(Veldora POV)
"Come on, Veldora! I didn't mean to tell anyone!" Rimuru pleaded.
"You could've said that my survival was a secret at least!" I moaned as I looked down at the profusely sweating slime.
"Eh, but that king already somehow knew though? Maybe you aren't good enough at hiding your presence?" Rimuru shot back.
I rolled my eyes. "He was reading your mind. You are like an open book, you know?" I said, giving the slime a glare as I said so.
'Eh? Really? Am I that open, [Great Sage]?' Rimuru asked.
<< Affirmative. No resistance against mind reading has been put in place. Would you like to implement such defences? Yes/No?>>
'Yes!' I answered [Great Sage] in place of Rimuru, demonstrating how I was able to read his mind and how Gazel probably was able to read Rimuru's.
Rimuru jumped into the air in shock when I confirmed it for [Great Sage], however, proving that the Unique Skill already had at least a hint of some kind of ego, it took my answer as confirmation without waiting from Rimuru to process it.
<
I could no longer use the same method to read Rimuru's mind as before. I smirked for a bit before reaching down and picking up Rimuru off the ground, finally turning to the dwarves who had followed Rimuru back to the village.
"So you're the craftsman huh?" I asked
The middle dwarf, wearing goggles with the most put-together baring, stepped forward despite standing in front of a True Dragon and being nervous, he did not seem afraid. "Y-yes, Lord Veldora."
I nodded my head. "Good. The Goblins here all need to be taught some practical skills. I've taught a number of them magic and even some martial arts, but when it comes to things like building housing and whatnot, I am at a loss."
This was only partially true. I could always rely on [Faust]'s [Truth of Creation] to become a master architect, blacksmith, craftsman, etc in only an instant, however, that would only force the Goblins to rely on me more and more for their education, which I couldn't be bothered with. Sure, they were my 'worshipers', but God doesn't impart knowledge directly onto his subjects for such mundane things. He sends a messenger to do the job for him.
'These dwarves will make mighty fine 'messengers' too' I thought to myself.
"We will attempt to, no I beg your pardon, we WILL impart our knowledge upon your population!" the dwarf named Kaijin said with conviction in his voice.
I nodded. "Good, then you shall start tomorrow, for today..." I looked down at Rimuru who was looking back up at me with confusion. "You've got work to do." I said with a hint of mischief in my voice as I walked out of our tent and forward into the crowd of several hundred Goblins eagerly awaiting Rimuru's return.
"time to get to naming, oh 'friend' of mine," I said, a slight amount of my sadistic side leaking as I spoke.
"That's way too many!!!" Rimuru shrieked, though, in the end, he successfully managed to name all 3,000 goblins who came to us from across the forest.
Rimuru actually almost ended up repeating names, so I gave him the idea of separating groups of goblins and giving them last names based on the villages they came from, effectively creating a large number of 'clans' of goblins who all swore fealty to Rimuru as my chosen administrator, though Rimuru immediately began to delegate tasks, making Ridurd the Goblin King and the other Village Chiefs into a sort of Goblin Council.
In all honesty, it was pretty cool and got my American Blood riled up a bit when he mentioned fashioning a 'constitution'. I made sure to add my 2 cents and add provisions for freedoms of religion, limited free speech (you can be prosecuted for intentionally creating/spreading lies and/or fake news but not for your opinions), equality of all 'intelligent' races, etc. I also made sure to put in place a few rules about interactions with humans.
Rimuru initially said 'Don't attack humans' and thought that was enough, but I elaborated to not be the aggressor against humanity, but that you were well within your rights to defend yourself against humans if they attacked first up to and including lethal actions if necessary.
Rimuru and I got into a lot of disagreements over this, funny enough. Rimuru wanted a lot more liberal reforms while I was a bit more conservative. For example, because I knew female-only species such as the Harpies existed, I argued against outlawing polygamy whereas Rimuru was worried that a handful of smart, funny, or handsome guys would eventually collect all the women into harems if we didn't enforce monogamy, which was a valid point. Eventually, for this point, we ended up setting up a system where monogamy was the de-facto law of the land as there was only allowed to be a single 'wedding', however, if multiple women/men were willing to share a wedding, say two brides and one husband, then that would be allowed.
Finally, after all of the Goblins were named and evolved, we decided to move our home base. As it turns out, the area where we were staying was pretty poor for the large population we'd created, and so we decided to bite the bullet and make our move now.
According to Rimuru, the best spot was just outside of the Sealing Cave, as it had plenty of fresh water and wide open space. I suggested we just move into the cave and make some kind of underground city and call it Pandemonium or something but Rimuru didn't think living in a damp and dark environment was good for morale, so we settled on building the town outside the gate, though I decided to take the place where I was sealed inside the cave as my own 'Holy Site', which really just mean where I wanted to live and not be bothered in the future.
Afterward, I continued to help the Dwarves by using Earth Magic to create house foundations and generate magic crystals using [Material Creation] for them to use to create things like hot water taps, magic ovens, magic refrigerators, etc. Furthermore, I began experimenting with different materials until I accidentally created a few of my own. Manacrete, which was a form of concrete that would self-repair itself using the ambient magic in the air. It acted as a good insulator and the houses we created from it were perfectly temperature-controlled, never too hot or cold, nor too humid or dry. I also recreated Minecraft's glowstone, allowing for essentially magic-powered lighting in most houses and street lamps.
All of this only worked because of the large amount of magicules in the air which leaked out of the Sealing Cave.
After a few weeks of this, we received our first visitors to our unnamed little settlement.
"What the hell is this!?!" The elf girl pretending to be a human shouted at the top of her lungs as she stood in the town square.
"This is our town," I replied, matter of factly.
"Eh- no I mean, how did you guys build all of this so quickly?" She repeated, a bit embarrassed.
"Magic" I said, wiggling my fingers at her.
They didn't look impressed.
"Well it's true~" I whined as I gazed over at the woman wearing a mask who was carrying Rimuru.
"Well, maybe we should get some food at the stall nearby." Rimuru explained, pointing to a recently opened meat skewer 'shop'.
I emphasize the word 'shop' due to the fact that it didn't cost money to get food there. It was simply one of the many stations around the city where a person could get lunch. It was closer to a cafeteria that only served one dish than an actual fast-food restaurant.
Eren, the elf pretending to be a human, and her two human friends, instantly ran into the shop when I explained to them that they would be getting food there, not even waiting for my full explanation.
"Your friends are a bit odd." I said to the masked woman.
The mask covereing her face was enchanted with an anti-magic effect, making it so I couldn't tell the expression she was making behind it with my Sensory Skills, but I could have sworn she was smiling. "Yes, they tend to be like that." She replied as she walked in while still carrying Rimuru.
'She's a bit odd, as she's was being watched by someone troublesome.' I thought to myself as I glanced at a certain position in the sky. To normal people, hell, even to those who specialize in sensory skills, they probably wouldn't have noticed it, but with my refined sensory abilities and Ultimate level existence, I was able to clearly spot the small invisible 'hole' in the sky that followed her and absorbed small amounts of magicules in doing so.
'Noir huh?' I thought as I turned to walk into the 'restaurant' and follow our guests who were eating voraciously already as though they hadn't eaten in weeks.
...
A/N: Sorry for the short chappy, I think the next ones will begin picking up the pace a bit more. Probably half a chapter on the Shizue stuff and then onto a slightly different Ogre interaction.