As the goblins headed out of the tunnel, Elroy saw the sun starting to set down in the distance over the trees. A strange feeling took over his mind.
'A day has already passed since I've come here, what a strange day. I wonder what happened to Rob, Julia and Archie after the accident. I hope that they're doing fine, although I probably will never know since I ended up here.'
'Come to think of it, I guess no one apart from these three would miss me…'
Feeling slightly down at this thought, he continued to watch over his goblins as they started to enter the forest surrounding the entrance to the Dungeon. He then commanded them to fan out in order to cover as much ground as possible. Examining the vegetation, there seemed to be a majority of oak and walnut trees with a few pine trees making up this forest. As the goblins continued to delve further into the forest, they came across a variety of animals such as some rabbits and a few deer. However, as they were not very discreet and moving in quite a large group, all the animals were scared off allowing them to only catch a glimpse at them. Soon they came upon a small stream flowing in the middle of the forest. There they could see a few fish swimming about.
As night was starting to replace day, a few wolf howls could be heard in the distance, signaling the start of their hunt. Elroy then instructed the goblins to return to the Dungeon on a roundabout path as he intended to send them out again on the next day. On their path back however, they started to see some trees marked with large claw marks and soon stumbled onto what appeared to be the mangled corpse of a hunter not far away from a half-eaten deer with an arrow stuck in its neck.
'The marks on the body appear to be the same as the ones on the surrounding trees. Whatever it was that did him in, it looks to be large from the size of the claws. The hunter probably shot the deer and then tracked it down to this thing's territory only to be then killed when he disturbed.'
Remarkably, the hunter's longbow and his quiver of arrows did not seem to have suffered any damage in his scuffle with the mysterious beast. As such, thinking it probably was not a great idea to stick around, Elroy made the hobgoblin pick up the longbow and arrows before having all the goblins leave this place.
'Come to think of it, the goblins only have those stone knives and no proper weapons or clothes to speak of. This is definitely something I should fix in the long run.'
As they were about to arrive to the clearing where the entrance to the Dungeon was located, Elroy made the goblins stop in their tracks as he had spotted a few deer in the clearing. Then, he ordered the hobgoblin to take out the recently acquired longbow and try to shoot one down as it could provide some food for the goblins. Although he was still unsure whether they needed to eat to sustain themselves considering he had seen them absorbing Essence, he felt that it was surely worth a try after-all.
As he recalled some tips he had heard about how, when hunting, you should aim for about the opposing shoulder of the animal to have a greater chance of hitting vital organs like the heart or lungs, to his surprise, the hobgoblin seemed to flash a look of understanding. It then proceeded to notch an arrow to the string before easily drawing the longbow to a full draw. As it aimed at the deer, it looked to be following along what Elroy had thought about. It then let loose the arrow which embedded itself with a low thud in the deer's body, puncturing its heart and lungs.
It let out a wet gurgle as it fell to the ground. Startled, the other deer raised their heads and paused for a second before fleeing rapidly through the woods.
The goblins then headed through the clearing to the dungeon, dragging the deer along with them. As they got to the Core room, Elroy let them free to eat it. To his fascination, the two hobgoblins snarled at the surrounding goblins before slicing some chunks of meat from the corpse of the deer. After they had been done with eating from the deer, the two then let the remaining dozen goblins feed from it. These goblins fed directly from the corpse in a feeding frenzy, doing away with slicing off the meat as the hobgoblins had done. In mere minutes, there was nothing left but the bones of the animal.
'I guess it is normal for a hierarchy of sorts to form within a group.'
What Elroy could then notice was that, after having eaten the deer, all of the goblins were now absorbing much less Essence than they had been previously. The current amount being minuscule in comparison.
'It seems I was half-right, although my minions can sustain themselves purely on Essence, it seems that feeding them is much more beneficial as they become less dependent of it. I will get them to hunt some more food in the forest, perhaps to go fish in the stream we found earlier, that way the Core will be able to gather more Essence.'
As he looked at the goblins and then the longbow they had found, he thought about the lack of proper equipment he faced. He continued looking at them, and specifically at the stone blades they were all wielding.
'If it was possible to summon the goblins purely out of Essence, and that when they appeared, they already had these stone knives, doesn't that mean the knives were made with Essence as well? If so, I might be able to fix this equipment shortage faster than expected.'
As he had this thought, he immediately set out to the task, trying only to produce a small knife out of stone similar to the ones the goblins had in order to prove his theory. Drawing only a little amount of Essence from the Core, he succeeded only after a few tries and was now looking at a brand-new stone knife on the floor.
