Mike spent most of the night planning for the general survival of his camp. They needed to keep progressing forward, even though he intended to leave the valley, 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 began carving three 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.

The pick ax would be crucial in the next stages of the valley’s development. As he saw it, the valley would soon need more iron and steel than they could scrape from the river bed or loot off of fallen bodies, and the only way he could think of to accomplish this was through mining. Mining also had the additional draw of being a skill that the hobgoblins could theoretically learn quickly, and any boost to their low stats would be beneficial.

The draw knife would allow him to start shaping wood for structural purposes. Logs cut with only his ax would be rough and wouldn’t enable him to build the long term shelter that the valley needed. His highly resistant body might survive the Montana winter without a proper shelter, but those in his care would not. He also hoped that building small living spaces would help with the general order of the camp, which was severely lacking. Without being able to really communicate with the creatures, he could barely instruct them in completing simple tasks, but concepts like cleanliness and organization were still beyond them.

Finally, the hook knife would allow them to start making basic goods, like bowls, spoons and cups. He and his charges may live like animals as of yet, but they could at least learn to eat with something other than their hands. Mike’s mother was probably rolling over in her grave with the way he had been eating his food lately, that is if the cemeteries hadn’t been reshaped somehow by the System integration.

For his hours of effort, he was awarded the Woodworking skill, which gave a point to Intelligence. He had been expecting the 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. He needed all of the Strength, Toughness, and Dexterity he could get his hands on.

His last act before bed was creating 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 tried rubbing some river sand on the wood first, and then pushing it into the mold. The result was closer to what he wanted, although he was worried that the sand covering would likely lead to the finished product not being as smooth as his carving. Still, it was as good as he was going to get it for the time being, and he had gone to bed feeling satisfied.

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Mike awoke later than normal the next morning, the pre-dawn light had already made its way into the valley when his eyes had opened. He felt much improved now that he had a plan in place to stop the attacks, and the progress he had made in the valley’s development only added to that. Before he was able to begin enacting his plan, 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 with gentle nudges, he led them over to the forges, and after giving them the metal that he had looted from his most recent battle with Bart, he instructed the smelters to start melting it down. With half of the hobgoblins focused on their tasks, he turned to the remaining hobgoblins, the smiths, and produced the molds he had made for his new tools. He tried to impress upon the dutiful creatures that he wanted them to make multiples of each, but he wasn’t sure that they understood the concept of numbers, so his directions devolved into a bunch of nonsensical hand waving. With his instructions given, he took the 7 iron axes that the hobgoblins had completed over the last few days, which brought his total ax count to 10, and went in search of his next group of pupils.

The remainder of the morning was spent with the gardeners. He was happy to see that three of the hobgoblins had already managed to get the gardening skill, which had been the most suspect skill he had tried to teach them thus far since he didn’t really understand exactly what actions he had taken to get the skill himself. The three who had acquired the skill were pulled aside from the larger group so that he could help them begin leveling up the skill, which consisted of transplanting shoots from larger plants to their own spots of ground. It was what he had done to get the skill to Level 2, and he hoped it would work for them. The rest of the gardeners received no additional training, but he did instruct them to continue on as they had been the last few days. Hopefully, they would also get the Gardening skill with time. Three goblins couldn’t feed the valley for long, and his survival plan relied on many hobgoblins who had the decreased harvesting time that came with Gardening Level 2.

In the early afternoon, Mike went in search of the Beast of Burden group. They were by far the most numerous and had been working nonstop for the last several days. To his surprise, some of them had managed to achieve Level 2 in the skill, which surpassed his own level in that skill. What he found interesting was that the arms and legs of these hobgoblins were noticeably bigger than their counterparts, which seemed to indicate that increasing the Strength attribute really did have a physical effect on the body. With their nonstop work, this group had almost completely transported all of his downed logs, so he spent the afternoon showing them how to use the logs to build ramparts to the valley. First they had to dig a small trench, next they had to stand several logs on their ends. Finally, they filled in the trench around the base of the logs and piled large amounts of dirt on the inside edge, which they packed down with their feet to make the structure more stable. None of the hobgoblins were structural engineers, or even better than most elementary schoolers by his reckoning, so they would likely only manage a very rough barricade at the entrance to the valley, the effectiveness of which would decrease over time as the villagers started getting their stats close to his. Still, creating some kind of a choke point was better than nothing, and he could always iterate on this later as the hobgoblins improved. 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 once been Polson, Montana, at least according to Igor.

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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 shops, inns, and a multitude of taverns, from which came the discordant chorus of drunken men and women. The atmosphere and architecture was similar to how Mike imagined medieval Europe. He had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that he hadn’t noticed the total transformation of Polson when he first came to town, but he told himself it was probably because he had been completely preoccupied with the idea that he had ingested poison.

From his current position in the tree line, it was impossible to make out many details, 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 that the System’s built-in warning feature was a sufficient defense, which was just one more visible testament to mankind's willingness to become slaves to technology in his eyes.

His plan for the next few days was simple, and it was 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. He knew that he wasn’t strong enough to storm the town by himself, which meant that he would have to rely on psychological tactics rather than brute strength. If he could make the people scared of leaving the village, or short of that, scared of Mike himself, maybe he could return to his valley in peace

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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–apparently it valued skills geared more towards violence if the rewards it gave out were anything to go by. It hadn’t bothered him much at first, but as his friends slowly rose from Level 1 to Level 2 and then from Level 2 to Level 3, his far inferior stats began making him feel 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, despite 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 it was in his best interest to follow them. Though he wasn’t ready to adopt more hobgoblins into his valley, he couldn’t, in good conscience, allow them to be slaughtered. He had already killed two groups of adventurers that morning, their low levels making it so they stood little chance against him, bringing his total kill count towards level 7 up to 25 and making him feel like a short break from patrolling the village's perimeter would be ok.

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 ended abruptly, 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 where they would then be picked off by the 30 humans who had cornered them. The hobgoblins weren’t intelligent enough to all turn on their enemies as one, and their only attempt at defending themselves was when 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 that led up to the surface directly behind him. While not overly deep, only around 40 feet, 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 complete with traps and 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. After throwing 8 axes and killing 8 people, a notification in the corner told him that he had reached Level 7. The surviving adventurers had realized something was wrong as the lifeless bodies of their friends fell, and they ceased fighting the hobgoblins and sprinted towards him at the same time, 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, while 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 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, but he was still debating where the best place to put those points would be, so he left them in reserve. At least for now, he seemed to be able to easily handle groups of adventurers and he 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.