Going Hunting
I set out to hunt.
Using the Conversion Platform, I started making new equipment suited to the situation for all the workers.
What the goblins shaped as best they could on the Conversion Platform were crude stone weapons.
Daggers sharpened as keen as shark teeth, throwing axes, clubs, and even spears as thin as toothpicks.
The fifty goblins, each gripping their own clumsy weapon, moved in line as though they were soldiers carrying out my will.
Production kept running, and the ten newly made ones were set aside for the tasks they’d be assigned to later.
I intended to send fifty of them out to scout the outside world.
Because goblins had very low intelligence at the start, I directly burned the minimum survival rules I’d learned in the game into their minds.
Maintain units of ten.
Keep watch in all directions, back to back.
The moment you go outside, rub grass over your bodies to mask your scent.
If you hear even a single footstep, hide first.
Do not attack first.
After judging prey’s strength with your instincts, then move.
I taught them things like that and implanted the concept of hunting.
- Catch weaker life forms.
At that idea, the goblins let out sounds saturated with the instinctive thrill of the hunt.
“Krrr….”
That wasn’t all.
What mattered just as much as hunting was gathering.
I also planted those instructions in their heads.
Do not damage the roots of plants.
Only young trees.
Recover insects alive.
The goblins nodded with expressions that showed they didn’t really understand, but as long as their intelligence allowed, they would probably remember.
Watching the ones lined up in front of the entrance, I took a moment to steady my breathing.
Crude weapons, uneven builds, equipment they could only carry one at a time because of the weight.
Still, for a force assembled in only a few hours, it wasn’t bad.
Because there was a beginner’s protection period, nothing outside could directly attack the dungeon for now.
But confirming the dangers outside was a separate matter.
One by one, the goblins crossed beyond the barrier at the entrance and entered the forest.
Normally I wouldn’t have done it this way; I would have used dungeon energy to obtain seed stock. But that wasn’t possible here, so I had no choice but to take a risk.
Still, at least the vision function from the game seems to work.
In Dungeon Masters, there had been a function that shared vision with subordinate monsters.
It felt like a CCTV feed with sound.
Beyond that shared sight lay the forest.
Either this is a jackpot, or it’s a bust.
Forests were dangerous.
At the same time, their high biological diversity made them the best possible starting point for a life-type dungeon.
As long as it’s not the heart of a human city, I’m already half done.
Humans were always the most dangerous threat.
Exceptions existed for other races like elves.
As long as no one invaded their territory, those kinds preferred luring humans in over attacking dungeons directly.
I divided the goblins into five groups.
Three groups would patrol the forest and carry back seed stock.
The remaining two groups would split left and right to scout.
Bring back everything you can see. Trees, grass, insects… all of it.
I sent the command through their minds.
I planned to send at least three pairs back into the dungeon so they could reproduce.
The two scouting groups moved out to search a wider area.
Twenty goblins slipped cautiously into the forest.
For more than ten minutes, no animals appeared; only the terrain came into view.
A stream?
I was thinking that later I could bring some creatures from there and release them into the small river I planned to make in the dungeon when the group moved.
Kiiek—!
One goblin from the left group was suddenly yanked up into the air.
Krrrrr—!
Screams and confusion.
When I shifted the viewpoint, I saw the treetops.
Within the dense leaves, layers upon layers of red eyes glittered.
Dozens of eyes.
Multiple fur-covered legs splayed out in all directions.
What the hell?!
It looked as though something invisible was dragging it away.
A spider?
From the goblin’s perspective, a transparent thread quivered faintly in the air.
Cut it!
At my command, the goblin swung the stone axe in its hand.
Tang!
It didn’t cut through at all.
It seemed to have merely provoked the spider’s nerves.
The spider instantly yanked on the thread.
The spider’s mouth drew closer.
Crunch!
With the sound of its jaws meeting,
the goblin’s vision went black.
Another goblin’s sight.
The captured goblin’s skull was crushed to pieces between those teeth.
This wasn’t tofu; it was bone being shattered.
Spiders are supposed to dissolve their prey before eating it…
This was a predator that chewed and swallowed with its teeth.
And it wasn’t even in a cave; it was in a tree.
More than that, this wasn’t the kind of creature that bit and tore with teeth like that.
Of course, fantasy worlds had many kinds of spiders.
Don’t they live in caves?
This spider lived in a tree.
Even with nine pairs of goblin eyes watching it.
The spider slowly melted into the scenery around it.
Camouflage?
That was too advanced a technique for a spider.
Between the leaves,
I could feel the breath of an unseen predator.
Get out of its territory now!
Sensing the danger, I ordered the goblins to break through in one direction.
The goblins ran in a panic, but
as they fled the spider’s territory, two more of them were sacrificed.
When they finally reached a slightly brighter stretch that felt like it was outside the spider’s domain,
I realized the spider wasn’t following any farther.
This is the edge of the spider’s territory.
The newly entered area was home to a fair variety of tree species.
Especially strange was the fact that, although it was a forest, there were clearings, and in those clearings, flowers.
There’s a lot of variety.
