Day 14 was shaping up to be a busy day. A lot had happened since the battle. It was not even mid morning on day 12 that Mark had unlocked the scouting class for 1,000 MP and built four, four-hobgoblin scouting teams out to do a better job scouting their surroundings. They linked the team that was following the traces left by the orc army. Late on day 13 the team had found the remains of another dungeon. The dungeon was gone, but the signs of a battle and the mounds of coal was a telling sign. The team had then been able to follow the traces of an army a bit to the south. From that Mark was able to deduce that Crassius dungeon should be east of them.
The fact that there were four mounds of coal was alarming. Of course he had assumed that the starting conditions for everyone had been the same, now there was the prospect that other dungeons were gathering 960 MP a day more than them, perhaps more… If that was the case instead of getting them a leg up the manna bellows had just brought them to the point where everyone else had started from. It was infuriating, but he could not do anything about it.
The dungeon being to the east had a few positive aspects. For one the gnome village lay in between them. The orc army had not passed it since they had come from the last dungeon they had conquered from the northeast, but if Crassius wanted to come at them directly they would likely pass by it. The topography in this case would help them. There was only one pass between the two plateaus to the east. They would either come through it, or from the northeast or a couple places from the southeast. Mark could ensure his scouting team’s could monitor these passes from now on.
The gnome village was just offset along one of the cliff faces. Crassius might not have found them yet, but there was a potential angle that Mark could work. Crassius’s goals might be the dungeon, but there was no reason he would not take out others on the way. He could potentially get technologies or other benefits from doing so. Regardless, he had used the recent attack as justification to get Cedrick to come and meet with him again. There were only around 100 gnomes in total, but their help could be instrumental.
It was not the only meeting that Mark had for today. A good half day to the south one of his scout teams had run into another sentient race. A village of Bullywugs, or frog people. They had a village on the edge of what sounded like a swamp. Mark could not go himself, but luckily Nasal was now recovered. It had taken a 100 MP potion from the store to restore the broken bones. There was a good chance he would have been able to recover eventually on his own, dungeon units had a sort of regeneration after all, but Mark could not wait. Mark had an established link with Nasal and the scouting team, and Amelia was currently monitoring the team's progress.
It was not the only barbarian people groups they had found either. The team who had found the destroyed dungeon had noticed a few harpies, or bird humanoids flying from the bluff to the north. They suspected there might be a village there, but had no way to confirm. The sides of the plateau were unclimbable. It might take a while to establish contact with them, but allies that could fly… It would definitely be a great boon. The same team had seen more evidence to support what the gnomes had said about the gnolls. There was another gnoll village up in the northeast. Another team had seen a couple of kobolds to the west. They had come out of tunnels, and his team had not decided to follow, so perhaps there were opportunities there.
Mark was beginning to wonder just what his goblin squads had been doing when he sent them out to scout. Likely they had just gone out and goofed off, or perhaps they had visited a certain hill that they seemed overly fond of. Investigating ravines…? Who could say. Apparently he should have gotten the scout class a long time ago. The scout hobgoblins were not any smarter, but they seemingly had a desire to explore, and the scouting class made them better at finding things. They were just level 1 for now. Maybe at higher levels they would be more likely to locate essence or other resources?
The bottom right side of his vision started flashing various colors. “Alright, alright I’m coming.” The flashing continued. “Would you cut it out already? Don’t abuse it” The flashing stopped.
Mark started to make his back to the core room. The flashing came from the tactical map. It was their only way to communicate with each other when not in the same room. Mark was sharing his tactical map with her, and she could play with the contrast and brightness. It was a good way to get the other’s attention. It was a simple thing to keep it open in his peripherals.
One of them would stay in the core room almost all the time. Sure they could get some dungeon defenders to watch the core and monitor the screen, but then they would have to communicate with the pedestal outside the dungeon who would then have to send a runner to track Mark down. This method was much faster. Mark vaulted over the earthen wall guarding the mouth and nodded at the entrance guard as he walked into the mouth of the dungeon willing to go to the core room.
