So today it is again a slightly shorter chapter since the next one will be a timeskip chapter again! It is time for some well dosed progress.
Since i am mentioning the next Chapter it will most likely take until monday before i post. For one I need to rethink the mana spending thing and for the other i will be celebrating a very important persons birthday on saturday. So yeah gonna be busy on all sorts of things. :)
Though i will still peek in here and there to take a loot at the comments. So I wish to all of you a good weekend!
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Another day in farmville !
Or not… Well at least they are growing properly.
The day after my whole reroll of the dungeon came and I inspected the new fields. As expected the trees would take a while to fully grow and bear the first few. The wheat was growing well, but it was already obvious that they would not be as good as the one i knew from my old world.
Well of course, we humans did a long time of selective raising for the best crop. I will have to do the same. Luckily at this growth rate it seems we will have many harvests a year so we can speed up the process.
It was the same for the berry bushes on the other level. The mushrooms grew just as expected. After the realization about the crops i set up another greenhouse and planted the wheat there. Here we would always select the plants that grew the most and the biggest seeds. Speaking of which, Goga became the new leader of the future farming division. Who Goga is? Oh right he was the one i called snot goblin. The one i had selected as gardener a while ago. Another joyous thing to happen was that a few of the goblinas gave birth. We had 2 twins and even one triplet. It seems single births are just as rare for goblins as it is the reverse case for humans to bear more than one at a time. Explains why they are seen as the fastest multiplying race. Meanwhile another few got pregnant again since they were already showing signs. It seems the females have started to do most of the work inside the nursery to have their children be born faster.
Well then, let's expand the farming area a bit more.
I grabbed another 4 blocks to the right of the goblin home and mirrored them with what I built yesterday. This would most likely produce enough for goblins and leave plenty over to trade with the Drow.
Speaking of which, I should go check in on Vierna.
Switching over to my avatar I went right away to the remaining Drow. I found her sitting in the Goblin Home still in her statue like position.
“Good day, I hope the place is not too uncomfortable so far? You did not stay here all night right?”(Me)
“No the goblins have shown me to a cave for my own use. Though it is not the most pleasing thing to live in it will do.”(Vierna)
Hmmh not impolite but she doesn't pull her punches either.
“I was thinking of getting your opinion on some of the things I built recently. After all I do not know what your people prefer. Would you come along?”(Me)
At my words the Drow raised herself in a fluid motion. It was a sight to behold how the leather stretched over her body on every move of her lithe figure and made it was really hard to not stare at her like an idiot.
“As you wish. Where to?”(Vierna)
“Ah, this way. ”(Me)
We leisurely walked out of the home towards the west and we toured the new farming area where the various plants were already growing nicely.
“You made this all yesterday?”(Vierna)
“Of course, there is no time to waste right?”(Me)
We were standing at the entrance to one of the wheat fields and she regarded it silently for a while. It actually made me feel a slight bit nervous since I could not read her face under the mask.
“Is something wrong? Don't tell me you cannot eat this wheat?”(Me)
On my words the Drow actually twitched slightly, which was amusing in its own way. She then turned to me and shook her head.
“No… I just did not expect there to be this much. This will greatly help my people. ”(Vierna)
Hmmm ? Her tone changed? Ahh now i get it.
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“You did not think that I would be of much help huh?”(Me)
I was very amused amused by her sudden change in attitude and she actually let her head bow slightly as she answered.
“I indeed doubted it. Normally Dungeons operate by instinct. It should have been that you simply let the plants grow everywhere and it would be a chaotic collection at best. But this is… an actual farm. ”(Vierna)
Ahh shit…I am totally an out of norm case huh? Guess I should keep back a little on the smarts or they will consider me a threat?
“Well it just seemed logical that I would need a big room where I could grow a lot at the same time. Besides the insects would eat it if I did not make a separate part. ”(Me)
At those words she nodded simply and seemed to accept my answer. But I still wanted to switch the topic quickly.
“Speaking of which, Gulagh said something about you knowing magic. What do you specialize in?”(Me)
“Mmm, I am a Nightblade and as such I have various manipulation skills and some darkness magic.”(Vierna)
Huh? Manipulation ?
“What do you mean with manipulation skills?”(Me)
After that Vierna regarded me for a while and then sighed audibly.
“I guess the knowledge of your goblins is indeed very limited. I shall assist you with that a little.”(Vierna)
We left the farm again and returned to the Goblin Home where we retreated to my personal cave for now and begun a very long talk about mana and magic. It seems a lot of what Gobar knew was incomplete or in some places even wrong. Not that I blame the old guy, after all he had to explore everything by himself. It seems to be true that not everyone can learn magic skills. But as good as everyone can learn elemental manipulation skills as they are practically the easy and simple version of it. They even had to learn them to improve other skills. From what Vierna told me to reach any physical skill above the high grade you will need to support it with a manipulation skill to empower it. Either to boost yourself or boost the skill directly. Vierna for example showed me how she manipulated wind mana to erase all sounds that her body made while moving.
