The iron landed sharply in the mound of the soil once again, rousing the smell of wet dirt that still lingered after the rain from the day before, when the sun had just barely begun to set.
From a tanned forehead dropped several thick beads of sweat, salty remains of the hard work the young man had completed for another day. At the edge of the field, his hand resting on the end of the plow, he let a satisfied smile cover his face. Now setting eyes on the land he had been working for almost two months, there was a feeling of reward that he had been missing for quite a while, although one that made him return to roots that he still despised.
His bare feet moved along the track between the rows of fragrant black herbs, surrounding him and embracing him in the smell of the pungent liquids the leaves occasionally dispensed. As his legs guided him down the darkened hectare of land, the roots and leaves grew uncontrollably at the mercy of his influence. The land cleared slightly, loosing much faster it's water and mineral, providing it to the growing life on its surface.
Observing the land from another angle he noticed the beauty of his most recent addition, the new plot he had plowed, which sparkled lowly under the crisp of the sun. Now, another hectare had been added to his area of cultivation, which would soon be home to more life.
It was clear, looking at his lost gaze, how dearly he enjoyed the view that unfolded in front of his eyes: a vast supply of crop, grown by him, and meant to feed a population that had starved for so long up until now. Pride arose in his heart with every thumping that ringed in his ears and carried over the pulse of his exercised wrists, but it didn't steam from the satisfaction of granting a second chance to an abandoned culture.
His satisfaction didn't come, either, from the return to his roots, from the plowing of the land, the harvesting and the long hours of work. It was something much less pure than that.
The pleasure of working three days in a row without sleep and still feel vitalized, the pleasure of seeing your power display in the quickness at which your plantation develops. Thom Arburson was basking in the pleasure of feeling in control, of feeling king of the field, of feeling needed and the only solution to a problem. He had been enthralled by the fulfillment of productive work, several times more productive than any human's.
It was a job he had been obtaining a rewarding feeling for.
"It is terrifying."
A voice exclaimed, a few meters away from him. He turned his head, seeing a young man walking towards him, dressed in dark velvet robes that fluttered in the sparse wind filtering through the hills, carrying a burdening bag with him.
"Do you think I'm doing well?" Thom asked with a smile that denoted the answer he was expecting.
"You have excelled, Lord Thom." Clung nodded and returned the gesture, placing the bag on the ground. "Berries usually take half a year to grow. It impresses me how quickly they grew into full plants. From seeds to bushes in only two weeks. That applies to the rest, too. And the herbs, haha..."
Clung signaled to his hip, from where a small pouch hung, filled to the brim with the pitch-black herb.
The few hectares of land they had made were enough to keep the population fed, a thousand goblins who had learned to eat nothing but berries, leaves, and herbs, and were delighted that their bellies could be full twice a day, sometimes three. Muscles had begun to grow and fat began to accumulate, the black beasts had started to look humanoid, although pig-like, thanks to their healthy bodies.
"I still think it's little." Thom sighed. "We have close to 4,300 plants, divided between all sorts of berries and greens. I'm aware that they do not all measure equally, but if we even the production for all plants, they each produce close to half a kilogram in food every week. That's only 2 tons and a little more. If we add the effect of my... Ehem, divine gift, which I call [Great Crops], we're getting 4.3 tons a week."
Thom had severely neglected to tell Clung about Skill Master, and as such, he couldn't tell him of a certain skill called [Great Crops] that doubled the amount of food obtained per each yield.
"Ah, accounting for pests and rot, we're getting closer to 3 tons of food per week or so." Clung corrected, to which Thom nodded.
"If we have a thousand goblins that eat two times a day and require half a kilogram of food per day, taking into account they're smaller than humans, that means we're only producing enough for six days of the week." Thom clicked his tongue.
"That is more than enough." Clung chuckled. "There is no need for a surplus of food. You see, the goblins also get tired fo feeding exclusively of berries, so they include meat in their diet every now and then. Besides, many of the things we're planting will rot in little over a few days, so it's convenient to maintain this pace at which we do not need to store more than what we consume."
"Right..."
Thom softly outlined the shape of his face, defining without haste a trail from which his black beard had started to grow, closing at the bottom of his lip. He had never been one to let the hair on his face thicken, but the lack of tools and human interaction made it harder and pointless to clean his face of the thick strands that coiled on their spot.
Caressing his face had become a habit of his, when he dived deep into thought. Clung, aware of this, remained silent and leisurely grabbed from his pouch a handful. Nibbling in peace as with calm he admired a blanket of blue, his eyes drifted slowly away from the sun, to remain on the patch of black herbs down below. He questioned without answer if his Lord, standing by his side, knew or even imagined, the value of that single lonely hectare.
As the nectar from the noar herb nurtured his bones and his skin, making him stronger with every little chew, he wondered if Thom planned for such a thing. For the Black Horde to be the strongest in the forest, nurtured by the wild raw energy stored in the black grass.