Feeling confident, he wished to now make a blade out of metal, or rather steel to be precise. Unsure whether he would be able to produce the wood to make the handle for it, he rationalized that it would probably be fine since, if he was able to summon living beings such as goblins, he most likely could summon another living being like a tree. There were a few failures, where the Essence would fail to take form and sink into the ground, however it was in the end incredibly easier than when he was trying to summon the first hobgoblin. As he looked at the final product, he was incredibly satisfied.
It looked as if a steel blade had sprouted from the wooden handle. Looking at the blade more closely, it was as if roots were sinking into the blade. Considering that the handle was made of living wood, Elroy had implanted a small Essence crystal within it to sustain its life whenever it was out of Dungeon, otherwise the wood was likely to die – and disappear as the dead goblins had – which would be unfortunate in a combat situation. Seeing how an Essence crystal had condensed upon the death of a goblin had certainly been of great help when designing the weapon.
'I guess it is much more like a living thing than a dead weapon.'
He instructed one of the goblins to take up the knife and drag it along the deer bones that had been lying on the ground. Seeing it leave a nasty mark on the bones, he grew excited and made the goblin take a swing at the stone wall. Seeing the shallow mark left on the rocks making up the wall, he grew even more satisfied of the weapon.
'It definitely is much sharper than any knife I've ever seen that's for sure. Seeing as it is a living knife, I think I'm going to call these Living-wood weapons.'
He then proceeded to create eleven more Living-wood knives to arm the rest of the goblins before turning to the hobgoblins who were still holding their stone short-swords. Looking at the hobgoblin wielding the longbow that had been found inside the forest, and remembering how the rogue had quickly taken down multiple goblins with his bow, he resolved to make them some bows.
Looking at the longbow they had found, he dismissed the idea of making longbows due to its size. Standing at about a meter eighty, they would prove unwieldy in the cave-like environment of the Dungeon. Instead, he set out to make recurve bows which would allow the bows to have a greater draw strength compared to their size than longbows, allowing for a smaller size overall.
After he created a relatively small Living-wood bow, he had one of the hobgoblins try to draw it. Seeing the great ease with which the creature had done so, he decided to make larger one with denser wood to increase the draw weight. Finally feeling satisfied with the finished result after a few adjustments, he was now looking at a recurve bow of about a meter forty in length. Similarly, to the knives, Elroy had incrusted an Essence crystal inside the grip of the bow. He then made a replica so as to equip both hobgoblins with one.
Although he had successfully made the bows, without arrows they would be no different than useless pieces of wood. After creating two quivers incorporating Essence crystals to keep the arrows alive for a long duration, he set out to make forty arrows for each. These arrows relied on the same principles behind the knives, having the arrowheads seemingly sprouting from the roots of the shaft. As for the fletching, in place of feathers, Elroy thought to use hardened leaves to stabilize the arrows when in flight. When it came to the tips however, he introduced some variation. Out of the two sets of arrows, each of them had thirty arrows sporting modern broadheads, with three edges, while the remaining ten looked more like long nails than anything else. The two types of arrows would sit in different compartments of the quivers to differentiate between them, in addition to possessing leaves of different coloration: red for the nail-like arrows, and green for the broadheads.
Feeling satisfied with the ranged capabilities afforded by the bows, Elroy then turned to consider close-range situations. Remembering the equipment of the warrior that had accompanied the rogue, he settled for creating two sabers and shields. Creating the shields, he made them rounded with a circle of steel along the edge while having a steel cover where the center grip was located. As for the sabers, Elroy made them like willow-leaf sabers, with a slight curve along the nearly meter-long blades and handles canted in the other direction. Similarly to the other Living-wood weapons, the shields and sabers also incorporated Essence crystals.
Feeling satisfied with the weaponry, he then set out to making some protection. In the end, he only managed to make some basic wooden protections, such as shin guards and vambraces as well as breastplates, while making cloth-like materials was a bit beyond him. On top of these protections, Elroy had also incorporated some steel plating as wood alone would probably not be enough. Assessing the Essence left in the Core when he was finally done, it looked like it had pretty much been depleted.
After he was done with creating all this equipment and was looking at his now finely equipped goblins, Elroy realized that he was feeling very satisfied and even somewhat proud looking at the fruits of his work. Looking to the outside of the dungeon, he saw that dawn was soon coming.
'Although this has been a crazy first day over here, I guess it isn't all bad after-all. I might be able to leave my mark for once.'
For the first time since coming here, Elroy felt that he would be smiling if he could.