No wonder the goblins did not progress beyond the high stealth level.
Apparently there is a easy way to learn manipulation of a certain element if you have a magic crystal. Simply direct your mana through it and gain a feel for the resulting change.
Damn I will have to put up more geodes again. Our consumption will skyrocket once the other goblins learn this as well.
The same went for most magic skills. She explained it by the example of fire magic, which most often was combined with wind magic to boost its output. Which made a lot of sense even if they had not either quite understood the theory behind it why it was that way. There were exceptions to this rule but those were more obscure skills apparently. She also went through the manipulation exercises that Gobar had shown me and corrected some mistakes there as well with a pretty good result.
You have learned
Mana Manipulation low
The basics of all magic is to manipulate Mana.
From now on you can learn other magic skills.
Skill was added to the Dungeons list of servant skills.
“Huh that was unexpectedly fast.”(Me)
“You being a Dungeon Lord assists your growth in such areas as well. Since you manipulate Mana nearly all the time you just needed to learn to do it consciously. Progressing further though will need more effort. ”(Vierna)
“Hmm I see… Well this is important information. If you excuse me I will have to relate this with my mages. ”(Me)
“Of course, it is important that you strengthen your forces quickly. After all even if we Drow and Elves are in a deadlock there is no saying if they might not spot this place on some chance. ”(Vierna)
After bidding her goodbye I quickly went to Gobar and sat down with him to relay all the new knowledge I had obtained. At first he looked reluctant, no wonder after all his effort. But after listening for a while his researcher spirit was ignited and he greedily absorbed every bit of information I could tell him. He was absolutely excited on the prospect of advancing further in his studies and as soon as I was dry of new information he hurried to gather his apprentices to get to work. I also told him to spread the improved knowledge of mana manipulation so we could get it distributed quickly among all goblins.
Oh man… the amount of things they need to learn is more and more growing in size. This is good but I will need to think of a way to relay it properly.
I sighed mentally at the upcoming problems and went to eat something before touring the dungeon in person. Most of the goblins were still a bit adapting to sudden huge change that happened to their home and were very busy with their daily tasks to be fulfilled. Especially Gorin was tasked with a heavy workload as she managed all the Insect Homes. Actually since the new spider evolutions had unlocked it seems that the first had already begun to evolve into the new versions up to the mother level. Any spider could change to that since it was basically just a bigger version of it that simply laid a lot of eggs. Which made the spider population boom in growth.
Hmmm i'll have to control this a bit…Don't want them to ruin the balance.
After a bit of thinking I allowed the smaller spiders to head outside, though they were ordered to stay inside my dungeon radar.
With that it should be a lot easier to keep security up as well.
My last stop on the tour were the baths. The goblin had taken very well to it and enjoyed it on a near daily basis. Though they did so more because it was pleasant and relaxing rather than the hygienic reasons. I permitted myself to take a relaxing dip as well before I continued on to my crystal cave. I wanted to widen my mana pool a bit and ponder about what I wanted to actually expand on with this avatar.
Should i even make a decision already? There is so much I still do not know. But on the other hand letting it go to waste would also be really annoying.
Luckily the procedure to widen the mana pool was not that intensely complicated. It was basically drawing mana out of the pool and waiting until it regenerated a bit before stuffing everything back in and letting it expand slowly. Of course you had to give it a bit time afterwards to regain its stability or else really bad things could happen. But that was also a good thing since I was able to ponder about a few things.
Hmmm no there is no use in spending wasted effort. I will focus on the Drow bringing in new information before I decide on what to learn. Meanwhile I can train my mana pool and the manipulation skill.
For the rest of the day I stayed inside the cave and simply progressed on those two things. Then it was time for the dinner and I called all goblins to come to the central place. After the meal I had another announcement to make.
“Well then, as likely all of you have noticed the dungeon expanded. But not only that our knowledge expanded as well. As such none of you will head outside the dungeon for the next few days. You will stay here and undergo a new time of training. ”(Me)
That was the answer I had come up with. Right now we needed to expand internally instead of external. We had the necessary things to not need to go outside for now. For now the most important thing was that we were severally lacking in quality of skill. The slings had to be mastered, mana manipulation and the elemental versions needed to be taught as well. Then they would need to match those with their own skills and talents to progress. Not only that soon we would need a lot of hands to harvest the various crops and tend to them a bit as well. It would likely also be quite useful to get us a millstone set up for the soon to be wheat. The goblins grew a bit noisy at my words but it was more out of excitement than anything else.
Yes it is time that I enhance the goblins themselves. We have enough potential. It is time now to develop this potential to it´s fullest.