He had bought 2 dozen new hobgoblins to serve as the entrance guard and 3 squads. It was not much, but he wanted at least a nominal force. They currently had 3,001 MP, but then it was late in the afternoon. At the earliest, Mark had estimated that Crassius could return in about 6 or 7 days. Mark estimated that it would take about that long to build a new army that was slightly bigger and better equipped than his previous one. If he was being real careful, he would take even longer, but then the force he could bring would be really terrifying.
Mark hoped he was right. He was not planning on expanding their forces overly much for a few days. Mage would unlock in 2 days, and he definitely wanted to have a good deal of MP to spend then. Until then, 60 goblins were enough to prepare their defenses.
Nasal was already inside the bulwark village, when Mark arrived. He shot Amelia a questioning look. She had not given him much of a heads up if they were already inside the village. “If you had gotten here quicker, you wouldn’t have missed anything,” she smirked.
This girl was getting used to her new reality, and was showing a bit more personality. Mark guessed that a person could only go so long agonizing that their life could end at any given moment before they mentally accepted it. The last attack might have run both their nerves raw, but since Amelia had been doing remarkably better.
The bullywug village was a real hovel. Not dirty and grungy like any place a goblin had occupied for more than a little while, but there was not much in the way of buildings. Old dingy hides were stitched together and wrapped around some logs. It was a pathetic version of a Native American teepee. The bullywugs themselves lined the route that Nasal was being led to. There were hundreds of them, far bigger than any force they had seen so far. They had green, brown, or a light beige skin color. Other than that they were just human sized bullfrogs wearing clothes. Half a dozen led and followed behind the 5 goblins. If the specialization Amelia had picked was a total dud, Mark would lose the only goblin he would regret losing. Nasal has too much potential to die here at the hands of a frog.
The procession reached their destination and the bullywugs in front scattered to the right and left. In front of the goblins was an enormous bullywug. Besides its size and for the fact that its brown eyes were glazing over there was not much of a difference. Mark was able to pull ratings. The bullywug leader was only at 1.6, which was not too impressive, but considering the fact that he had what must be about five hundred plus bullywugs under him with power ratings at least above the green goblins it was a pretty strong force for this early in the game.
“whaaaa haaavvve yaaaaoou cuuuuum?” The bullywug leader said the air sac where its chin would be swelled and deflated. Mark sighed. He had thought Nasal was annoying when talking.
“I’ve come as a representative of my village in hopes that we could establish relations.” Nasal said confidently.
“Whaaaaaa, veeeerrrry weeeeelllll. Staaatee uuuuurrrrr teeeeerrrms,” the head bullywug croaked. Mark blinked; he had not thought anything would be that easy, but then again the encyclopedia had referred to the bullywugs as violent and simple people, who did not talk much to outsiders. Hopefully they did not see the violent part of that.
“My boss has authorized us to trade technology for technology, or otherwise make a deal. Perhaps, I might suggest the tech buildings. Buildings would help protect your people from the elements, and you could build walls or other things to improve your village's defense.”
“Hmmmmmmmmm, betweeeer, wuildinnnngs cuuuuulddd heeeeeeelppppp keeeeeeep ourrrrrrr heeeeeeeerbs dryyyyyyyy, annnnnndd maaaaaaayyyyy heeeeeeelpppp agggggginsssst theeeee lizzzzzzzarrrrrd meeeeeen,” the bullywug finally croaked out. Mark had the feeling that it was other people who did not like to talk to them, and not the other way around.
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Nasal toughed it out negotiating for well over an hour. A majority of the time was spent due to the fact it took the bullywugs a long time to say anything. However Nasal made a commendable bargain. The bullywugs would trade 2 techs. One to get the building tech and another to get goblins to come and build huts to store their herbs and a fort for them. Nasal would bring back a list of available techs. Nasal even got them to agree to send some bullywugs to join their force and provide defense for the dungeon in place of the goblin workers.
