A week passed by in a breeze after that. The first few days were spent being visited by Ms. Gwyn and Leo or Karen and Eliza and then the entire group for another cookout. Ms. Gwyn and Leo came looking for the servants I had tempted them into moving to a new home for.
They picked out a pair of goblins to be trained as fencers like Poniard as well as taught how to do simple house chores like laundry, loading a dish washer, sweeping and mopping, and even some lawn work. For them, I did not even charge them except that Ms. Gwyn had to find us a good slime portal to clear out, first. Both partners were more than happy to hear about this and agreed to my terms.
Both Leo and Ms. Gwyn wanted magical familiars alongside their raptors, so they were only to happy to help supply their goblins with slime cores- Leo even placed an order for a couple of preserved C grade slime cores for my familiars.
Karen came by repeatedly with and without Eliza to help me organize not only central pond area the training field had been reorganized around but also in tending the greenhouse. In exchange for their assistance I gave Karen half of the metal silt I stockpiled while in the portal as well as a handful of metal bugs and elemental stones Si-Pon collected.
The goblins spent these first few days running on treadmills divided on either side of the exposure pond. One side was for goblins who were waiting for their contracts to be finalized while while the other half were the goblins already starting their training for the Bureau. Of course, the Bureau goblins would take an extra week not just for extra combat training but also the extra week mountain goblins required for stamina training.
Since these goblins were young, though, they were much more malleable in what they could learn as well as much easier to raise the stats on through exercise. However, some of these young goblins were barely older than the goblins birthed at the property. Those babies were only just recently being introduced to the treadmills on low one digit speeds.
So, everybody was left running without weights while I worked on finding the general extent of their endurance. The two trollkin I brought with me were defensive around the original hobs at first, but when one of them started showing an attitude Poniard spoke to the hobs. Both hobs then slapped the trollkin.
That trollkin who was slapped on the first day drew back to punch one or both of the hobs, but a single hiss from Poniard stiffened them with fear. With only a few more similar incidents, the one defiant trollkin soon learned the hierarchy here.
Instead of cooking for everybody this time around when the entire team, Lucinda, and even the director showed up at the property, they all brought a bunch of different dishes and their own meats to cook competitively. I only had to tend to my goblins and distribute slime core snacks to keep them from being too distracted. It was a nice change of pace.
Poniard and Glaive did not show any interest in drinking that time so I was actually pretty proud of them. However, they still spent most of their time racing with the raptors or learning how to play with hair with Eliza and the other ladies. Poniard's hair was now about six inches long all of the way around and showed no signs of slowing down not that it was growing.
Lucinda already got to have fun braiding and dreading her hair at home, but now everybody got to play with the human-haired goblin. As well, Karen and Emilia had brought over different clothes for Poniard to try on as if they were having a fashion show. I did not know how I felt about something like that after the first time the ladies were alone with my recently evolved familiar but with Lucinda involved I felt like I had less to worry about.
So, I foolishly let the ladies put on a somewhat questionable fashion show as they took Poniard in and out of an empties equipment shed with different hair or makeup as well as different styles of clothes. At first it was kind of fun and cute as she walked around in punk-like pants and shorts with open sweaters and simple leather accessories or this one time she was put in a sporty tennis outfit complete with a sweater tied about her shoulders and a pink visor that matched the rest of the outfit.
There were, though, some things that I was annoyed by or had to outright put a stop to. She was once put in a schoolgirl outfit with short pigtails and then in a doctor outfit with black scrubs and a white coat complete with fake glasses. Karen tried to bring her out of the dorm in a one-piece swim suit and I put my foot down.
When they tried to bring her out in a leotard workout outfit I had to step in once again and go through all of the remaining outfits. There were several more 'costumes' and even two different styles of bikinis that were NOT going on my goblins. After that, there were only a business pant suit, butler costume, several dresses, and one of those old-timey European dress outfits that were usually associated with yodelers that she had to wear a wig with.
I thought that one was funny and the butler costume was tasteful so I allowed them, but even I was surprised when Poniard came out of the dorm wearing a long shiny red dress that rode high around the knee on one side but dragged in the back followed by a salsa dancing outfit that was not too different besides the adornments and the show was completed with Poniard in steel gray stilettos and a little black mini-dress.
However, much to everybody's dismay, I was the only person allowed to take photographs during the event.
At the end of the week, though, I printed out the photos and framed them in collages of smaller versions to give to my teammates and the director- minus a few outfits. Lucinda and I, of course, had a large canvas framed and pinned the photos from the fashion show to it.
As weird as it probably seemed to use pictures of my goblin as gifts and decoration, it was impossible to deny that she COULD be very pretty even by human standards. From the outfits that they tried to put on her, pretty was not the only kind of attractive that Karen and everybody else thought she was. To me, she's always just been as cute or as dangerous as she behaves.
After that first week was when I started adding weights to all of the goblins and began their actual training. Unlike last time there were several contracts for goblin archers after the video of the kobold archers herding wild kobolds into the pilums of the phalanx front line. Even though I already had enough low leveled MP bows made by Johnathan to supply the starter kits, I only had enough.
If goblin archers become a hotter selling point than I anticipated, I would need to buy a lot more bows than the ones needed to replace my current stock. On top of this, I had really only stocked about fifty of each goblin package worth of kits and the kobolds I acquired took a decent chunk out of my armor and weapon supplies.
Not only would I be low on my stockpile in general, there would be some packages I was out of after these contracts. Luckily, all I had to do was post another two cases of mana water from the exposure pond in a market and I could start buying materials instead of collecting them myself. My immediate troubles were solved and my driver hit the road again.