While observing the surrounding trees and taking in the grass, seeds, plants, and vegetation, I happened to realize something.
An eerie silence.
There was no sound of insects.
Danger...?
I knew something was nearby.
I moved the goblins to carefully survey the area around them, but—
Crunch.
Something killed one of the goblins.
Looking at the corpse, its head apparently chewed apart by something until only the neck remained,
the other goblins hurriedly formed a defensive ring.
They stayed alert this time too, but—
Crunch—!
Another head burst apart without even the shadow of a figure appearing.
Like a cracker being crushed, the skull shattered, and another one fell.
It felt like fighting a ghost; there wasn’t even a trace to follow.
Crunch—!
After a few more sounds over a short while, the last goblin died, and only then did I catch a blurry glimpse of what had killed it.
A chicken?
Its beak was shaped like a chicken’s.
And the plump red comb on its head looked just like that of a rooster.
The fluttering white feathers seemed almost to drink in the light.
But its body was as large as an ostrich’s, and its beak was so sharp that the moment it touched a neck, it cut cleanly through.
I couldn’t be certain whether that was the same kind of “chicken” I knew.
And so,
one squad was annihilated.
.....Shit...
The outside world was hell.
That was a misjudgment.
Armed goblins were the lowest-tier units, yes, but
on the previous map, there hadn’t been many creatures like this that could slaughter them so easily.
Looking toward the left side, where no survivors remained,
I shifted my view to the goblins moving on the right.
This side is still peaceful.
Animals appeared here and there.
Rabbits, deer, roe deer, foxes, squirrels, chipmunks, and owls wandered about.
This is what a forest should be.
No animals with combat power beyond a goblin about the size of a grade school child and a little taller were visible.
As the goblins searched, they bared thin, feral smiles and began using their racial trait.
Scorn of the Weak
Their wild nature.
Dohyun, seeing that there were no strong opponents, gave the order.
Crush them.
In an instant, a fierce aura like that of a demonic beast burst out from the goblin’s body.
Thanks to that aura, the movements of the surrounding wild animals began to slow.
Seeing that, the goblin grew cocky and lunged like a predator, unlike its earlier movements.
Its eyes burned red, as if fire had seeped into them.
It looked three times faster.
Its power had become three times stronger too.
A stone axe, hurled with such force that it shattered from the impact, struck an animal.
The accuracy had also become three times better.
By contrast, a squirrel’s speed slowed by three times,
and the rabbits were so terrified they couldn’t move.
Raging through the area, the goblin hunted down everything around it.
Kraaaaaa!
The goblin, having become a predator, moved as though it were infinitely overhunting.
So this really is Scorn of the Weak?
That trait was a racial characteristic of goblins, and at the same time, one of their strongest abilities.
Combat power was relative.
Even if the numbers were small, it still increased combat power.
Scorn of the Weak was a special trait that let them overwhelm weaker enemies without taking damage.
It was one of the great characteristics of the greenskins.
In an instant, the fragile rabbits, deer, roe deer, foxes, squirrels, and chipmunks were caught in the goblin’s two hands.
Because each of them had low combat power, they were easily taken by Scorn of the Weak.
While using Scorn of the Weak, the goblin’s eyes turned red and it became three times stronger.
It’s implemented exactly like the game.
As I continued roaming, I moved through the area I thought was safe.
But this place wasn’t completely safe either.
Its master was a wild boar.
Kuhooo—!
A boar with black, hardened-looking hide, steam rising off its body.
The moment the goblin faced it, its eyes reverted to a naive brown.
Its instincts had judged this thing to be strong.
The master of this place is the boar?
The blood around its mouth suggested it was omnivorous and ate meat as well.
That said, unlike the spider or the chicken before it, it didn’t seem to have any stealth ability, since its location was easy to pinpoint from far away by the sound of its footsteps and breathing.
The moment the goblin encountered it, its eyes quietly returned to brown, and it turned around to shout red-eyed in a region where the boar wasn’t present.
Kraaaah!
Like a fox ruling in a place where there were no tigers,
the goblins were kings wherever no boar stood before them.
Keok, keok…
When the skill was forcibly deactivated,
fatigue flooded over the goblin.
The drawback of tiring out three times faster because it had become three times stronger triggered at the worst possible moment.
The boar moved.
Crunch!
One tree it slammed into snapped clean in two.
Had it been a little slower, it would have been crushed under that thing’s bulk.
Avoiding the huge boar, the goblin ran wild through the forest.
It forced its way between trees, ripping through brush as it fled.
It was a desperate escape, using its small size to survive.
The boar’s strength was overwhelming.
But that was all it had.
A long while later,
the goblins that had succeeded in hunting gathered at the entrance of the location, with their forest companions tied in a line to long vines,
turning dozens of animals into new members of the dungeon family.
Oh?
Each of them was loaded down with animals in both hands.
The haul was more than enough.
At this rate,
I wouldn’t need to worry about food for a while.
But during the hunt,
the production area kept working, and the number of goblins was increasing rapidly.
I’m going to need food steadily.
And then,
the hollow the goblins had been diligently digging into the wall was finally completed in miniature.
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