It had actually been the suggestion of the bullywug leader, when Nasal attempted to lower the amount of goblins that would have to come, or after saying he would need to go back and ask his boss. The bullywugs' anatomy made it difficult to build, so the leader was insistent on it. The encyclopedia did say that the bullywugs were not overly attached to their young since they had so many of them. A single egg sac planted in the marsh could birth several hundred and since there were a good amount of bullywugs that laid egg sacs the amount would easily shoot into the thousands. They were a constant nuisance to those around them since their numbers were unending.
It was not his concern. Their dungeon was not in the swamp area. Mark felt bad for whoever was. The leader had mentioned lizard men, which was a dungeon race. Perhaps a dungeon to the south was in conflict with them, or it could just be other groups of barbarians. Mark was not sure how the goblin building would turn out, but getting 2 techs and a different type of soldier was not a bad deal. Once it was completed they got a notification.
[Congratulations: you have established a relationship with the bullywug people. You have agreed to trade the tech buildings to the bullywugs and give them custody of your 3 squads of goblins to serve as builders. In return you can pick 2 techs from the bullywugs and will get 36 bullywugs to serve as soldiers. Your representative, Nasal, has accepted this deal on your behalf. You can reject the deal at the cost of severing relations with the bullywugs.]
Why would he reject? If he could he would accept it right now, but it looked like he would have to wait for Nasal to return. The 36 bullywugs would be accompanying him. They would be getting 33 tadpoles and 3 pollywogs. The difference between the bullywug types appeared to just be age. The tadpoles were the youngest. They were smaller, short and skinny, with long skinny tails, standing about 3 ½ feet tall. The power rating was 0.45. The pollywogs on the other hand stood a foot taller. They were much fatter, more closely resembling the bullywogs, but their tail was still on the longer side instead of the bullywogs short stub. They had a power rating of 0.9 making them just touch stronger than the hobgoblins power rating wise. They would see how useful they were when they arrived, but they could not be any worse than the goblins.
They could not officially accept the deal till Nasal arrived back, but they could see the options. All the simple ones like crafting, foraging, trapping, and domestication were on the list. They needed foraging, but Mark already had it half studied. Domestication could help with food and they could raise horses or other animal types for various purposes. Unless they opened the beast tree in the units page it was seemingly the route to get cavalry units. However for their current needs trapping was at the top of the list. It could be a game changer in the up and coming battle.
The second one that he was immediately drawn to was one called herbology. It had the word unique by it, and unless it was a research from the higher Tiers it was not on the research list. Since it said unique Mark was under the assumption that it likely was not. Researching it would give access to the alchemist class. Which all Mark could gather about that class was that they could develop potions and other concoctions. It was an auxiliary class. It was not combat related, but could potentially help their dungeon. If they did not take it they might not get another chance.
Mark's thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of a couple of gray blimps on his tactical map. The alarm alerted him since they were not units from his dungeon, but using the spy feature Mark quickly identified the plate armored gnome leader and a couple more from his clan. “Lets see if we can go 2 for 2,” Mark said, turning towards the guardian room door.
“Ask them about essence sources,” Amelia called after him. Mark nodded as he stepped through.
They had come up with a couple of things to talk with the gnome leader about, asking about essences was not a bad idea. However, he would have to see where the conversation went. The last conversation had started off pretty shaky due to their goblins having tried to steal the clan’s sheep. Mark quickly saw that the leader was carrying his war hammer. He felt uneasy for a moment approaching the short but intimidating figure. He was a gray blimp now, but who knows if he could turn red and attack all of the sudden. Mark forced himself forward.
“Welcome to our settlement once again,” Mark said, giving a slight bow. He did not quite know the etiquette for these situations, so he defaulted with the bow. Hopefully, this was not a sign of subservience or something. He liked the dungeon building aspects, but diplomacy not quite so much.
“Aye, I would like to say the place is really coming along, but… Well, seems there is still a bit to go eh,” Cedrick chuckled to himself.
