Mike spent most of the night planning for the general survival of his camp. They needed to keep progressing forward, and with that in mind, he needed to start working on tools that could be used for more than just killing.

Taking out his knife, he carved out some wooden shapes. They started rough at first, but his high Dexterity and years of experience quickly shaped the wood into the desired tools, a pick ax blade, a draw knife blade, and a very rough hook knife. As he saw it, they would soon need to see about finding materials other than iron and steel that he took off of bodies, and mining would be an easy skill for the hobgoblins to learn. The draw knife would allow him to start shaping wood for structural purposes, eventually he needed to think about a long term shelter. If not for his highly resistant body, then for those he now had to care for. Finally, the hook knife would allow them to start making basic wooden bowls, spoons and cups. He may live with animals, but they could learn to eat like humans.

For all of his efforts, he got the Woodworking skill, which gave a point to intelligence. He was expecting a Carving skill, but Woodworking seemed like it would apply to more activities than just basic knife work, so that was an unforeseen bonus. Although a point to intelligence wasn’t exactly a boon to his current stats build.

His last act before bed was to create molds from the various carvings, which was harder than he thought it would be. After numerous attempts where the wood kept sticking to the mold when he tried to extract it, he rubbed some river sand on the wood first. It wood likely lead to a the finished product not being as smooth as his carving, but it was a first attempt.

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Mike woke later than normal, the pre-dawn light already making its way into the valley. He felt invigorated with a plan in place to stop the attacks and hopefully continue the progression of his small colony. Before he went on a hunting spree, he needed to make sure that he left the hobgoblins with enough knowledge and instruction to continue developing skills in his absence.

Scanning the sleeping bodies, he found the groups of hobgoblins with the Smelting skill and with the Smithing skill. Waking the small forms, he brought them over to the forges, instructing the smelters to start melting down the metal, which he gave to them from his most recent battle with Bart, and then showed the Smiths his molds for the new tools. He tried to impress upon them that he wanted them to make multiples of each, but he wasn’t sure that they understood the concept of numbers, so it was generally just a bunch of nonsensical hand waving. He took the 7 iron axes they had completed over the last few days, bringing his total ax count to 10, and went in search of his next group of pupils.

He spent the better part of the morning with the gardeners. He was happy to see that three of the hobgoblins actually managed to get the gardening skill. These he took aside and showed them how to transplant shoots from the larger plants, hoping that by replicating his work, they too could get to level 2 and increase the food production of the valley. The rest he allowed to keep doing the same work as before, hopefully they could get the Gardening skill with time. Three goblins couldn’t feed the valley for long, and he was relying on the bonus at level 2 that would decrease the time to harvest.

In the early afternoon he went and found the Beast of Burden group. They were by far the most numerous, and they had been working nonstop for the last several days. Some of them had managed to achieve level 2 in the skill, which was higher than his own skill. What he found interesting is that the arms and legs of these hobgoblins were noticeably bigger than their counterparts, proving that increasing the Strength attribute really did have a physical effect on the body. This group was almost all the way done moving his many chop downed logs, so he spent the afternoon showing them how to dig a small trench, stand a log up straight, and then fill in the trench to help it stand, piling large amounts of dirt on the side of the log that was facing the valley. None of the hobgoblins were structural engineers, or even better than most elementary schoolers by his reckoning, so tt was a very rough barricade at the entrance to the valley, especially as other people started getting their stats close to his, but having some kind of a choke point was better than nothing, and they could always iterate on this later. At the very least, maybe some of them would get the Digging skill or something, which would be helpful for his mining project in the future.

With all of his ideas for the valley's survival underway, Mike left the valley and headed towards Noobtown, which was apparently what everyone was calling what had one been Polson, Montana.

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The town boomed with noise even at this late hour. The once paved roads, now cobblestone, were lined with all sorts of buildings. Small shops, inns, and many taverns. It was exactly how Mike imagined medieval Europe. He hadn’t noticed this transformation when he first came to town, probably because he was too preoccupied with the idea that he had ingested poison and the large influx of people.

From the tree line, it was impossible to make out much more, but one thing that really stood out to him was the lack of any kind of security. A smart medieval town would have erected a palisade and posted a watch to keep the people safe, but apparently the inhabitants of Noobtown had decided they trusted the System’s built in warning feature, which was just one more visible testament to mankind's willingness to become slaves to technology in his eyes.

His plan for now was simple, and the exact tactic that he had used in Vietnam: guerilla warfare. He would roam around the edges of the town, picking off parties as they made their way into the forest. Before he tried to get strong enough to storm the town by himself, he wanted to see if he could make the people scared of leaving, and more importantly, scared of Mike himself.

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“Remind me again where we are going?” Ralph asked. Trying to keep up with the woman in front of him.

