Chapter 08 There be goblins

We loaded up the supplies needed to make it to the nearest town. It was about five times the size of the village we lived in and had an actual military presence in case any of the neighboring villages were overrun by monsters. The main goal was to get grapes and cucumber seeds.

Grapes were a good holdover plant that would grow back every single year. With that, I could start making wine and balsamic vinegar for the pickling process. If I could get a few baby fruit trees or something bigger, like a watermelon or pumpkin, that would be nice too. The last thing I wanted to check was the price of animals.

The few cows and chickens were worked by someone else and only supplied the mayor’s home with that produce. We ate there and I selected my seeds. With a heavy heart, I wasn’t greeted with grapes… I would have to special order them, which… ABSOLUTELY SUCKED! That would make them expensive as hell, but they were necessary for my plans.

Cucumbers, blackberries, raspberries, garlic, onions, mint, sage, pepper, watermelons, and pumpkins. Two types of trees, apple and chestnut. With a special order made for grapes that would take two weeks to arrive and cost as much as any three of my other choices, I was just about tapped out already. I’ve done enough research into growing fruits and vegetables yearly to know how to collect seeds from most now.

Building up a wide but varied amount of food was what I was going for. If I wanted a special type of dish, I didn’t want to have to go to another village to eat it. While the food I have been growing has been filling, the lack of spices besides salt was noticeable. It also meant I could begin to expand the products I could make and sell in the future.

We looked at the prices of cows, nope, maybe never. Chickens, on the other hand… I had enough for two, but was a single chicken and rooster worth it? Not really, I decided on two female chickens for now, just for the eggs. Yeah, I could grow more chickens from the eggs, but I didn’t really know how to do that. Two chickens are enough to get enough eggs that I won’t crave them.

We were far enough away from the main cities not to be attacked by bandits. After making it home, we got to work right away, and speaking of which. Tems gained a farm worker skill that reduced fatigue and increased the experience she gained while working on the farm. We were already done with the third farm plot, and with only two more to go before we started to run out of room, it wouldn’t take long now.

Slowly, life became easier. My plan bore fruit, and the housewives would come out and make their suggestions before going back and using the new produce to please their men. The few fruits or vegetables that unmarried women in the village cared about, I made note of and made sure I kept growing those, just in case.

For some reason, I didn’t get the same feeling from mine and Tems’ relationship as I thought a marriage was supposed to be. I knew she was happy with me, but I didn’t see her getting mad if another woman or even two or three were to join in. It had to do with her culture. The strongest kobold was allowed to have multiple mates. She grew up in a kobold tunnel system.

Her mother was an unfortunate victim of those kobolds, but they didn’t kill her. She instead ended up the plaything and eventual actual wife of the kobold leader. As evil as you could say they are, they let her live. Most races didn’t suffer that same problem; if a human invaded a dwarf, elf, orcish, or goblin area, they’d be killed or end up a breeding slave.

Tems' father had more than a dozen wives, and not all of them were kobolds. They actually looked up to Tems as the bigger and stronger kobold of the tribe, but politics inside the tribe led to her expulsion. I think I was fine with that. Right now, farming and Tems just took up too much of my time. In the future, though, maybe I could see who else would be interested.

An arrow flew by my head, it interrupted my thoughts, and a huge group of goblins came rushing out. I said, flustered. “G-Goblins! We’re being raided!” Another arrow whizzed by at a slow pace as the guards prepared to engage them. I ran, but Tems had another idea in her head. With her newly acquired upgradable shovel, she charged at the group. I bounced in place for a few beats before running right after her.

More than fifty goblins ran at us, and Tems was about to be overwhelmed after cracking one of their skulls. They just ran straight past her and towards my crops. Fuck! This wasn’t a fight, it was a defensive game to protect the crops. Dozens of the corn stalks were trampled over as they tried to pull as much crop from the ground as they could before running away.

The guards were finally prepared enough to rush out, and most of the cowardly ones only did so because the goblins didn’t care for fighting, only food. I cracked the sixth one over the head with my hoe before I started focusing on the ones that looked like they were about to make a run for it.

It was a hectic time, and in just two or three minutes, a huge portion of my fields were overrun. It would be impossible to recover everything, and I doubt I could even get close to what the true value was… I felt defeated. I just got the chickens, and they killed one… The chestnut tree was knocked over and might not survive. It was a little over two months, and I was already having to deal with forces. If they had waited until nighttime, they could have stripped the place clean.

As unlucky as I was, at least they didn’t come when the plants were ready to harvest. Most of the freshly bought seeds were in the ground undisturbed by the activity above. It still let me know I needed to prepare. I needed to start working on a golem. As expensive as it was, just the fear factor of seeing a large golem protecting the field might be enough to keep the goblins away.

Even just a large wooden golem would be fine. The biggest problem was the fact that I had no fucking idea where to start. I could start sourcing the materials and building the golem core, but it was a long, long process. What if it wasn’t? Could I make an inferior golem that just looked scary? A scarecrow golem? That was something to look into.

Wood wasn’t expensive, but it would leave the golem far weaker than stone. What about straw, though? It would be even weaker but require a smaller core than even wood. It would drop the cost from a fifty-gold stone golem to ten gold for wood, maybe a gold for straw? It wouldn’t be very useful in a fight, but it wasn’t made for fighting.

I chuckle at my idea as I head to the vendor and try to exchange all of my trampled crops. Even with just half its original value, it meant I could barely afford my idea… It was too soon, though; they wouldn’t come back the same day or even for a few days. We killed more than half of them, and only five managed to run off with any food.

Things started to come together, but at the same time, anything could push over all my carefully laid plans and ruin me.

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