Chapter 112 Setting things up

“Are you sure this is all you need?” Amie asked, handing over several maps of the surrounding flora and fauna, as well as the territories of nearby monsters and monster-kin.

“Yes, thank you.” Van then took the offered maps, giving them a quick once over before stuffing them under his armpit. “I want to have an idea of what's around me and what I should watch out for. Not to mention what resources I can gather.”

“I just hope you're going to use this information to keep out of trouble and not get into it,” Lyn said with worry.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful, promise…” he said, trying to soothe Lyn’s worry. “I just want to make sure I know what I’m getting into is all. More importantly… how long will it take for you two to return with the potential buyers?”

“It will be a while. Maybe three to four days as we set things up. We also may not be able to return, well… maybe I will, but Lyn will probably have to get back on the front lines.” Amie said, clearly unhappy about that.

Van shared the sentiment and looked over at Lyn with something similar to puppy dog eyes filled with worry. Amie did something the same and Lyn was forced to contend with two sets of eyes filled with worry.

“I’ll be fine! Really! If anything I’m going to be better off than I was before! Just look how much stronger I’ve become!” she then flexed a little, showing her nonexistent muscle as her body was too slender for it.

“Still… be careful…” Van said, moving forward with a hug and giving Lyn a gentle kiss. “You to Amie,” he said after pulling away and looking in her direction.

“What? No kiss for me?” Amie teased.

“You can have as many indirect kisses with me as you want through Lyn.” Van smiled, teasing her back. But he also gave her a hug and a kiss anyway. “Take care of Lyn for me.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on her,” she said with a smile.

“Hey! I can take care of myself! Thank you very much!” Lyn playfully pouted.

After that, they said their final goodbyes. Both sides were happy that they left on a good note, but still unable to fully suppress the worry that plagued their hearts as they parted. But determined to go forward anyway and hope for the best as they followed through with the task they set themselves.

After that Van did the very important task of helping repair the fort. Something that took the whole day. Also, something that was a lot easier than he first thought it was going to be. Because of his new larger mana pool, the rate of his mana recovery, and the fact that he had such an easier time manipulating the mana. Had made repairing the damages far easier than he expected it would.

If anything, the thing holding them back was the lack of hands to help rebuild and remake the damaged tents and other parts of the fort that his magic couldn't do on its own. He could help create the tools and the resources, such as helping refine the stone and lumber into proper planks and bricks. But he couldn’t put it all together, that required architectural knowledge that he simply did not possess, nor did he possess the finesse for it, he simply wasn’t there yet, though he was close.

But at least the fort was half repaired, which was better than nothing. So feeling like he did the best he could for that day, he left to turn in early and make preparations for his plans tomorrow.

The next morning he and Gwen made their way to take stock of their leftover mana cores. Which was a far cry from how much they had before. Thankfully, Sela came back with several more chests filled with cores and other treasures, as well as arms and armor.

Sela said they needed to still make a few more trips to get the last of all the goodies left in the cavern, as they were in the process of transferring all the resources of their old base into this new one. Which will take a while because that also included food, clothing, beds, and much more.

To help with that, Van had about a dozen of the troglodyte eggs they had gathered hatched to help Sela. It was odd to see fully formed troglodytes hatch from eggs, but not the weirdest thing he had ever seen. Unfortunately, they could only obey simple commands and required an immense amount of food before they were good to go. After that, they were helping around doing simple things here and there, and when given free time were taught everything they needed to know.

After that was done, he and Gwen got to work on another task Van had been planning for. Gathering up all the goblins and hobgoblins, he spent the rest of the day ranking and evolving them up using the immense amount of mana cores they had left. Also using the mana cores and the extra metal and scrap lying around.

By the end of the day, they had ten greater hobgoblins with proper equipment and their own shadow wolves. Looking somewhat similar to Isa, and lined up in rows looking imposing.

It was unfortunate that they only had ten girls left after everything that happened, but at least now they could better defend themselves. They also used the biomass gathered to increase the rate of growth in the eggs. Hatching six of the goblin eggs they had. They were like the newly hatched troglodytes, fully formed, but a little simple in the mind and needed teaching on their off time. They also hatched another harpy.

