After a few more minutes of talking with Grok, a knocking came from the door and opening it, I was greeted by the butler assigned to me, and he quickly led us to the room he had prepared as per my request.
And inside was a large table going from one side of the room to the other, and the 6 goblins who were already here and seated turned around to greet us, and as Grok joined his comrades and started explaining what we were going to do today, I approach the large wall covered in dozens of pieces of papers and scrolls and, on a small table near the wall, a plethora of brushes and ink covered it.
Turning both my arms into lesser souls, I ordered them to take 2 of the brushes and start copying down the map I had drawn with a golem back in the goblin village, and adding more details as the map in the goblin village wasn’t exactly 1-1, and I wasn’t upgrading at every opportunity as I probably should’ve.
“...This is a bit slow...” I muttered as I watched my arms glide across the paper and parchment, drawing the forests, the villages, and bandit camps in as much detail as they could.
But with only 2 arms, it was going to take an hour or two to complete this map.
“That won’t do...” I thought to myself and started sliding branches and vines out of my armour plates, and thanked the past me for having the foresight to replace them when he wasn’t busy with making undead in the forest.
Grabbing a dozen other brushes and dipping them in ink, the branches and the vines coming out from under my brass armour plates started gliding across the wall of paper in front of me.
They weren’t good at adding detail as my hands were, but they didn’t need to.
They just had to draw the rivers, lakes, and draw circles around areas of importance, and my hands would later move over there and add details if they were necessary.
And for half an hour, I kept at drawing the map, leaving areas where I hadn’t explored yet empty, and finished the map by adding a small symbol at the very bottom of the map, signalling where Lublin was.
And as I turned around, I greeted the Bishop, Priest Elijah, Priest Jarek, Mayor Beniamin, and a few members of the council.
They had all come into the room while I was still working on the map and had decided to quietly sit down and wait for me to finish my work instead of bothering me.
“Welcome, everyone...” I started in the language of the Elk-men, and the northerners in general, and caught their attention.
“Thank you for making time in your day to attend this meeting, but sadly, as you probably have heard from your men already, this meeting is going to be mostly between me and my men and, while you are free to ask questions, and while I’ll try to answer them whenever I can, I will be mostly speaking in the language of my people.” I said, putting all the brushes back on top of the table next to me, and motioning for nearby servants to come and pick them up.
“Of course, Lord Eternal, we understand that, and are thankful that you’ve chosen to let us participate in this private meeting, but if you do not mind me asking a question, that is probably in all our minds, why have you gone out of your way to draw this map? And what do you hope to accomplish in today’s meeting?” Mayor asked after everyone was done greeting me, and as he finished his question everyone, but the bishop and priest Elijah had nodded in agreement, and looked at me for an answer.
“Hmm... I don’t know how much knowledge has been shared between the village administration and the church, but as you might’ve guessed by the forest being cleared on the orders of the bishop, and the tents being popped up, I am planning on bringing refugees here from Teria, to be specific, from Prady, and today I’ll be drawing out plans with my men about what routes should we bring the refugees through, and other issues related to taking care of the people we’ll be bringing here, and inevitably the prisoners as well.
“And the reason why Lublin is on the bottom of the map is because it’s the end point. After coming to Lublin, the refugees will be transported back to my lands with the help of some of my people.” I told the table of my looking at me, and they nodded, and I could see the bishop raising his hand, and I pointed towards him, signalling for him to talk.
“Lord Eternal, as you’ve not informed us about this meeting before hand, I am assuming you do not want the church’s help?”
“...There are a few reasons as to why I have not informed you of this meeting before today, but to cut the long story short, yes. I do not yet need the church’s help, at least not yet, and I’d rather not owe Ojciec Lasu any more favours if I can help it.
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“Though, that is not to say I will stop using the carriages of monster corpses you’ve brought for me, and the tent town you are building for the refugees. I will be making full use of them, and if you want to help me in any other way, that is appreciated, but I will not ask you for help unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“I see...” The bishop muttered as he closed his eyes for a moment in thought.
And after a few seconds, he opened them, and got up from his seat.
“Then, I assume you wouldn’t mind me leaving this meeting? As you can imagine, I’ve got quite a bit of preparation to do for the arrival of the rest of my compatriots.” The bishop asked and I nodded.
