In the face of such worshipful gratitude, Mike didn’t know how to act. His pure driving force had been righting wrong, and he wasn’t seeking out praise. Feeling that he should say something, he cleared his throat and spoke up.

“Listen, I am not looking for your gratitude, I was just doing what any self respecting person would do.” The hobgoblins seemed to not even notice and remained on bended knee.

After another minute, which seemed more like an hour to MIke as he racked his brain trying to extract himself from the situation, he had an idea.

“If you insist on thanking me, here is what I want, please find me some garlic. You know, that small plant that is as long as my forearm and has the white bulb on top,” Mike tried to describe it and found himself making hand gestures to an audience that still just had their heads bowed.

Sighing at his own awkwardness, he decided to get out of there. “Well… you are welcome”, he said, and turned to leave.

As he took his first step, he heard a smattering of steps behind him and turned to see that the hobgoblins were now on their feet. He turned back around and as he took a few more steps, the sound of movement continued behind him. Once again looking back, he saw that the small creatures had all frozen mid stride in following him.

“Oh, that’s ok, you don’t have to follow me or anything. Just be on your way.” Mike said, then turned and continued walking. They didn’t stop following him though, and he began to wonder if they could even understand him.

Over the next few minutes, this awkward game of “Red Light Green Light” continued. They somehow always managed to seem motionless whenever he looked back, although the hundred feet were anything but silent behind his turned head. Wracking his brain, he could only think of two ways to get away from them: 1. Use his superior speed to run or 2. Scare them off by roughing them up a little. But he couldn’t bring himself to do either. What lay in wait for these small creatures on their own? They would just be hunted further by humans for easy levels. Could he really live with himself if he consigned them to that fate?

And so it was that Mike came to be leading the very slow processions back towards his camp, his shoulders hunched with the added burden of caring for a hundred other beings. The small legs and low dexterity score of the hobgoblins strained to keep up with the slowest walk he could manage.

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Twilight was upon them by the time they reached his secluded glen. First things first, he got a fire going, which the hobgoblins watched with a curious mixture of delight, horror, and venerable chirrups.

“If this impresses them, just wait until I make them a roast,” Mike thought to himself.

With the fire going, he used the last bit of light to plant his sweet potatoes. He was going to need to increase the importance of gardening if he wanted to make enough food for the group. He wasn’t sure how much they ate or how they typically got food, so at this point, he had to plan for the worst case scenario that they would be wholly dependent on him.

As he finished planting his potatoes, he wanted to make sure that the hobgoblins knew that the garden area wasn’t to be trifled with, so drawing his ax, he made a big show of drawing a line in front of the garden. Up to this point, the hobgoblins showed no indication of understanding any of his attempts at communicating, but their wide eyes and gasps made it clear that this message had been delivered successfully.

With a bit of a pep in his step at the progress, Mike decided to turn in for the night.

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A host of quiet snores woke Mike earlier than usual. He laid in the darkness before dawn, thinking about all of the things that needed to happen to ensure the group's survival. Fortification and food production were now at the top of the list. He had wanted to replant some of the trees, but in actuality, they may need the cleared space sooner or later to help grow food. The other major task was that he needed to continue training, as apparently he would be the only defender of the group based off of yesterday's events, although he hoped to change that with time.

Deciding he may as well get to it, he rolled out of bed, cracking his neck to loosen up after another night of sleeping without a pillow. One day, making a new pillow would be on his list of priorities, he promised himself as he went over to his chopped logs and hefted one onto his shoulder. Even with 24 strength, the log was heavy. He could manage it, but it required that he use the proper lifting form his father had once taught him. Bending his legs and looking straight up, he deadlifted the log to waist level. Then sitting back into an air squat, he rolled the log up to his chest and pivoted it onto one shoulder.

Slowly plodding the distance to the entrance of the valley, he deposited his load and turned back. After a few trips in the darkness, he became used to his load and started moving with more fluidity.

[Congratulations! You have learned the skill Beast of Burden.

+1 to Strength and Toughness.

You have discovered that the purpose of your existence is to carry heavy objects for others]

Despite the derogatory nature of the message, he couldn't help but smile: the System was going to reward him for doing the menial tasks that he needed to do anyways. Checking the skill, he saw that the level two requirements were to move 10000 pounds a distance of 1 mile. That was potentially doable in one morning if he got to it.

As the sun slowly rose the hobgoblins roused themselves and watched Mike as he continued moving logs. After a few trips, they divided into groups and began to help him. Upon seeing their willingness to help out, Mike took the time to show them proper form. It took a bunch of pantomiming and more time than he wanted to spend, but eventually the small green bodies were lifting the longs in coordination and with perfect form. It took around 15 of them to do a single log, and they were much slower to make the full journey, but the help was welcome.

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Around mid morning, Mike completed the requirements and got Beast of Burden to level 2. Being completely famished, he decided it was time to call it quits and went to check on the garden. He was pleased to see that sweet potatoes had made measurable growth overnight, including the ones that he had stored in the spatial storage bag, which was terrific news for the future. He briefly wondered if a hobgoblin, or another living creature but hobgoblins were the most accessible at the moment, would survive in the bag, but decided it wasn’t ethical to experiment on them. Turning to the task at hand, he spent the next few hours doubling the size of his garden by separating out onion bulbs and huckleberry shoots. When he was finished, he was awarded with notification:

[Congratulations! You have leveled up the skill Gardening.