Thus another busy day passed.

On the third day, Van went out to explore the surrounding landscape using the maps he received from Amie as a reference. He had plans, he wanted to check out the nearby monster habitats and maybe even a few monster-kin territories to study and see what he can learn. Perhaps even see if he could get a few to join him.

He took samples of many plants and flora to put in his soul realm later when it recovered. And took his own notes of things that looked valuable that may be useful later. More importantly, he made sure to scout and check things out, keeping his promise to Kella not to go too far, considering he was out on his own because Anna was still recovering.

When he got back it was near the end of the day and he worked with Gwen to hatch another dozen troglodytes. Watching them with some amusement as they walked around unsteadily, then with some fascination as they quickly learned how to walk properly.

They were quickly going through their store of biomass because of that, so Van walked over to Isa to ask if there were more humane ways of gathering biomass for use in making more troglodytes and goblins.

“Hmm… more biomass? Well… it obviously doesn’t have to be made out of goblins or other troglodytes. You can also throw in anything you don’t need that's leftover from anything you’ve hunted in the forest. I also heard that some plants are great sources of biomass.” Isa said.

“I see…” Van then thought about what he scouted and wondered if anything he saw was useful for biomass material. “But can anything work if you have enough mana to make it work?” he asked, curious.

“Well obviously ya, but remember? There were a lot of extra bits we had to throw away in the end. And the fewer vitamins and biomaterial something has, the more mana it will take for you to turn it into proper biomass.” Isa explained.

Van shivered. He did not want to remember. “I’m honestly surprised how quickly we're going through the stuff. You would think with over a hundred corpses there would be enough to grow a hundred eggs.”

Isa shrugged. “That’s just how it is. Just like food, we can’t one hundred percent get all the nutrients we want out of what we eat. Biomass is the same, we can’t get everything out of a corpse or plant we use.”

Van didn’t like Isa equating corpses and the inability to derive one hundred percent biomass from them with the digestive system of the average person. Though realized that was not Isa’s intention and probably was just a clinical view she has developed over the years of dealing with this kind of stuff. He absently wondered if all goblins were like this, just accepting these kinds of things as a matter of course.

He quickly decided to change the subject to something else he had been wondering about, in the hopes of getting his mind off of the digestive system and biomass.

“Err… Isa… have you thought about evolving again?” Isa’s eyes widened and he quickly explained. “Not like that! I know it’s too soon. But… I've been thinking, I heard that hobgoblins have many different evolutions they get to choose from after a while. So I was wondering what kind of evolutions are available and if you had a choice, which one would you choose if you had the choice?”

Isa studied Van for a few seconds, wondering if he was genuinely interested or trying to get her to evolve before her body had even settled on her current form. “Well… how much do you know about goblin evolutions?” she asked, trying to get an idea of how much Van knew about it first.

“Well, I know you can evolve into ogres correct? And something called half lords? But I figured a goblin would have a better understanding of what they can and can’t do than something I’ve read in a book a long time ago. So I wanted to get your perspective.” Van said.

Isa continued to study him for a few seconds, before giving up. “Alright, but this better not be used to start evolving me or the girls. It would be ludicrous to think anyone would waste so many resources like that. You’ll have your hands full just trying to make an army of greater hobgoblins, with all the bells and whistles you give them. So I'm going to just tell you for academic purposes and nothing else, okay?”

Van nodded. “okay.”

“...Well, the first thing you should know is that hobgoblins really do have an absurd amount of different evolutionary choices. So much so that even I don’t know them all. But I’ll do my best to tell you about the ones I do know.”

“The first choice for a goblin is the orc. We become bigger, stronger, with slightly larger fangs and imposing figures. Orcs are more aggressive and have a far higher pain threshold, with strength that doesn’t always match their appearance with their athletic build. You’ll find most of our evolutions have an athletic build. More importantly, orcs can go into a rage-induced state to increase their overall capabilities temporarily. They can then later evolve into greater orcs, high orcs, and arch orcs. They do not make great mages, but there are powerful shamans amongst them.”

