Day 51-60/Day 51

When I woke up, four goblins had turned into hobgoblins and the number of hobgoblins is now twelve.

Moreover, there is a quality Mage from the four, and another of them has aptitude to work as a Cleric.

The large wounds received until now have all been cured by me, so having another one with a healing ability is something I’m grateful for.

I also can't rule out the possibility that some of the wounded would die before I reached them if there are a lot of wounded patients at once.

That’s why, I have established a medical unit named “Prière” under the new Hobgoblin Cleric Gobuji-kun as its captain.

TL Note : Prière is “prayer” in french. - Sarah

Although he’s currently the only member of his unit, I hope that other individuals with similar skills will soon be joining him.

Incidentally, you might think that there should be more than twelve hobgoblins. I have not counted wrong however.

Counting off, Gobumi-chan, Gobue-chan, Hobusato-san, and their 5 underling goblins, and four additional goblins that joined, which all total to 12 hobgoblins. It’s simple addition.

But Hobusei-san was not mentioned, because when she woke up she had undergone her next rank up already. According to her, it has been years since her first rank up.

Hobusei-san ranked up and became a Lord base species called the Half Spell Lord.

The reason Hobusei-san wasn’t counted this time is because of that.

Concerning Half Spell Lords; it seems that for hobgoblins who practice magic becoming Ogres is not a popular route, although the probability is lower, mage-type monsters are races that advance on routes that specialize in using magic.

It's really like Hobusei-san who is good at using magic.

Turning into a race that best leverages her strong points is a good thing, too.

It's just that the specialization comes at the cost of lower physical abilities than other lord types, but magic is in the first place a technique to one-sidedly torment the enemy from a distance.

Since it's mostly a close-combat averse race that specialize in using magic, it's not particularly a problem.

A Half Spell Lord's appearance is like that of a human with two small horns. I haven't seen any besides Hobusei-san but there might be differences between individuals, from her appearance, one could guess that Hobusei-san who became a Half Spell Lord was in the latter half of her early twenties; rather than calling her cute, she was like Alchemist-san, an intellectual cool-type beauty who seems like she would look good in a suit.

Bluish-white skin that radiates life, green, somewhat tsurime eyes that show intelligence, in the middle of her forehead a sapphire-looking round gem 3 cm in diameter between a pair of horns, long, ash grey hair that extends down to her waist, and black tattoos on her forearms with patterns similar to mine yet subtly different, these were her characteristics.

TL Note: Tsurime - Eyes that slant upwards, ending in a corner, usually seen on willful, proud, or intelligent characters in visual media. The opposite of Tareme, round eyes drooping downwards on soft, kind, or ditzy characters

Measured by eye, her height is 180 cm.

Speaking of the person herself, the tattoos on her arms were something that had originally not been there, and apparently she herself doesn't know how they got there. It's just that she felt power gathering to the brim near them, so they didn't give off a bad feeling.

When I asked whether she had something like Gobukichi-kun's [Demigod's Divine Protection], she denied it. Apparently she didn’t hold such a blessing.

Hrm, this is an enigma. Well, I expect that this will be explained in due time.

Then Gobujii additionally told us that the "Half" in front of the race's name was because it had inferior overall specs compared to the true species—Spell Lord in this case.

Well, I already thought that much from the beginning because it was "Half".

People who don't quite understand what "Half" means, it's okay to consider things like Ogres and Hobgoblins like that, I think. Knowing that much already means being one step ahead.

It looks like the next time she ranks up she will officially become a Spell Lord, too.

Afterwards, to confirm the extent of improvement to her abilities when she became a Half Spell Lord, we had a magic stage performance by the stream outside, yep, it was amazing. No, incredible.

Among the magic that Hobusei-san could use, there was one that is classified as a second-grade fire-type magic called “Firestorm of Disaster (Char’dei Dirou)”.

I think I was being cryptic by suddenly saying gibberish like "second-grade", so I'll add one thing.

It seems  had defined all ten ranks of magic, from the lowest ranking "first grade", to the highest ranking "tenth grade" according to difficulty of invocation, destructive power, spell release level limit, and so on.

Like the way abilities are often something like [Demigod of Something], in this world, beings that stand one domain above us are real. The world is practically dotted with several places where one can meet Gods—the "Holy Places".

Well, let's put aside Gods and such and get back to the story.

After learning that it is only one step above the most basic spells, you might think it’s weak, but you would be gravely mistaken.

Even by being able to handle the lowest first-grade magic, it's easy to kill several people at the same time.

Just by launching a single fireball of the first-grade fire system magic "Flame Calamity (Char Rou)", several people can easily be incinerated.

By the way, the lightning system magic that hit me directly in the face before was a third-grade spell. If that's true it contains enough power to blow away an Ogre-class monster entirely.

Editor Note : This is the same lightning magic that was used in Day 36 where he was fighting against the adventurers pillaging Velvet’s Treasury. - Sarah

In my case I didn't become like that because the power was sharply lowered by my abilities, but it still hurt…

If you can handle a fifth-grade magic, even burning an entire city block is probably possible.

Going that far, you'd certainly be a monster that can "match a thousand", Redhead even seemed to know of some people that could do the same or worse than that, although only through hearsay.

…I wonder what kind of ability I could get if I ate one.

It’s fun to imagine the possibilities, since the High Wizard that I previously killed and ate could only at his best use third-grade magic.

Though there’s no knowing when such an opportunity will occur, imagining the possibilities is fun.

Going back from what I heard of “Firestorm of Disaster (Char’dei Dirou)”, Hobusei-san once upon a time used it and it produced fireballs with a diameter of ten centimeters, the magic then launched these fireballs five times in a row causing wide area destruction.

