You are Summoned

Chapter 255. Time to Explore.

Seeing that the tutorial had completed made me a little nervous. I sort of expected a horde of enemies to come pouring out of the woodwork, but several minutes into the official first stage of this challenge, nothing really happened. Resources were still trickling in, and I finally got a look at how my population would increase.

Near the housing complex, I noticed a new feature. A small nest was placed outside of each hut. Near three of the huts, the nests held a huge egg. As I watched, the eggs grew in size, and about five minutes later, hatched into a new kobold citizen for my growing empire.

After the three eggs hatched, my population was up to 30. The new kobolds were odd, they hatched adult sized and were already clothed in the dirty tunic that each of the workers wore. I was pretty sure that’s not the way it normally happened with kobold reproduction, and there must have been some system shenanigans going on to keep the challenge flowing at a better pace.

About the only downside to more population was that the flow of resources from the mushroom farms dropped to almost nothing. I needed to decide on what to build next with my growing empire. More population was going to be needed no matter which way we decided to do things. To make that happen, I selected a third mushroom farm and a second housing complex.

They would take a while to construct, given my limited resource flow. While I waited, it was time to explore. Since the kobolds didn’t seem interested in exploring, it would be up to my minions to do so. I kind of wanted to head out there as well, but the only way I could access all the information for my empire was inside the headquarters.

If a threat showed up nearby, I could jump out to help fight. For now, I needed to keep my hands on the wheel of civilization growth, or we’d fall too far behind. I wasn’t sure what my minions would find, but I needed the information and if I lost a minion or two in the process, this challenge was going to be long enough that I could eventually resummon them back into the fight.

“I want everyone except for Blieek and the drone to head out. Stay as a group and scout the area around the cavern. If you find something, try to stay hidden and wait for further orders. I’ll send Blieek out to you with new instructions on where to explore, or to bring you back if something happens here,” I ordered to the team.

With the still somewhat hostile kobolds under my reign, I wanted my heavy hitter, the mana slayer drone, to stay nearby and remind the kobolds who was boss. Blieek would make a good runner to pass orders to my minions, though I hoped that the system would allow me some other method of communication with my team. From the kobolds I’d fought with, it seemed that even my lowest tier and rank minion was considerably more powerful.

I watched the headquarters post map as my team began their sweep. It was like one of those strategy games with a fog of war that kept everything hidden until your units explored there. They began working around the unknown area, starting with what was outside my cavern entrance.

The entrance opened up to the west, which was also where we had explored the edge of the forest. Our cavern was at the base of a small mountain, which seemed to be impassable. As my minions skirted around the edges of the mountain, the terrain changed to hard scrabble rock with patches of dry brush here and there.

It was at this spot where they ran into trouble. A pack of wolves, six in all, came charging out of the brush. Khurr yipped a warning before firing off his hand crossbow at the lead wolf, dropping it with a lucky hit to the eye. The goblin archer, Glurk, followed with his shot a second later, killing another of the wolves.

I had almost forgotten that Elida had a ranged weapon now but was reminded when a stone from her sling slammed another wolf in the nose, causing it to stop and shake his head in pain. That left two wolves dead, and one falling behind the rest of the pack when they hit our melee fighters.

Glem and Glamb met the charge, with Khurr taking on the third. Glurk and Elida fired off another shot at the straggler, taking him down while the others engaged in melee. Glem’s long spear was the perfect weapon in this fight, and he impaled the wolf charging toward him.

Glamb had similar success with his masterwork chopping blades. The blades looked like an odd combination of meat cleaver and shortsword, but the goblin wielded them with some skill. Both blades dug deep into the wolf’s neck, but the large animal did manage to snap at the goblin’s left wrist, causing him to drop a blade.

The light enchantments on the goblin armor prevented the bite from doing any real damage, and the wolf facing Glamb was quickly bleeding out. Khurr was having a harder time, unable to reload his crossbow, the gnoll had opted to draw his shortsword and was stabbing at the wolf in front of him. The wolf nipped at the gnoll, eventually grabbing onto his ankle and flipping the gnoll over.

With a prone victim in front of him, the wolf dug into Khurr’s stomach, tearing through his padded jerking with little trouble. Glurk came to the rescue, skewering the wolf with a well-placed arrow while Elida cast Healing Burst to close the wounds Khurr had suffered. Another arrow ended the wolf, and the skirmish was over.