“Then there are the half lords, usually for when a hobgoblin gains a great amount of skill in a weapon or ability. A spear half lord will be far better than your average spear user. They also evolve into spear lord and spear high lord. Their skill with a spear will go unmatched.”

“Ogres are another interesting evolution. They are somewhat like orcs but with two small horns on their heads. They are stronger, but instead of a high pain threshold, they have a high regenerative body. They are a bit of a jack of all trades. They can evolve into an oni, and then a kinshin.”

“Amazons are also something we can evolve into. If we had some amazon blood of course… They are masterful fighters and beautiful to top it off. Their skill in warfare is no joke. They can evolve either into a greater amazon, or even into a war maiden, and from a war maiden into a valkyrie.”

“Finally there is the vampire-kin. A unique evolution that only Alcranian hobgoblins such as ourselves can evolve into, where we become something like thin bloods. We also become very beautiful, become stronger than we look, have a mix of many different abilities, and a much longer lifespan. And no, we can’t from there go into full-blown vampire-hood.” she said as if to cut off any such thinking he might have on the matter.

Isa then paused. “Actually… there's one more evolution… the chimera… I don’t know how you achieve it though, and I don’t know the benefits or cons of it either… It should also be mentioned, different types of goblins have different potential evolutions. Such as blue hobgoblins becoming something like mer-kin… or something like that. I hope this answers your question.” she said.

Van nodded. “More than satisfactory, thank you.'' Then a thought crossed his mind. “Is it possible to evolve into two of those evolutions? Like becoming an orc and an amazon?” he asked.

Isa thought about it. “It would be very difficult. The hobgoblin in question would have to have the blood and meet all the requirements of both races in order to evolve into the both of them. And that’s not even considering the amount of mana it would take for such a thing.”

“Is it not possible to, once you evolve, go back and add another race?” Van asked.

Isa thought about it again, brow furrowing in thought. “I… don’t think so? At least, I never heard of such a thing happening before. Perhaps it's possible but no one ever figured it out, or I am simply uninformed.”

“I see… thank you Isa, this will really help give me a few ideas for the future. I promise though not to overextend myself with trying to upgrade everyone. But I have a feeling that one day It will be necessary for this kind of knowledge.” Van said thoughtfully.

Isa nodded. “So long as you don’t do anything reckless,” she said, then moved on, making her way to help take care of the newly hatched goblins and troglodytes that were idling around, not knowing what to do next now that their current task was finished.

Van said his goodbye and walked over to the magic circle near the center of camp. Taking his time as he looked on with appreciation at all the repairs that are being done and we're almost finished. The newly hatched reinforcements added just a tad bit more life back into the very vacant fort.

With the help of Gwen, he spent the last few hours of the day extending and improving upon the magic circle. Teaching Gwen along the way about how to use said improvements and what was expected of her and what she can do to help once the customers start coming to the fort.

It was then that Van started to worry about his location being leaked, but tried to calm himself by reminding himself that Amie wouldn’t let strangers so easily figure out where he lived and that she probably had a plan in place for such a thing. Still… it was something he wished he had the forethought to ask and talk about before everyone left to do their own thing.

Tired, he walked over back to his tent. Only to find another dozen or so eggs lying around with Luna just being her new ditsy self by rolling around and giggling.

“How do you do it?” he asked, mostly to himself in disbelief.

Hearing what he said, she turned to look at him with a smile. “There are many ways…” she said coyly. “There is the fun way…” moving her hands down her lithe body. “And the boring way…” she then giggled to herself and rolled over.

“The boring way? Does she have another method of producing eggs that doesn’t require her using her body?” Van thought, but he quickly shook his head. “I’m too tired to figure it out. First I got to fuck Luna. then I can finally get some sleep… tomorrow is probably going to be the day the fairies come, so it’s going to be busy. Got to get my rest now before it’s too late.”

He then did just that. Fuck his wife. And went to sleep. Feeling a little nervous about what tomorrow could bring.