It's just that for Hobusei-san to cast it, she needed considerable concentration and a long chant time, furthermore, for several days after she’d used it she couldn't use magic, those were the risks inherent in using it.

When thinking of the great risk inherent in using it, this destructive power could only be used as a last resort.

Now that she had ranked up, it had changed into magic that could not be compared to that of the old days.

The time needed to activate “Firestorm of Disaster (Char’dei Dirou)”, not only has it been reduced to one-fifth the cast time compared to before, but also the diameter of one fireball is now 35 cm, and the total number of shots fired have turned into twenty.

Furthermore, she no longer even gets a feeling of fatigue after activating it, with her current supply of inner mana, it seems she won’t receive any backlash even if she were to fire it twenty times in a row.

Additionally, she could now use even more powerful spells than before.

You could expect no less from a race-specific magician.

By the way, every shot was aimed at the sky. This is because if she were to shoot at the ground, dealing with the damaged terrain would be a bother.

Even so, since she is still only a Half Spell Lord, it got me wondering on how great the magic of a full Spell Lord would be.

No matter how hard I try at gathering information about this world, the information I get is too incomplete, not knowing the limits of power is quite scary.

To congratulate them for their rank up, I did the same as I always do and gave each of the four hobgoblins two magic items.

Hobusei-san got an item from Velvet's inheritance, a robe made from silver and gold thread combined with a red holy shroud that showed several special effects like [Auto-Amplification] and [Physical Magic Damage Resistance] among others.

Another present I gave her was a magic staff named “Arannote’s Staff”, made from ancient wood studded with a red magic gem that used to be in possession of the adventurer with the [Job-High Wizard] who was killed in Velvet's dungeon before.

I also handed over a bracelet-type magic item that had the ability to store magic staves and gadgets that were usually in the way, just like the one I had given to Gobukichi-kun.

Due to the weapons reshuffling this time, the equipment that Hobusei-san was using until now, a staff and a grey robe, were given to two of the mage disciples that were formerly under my command but had now been transferred to Hobusei-san's corps.

Now then, I’ve been grumbling nowadays since I found out the reason of their growth lately.

Yeah, somehow the goblins from the same generation as me seem to generally have an unimaginably high growth rate—or experience point absorption ability. That had been demonstrated by hobgoblins being born en masse before going out of the forest.

I've been told by Gobujii before, but normally, goblins needed years to become hobgoblins.

The reason for things becoming like this was undoubtedly me.

And so I tried thinking a bit, perhaps due to their living environment one month or so after birth, their growth rate was not going to change in the future.

See, because Goblins as a species have a high growth rate, I speculate that the growth of their abilities are also higher than other species. I wonder if I could call it a growth period extension?

In the month since they were born, these goblins have killed and eaten tons of creatures ordinary goblins would avoid like the plague, undergoing a harsh training regimen repeatedly, which has caused their growth rate to greatly change.

Assuming that the growth rate of an ordinary goblin is 1, the goblins that continue to strictly train, kill and eat until their bellies are full is 10, this is what it feels like.

Definitely there’s no way to confirm it, however I suspected that there’s a very high probability that it is so.

I can’t find any reason to deny this hypothesis either.

Also, it is very likely that there was assistance from my [Pack Leadership].

I already mentioned the effectiveness of this ability in raising my subordinates' abilities, but in order to fulfill the conditions for utilizing the ability, I had to come up with concepts for each corps, picking out individuals that I judge to be the most suitable considering their character and ability and assigning them there.

What I'm trying to say is that, shouldn't it become easier to get more and more powerful than normal because of the expectation from usually using the effects of [Pack Leadership] for that purpose?

Well, having an increase in strong companions is something that should be welcomed, let’s stop this talk here because I haven’t gotten any clear proof that this is so yet.

It is however vital that I thoroughly investigate the effects of say ranking up into an ogre in the future.

Among other things I have to figure out an ogre’s lifespan.

If ogres are as short lived as say goblins, of course it would be depressing.

Oh yeah, of the 17 elves we have in captivity, one woman from the seven and three men from the ten have yielded to their desires.

Although I already had Gobumi-chan and the rest, I was curious about what Elven biology was like, so I put myself in charge as her first partner.

For now I'll say that I intended to be as careful as I can to not hurt my partner. But I couldn't deny the feeling that I made her faint.

TL Note : …. his alphaness shined!

Well, yeah, it was awesome. Though I'm not saying anything. Not even that it's because beautiful girls are assertive.

After that, it was the other goblins turn.

This group mainly consisted of goblins from my own generation.

Rather, I strongly ordered them.

The orders were mostly for the sake of the older goblin males… To have them make her feel good when she’s their partner.

But I won’t allow many-to-one. It has to be one-to-one.

I might have thought that she was reluctant because she was a haughty elf, but in reaction to enduring being stimulated with drugs, she was delightedly gasping.

I thought "If she seemed happy about it then it's okay, right?" Well since it can't be helped, I gave up.

Because I gave them detailed instructions to treat the girls with care, and because the girls assigned rooms were better than the subordinate goblins, they shouldn’t end up tattered and then die like what happened before.

Having given that much warning, particularly to Gobujii who was a repeat offender, it should be fine because I took action first and thus had the initiative.

After that, let's talk about the [¦¦¦ of Kins] that I got when I woke up.

TL Note : This is one of Rou’s many “Sealed” Skills. I’d be spoiling on what it is.

Yeah, I really didn't understand how this could be used. In fact, it's not even clear right now what effects it had.

I couldn’t even make a conjecture because the first few letters were blocked.

I wanted to say "Somebody teach me!"

Because it says "Kin", I thought that maybe something or other was messing with me, but…

If it's an ability I learned by myself, usually I could understand the way to use it, but this ability is probably something that I earned because of the rules of this world, so yeah, I don't get it. I'm giving up on trying to figure it out for now.