“I told you, we are going out to grind some levels. There is a pack of hobgoblins not far from here and they basically kill themselves on our blades.” Janice responded.

Ralph had initially tried to take up something peaceful after he respawned, but soon found that the System did little to help out the average yeoman farmer, being far more generous with rewards for grinding skills geared more towards violence. It hadn’t bothered him much at first, but as his friends slowly rose from level 1 to 2 and then 2 to 3, he began feeling left behind. Add to that that the fairer sex only seemed to care about a man’s levels these days, and Ralph found himself following Janice out of town, trying to seem confident on the outside, but internally remembering a pair of merciless green eyes that still haunted his dreams.

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Mike had been about to dispatch the two lone adventurers, but upon hearing mention of hobgoblins, decided to follow them and see. He had already killed two groups of adventurers, their low levels making it so they stood little chance against him, bringing his total kill count towards level 7 up to 25.

It was laughably easy to follow the two adventurers and before long he could hear a ruckus slowly building in volume, until the sad chirrup and trills he had come to recognize as hobgoblins became distinguishable.

The forest abruptly ended, giving way to a large ravine that was teeming with the small beasts. There were thousands of them, and they had been blocked into a corner, the roiling mass of bodies slowly oozed out of their confines and was being picked off by the 30 humans who had cornered them. The hobgoblins weren’t intelligent enough to all turn on their enemies as one, their only defense being that they would occasionally throw rocks at the adventurers, but their low strength score made the throws meaningless. Still, the humans were apparently smart enough to not rush the whole body of hobgoblins, which Mike guessed would have been suicide even for him. And so the two forces were at a stalemate, the hobgoblins being slowly whittled down, though it would take weeks at the rate it was currently going.

This was definitely a fight he wanted to enter, but he had to be smart about it. Thirty adventures in one place was a lot, and while he may be able to just storm them, he wasn’t willing to risk his life on it at that exact moment. Deciding to pull back and come up with a plan, he charged the two adventurers from behind, the man’s eyes widening in recognition and horror as he saw his assailant's face. Weird, Mike didn’t remember him.

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Mike stood behind the adventurers in the gorge, the narrow trail to his back that led up to the surface. While not overly deep, only around 40 feet or so, the walls were sheer enough that the trail was the only guaranteed exit. With a Seal team at his back, this would have been the perfect scenario for a coordinated attack and maybe some traps with elaborate traps with some explosives, but he didn’t have those options available. He had 10 rebounding axes, could make himself into a lifeless statue for 12 seconds, and usually knew when he was going to be hit before it happened. Oh, and some cooked buffalo, which was still just as delicious today as it had been two nights before, man these spatial storage bags were better than fridges.

Standing 20 yards behind the adventurers, he began throwing axes at them, strafing across the width of the ravine so that his returning axes wouldn’t hit him. 8 axes thrown and 8 kills, taking him to level 7.

By this point, the surviving adventurers had all ceased fighting the hobgoblins and were sprinting towards him. Their eyes looking above his head and taking in his Boss status with greed.

Turning, Mike ran up the trail. Going just fast enough to put a little more distance between him and his pursuers, but not discouraging them from chasing him by going full speed.

Once at the top, he turned and headed back down, his steel axes paving the way before him. The adventurers, who had moments before pushed and shoved one another in their efforts to be the first to him, now tripped and fell as they sought to escape the remorseless blades. After his hours training, his rebounding ax blades did little to make him falter, dodging where he could, and taking the hits in stride where he couldn’t.

Reaching the bottom of the trail, he had already dealt with 12 opponents, leaving just 10. Four of the 10 had been able to back up off the path, the other six had fallen off of the side somewhere between the top and the bottom and were still regaining their feet.

He rushed the four in front of him before an attack could be coordinated, his steel axes delivering killing blows to the necks, heads and spines as he wove his away between their attacks, gaining a few points towards his Dodge ability.

With those four dealt with, he decided he really should keep working on his Throwing Ax skill and sprinted over to where the 8 thrown axes lay. Within 30 seconds, Mike was the only human left standing, having used True Shot on one the one adventurer who was smart enough to run away and was just outside of his usual range.

He had gained another level from this fight, putting his total unassigned stat points to 6. He was still debating where the best place to put those points would be. For now, he seemed to be able to easily handle groups of adventurers and felt it would be irresponsible to assign points without a goal in mind.

His thoughts were interrupted by the familiar sound of many tiny feet. A cold sweat broke out in his mind as he thought about the logistical nightmare of adding several thousand hobgoblins to his valley. He wasn’t ready for that and didn’t know if it would even be sustainable without some pretty miraculous upgrades to the Gardening skill.

“Big Boss..”, Mike ignored building reverent acclamation and used all of his Dexterity to leave the valley. He felt slightly guilty, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that as long as he was patrolling the area around the village, these hobgoblins would be safe.