Winter Has Come — The Wolf Appears
Leaving Heok-o’s words behind, Dohyun’s work did not change in the slightest.
He dried poisonous herbs with illusion arts, ground them into powder, and stirred them down in the pill cauldron with water and various other ingredients. That process remained the same.
After repeating that labor for days on end, he grew accustomed to handling dungeon energy. He could even do it in his sleep.
And more than that, he had come to realize again that a dragon had five fingers.
That gave him the confidence to handle things just as well as a human with ordinary fingers. Moving carefully, as though he were using chopsticks, he found he could do it perfectly.
Once his fingers closed around the object without a flaw, Heok-o spoke.
“Well now, dragon, you’re actually getting somewhere, aren’t you?”
Of course.
He said it, but in his mind, other calculations were already flashing past.
He had made nothing but poison jars, and already there were dozens of broken furnaces and broken jars.
Still.
Dohyun’s skill improved steadily the more he practiced. The dwindling number of shattered jars and failed pills proved it.
Heok-o, noticing the confidence growing in Dohyun, said casually, “By the way, dragon, did you know martial pills are the easiest kind of pill refinement?”
For a moment, Dohyun didn’t answer. He simply kept working in silence.
Only his brows twitched slightly.
Heok-o narrowed his eyes and watched him. The instant Dohyun’s gaze met his, Dohyun’s hand slipped.
Crash—
The pill cauldron broke.
“Dragon, you broke another furnace.”
....
Dohyun wanted to say a few choice things, but he clenched his mouth shut.
Seeing that, Heok-o let out a laugh and flapped through the air.
For a moment, Dohyun’s face—though still that of a dragon—flickered with the weary expression of a middle-aged man raising a child alone.
Then Dohyun resumed his silent work, and pill production finally began in earnest.
Clatter-rattle-rattle.
As the dungeon energy condensed into a neat, round form, the heat from the finished pill made the lid of the furnace tremble.
When he opened the mouth of the furnace, a dark red pill came into view.
At last, it had escaped the level of something fit only for dog shit. It was good enough to call a proper product.
Finally, it’s coming out well.
The failure rate was only seventy percent.
Dohyun placed the successful pills into the wooden storage boxes reserved for finished products. By now, those boxes had been stacked in neat rows against one wall, more than a hundred of them in all.
That would be enough for the time being.
He tore his eyes away from the furnace and looked into the dungeon itself.
First, his gaze went to the training yard in the distance.
Even today, the goblins were bleeding as if they were sweating through a full day of grueling, almost abusive training.
They struck stone, lifted it, and swung it again and again.
One. Two. Three...
Their number kept rising until it reached one hundred.
A small but convincing little army was taking shape.
That should be enough.
With pills now replenished, they could continue training without interruption.
The martialists’ progress was astonishing.
One month had passed, and the goblins’ bodies had changed. Their muscles had thickened, giving them the look of wild horses running free.
So this was the price of shaving off their lifespan.
Whoever had created the martialists, Dohyun thought, seemed to have shared that same cold logic.
Still.
I won’t leave them with nothing to show for the life they’ve lost.
Martialists were soldiers, yes, but even if they were inferior to orcs, he would still treat them decently. He would see to it that other goblins helped with food, sleeping arrangements, and daily living, so the martialists wouldn’t be burdened by everything alone.
Thinking that, Dohyun turned his attention outside.
The colors of the forest were changing little by little.
The green leaves had begun turning red and gold.
Among those trees, a huge orc was rampaging.
“Geoung, smash!”
The orc was pounding on the spider he had seen before.
It was currently the easiest of the yokai beasts to hunt.
There are a lot of insects.
Animal-type yokai and insect-type yokai seemed to be about evenly matched in number.
Geoung had been hunting enough every day, and the other orcs had kept up as well. Thanks to that, the storage shed was full of spider legs, which were good for boiling and eating.
Come to think of it.
He turned his gaze back inside the dungeon.
Rumble-rumble.
Like a cluster of grapes, a new goblin had placed a hand on the Warrior Rock.
Thick. Hard. A single orc with muscles like stone was smashing the rock apart.
Watching the scattering stones, it looked almost like a victory burst celebrating the birth of a new orc.
I need to regulate the numbers.
He would take the hunted creatures from the forest, bleed them out one by one as if performing a sacrifice, and offer them to the Warrior Rock. As he kept upgrading it steadily, the number of limit orcs would increase.
Later, once he had checked the dungeon core, he planned to install additional Warrior Rocks depending on the numbers.
That is, unless one thing stood in the way.
Orcs ate a lot.
And not just a lot—an enormous amount.
To keep them running, he needed enough food.
