The two humans upon hearing my statement were bewildered by my supposed outrageous statement. A chuckle escaped the young man’s lips as if he had already forgotten the embarrassment that I had just put him through a moment ago.

  “What, you joking or something!? As if a weak kobold like you could do something so crazy!”

  The young man was already gripping his weapon tightly, ready to go on the offense. I just wanted to end this farce already and had caused the ground near him to suddenly transform into a small pillar, the sudden change had knocked the weapon off his hand as a ping of pain crossed his face. The weapon flies off and lands near my direction. I raised my hand and began to use my skill. Noticing this the young man had an idea of what I was doing, panicking he reached out to try to stop me.

  “No Don-”

  But it was too late, within a second the metal blade began to crack and then started to shake, taking only mere moments before the momentum became more violent. The crack begins to expand and spread until it suddenly breaks apart, the once singular metal weapon was now split into two. Seeing his poor weapon torn into a state it couldn’t be fixed the young man could only respond in anger.

  “Damn you fucking scaly bastard, that weapon wasn’t cheap you know! You’re going to pay for this!!”

  Both men rushed towards me, ready to turn this into a fist fight but not a moment too soon as a hulking shadow had started to loom over us forcing them to stop in their tracks. The large creature started to speak, his voice capturing everyone’s attention.

  “Hey boss! Everyone is safely evacuated just like you ordered so now I can support you in your fight!”

  Mordred came into view, ax at hand and ready for a tussle. As the massive creature inches closer to us all the anger over the humans’ faces drains away and is quickly replaced with dread. So full of fear, the humans could only nervously muster a singular word.

  “R-Run!!!!”

  Both men panicked and dashed to the other direction, clearly wanting to get as far away as possible. But in their haste, they had forgotten one tiny little detail.

  “Don’t forget your little package! Here I’ll deliver it to you!!”

  After my statement the ground nearby shook as a pillar of dirt was suddenly formed and with it the young woman that I trapped popped out and landed on the ground. She was groaning in pain from the sudden fall but before she could even open her eyes the larger man in the armor quickly scoops her up and dashed away without giving her an explanation.

  A few seconds passed and the humans were long past my line of sight, after making sure they were completely gone I took a deep sigh of relief as I gave my attention to Mordred. I’ll have to deal with the humans’ issue later, right now there are more immediate problems to deal with.

  “Take me to the injured now Mordred.” I gave the stated command and without a moment sooner the giant minotaur nodded with a serious expression.

  “Right away boss!”

  I jumped on my usual seat on top of Mordred as he took a mad dash to our location. It didn’t even take a minute before we reached the injured goblins. To my relief everyone seemed to still be in a stable condition while those who were able to move continued to frantically work on caring for the injured. They suddenly jolted into a pause the moment we came into view, as if they were still afraid of what I was going to do with them.

  “Don’t worry, I scared off the humans myself.” That comment confused them as they quickly looked at Mordred who quickly nodded in confirmation. Their expression changed from fear to a mix of amazement and relief, while I normally would want to soak it in right now there was something more important to take care of.

  “Mr. Vlad Mr. Vlad you’re back!!!” out of nowhere V jumps at me in a hug. Tears were running over their eyes as they clung tight to me. Instinctively I gently pet the young goblin’s head. “There there now, everything is alright. Now tell me did you get what I asked?”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  When V eventually let go of the hug they sniffled and wiped their tears, nodding their head as they pointed towards the pile of plants. “Alright you did good job V, now let me take care of it, you can trust me.”

  I began examining the various plants before me, with my [Game Screen] it was easy to tell the beneficial effects. After glancing through them I concluded the majority of them were [Healing Herbs], which was exactly what we needed so I began my work.

  I was lucky that my [Material Forge] definition of nonliving material counts towards plucked plants as well. I’ll have to put more research on the limits of this skill once I get some free time but for now. I took a piece of the herbs at the palm of my hand as I began to reforge them into crushed material, turning them into [Healing Powder]. I had to make sure of their potency so…

  Inspect

  Looks like this will do, hopefully Rank D will prove enough for these poor goblins. I took the [Healing Powder] at hand and went over the most critically wounded goblin. There was a small hole at the edge of their stomach, they were holding on to it while grunting in pain. They seemed uncomfortable at first when I came to provide the medicine but quickly let their arm go so I could apply the medicine. After applying the powder, I made sure to watch its effectiveness and to my relief I could see the wound beginning to regenerate. The process on its healing reminded me of the orcs’ own regenerative abilities albeit at a slower rate, so I doubt this will help in any future lethal wounds which luckily none of them seem to have. After some time, they managed to recover enough that their breathing steadied.

  Once I verified how much it worked, I then began to put my focus on creating more [Healing Powder] as I instructed both V and Mordred to begin to distribute them to the other goblins and to help the other injured recover. It took some time and I had to make sure to maintain my mana capacity and not let it go down too far but after what felt like half an hour I was finally done.

  All of the goblins were now safely recovering as I sighed with both relief and exhaustion. The constant mana usage really took it out of me, though not as much as those intense fights so all I would need was a short rest. Stepping towards the nearest tree, I laid back on it and let my body recover. As I do though, I began to hear multiple tiny steps approach towards me. I didn’t sense any danger from them, so I wasn’t too worried. But as I looked to see what it was, I was surprised to see it was all the goblins. They all surrounded me and at the side I could see Mordred readying his ax, I quickly motioned him to stand down and he complied.

  “Alright now was there something you wish to say to me?” I began to ask them.

  Responding to my question they all suddenly kneeled before me, both knees and hands on the ground as one of them at the front nervously spoke. “A-ah yes we all were discussing about your earlier proposal, a-about recruiting us to your group…”

  Intriguing, I honestly had forgotten about my recruitment proposal. The only thing I was thinking at the time was my anger over how those coward humans were making poor V cry…

  “…And have you all reached a conclusion?” I asked ready to hear their answer, though based on what I was seeing I believe I knew the answer already. ~

  “A-and after driving away those scary humans and helping our own recover, I-I believe we’d all be honored to serve you Mr. Vlad sir…”

  After hearing those words, it felt like all my exhaustion had suddenly left me as I suddenly jumped up, surprising everyone. This was just too much good news to sit down on. With one foot forward I pointed towards the group of goblins, who seemed rather confused over the spectacle stance I was doing while Mordred was clapping in awe and V was acting cutely in admiration.

  “Very well then! From this day forth you all shall now become my minions!!” With my proclamation the familiar floating screen appeared before me and provided the notice I was expecting.

  “ehehehe…. Veehahahahaha!!” My familiar laughter bursts out and roars across the forest trees. I couldn’t help it, I could never get tired of seeing my influence grow after all! ~

  One of the goblins whispered to another as I continued to laugh, clearly confused. “What is happening right now? ...”

  “I don’t know just stay quiet and let him continue for now …”

  Meanwhile, at the home base, the three stooges heard my laughter from afar and immediately knew what that meant. The look of resignation all over their faces.

  “…. Yup there he goes laughing again.”

  “Yeah…. guess that means I won the bet…”

  “Better get ready, it’s going to get busy again soon…”