Halfway through the next week, though, when the goblin archers were just starting to hit two or even three arrows with fifty yards of distance from their targets using weak training bows was when Ms. Gwyn called me about the next dungeon. There were currently three portals that just appeared within the past two days and contained slimes, all of them underground.
One was a lower E portal that lead to what very well may have been an empty magma chamber not far from my caldera because of its pumice makeup. However, this small but two-level cave system was home to both goblins and slimes. I was not the only person who was tired of goblin portals, too.
The next two portals were similar in their tunnel system sizes and projected numbers, but one had only slimes while the other had both slimes and spiders. Currently, the armor used for their raptors was a little lacking in its protection because it was a soft leather harness and skirting. Not only would the slime and spider portal have spiders I could try to capture but in the nesting areas there would be plenty of spider silk to harvest.
Despite our previous experiences in a slime and spider combo portal, Ms. Gwyn was more than willing to give this one a shot and start networking with the rest of the team. Putting my phone away and looking down at Poniard who was currently feeding some E grade cores to the baby goblins nearby, I say, "It's been a while since you last had fresh slime cores, right?"
Poniard almost completely forgot about the two baby goblins entering their juvenile stages as she bolted upright, saying, "Too long! Want fresh cores, fresh cores so sweet, so juicy, so… strong. When we go? When, when, when?
She probably meant how a fresh slime core was not mostly dried inside and still had all of the MP stockpiled by the slime's lifetime. "We'll be going to another job in a couple of days," I say in a professional manner with a brief pat to her bouncy hair, "make sure all the goblins understand their exercise and unarmed routines for their patio sessions while we're gone. We might not be able to take the biggest core in the portal but you and Glaive will definitely get to eat all of the second biggest cores."
"What about beh-behs?" She all but hisses, reaching down to pick up the three-foot goblins by the backs of their adorable little overalls despite their small flailing limbs.
"Yes, we'll bring cores back for the babies," I assure her, breaking my professional character with a smile as I reach out to properly pet her head. "We want these babies to develop magic and then we'll teach them to fight just like you. If it works, we'll have it made."
"What we make?" Poniard asks suddenly, cutely reminding me that even though she could have some conversations she did not yet understand metaphors and euphemisms. "Is food? I hungry. Can have core? Oh! May I please have a slime core, Sifu Malcolm?"
"You know you don't have to call me sifu anymore, right?" I ask while gesturing for her to help herself to the large metal box kept by the pond. "Back when you were little, it was just a thing that happened because of your training videos. It would be nice if you just called me Malcolm now and then."
Hurriedly chewing and swallowing her current mouthful of softball sized slime core, Poniard asks, "It be nice? Like good job? I say Malcolm, you rub head. Malcolm."
"Good job," I say with a defeated sigh, reaching out to playfully ruffle her hair. "Take the goblins out on the agility course when you're done with their sets and I'll rub your head the whole ride home."
"Yes!" She exclaims merrily, completely forgetting the babies while running off to take over the various training goblins from Glaive. I simply took the baby goblins to their mothers who were overseeing the two trollkin raking the outer property.
Lucinda was less than thrilled when I told her about the special mesh dome I had order to be placed on the property for housing spiders. She did not care that my second of three portals this month was going to be so soon or that it was going to be another slime and spider portal. What she cared about was whether or not we would have to house any spiders while waiting on the dome the be finished.
Worse still was when she heard that I was going to start breeding and exposing Flemish Giant Rabbits to feed the spiders. She liked bunnies and bunnies that could get as big as some dogs were just more bunny to love. She used to have this one exotic hare that was super fluffy but it died from getting into the trash before I graduated.
However, I assured her that it was only temporary until I could get a portal creature with natural MP that was an appropriate size, like cave rats. However, I did not tell her that I would give her one giant rabbit and then set the others free in an E territory in the hopes of actual hybridization.
The installation crew for the spider dome and a small barn for giant rabbits arrived on the same day that the team got together to leave for the next portal. Luckily for me, I had a driver who could stay on site while they worked because I could not legally have people here without some form of supervision. Even though my driver was a normal person, he still worked for the Bureau and that was good enough for me.
While having my driver stay at the property to handle the construction crews might have been a good idea, letting the only person on the team with a commercial license drive was not. I do not know who gave it to her or how Karen got a top class license with the way she drove today, but she had it. As if God himself were laughing at me, she had the license.
Luckily for everybody who rode in the armored transport with her, though, the portal was within one hundred miles of our home city. If not for that small boon we would have spent much more than an hour being honked and yelled at by people passing our large vehicle that made the middle of the lane its real estate. If not for all the armor and weapons in the window, some people might have tried to stop us as Karen intentionally swerved on honkers to make them hesitant to pass.
Whereas mine was a good defensive driver that hugged the outside of the lane at most times and maintained five above the limit, Karen seemed to want her name tattooed like a ring around the middle finger of everybody on the road.
For today's assignment the portal was located in the middle of nowhere next to the state border with the only other landmark being an old abandoned farm about three miles away. With Karen's driving it was only halfway to noon when we parked around some other Bureau vehicles after driving through the farm and beyond. Ten minutes later, Ms. Gwyn and Leo parked as well.
After a brief equipment check everybody got together for medical checks and a brief scanning. My MP rating had gone above two-seventy since my last scan and the others were all nearing or entering D grade. Pretty soon our team would be able to move up into the next grade of portals.
*