Starving them was a sin.
Maple trees…
As Dohyun looked outside, the words slipped out before he realized it.
The trees were slowly dressing themselves in new colors.
“Dragon, the cold season is coming.”
Yeah.
Being a sensible person, he understood the meaning immediately: winter was approaching.
I need to calculate this.
Once the balance of production broke down, the greater the scale, the harder it became to manage.
Beside Dohyun, lost in thought, Heok-o said, “Dragon, a guest will come then.”
...Late.
“That’s right,” Heok-o replied, and his eyes curved with mischief.
“The forest sleeps in winter.”
So?
Heok-o gave a small snort of laughter and said, “That guest is going to do something interesting.”
Interesting?
Heok-o laughed low and slyly, as though it was more fun if he alone knew the answer.
Dohyun ignored him and kept working through the calculations.
I need food.
The dungeon warehouses kept expanding.
Altogether, the stores were substantial, but...
If I think about the total food supply, it’s still tight.
There were ten goblin production facilities, and each of them had been leveled up in step with the core’s level.
At level ten, three thousand goblins were being produced and maintained, and now there were six thousand moving about.
All the goblin forces he had accumulated so far were finally beginning to move at once.
Every goblin was productive in one way or another.
There were orcs too, but they consumed far more.
For now, I won’t increase the Warrior Rock. Instead, I should try making a new preserved food for the food supply.
In the game.
In reality.
Food was important.
There was a forest inside the dungeon, but that place was always more like an emergency reserve.
And beyond that, if he wanted medicinal herbs in winter, he would need to prepare for making a herb field as well.
Thinking about dungeon operation, he hurried through winter preparations, personal training, and pill production. By the time he had roughly finished getting ready...
Snowflakes began to fall at the entrance to Dohyun’s dungeon.
With a cold wind.
Winter had come.
Leaves fell from the forest trees in the icy wind.
Plentiful fruit dropped to the ground.
And various creatures retreated into deep nests to sleep through the winter.
The goblins, too, could no longer go out bare-bodied, so warm fur cloaks and fur hats were added to the hunting party’s supply gear.
The orcs wore thick clothing that puffed their bodies out even more.
In the days when hunters’ footsteps would shrink from the cold, Geoung completed another hunt flawlessly.
Since the spiders had vanished with the coming of winter, Geoung had found new prey.
“Geoung, very smart.”
A family of moles moved along, riding on the back of the hunter goblin behind him.
They were monster yokai moles, as large as a big dog, with claws longer than a meter.
They had succeeded in smashing open the burrow with clubs and dragging them out.
And so, in the cold of winter, the mole family that had been wintering together in the burrow died there.
The hunter goblin stopped walking, trembling.
Geoung knew that reaction well.
His own feet stopped at once.
Thud—
He frowned and sniffed the air.
Even the goblins watching Geoung trembled at the sight.
The contempt for the weak inside them was telling them someone powerful was nearby, and the thought of death pinned their bodies in place.
They had instinctively detected an overwhelming strong presence.
The goblins wanted nothing more than to turn and run on the spot.
But this was right near the dungeon.
Geoung, nostrils flaring, slowly lifted his head.
“Geoung?”
He tilted his head.
He didn’t know the cause.
It was just strange.
Watching him, the hunter goblin, whose body had begun reacting on its own, was the first to realize it.
The forest was quiet.
The birds were quiet.
The wind itself was silent.
Too silent.
Nothing could be heard.
As though the entire forest had drawn a breath and was holding it.
Then, in that moment, one of the hunter goblins let out a dying groan and pointed ahead with a trembling finger.
Ki...ki...ek...
Geoung’s gaze followed the direction.
At the dungeon entrance...
There stood a wolf.
It made no sound.
Though the wolf was so enormous Geoung had to look up at it, no one had noticed it standing there.
Only the sensation of silence existed.
Its gray fur stirred slowly in the wind.
Only then did Geoung realize he had been smelling a strong predator.
When Geoung stared at it, the wolf slowly turned its head and met his eyes.
Silver-gray, unblinking, almost metallic eyes.
“Geoung... Geoung... Geoung...”
Geoung tightened his grip on the club in his hand.
His muscles swelled.
He desperately tried to recall the name and honor his master had given him.
And yet...
He could not move.
Instinct told him all he needed to know.
If he fought.
He would die.
Then.
The wolf’s mouth slowly opened.
A low, heavy voice flowed out.
“I heard there was a dragon here.”
The goblins froze.
The wolf’s gaze shifted toward the dungeon entrance.
Its silver eyes narrowed.
“So.”
A brief silence.
Then it continued slowly.
“...I came to see for myself.”