49 Chapter 49 (1/2)

Once Aerwyn arrived back in Ardin he sought out Frakki and handed him the vials Tylin had given him.

”Make sure to only use one drop per five liters of water. For now just use it for three days... Also i want you to pick out a few undead goblins and see if they can breed. I don't expect it to be possible but try nonetheless.”

”Y-yes great one.” Frakki spoke and stared into the red liquid as if it were something holy.

”Oh, one more thing. I need you to... Ahem, collect the goblins urine and feces.” Aerwyn did his best to keep a straight face and appear lord-like but ultimately failed.

”Great one?” Frakki looked up at him for the first time since being turned and displayed a confused expression before quickly averting his eyes when he realized Aerwyn wasn't joking.

”It's for creating leather...” Aerwyn explained the process in detail and put Frakki in charge of leather-work since he was the most free out of all the hobgoblins.

Aerwyn spent the next two weeks collecting souls from the hunting parties and practicing his spearmanship. The city had been mostly cleared of debris and only eighteen building ended up being salvageable which was to be expected from a city left to rot for eight hundred years. Seven of the buildings in the square surrounding the broken spire were among the ones that remained and it gave the city a rather empty feeling which Aerwyn wanted to remedy soon.

Tylin's breeding drug appeared to be working even better than Aerwyn had anticipated. After dosing them for three days the goblins seemed to go into a frenzy and even continued breeding without the drug. The female's were already showing signs of pregnancy which meant he would soon have a steady supply of goblins to fill his undead ranks.

Aerwyn was curious and decided to sneak a peak which he regretted instantly as the sight of [Obscenity Filter] and [EXTREME Obscenity Filter] made him eject the contents of his stomach onto the side of the breeding building. The horrid scene haunted his dreams for the following nights. Unfortunately the undead goblins saw no success in the breeding department but he wasn't too upset with the result, he expected as much.

A few days ago Erit had discovered she could control her webs as long as they were no more than fifteen meters away and still connected to her wrists. She showed it off to Aerwyn by using her living web to pick up a rock and swinging it around like a flail. He was quite surprised by it and could easily tell how useful it would be in combat.

Erit asked him for two daggers that she could use in conjunction with her new power so Aerwyn gave her Glik's rusty sword and Kabba's old dagger for now. Since he had a steady stream of revarium he planned to ask Marik to make the daggers using his revarium instead of steel the next time he went to Setrhyn. It would act as a congratulatory gift for Erit's evolution into a person.

The construction of the underground fort was making quick progress despite the setbacks by spiders and zin beetle attacks that claimed the lives of six goblins. There was also another setback in the way of tenri that had begun to harass the goblins cutting down trees for the fort. They had yet to do any real damage but Aerwyn decided it was time to deal with their nest so he found Bon and asked about it.

”Master, the tenri nest is a few kilometers east but there are too many to attack head on. You'll be overwhelmed even if you brought all of us with you.”

”I plan to use the spiders so i won't be attacking them head on and if there are too many i can always flee.”

”As you say master.”

Aerwyn took the side of caution and sent a few jakku out to scout. He connected to one after a few minutes and took in the sights as the jakku flew east. Soon he could see dozens of black dots within the breaks of the canopy. Dozens turned to hundreds and hundreds turned to thousands as they continued to fly east. Aerwyn wondered how the creatures could keep such a large population without starving to death from overhunting the area.

There were far too many of them for him to even entertain the idea of killing them all any time soon but he still needed to do something. He couldn't leave such a large hostile force so close to Ardin, the webs surrounding the city would keep them from getting in but his goblins still needed to leave the safety of the webs to cut trees for his projects.

Aerwyn ordered the jakku to stay above the nest and keep on eye on them before disconnecting. Back in Ardin he called Erit and Velk over.

”Gather all the spiders and zin beetles we're going to cull some tenri. We'll be going straight to Lyr after so pack some ore to trade as well.”

”Are we going to buy my daggers master!?” Erit got excited but Aerwyn had to shut her down.

”No i'm going to put in that order with Marik. It won't be ready for a while so you'll have to make due with what you have for now.”