“Of course not. Afterall, I know firsthand how busy you are, so I have no reason to keep you here.”
“Great... but could Priests Elijah and Jarek stay here in my absence so they can report to me once this meeting is done? I’d like to be still well informed of ongoings even if I am not attending the meeting personally.”
“Of course, bishop. I do not mind that at all.” I said, and the bishop nodded, before leaving the room, and I turned my attention to the remaining people in the room, especially towards the elders and the mayors.
“Would you all like to stay in the meeting as well? Or would you like to leave like the bishop? I don’t mind you leaving some of you or a servant behind like the bishop did so you can stay in the loop.” I asked them, and after a short discussion the elders decided to leave, leaving the willing mayor behind to observe the meeting.
“...Does this guy have nothing better to do? I mean I can understand the elders leaving because they are... well, elders, but shouldn’t this guy leave too? Doesn’t he have anything more important to do?
“...Eh, who cares...” I mutter inwards, and turned my attention to the group of goblins watching me intently.
“Okay now get this started!” I muttered to myself and lifted my hand up to call Grok forwards, so we could brainstorm together, but an idea hit me as I was lifting my hand up.
“Wait... the others won’t be able to participate at all if it’s just me and Grok who are doing all the talking!”
If I wanted to just hold a meeting with Grok, I could’ve done that in the private room we were in! Then, what would the point of calling all of the goblins here?
I want them to learn at the same time as me, that’s the whole point of the meeting!
Sure, I doubt all of them would learn anything useful even after a week of holding this meetings, but some would, and that was what mattered!
And I could “act” stupid, and have the excuse that “Oh, I am just saying these things because I know that all of you, who have no experience in the field, would think of this!”.
...Don’t mind the fact that Grok knows I am just going to be lying, but like I said, I don’t really believe people would believe him if he just started telling them that I was basically less than I made myself out to be.
“All of you, get up, and come here.” I told the goblins, and motioned them to come to me.
For a split moment, there was confusion in their faces as this wasn’t exactly what Grok had told them, but without much of a fuss they came up to the wall.
“Like how Grok informed you, in this meeting, and in the subsequent meetings we will hold throughout this week, we will be discussing about how to transport people from the villages of Prady to Lublin through a variety of supply routes and safe areas we’ll build throughout the forests.
“And, while I know the only one out of you with any experience in this kind of thing is Grok, I still want all of you to come up to the map, inspect it, and try to come up with ideas as we go along. Understood?” I asked the goblins, and they nodded.
Then I started going in a bit more in-depth about the various villages, bandit camps, and other areas of interest.
Talking about how many people lived in the villages, how many people of interest, aka possible future followers, were in each of them, how the bandits acted and lived, ect.
Then, with all that knowledge, Grok and I started planning out the actual supply lines.
We started setting up possible evacuation routes from each of the villages, trying to give all of them at least 2 routes that lead to different areas where we’d be—I’d be building temporary housing using my undead, and along a single supply route there’d be quite a few of these temporary housings as, while the distance between Lublin and the villages wasn’t that great, and a healthy person could cover that distance in a day easily... a healthy person could cover that distance in a day easily.
So, I was going to have to do make quite a few humanoid undead and make them build a lot of temporary houses, but that was fine. Better be extra prepared than not.
And, just before the supply lines coming out of the villages connected with Lublin proper, we were going to build a secondary HQ of sorts that was going to lead to the prisons for any POW we captured, and be places where any injured could be healed, and I could send undead down any of the supply routes for reinforcements or just to send supplies to any oncoming refugees.
And, in a few short hours, we had made an outline for quite a few villages... now, I just needed to send undead to those areas to make sure they were as safe as I thought, and clear out the dangerous wildlife from the areas where we already planned to pass supply lines through, make a few batches of humanoid and other types of undead to kick start the process, and also go ahead and explore the rest of the forests and villages just so we could start planning out the supply lines for them and call meetings every other day, if not every other day, to keep my men up to date on what I was doing, and update the previous plans we had made...
Yeah, I am going to be a bit busy... and I still need to build the prisons for the POW, and make sure I can feed them, clothe them, and keep them healthy...
I am not going to have a fun week. I can tell already.