202 Make them obedient, please! part A crowd was gathering in front of their interim leader, but it wasn’t the usual crowd one could find in just any city.
People that gathered in front of Ryu were actually from a different race. On his mind, it made them no less of a person, but Anne thought very differently. Their pointy ears, their green skin and their wrinkly faces made her shiver in disgust.
“People of the goblin village, I need you to hear me out on Bardun’s request”
Everyone fell silent for his speech, but Ryu had trouble keeping his cool. It hasn’t been long since he regained consciousness in the forest to the south of ironwoods, but he had time to learn about himself when he traveled the forest with his pets and one of the biggest aspects of himself that became clear to him during that period was that he had something similar to social anxiety.
It wasn’t as bad as to make it impossible for him to speak to people, but it made things difficult for him. His mouth would get dry and he would stutter for no reason.
It took him all of his focus and willpower to speak in front of so many goblins, but everyone agreed that he did just fine. Especially goblins, since they valued short speeches and efficient communication.
What Ryu asked of them was to form different teams of professionals in different jobs to make sure they would progress in that areas. It was difficult for goblins to accept this because every single goblin considered themselves a warrior and what Ryu was telling them was that some of them would not be able to ever pick up a sword again.
What started as loud cheers, soon became a deathly silence. But Ryu was far from over, he asked them to make stockpiles of everything they had in their possesion and mint a coin. Goblins had different materials in their possession, but they were used raw. Because of their reluctance to handle fire, they never smelted metal.
Their weapons were rustic at best and the only weapons they crafted with metal were wood maces with a tip made from metallic items such as bundles of coins or pieces of armor. To say it was an inefficient use of materials would just be the start of all the things that were wrong with their weapons. Now that they learned how to craft knives from beast parts they were going somewhere, but goblins in general had trouble innovating.
.....
Be it science, language, art, crafts, even politics, they were behind in almost every aspect when compared to human society.
Despite most being against the changes that Ryu wanted to impose, they still followed their commands to the letter. They were really against changes, Bardun had been one of a kind in his generation by stepping forward and attempting to communicate with humans, but they were really good at it.
Took them less than a full day to put the different teams together and pile their belongings in the middle of town. Meanwhile, Ryu made some forges with Athela’s help and taught goblins how to operate it.
It was a good start, but to be able to produce enough copper or iron to satisfy their demand they would need to build a mine somewhere, but that was a job for the prospecting team. Goblins with the highest perception skill were sent along explorers to gather information on different resources, Ryu even assigned team leaders to write reports.
Things advanced so well during the first day, so much so, that by the second day there was no need for him to be involved in the process. All he did was delegate the work and, because Thoba was still assigned to caring for the younglings, Lauda remained by Ryu’s side.
She was completely stunned at how much the village had changed. While Ryu was out, Bardun asked his new human maid a lot of things about human cities and little by little performed many changes.
He did assign guard duties and tried to keep the streets clean, but those were shallow changes and needed constant supervision. Ryu used the same strategy he used when he had to act as a party leader, every single goblin was supposed to know his role and perform it and, in the case that someone fell behind on his tasks, there was a substitute system in place.
“Why are they making clothes too? we have clothes, nice clothes!”
Lauda inquired, still in shock after seeing how much things changed in just one day.
“Well, I’ve found out that proper clothes reduces stamina consumption, thus reducing the need for food and water. You might think it’s not that important, but it will have a bigger impact later on”
Mia was teaching goblins how to craft fabric, wool and basic pieces of clothing. It hasn’t been that long since she learned, but she had more talent in tailoring than she had in alchemy. Next one was Anne, she was supervising the plowing of land, she didn’t have any sort of talent for growing crops, what she did have instead was an advance knowledge on techniques developed back on her homeworld.
It wasn’t an extensive knowledge on agriculture, It was mostly just considered common sense, but it was centuries more advanced than people in this world possessed.
Sera was taking care of sorting through the different items tht goblins possessed, it was a difficult labor that unfortunately only she could perform because so far no goblin had developed the identify skill. They still tried to help however they could, but finding goblins with a high dexterity or strength stat was easy, finding goblins with a high intelligence stat was more difficult because intelligence wasn’t something that could be tested so easily.
It was yet another productive day in the goblin village and as days went by more and more changes took place. Everyone, including those against it at the beggining, couldn’t deny the immediate positive effects that came one after the other.
Food provisions, weapons, safety, tools, every single aspect became better in a matter of days, the same goblins that looked like nothing but skinny little creatures, now looked fiersome and ready for war and Ryu hoped that they would become even stronger. By focusing on learning a single skill and then having them shift their jobs, he was expecting to produce an effect similar to what he experienced, leveling up different skills to the max increased his stats immensely back when he lived in Ironwoods.
All of this had a single purpose on Ryu’s mind. He wondered why were goblins such short lived creatures, was it because they had short life spans? or was it because they always met an untimely end?
Right now, he wanted to protect the goblin village, at least long enough for their true leader to come back.