Elida burned a second Healing Burst to fully repair the damage to Khurr. Glamb didn’t need healing, but I suspected his wrist would be sore for a bit from the pressure of the wolf bite. They were in no rush, so the team stopped while Elida used Channel Mana to recover one of her spell slots. While they were getting ready to continue their exploration, a system prompt appeared.

Forces under your control have defeated a threat within your territory. Dealing with these threats can benefit your civilization in two ways. First, reducing the number of threats in the territory can have a positive influence on morale. Second, the defeated threats will often leave behind resources that your workers can gather.

A new option has opened in your headquarters, the ability to assign work teams to different tasks. Send a team to gather the bodies of the wolves which will be converted into resources for your faction.

Side quest issued. Completely harvest the remains of your first skirmish with a native threat.

Reward: Ability to upgrade structures to Rank 1.

Nice, I had a way to upgrade my structures to a higher rank. Other than the upgrades to rank one from the arena certificates, the system really hadn’t explained the structure progression yet. It also spurred me to continue exploration, the quests for further upgrades were out there waiting for me.

I could now see under the population tab that there was a list of work teams under my command. The tab was set to automatic, and there was currently one work team unassigned. I guessed those were the loafers just wandering about inside the cavern who hadn’t taken up a profession or reported for military training. Four other work teams were already assigned to tasks, one for each farm, one for the crafting station, and the one lazily gathering lumber in the forest.

I assigned the available work team to gather the wolf remains. As soon as I gave the orders, they began to walk out of the cavern and toward the fallen wolves. They had the same slow and lazy pace as the wood gatherers, and I hoped the wolves wouldn’t start to rot before they managed to harvest everything. Maybe, when the morale ranking improved, they’d get more pep in their step, but for now, I’d have to deal with their slow and sloppy work rate.

My team continued to explore the mountain that our cavern was nestled under. The mountain wasn’t all that large, and they had made good progress over the last hour. During that hour, they cleared out another pack of wolves, which the system finally identified for me as Tier 1, rank 0 Mountain Wolves.

During that time, the third farm was completed. I had placed it near the others, and I had a long line of three farms now. The problem was that I didn’t have enough workers to manage three farms, a problem I hoped would be rectified when the second housing complex was finished. That structure was almost done, and despite having equal resource flows assigned to both, the farm was the quicker to build of the two.

I waited to see what would happen with a new farm and no available team of workers. Instead of one farm being abandoned, the workers divided themselves up as best they could among the three farms. Each was operating at a lower efficiency, but they were still generating enough food for the population and providing a small stream of resources for our next building project.

The workers assigned to gathering wolf corpses also contributed resources, which matched what the workers in the forest were accomplishing. A bit later, the second housing complex was finished, another five of the large huts appeared near the others. For now, I’d try to keep each group of similar buildings near each other to reduce any confusion when I was looking over the village.

Near each of the new huts, a pair of eggs began to grow, and I was feeling confident that we’d have ten new kobolds added to our population before long. My team had also cleared the eastern portion of the mountain and were heading southwest when a new system prompt appeared.

You have encountered a new faction inside your zone, the Gurtzam Rock Gnomes. Do you wish to open hostilities with them or attempt peaceful contact?

My team hunkered down behind a rise in the ground, and in the distance, I could see several of the gnomes moving in and out of a cave mouth like the one my tribe used. The figures were very different from the gnomes I had known before. There were no garish outfits, wild haircuts, or complex tools seen among them.

The gnomes wore the same ragged clothing as my kobolds and seemed to be unarmed. I was watching what must have been the gnomish equivalent of my kobold logging team. They were just about as lazy as my workers, and the group numbered fewer than ten.

There were probably plenty more of them inside the cave, and I had a feeling the system would make the first organized faction we encountered similar in power to my own faction. With my minions, I was confident we could win a war between our tribes, but was that the best option?

Now was the time to decide how I wanted to handle this first contact. Their cavern might be one we could expand into, and there might also be stockpiled resources for us to pilfer if we wiped them out. On the other hand, if they could be brought onboard as allies, maybe we could trade and both benefit from the cooperation and not waste valuable resources and time fighting against each other.