“Well it has only been a week, and we have had a lot going on,” Mark stated. The good news is that the gnome seemed in a more jovial mood.
“So I’ve heard. My people tell me you had a bit of an orc problem. Surprised the lot of you, did not kill right over, but then I also heard that you were able to summon quite the army yourself…. Is that another function of that orb thing?” The gnome leader inquired as he scanned the clearing.
Mark was not quite sure about that aspect of things. For the barbarians this world and their history in it was completely real. Mark did not know if they were lines of code or they were in a pocket dimension and everything was real. Mark had wondered about it quite often. The things they could do, the interface functions? In the end, he just had to accept that he probably would never know.
However, he had gleaned that the right thing was to just play along. There were certain interface functions that seemed to be accepted. Like the building template automatically being put in the gnome's minds or the trading of techs in the first place. There was no training or teaching the tech would seemingly just be known after an agreement was struck, so accepting the dungeon functions should not be too much of a stretch.
“Yes, it is a function to be able to create soldiers. However the main reason I asked for this meeting is to discuss the settlement where the orcs came from.” Mark gave the leader everything they knew and highlighted the potential danger to the gnome’s settlement.
“I see,” The gnome leader scratched his bearded chin. “We will look into it, but in the end how are they any more of a threat to us then you guys. Being able to quickly get an army of that size and strength is a threat to anybody. Who knows what you could become” Cedrick said, raising an eyebrow.
“Well we could agree to some sort of non aggression pact or something if that would make you feel better about us,” Mark suggested.
“Aye, that's a good thought but in the end an agreement is just that until one side decides to break it, no…” the Gnome replied thoughtfully.
“I guess that's true…” Mark responded thinking. Then an idea occurred, “There is manner to ensure peace between two groups… We could have such a relationship that is so beneficial to both groups that it is more beneficial for both sides to keep the relationship going.”
It was the idea he had thought up based on the world economy to prevent war.
“Ah, so deepen relations to decrease the ability of either group to sever the relationship. It’s not a bad idea, but how would you suggest we go about that?”
It was a good sign that the leader seemed responsive to it. “Well for one the research building that we are currently working on could be a boon to both of our settlements. It will aide in increasing knowledge in areas like essences and herbology.” Mark had decided they would be the bait to real the gnome leader in. Essences were something unique he was sure the gnomes would want to study, and herbology was a unique tech. No way they were not interested in it.
“Essences?” The Gnome echoed. “You know something about essences.” Mark nodded. “Aye we know a little about them, but have not been able to successfully explore its benefits, and herbology is something we are interested in.”
“And that could just be the beginning of things. We can build other buildings that will have other benefits. Of course, we would be dependent on the gnomes for both the building and utilization of such buildings. I’m sure you’ve noticed that our people aren’t too suited for such things.”
“Ahahaha, that is an understatement,” Cedrick chuckled. “It definitely sounds interesting. Despite knowing how, my people could not build such a building in our village. Must be another thing related to that orb of yours. Don’t suppose you have another of those hangin around?”
“Afraid not,” Mark said smartly.
“Then on behalf of the Holmsturg clan, I accept your offer.”
[The relationship with the holmsturg clan has been improved to allies. While the two are still separate sovereign entities, both sides will work together to ensure mutual benefits.]
“Then maybe we can talk about hurrying production for the research building?” Mark offered.
A half hour later the two had ironed out the specifics of a deal. Cedrick would bring a majority of the gnome village to hurry production on the research building. The builders had already done most of the intricate work, so a bunch of manpower would be enough to finish the job in a day or two. Mark had also worked in them completing the builder hut.
The builder hut was a building that would house the shade henchman and other non combatants during an attack. It basically kept them on ice, and even if the hut was destroyed it would respawn with them inside. It was a simple building that would take a fraction of the time then the research building was. Right now with 12 henchmen it would theoretically protect 6,000 MP worth of rebuilding if the enemy did target them.