Because I was grounded, there was not much that I could do besides working out every morning when I woke up and then again six hours later. Even when my swords were delivered in a large Bureau stamped box for no reason, I could only use them in the yard or basement. Where was the fun in that?
The short swords came out a little longer than my sabers in overall size with long and narrow obtuse triangular blades. The corner of the angle and the bottom bar made up the guard for the ergonomically gridded and finger ridged naked tang of the weapons. The base of the angles only came out to FIVE inches in length before the white ivory blades steeply angle up and back to the points about twenty inches above the handles.
Compared to my sabers, these short swords were only three pounds apiece but still had similar tensile strengths and sharpness. How could something made out of imporous bone be stronger than something made out of worked steel? Because the sabers were standard issue F grade equipment while Johnathan had added ivory material from the lab to increase the weight and thankfully the quality.
What would have come out upper E grade were now upper D grade swords sheathed in porcelain thickly padded by rawhide. Unlike the sabers, these scabbards could contain and maintain poisons and other coatings to make up for the fact that less weight meant less force. However, I was not really allowed to use either lethal or non-lethal substances.
Did my big sword's scabbard still technically contain C grade slime? Maybe.
At least I had time to familiarize myself with the swords. The first day, I started the day with my warm-up and one-legged squats. While I rested and recovered with my new artifact, I made the goblin run without weights at an incline at ten miles per hours. Over half an hour later, he collapsed and I had to rush to turn the machine off. Then, I sat him down next to the artifact to start practicing with my swords.
For the most part the goblin just sat there and watched, but then it wanted to get up and start getting curious. Another half smack twenty minutes into practicing my martial forms and he was quietly sitting where I wanted him to. Ten minutes later, he started to get up again and I growled when I caught him out of my periphery.
When I waited long enough to safely heal, I went through some weighted running for two hours before calling it a day. After naturally recovering on the treadmill, I got up to give the goblin another bath before cleaning up while they dried. Not long after I finished and sat down with my artifact, my phone vibrated with an alert.
One of the items I had switched markets was just pinged for an offer not too far off from my previous asking price. I accepted it then and there just for the general profits. If I wanted to, I could just finally have some of these items sent to me to be used or recycles. Sadly, even if I wanted to, I could not let myself damage my investments!
The next day, I started out with upside down sit-ups for an hour and instead of running the goblin I went to join a new server with my little bros and a giant bowl of salad. After six hours of teaching them 'the basics' of minimalist survival in this game, I went back downstairs to do two hours of weighted running. Then Lucinda finally came home from work.
She was still upset with me, so there was not much going on there anyway.
When I got my first offer for my E grade forest goblins it was probably some troll because they offered me a pair of 'goblin stone knives' in exchange. I already had a couple of hatchets! That was also what I woke up to, so it was annoying to have that to think about while avoiding bulking my arms and upper body by going through my single and dual sword forms while wearing twenty-pound weights on either forearms.
While I was running the goblin, I got another offer for the goblin that seemed a little more serious. Five hundred contribution or ten pounds of one-ten E grade scrap steel. The steel was pretty tempting, but it was likely I would get better offers now that it was on the screen.
Yet while I was getting ready to do another couple of hours of weighted running I received another notification. Somebody had finally bought an ugly set of bronze plates and the shield boss they fit around. Bronze had slight magic resistance, when used by mages, and decent conductivity. This bronze was all one-fifty E so an above-grade mage can make above-grade use of it or just recycle it into something stronger.
When I originally bought this set of shield pieces, the post was misleading in their sized. They had come out in slightly smaller sizes than the tanker wall shield they were advertised for and their proportions were for round shields. However, I never realized that there were no mages using either giant shields to begin with.
Now, somebody had probably taken an interest in the bronze itself and I could not care less because it was posted for half a time more than what I bought it for. Fifty percent of dirt cheap was still dirt cheap. Though, now it had become a little more dirt and a little less cheap.
Lucinda finally started talking to me again when she came home early while I was gaming again. The goblin was sitting on the floor eating some cheese sticks- plastic and all- so she was probably happy not to see it on the couch. The first thing she said to me was that she wanted to measure me again.
Now that all of my exposure items had stagnated again, now was as good a time as any to be measured again. I measured in at seventy-two, which surprised her because I was recently in the mid sixties when she got home. The goblin who was currently only worth ten pounds of slightly higher grade scrap was somehow the same grade as the scrap that was offered for him.
No wonder my collection had stagnated so soon, he sucked up all my MP!
After being measured I gave Lucinda my trollkin skulls and spider carapace pieces to personally deliver to Johnathan. I did not know if I should feel bad for the guy or not because she seemed calm, but she did not peel rubber out of the driveway. That was a good sign, right?
While she was gone the goblin finally started hissing the word 'food' from its videos. This meant that it was more or less settled into its environment to begin assimilating. As well, it meant that I had stop the watching of educational videos. If he learned a bunch of useless nonsense before becoming a hobgoblin, its overall learning capacity would still be limited.
Instead, I started him watching martial arts training videos on the big TV screen. This way he would learn something that would increase his value or at least their usefulness to me. Despite the fact that it was starting to learn how to use a toilet, the two large boxes of litter in the basement and my bedroom made me update its post to include saying 'food' and the unarmed combat they just started learning.