+1 to intelligence

You have learned how to cut up plants and put them back in the ground.

Time to grow crops decreased by 50%]

He stared in shock at the notification. A 50% increase in crop time was insane. Plants already grew much quicker than they had before, an onion taking about 4 days, but that kind of increase was really a step in the right direction. Maybe he could grow enough food for everyone, a worry that had been plaguing him all morning.

Munching on a handful of huckleberries, he wandered aimlessly over to where the work teams continued to move trees and nearly choked on the berries he was eating when he analyzed one of them:

Name: Creekle

Monster Type: Hobgoblin

Level: 1

Strength: 3

Dexterity: 1

Intelligence: 2

Charisma: 2

Toughness: 2

Luck: 7

Abilities: Beast of Burden (1)

Somehow the small creature had learned the Beast of Burden ability, and it wasn’t alone. Many of its brethren had as well. This got Mike thinking about learning skills in the System. He hadn’t thought about it until now, but how had he been learning so many skills? With such a low Luck score, he knew that he wasn’t just being fortunate. After some deliberation, he defaulted to the information Bart had given him when explaining the System: You learn skills by being taught them or by doing something correctly. Apparently his training in lifting heavy objects over the years had been accurate, and he had gotten a skill because of it, and now that he had trained the hobgoblins, those that had mimicked his instructions properly also learned the skill.

Could he teach them the other skills he had learned as well?

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Mike spent the afternoon training small groups of hobgoblins on different skills, which was a logistical nightmare. He ran from group to group, giving instructions and correcting, all without the ability to communicate verbally. And while they always greeted his entry and saluted his exit with a reverent round of “Big Bossy Boss”, the low intelligence score of the creatures made everything more difficult.

Somehow, by the time the sun fell, there was a small group of hobgoblins finding shiny river rocks and smashing them. There was a group managing the furnace, melting the rocks down, and separating out the cooled ingots of iron. There was another group that was stocking the second furnace, melting the iron so that it could be poured into ax molds–he would eventually need to create a mold suitable for them, but for now, he needed more axes for himself since he was their only defense. Another group was making clay bricks and firing them in the kiln–making pots was above their capabilities. There was still a group moving the heavy logs. And the final group, the smallest group with the highest intelligence he could find among them, was tending the small garden. Creeanth, the tribe leader, had been designated as the fire starter.

He might have felt that he had jumped straight from the iron age to the Industrial Revolution with his factory approach, if it wasn’t for the general atmosphere of utter chaos. The screams of hobgoblins charing their skin or smashing their hands and feet permeated the air, but Mike hoped it would turn into something great. He would need to keep teaching where possible, to ensure they did things correctly, but maybe with time it would lead to specialization which could in turn breed strength.

Most importantly, this freed up his time from doing the menial tasks to training for battle. He had decided during the day that only some of the skills he had developed would actually be useful, and he wanted to focus on training up those where possible. The two best combat skills he possessed, Beast of Burden and Hardened Skin, both had straightforward enough level requirements, but they had a substantial time commitment. He had decided to focus his efforts there for the time being, although he was continuing to toy with ideas for Tinkering. He had managed to level up his Smithing skill when he made his steel axes, and he hoped to level that again as soon as he came across a superior metal than steel.

With the camp running as smoothly as it could for the time being, Mike checked to make sure he had all four of his axes in his spatial storage bag and whisked off into the night. He wasn’t exactly sure how long it took people to respawn, but he wanted to be near the entrance to the valley when Bart and his posse returned. Keeping the existence of the hobgoblins a secret seemed like the best option until they got stronger, and he hoped to distance the fighting from them to prevent more casualties.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

The next two days were wholly devoted to Hardened Skin. Just like before, Mike noticed that he was slowly getting better at avoiding the two axes. The rhythmic pattern that had once been Thunk, Thunk, Smack, Ouch was eventually replaced by Thunk, Thunk, Thunk, Smack, Ouch. And then in time he was only getting hit one in five swings. It wasn’t that he was getting faster, but he felt his body was adapting to training and his evasive movements were getting more fluid. On top of that, the premonition of a ricochet was evolving as well. He was now able to sense the general area that he would be hit, and this was making it easier to dodge as well.

Around the end of day one, he got the Dodge skill, he didn’t know what he had done wrong that had required him to get hit over 2000 times to get that skill, but at two points to Dexterity for the first level of the skill, it was a welcome addition. The next level required 100 dodges, which he was able to get by the end of day two, earning another 2 points to Dexterity.

Being able to train both Hardened Skin and Dodge at the same time gave him the extra push he needed to continue training through both days. At first he had thought his fortune was turning, as being able to level two skills at once had been impossible for him up to this point, but he had started to suspect that whatever mind or consciousness was behind System just enjoyed watching him exhaust himself against inanimate objects, all the while taking a beating from his own attacks.

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At the end of the second day, as darkness slowly descended, a swollen, stiff, and discolored Mike watched from a ridge as ten shadows approached the valley. His deforestation of the 30 yards outside of the valley entrance, a testament to his increasing speed with an ax and the willing labor of the Beast of Burden hobgoblins, made it near impossible for anyone to enter the valley from this side unseen.

Mike grinned to himself. Bart was right on schedule, but he had come unprepared. Ten people wouldn’t be enough to stop him. Last time they had got the jump on him, but now he was the predator, and this would be a slaughter.