Free Web NovelChapter 9: Chapter 8: Winter Is Coming
As the goblin loyalty ceremony concluded, Shire felt a change in the Obelisk within his mindscape, just as he’d expected.
The second alien letter lit up, activating. The Scythe of Life was now in effect.
At the same time, a fourth letter appeared. Shire focused his consciousness on this dim letter and discovered its Ability: Star of the Domain. It allowed him to mark any target, and he would be immediately notified whenever that target appeared within the Domain under his control.
’A pretty useful function,’ Shire thought. ’I’ll just mark Little John when the time comes. That’ll make things much easier.’
Next, he called up his own panel.
[Tombstone Artifacts: Shire Merlot]
[Race: goblin (Human)]
[Danger Level: 0.5, Useless]
[Subordinates: 11/14]
[personality: ???]
[Own State: Advanced Transformation Curse (Negative), Malnourished (Negative)]
[Title: Head of a Vibrant Forest Group]
[Available Ability: Blessing of the Evil God]
"So this is the Bear Goblins’ Ability?" Shire immediately noticed the new change.
[Blessing of the Evil God: A single-target blessing that grants an individual a significant boost in size, strength, agility, constitution, Magic Resistance, and Recovery Ability, at the cost of a slight decrease in Intelligence.]
’Good stuff,’ Shire thought, quite satisfied.
Bestowing this Ability on his subordinates would add powerful combat strength to the Goblin Race, and it would also be a strong guarantee for his own safety.
However, he didn’t plan to use it right away. He wanted to observe the goblins’ loyalty a bit longer.
’Speaking of loyalty... why aren’t three of the goblins counted as subordinates on the panel?’
Shire picked up his Long Spear and began to wander among the goblins, checking their panels and observing their reactions. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
He soon discovered the three culprits sitting in the goblin crowd. They had feigned their surrender.
One of them was the same Scarface from before.
After the ankle-touching ceremony, the other goblins calmly accepted that they were now part of the Race. No matter how many times Shire passed by, they just sat there lazily, picking at their feet.
Only those three idiots would tremble slightly whenever he walked past.
Shire didn’t know whether to call them clever and bold or cowardly and foolish.
’Kill them now?’ Shire rejected the idea. ’I’ve only got a dozen or so of these little green snot-noses. I have to use every last one of them to their fullest potential. The disloyal ones have their own uses.’
Besides those three idiots, Shire had just been surprised to find a "freak" among his subordinates.
The other goblins’ personalities were all things like "cowardly," "reckless," "stupid," or "lazy," but this one’s personality was actually a positive trait.
[Name: Buck Teeth]
[Race: goblin]
[Danger Level: 0.7, A Somewhat Useful Piece of Trash]
[personality: Serious and Eager to Learn]
’Now this is fucking interesting,’ Shire thought, eyeing the goblin sitting off to the side.
This was a scrawny goblin, about 1.5 meters tall, with stick-thin arms and legs. He was clearly malnourished, and his most distinct feature was his protruding upper teeth.
Right now, he was looking around furtively, acting even more like a fake surrenderer than the other three.
Shire understood that if he wanted to develop "Lvxing," his forest society, there was one thing that mattered most: talent!
If you wanted a goblin to do something stupid or shirk their duties, every single one of them was an expert. But if you tried to teach them something, there were only two possible outcomes: either they went crazy, or you did.
It had taken a hell of a lot of effort for Shire to teach Red Eyes and Broken Tooth how to coordinate well enough to successfully hunt a wild boar.
’Not bad. I guess I drew a Rare Card,’ Shire mused. ’I’ll need to keep a close eye on this Buck Teeth for the next few days. If he’s suitable, I can properly train him.’
To find one with a decent personality among fourteen goblins... Shire felt he was insanely lucky.
Besides, with these fourteen subordinates, he could even win against a four-person team of Junior Adventurers.
The only real trouble would be High Tier Adventurers and Magical Beasts. But High Tier Adventurers didn’t come to the forest’s edge, and if they ran into a Magical Beast, he could just knock out the three idiots and use them as cannon fodder to buy time.
As Shire was lost in his future planning, Bai Mao came to his side. "Chief."
"Hm? What is it?" Shire asked casually, not turning around.
"It’s time to mate," Bai Mao said, pointing to the burrow behind her.
"Oh, okay." Shire then did a double take. "What did you just say?"
"It’s time to mate. There isn’t enough time."
"What do you mean, ’not enough time’? What are you talking about?"
"Winter is coming. If we don’t mate now, there won’t be enough little goblins to eat."
Hearing this, Shire’s expression instantly darkened. "Keep talking."
"The other females are already pregnant. I’ll be an adult soon, so I can get pregnant too."
Shire asked, "What’s this about the little goblins?"
"When there’s no food in winter, we eat the little goblins," Bai Mao said calmly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
Shire knew there were four female goblins in the Race, three of whom had been part of the Bear Goblins’ "harem."
"How did you survive the winter before?"
"Dig up roots, eat some leaves," Bai Mao said, making hand gestures. "Sometimes when we were hungry, we’d go take from the humans. The humans are very fierce."
"And most of the time?"
"We eat the little goblins, one at a time. When the little ones are gone, we eat the big ones."
Shire recalled from naturalist books that a female goblin’s gestation period was just over three months, and they typically gave birth to two or three young.
In winter, food became scarce. Wild fruits, bird eggs, and insects practically vanished. If they didn’t successfully hunt on a given day, the goblin Race would simply starve.
He hadn’t expected their solution to be eating the little goblins, but then again, it was perfectly in line with goblin nature.
"Why not hunt wild animals?"
"It’s hard. We can’t win. We’ll die," Bai Mao continued.
That was true. There were plenty of animals in the forest—deer, wild boars, wolves—but they were all larger than goblins and could easily kill them. The moment one goblin shrieked in pain, the rest would most likely choose to flee, only to be run down by the wolf pack.
Furthermore, smaller animals also holed up for the winter, making them difficult to catch. Even if they were caught, it wouldn’t be enough to eat.
"Did you have any siblings you grew up with?"
Bai Mao thought for a moment and said, "They were all eaten."
Shire asked, "Are you willing to eat little goblins?"
Bai Mao shook her head without a word, a flicker of loneliness in her eyes.
"It’s okay. We’re not eating a single goblin," Shire reassured her. "And you’re not an adult yet, so you can’t mate."
"You... good chief. Must live," Bai Mao said, her tone slightly anxious.
Shire knew that his policy these past few days of letting them eat from the pot first had probably earned him a high degree of loyalty from Bai Mao and the others.
But now he had eleven loyal goblins. If he didn’t want to become a connoisseur of goblin meat, he had to find a way to feed his subordinates.
"Don’t worry. I will lead you through the winter."
Then, he continued, "When it gets cold in the winter, how does everyone stay warm?"
Bai Mao didn’t say anything. She just wrapped her arms around herself and shivered up and down where she stood.
"Oh, so you shiver," Shire understood.
He even pictured the cursed image of a group of goblins huddled together, shivering collectively at the same frequency, like something out of a Bollywood movie he’d seen before.
"It’s so cold, I’m playing with mud in a cave, the cave isn’t big, I don’t have a home in the forest~~"
Shire shook his head, driving the cursed song from his mind. ’I have no desire to be squeezed in the middle of a goblin huddle.’
’The smell... it would be like a surströmming sauna. A skunk would probably offer you a cigarette after one night squeezed in there.’
’I have to find a way. I have to find a way to prevent that from happening.’