Not long after Lucinda got back from her trip to see Johnathan with a Bureau stamped box, I received another offer for the goblin. He was now worth fifteen pounds of E scrap steel or a 'cheap' D grade poniard. Even though the poniard itself was somewhat fragile in most portal fights, D grade basically meant magic doubled the strengths of the item and removed their potential for flaws.
A D grade poniard could slide between the ribs of a lesser orc with relative ease and sold, in cash, for between thirty and seventy thousand dollars depending on materials, lengths, and any ornamentation. If the D grade item had an actual magic effect or ability, multiply value by ten.
My goblin now had a current value of roughly thirty thousand dollars. I somehow felt that it was a good price. For an E rank forest goblin!
This guy still had increased evolution potential even if goblin stats did not increase until D rank, thirty thousand was an offensive offer for something of their caliber. I decided to update the goblin post with the 'fact' that 'all' of his training times since day one have been doubled by the use of a D grade healing 'ARTIFACT'. Fifteen minutes after the update, I was offered one-twenty-grand for the healing artifact.
When I finally got bored of waiting on the offers or comments to be made on my goblin post, I took the box Lucinda brought back and went down to the privacy of the basement to take it out. Inside the box was the first proper body armor. Ever.
The piece itself was something of a tunic or poncho with a low-hanging but belted 'V' on the front and back. The entire thing, though, was simply one layer of 'living-like' ogre skin that had been made both a little denser and much thicker by the printing process. Above the clavicles and along the top backs of the trapezes muscles of my shoulders were two straps of another layer of skin from which 'grew' two bands of white ivory.
Similarly, curling around the sides between the where the upper five ribs of my body would be were four long bands of five loosely fitted ivory segments. Fitted to the shrinking triangular shape within the ends of these bands was a triangular plate of ivory on another pad of skin that was thinly divided down the middle. The ivory was thicker at the top than at the point below and the middle was raised into a sloping bevel down the middle of the place.
Divided by the same line as the chest plate were long and thin abdominal plates like abs that stretched out and angled down around my lower sides in segments. Segmented down the spine were more ivory plates but they were half a time thicker than the abdominal plates and covering the exposed lower back sides under the rib bands were two right triangles of bleached ivory. Like the chest plate's top, the angled line of the plates was much thicker and there was another central line in a raised bevel down to the bottom corners.
The lower region of the poncho was mostly bare of plating but the belt had a large thick pad of hide and a buckle that was a shiny brass skull with an open laughing mouth whose opening had vulgar placement.
If not for the skull laughing around my crotch, I would have been impressed by Johnathan's designing of my armor. At the same grade as my sword, the ivory bands alone could stop two or three E assault rifle rounds apiece and the shaping of the chest plate and kidney plates would allow for the redirection of head-on impacts.
The original ogre skin could contain a contribution 10mm handgun round in every two square inches. This thickened skin could stop a full Revolver shot in a two-square-inch area if it is low-MP contribution ammunition. After having been treated naturally as well as chemically, a three-square-inch area could stop one of the back trigger pulls of my combination rifle and still reduce the second shot.
Emilia's combination rifle could probably hit me through a naked area, but not even her rifle's higher caliber and higher grade rounds would make it through a combination of bands, pads, and poncho. If a sword, ax, or spear tried to puncture or cut or chop this rubbery skin, as well, it was more likely to just bounce off or conformal than take any damage. At my current grade, there were only a handful of creatures that could now damage my upper body with all of my current armaments.
In the basement, I basically just wore the padded poncho to get a feel for the few fittings and work the material itself loose a little. After a few minutes of just checking myself out and doing some stretching, I put on a proto-suit to check the combined fit. Luckily, the pads of the ribs and abdominal pads kept them from conforming or constricting the suit very much and the inside was soft enough to give to the proto-suit a little.
Best of all, the originally burnt orange ogre skin was printed with a greater red content so that the chemical treating phase emphasized the red in an intensely dark glare. If the suit was not given a special matte enamel, I would have probably hated the color. Since the red did not shine, it was a nice contrast against the white ivory.
Once I was done admiring myself I took out my big sword and started slowly practicing some two-hand sword forms. For about ten minutes until I received another offer update on the goblin. Even though it was of less value than the poniard, some lady offered six pounds of D grade steel.
Six pounds of D steel could make a decent sized ax head and I still had plenty of wood product to make a matching or even batter quality handle. However, if these people looking to buy goblins were actually impressed enough to start raising their bids, now, then how impressed will they be when the goblin starts showing some results?
Finished with the first step of wearing in my new armor, I take my gear back upstairs and store it away before cleaning the litter box. I had no idea how much of what all kinds of food a goblin eats, but I was currently feeding this guy one pound of hamburg meat every morning and every night. A handler from the Bureau said they usually feed their kennel goblins one pound of meat in half quantities at the same times.
I forcibly exhausted my young goblin with weights and running twice a day, his caloric needs were at least twice that of a kennel goblin. Needless to say, about twice a day the goblin would drop a giant deuce about half an hour after eating. Supposedly this was quite healthy for its circumstances, making me wonder if I should not update its sales post right now with a picture of its shit.
Instead, I added a line about inviting questions or concerns about the goblin to see if I could find an excuse somewhere down the line.
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