He wondered what the others would say if, by any chance, they could see how healthy he was now. How strong the ones under his charge had become, how intelligent, mostly, they had come to be.
Clung was aware of the herb being a key asset, and he also knew that only continued and constant consumption would yield the results he desired. The bloodline he carried was powerful, but still, it would stop working once they stopped eating their share. The intelligence and power they gained would fade. Because of that, he needed to keep Thom close to himself.
"Lord Thom, I have received a word from the others."
"The hobgoblins?"
"Yes. Hlung, the acting master, was especially impatient to visit you. He may have noticed that your help is indispensable." A smile emerged on Clung's face as he dropped his last statement.
Thom smiled with satisfaction as he heard the last phrase. He wouldn't complain if people thought so highly of him, it was only normal to praise where praise was due. If the other hobgoblins wanted him to help them, although he was still busy with the black horde, he would accept their offer and ask for the according reward.
He wasn't interested in conquering Pontya, and he didn't want to win a war. The wandering man had found himself in being the centerpiece of something bigger than himself.
"Constructions are also advancing nicely. Your vassals, Miss Erina and Miss Suu, have been helping our goblins greatly. Be it in the matter of masonry or by guiding them in the art of smithing, they have excelled. As expected of your servants."
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Although Thom knew that none of the girls were experts in any of the related topics, he still trusted them with those. They were human and dextrous, after all. Suu also counted with Skill Master's blessing, so she had probably obtained a few useful skills that helped in the process. As for Erina, she was a great helping hand when moving things, although she tired easily.
Things had been moving smoothly for quite some time. But there was still unease fluttering in Thom's mind.
I'm currently at [Farmer Expert]. The bonus for [Green Sage's] multiplier is still only five times higher. Having all plants grow twenty-five times faster than usual is nice, but I feel like we're lacking something still. Maybe it's the size... I really should increase the number of hectares we're using, hm.
Expanding the farmland was an important matter that would still constitute a cause for concern. Thom knew, however, that what he was actually missing was workforce. Up until now, he had been relying on his superhuman endurance to constantly tend to the crops, but he was still only one man. Work would be significantly reduced if he could assign people to lend him a hand.
The issue laid on other people's lack of multipliers, of game-changing skills.
"We also need to land this land rest." Thom sighed.
"With only two months of use?"
"Plants will always need the same amount of material to grow. They have been absorbing it faster from the ground, in equal quantities. It's no different from using it for the amount of time it originally requires."
"Ah, of course." Clung nodded. "Isn't there fertilizer that could help with that issue?"
"There is. We're just lacking it. And it's not like we can go to the market and buy it, either."
Thom dug the hoe even deeper into the dirt, and looked towards Clung.
"Have you prepared what I asked for?"
"Yes, indeed."
Clung difficultly handed over the bulky leather bag from where a wooden long-box was sticking out. Thom carefully received and weighed it on his palm, sure that there was enough of what he needed.
"Good job, Clung." He turned around to leave, excitement shining on his face. "I'll be away for a while, but I'll come back to the field to supervise. You can assign goblins to do the recollection."
The black hobgoblin silently bowed, watching the back of his master disappear from his sight.
Thom cut across the thicket and the maze made of trees, with the perfect remembrance of the path towards that lonely treehouse in the middle of the forest. He looked up to see the rays of warm sun dancing through the darker leaves, green turning to orange under the change of the season. The two girls weren't inside the house. Ever since he had found them in a rather more private situation, Thom had made sure to check for their presence before going up.
He went up the stairs and into the house, and displayed the items on the floor.
The first thing to come rolling down was a wooden box with an irregular shape, a sort of prism made out of plank.
With measures of twenty-two centimeters wide and long, and fifty-five centimeters tall, the box could store close to twenty-two liters of content inside. It was, however, currently empty.
A 20cm cut was made on the right side of the box, at the exact 51cm mark, from where a 24cm small board was sticking out. If one removed the 1cm thick piece of wood that covered the bottom of the box, then this small opening was made at the 50cm mark, instead.
The reason for the board sticking out 2cm out of the opening was so one could pull from it or push it in, and change the total volume of the box.
When the board was pushed inside, like it currently was, it would instead be two boxes. The bottom one being capable of storing 20 liters, and the upper one being capable of storing shy of a single liter, if one accounted for the 1cm pulling board.
This was something that Thom had specifically asked for. Originally, he had made an extremely more complicated model that relied on the manual compression of gases to work, but noticed halfway that it would probably be something too complicated for the goblins to create and duplicate.
This invention of Thom's allowed for raw magic gas to be stored in an extremely small space, so it would be compressed to the point of approximating the semi-liquid substance inside a magic stone.
