed the book in her hands and looked towards me. The sun was down. I never wondered how she could read even though the light was gone. I stretched and checked the surveillance Slimes once more. I paled just a little since a few of the nocturnal beasts in this forest were terrifying. The Slimes were still working on trying to camouflage the cave and I stood, helping Gobuku to her feet.

-I think it would be best if we headed to bed now.

She nodded and gave me the book I looked over the book once more and handed it back to her. I figured she could use it to teach the others to read, if she wanted to. She hugged the book to her chest and smiled… Damn, she really was cute… Maybe I’ll have her teach me to read after we stabilize our position here. The Slimes did a pretty good job of hiding the cavern. It wouldn’t fool everything, but it would work well enough for now. I’d need to find a way to reinforce the walls later… Gobuku was looking amazed at the work the Slimes had done. I’ll admit, I puffed out my chest a bit with pride at her amazement… OK, enough of that, time for bed. We started to enter the cave when some of the Slimes contacted me.

-Lord

I stopped and closed my eyes, sending my vision towards the Slimes to see what they had found.

-Yes? What is it?

-We have found the Kobold’s village.

I realized that I really need to stop making wild assumptions. I had assumed that the Kobolds would be like the goblins. I sighed in my head as the sight before me completely blew that idea right out of the water. They lived in a sizable village. Well, perhaps it would be better to say a large camp. Regardless, the walls looked sturdy and they even had watchtowers. I could see a dozen guards just from that one Slimes position. It was heavily fortified and I was very glad that I had chosen to hide the cave. The Kobolds themselves were intimidating as well, and even had proper armor and weapons. I told the Slimes to hide and monitor the village just to be safe.