In other words, since Thom lacked the ability to create magic stones, he created a box that could store magic in a confined space. With this, he could turn majirical gas—which had density close to air's in the atmosphere, and thirty times higher in the Noar Herb— at least twenty times denser.
He looked inside the bag again, and saw the long mixing rod between a mountain of herbs. More or less thirty kilograms of these, which was what he had calculated to be enough for this little test.
He put the herbs inside the box and grabbed the mixing stick. With his skill [Sage's Mix], his hands moved at inhuman speed and turning the thick herbs into compost. He did this three times in total, taking only five minutes to turn the herbs into a thickish and sticky liquid that reached the 50cm mark perfectly.
"Hehe... That's it." Thom pulled out the mixing stick and placed it on a side without caring for dirtying the place.
Noar herb contained a high percentage of liquid magic stored in its fiber, equal to 2.2% of its total mass. From the 30-kilo compost Thom had made, there was a layer of liquid raw magic that he planned to make surface, six hundred and fifty grams of it or one estone, precisely.
From thirty kilo of noar herb, Thom could obtain one estone worth of gaseous raw magic.
He pushed the board and closed the box at the 50cm mark. With a rather small effort, he grabbed the box and placed it atop the stove they kept in their house— comprised of a slab of stone above firewood.
He grabbed the two different stones they kept by the stone, and smashed them in front of the firewood a few times until a spark lit the fire. Blowing on it to keep the flame alive, the small ember soon became a proper fire. Granted, it was not the safest thing to do in a wooden house. Still, no accidents had occurred up until now, and he wouldn't be the one to worry about it.
Five minutes later, the stone had begun to heat up. Thom excitedly checked the temperature of the box and confirmed that it didn't go above the necessary thirty-two degrees Celsius, the boiling point of liquid magic.
By touching it every now and then he confirmed that something was, indeed, boiling inside. He could see the wood start to creek at the seams and the box moving from side to side, feeling the sudden increase of energy inside the already-tight space.
Since only the majirical substance should be boiling, Thom didn't need to worry about the container exploding. He lifted the box every now and then to cool it down, then put it back, doing this every few minutes to maintain it between 30-40 degrees celsius.
After twenty minutes had passed, Thom put on the lid on top of the box, creating an isolated space of 1 liter at the top. Then he pulled back the moving board at the 50cm mark, and all the gas bolted upwards from the confined space to the newly-opened case. Ten seconds passed, and Thom pushed the sliding board once more.
In theory, all the 650 grams of gas should now be stored inside the 1-liter box, giving it the density of a liquid, but in gaseous state thanks to the heat keeping it moving.
Thom hurried to pick up the box and placed it on the ground. He approximated his face to the lid, a nervous smile appearing on his face. His fingers clenched the only thing covering the technical bomb he had built, and readied to remove it.
In the meantime, two goblinoid figures were going up the stairs of the treehouse.
"I assure you, Hlung, he's one of the most down-to-earth and skilled men you will ever meet. Not only that, but he's the sole responsible for our food production to have grown so much in so little time. If you let him enter the horde in an official way, he will gladly help your section and the rest as well."
"Tch. I will believe that when I see it, Clung."
"You say that, but I was going to show you our fields and you refused, you know?"
The black hobgoblin sighed as they parked their bodies in front of the door. Hlung looked at his compatriot with hands behind his back, and smirked.
"I'll see the man's work after I meet the man." The golden hobgoblin smiled. "Is that something strange?"
"No, not at all." Clung responded with a smile as well. "He's inside right now, working on an important experiment. Don't be too noisy when you enter, alright? I'll open the door for you."
"Go ahead."
Hlung raised his eyebrows and signaled towards the door with a hand, taking one step back. Clung inhaled deeply to calm himself down before placing his palm around the handle of the door. He pushed his shoulder on the wood as he turned the handle, and moving his hand to the right, he revealed what laid inside that house.
With eyes agape, Hlung observed a man retiring the lid from an elongated object.
A dark storm of bluish smoke erupted from the box and exploded on the human's face, who inhaled with the intention to breathe in the entire world. He placed his face inside the box as if he was trying to snort up until the last drop of gas he could find, sighing and panting deeply as he did.
The gas seeped inside his nostrils like a river searching for the sea, and went inside his body in a matter of seconds. His skin turned red for a second before it calmed down, and the human, excited, stood up and yelled.
"Fuuuuck yeaaah! It worked! That's the good shit, damn!"
Thom clenched his fists tightly beside his torso and screamed towards the ceiling, perhaps a little too excited about this new discovery.
Clung's eyelids twitched as he was drowning in internal pain, embarrassment corroding his soul.
He was about to ask Hlung not to judge Thom by this strange display of madness, when his eyes were placed on the golden faced hobgoblin. Clung observed, with awe, how Hlung was forming a clear smile on his face that showed a deep interest.
"This guy." He chuckled. "Clung... You've found our way to victory, have you not?"