It is often the case that time seems to pass very quickly when one's mind is occupied by something. Said thing could either be an idea or concentration on a certain task. As long as the mind is preoccupied and has a certain goal, one may not notice how many hours have passed.
But it is the opposite when one has nothing to do. Time passes so slowly that one could count every second. This is even worse when one is actively waiting for something.
So you could guess how long the past two weeks were for the child. With his magic plan a bust and his third-order energy so low, he had absolutely nothing to do. To bide the time, the child could sleep and let time pass swiftly. As a dungeon, he does not really need sleep. But he could sleep if he wanted to.
But the child found sleeping too much of a waste of time. The only advantage to it was that his Ether generation doubled while he was sleeping. But the current generation of ether is already enough, so the child saw no reason to sleep.
He instead used the coming time by following his original intention before perusing magic. He created clothing for all the goblins. Using ether, the child was able to create ragcloth for the goblins. Since he did not know how to create fur, he took inspiration from his goblin creation and made the chlothes in a skin-like form.
Ultimately, the goblins now wear dark green rags. Which is weird if you consider the clothes goblin skin. Of course, the child did not just stop at clothing. He also created armor and weapons. For armor, he did not do much; he only made metal helmets using earth magic and a metal chest plate for the hobgoblin. He also made wooden shields using wood magic. He figured that the goblins wouldn't be able to handle too much weight, so he just left it at that for now.
For weaponry, he created basic swords. Well, in consideration of goblin sizes, they were actually short swords. He also added some daggers in there too. He would have liked to give them bows and arrows as well, but since he did not have anything to reference, he was not sure how he was going to make them. Plus, archery is not something one can just dabble in willy-nilly. The goblins have absolutely no experience and are likely to score their own goal with an arrow. So in a battle, it would do more harm than good.
After that, he made wooden dummies. He ordered the goblins to hack at these dummies every day with their weapons. I'm hoping to at least get these green dummies some experience before the true battle.
With the idea already rolling, the child even got them to start doing push-ups, sit-ups, and squats. He sadly couldn't get them to start running in the small space. But who knows? Maybe even without the ten-kilometer run, they would still grow overpowered one day. As they had shown some improvements over the past few days.
It was, of course, not all smooth sailing. As some of the goblins did not do as he ordered after training for a while. Training was painful, and to the not-so-bright goblins, it seemed like a tiring task without reason. Heck, they didn't even know why they were doing it in the first place. So some of them stopped following his orders.
To combat this laziness, the child spent some time working on his plant magic. Ultimately, he was able to produce delicious fruits that don't certainly bring any diarrhea or fatal puking. He then threw them as rewards to the diligent goblins. Since there was now a tangible reason to train, they did it vigorously. As such, the goblins training went back on track.
But although this training was improving the goblin, it did bring about a possible problem.
The goblins now wielded lethal weapons.
Of course, the child was not afraid that the goblins would attack his dungeon core and break it. Even if all these goblins focused their attacks, they still wouldn't put a dent in the core. But what worries him is that they will attack each other. One must know that the male goblin and hob-goblin have never seen eye to eye. The child feared that their hatred for each other might make them draw their weapons. and if either one of them died, it would equal a loss of energy for him.
Luckily, the two were not equal, or else some sort of rivalry would have been born. Making them ignore everything else and start screaming each other's names. Since the two weren't equal, the child was able to take advantage of the male goblin's fear of the hobgoblin and order it not to attack. Because of its fear, it is likely not to ignore his order. It was stupid; I'm not an idiot after all.
But this does not remove the possibility of a battle. Who knows, the male goblin could develop brain cells and kill the hobgoblin while it was sleeping after all.
But the only way to truly remove such a possibility is if he could take away their weapons or give them somewhere else to use them. And connecting to the world is the only way for the letter to be done.
"Should I collectively order them to give their weapons to me?"
Regardless of his regrets about giving them weapons, the training has shown some results. So it could be counted as a success.
But these past two weeks, it was not the only success the child had seen. As the three female goblins from before had successfully given birth to 13 newborn goblins. Unlike last time, there were two female baby goblins this time. But this was nothing to be happy about. Instantly, the number of males in the dungeon exceeded the number of females. A shocking change considering there were only two males a few weeks ago.
Seeing the ratio, the child could only sigh. This was the birth rate for goblins. Only less than 10% of all born goblins are female.
Luckily, though, he was able to fix the difference in ratio when making hobgoblins. Since the goblins do not have genes and ultimately count on their core to reproduce, the exterior still looked similar to how humans do. Like humans, the gender of newborns is determined by the male's sperm. Depending on which type of sperm fertilizes the egg, a male or female will be born. He just made it so that the goblins produced more female sperm than usual.
But he doesn't make it 50/50 like it was when it came to humans. He instead made it 70/30. Of course, in favor of the females. This is done so that in the future, more goblin-generating machines will be born. The males will mostly donate their sperm.
The child did not feel that this would amount to a loss, as unlike humans, there was almost no difference between male and female goblins. There was no strength difference between the two. As for the weakness brought by childbirth and the time of pregnancy, it was too short to become a liability.
As such, the child determined the goblin race would become female-dominated in the future.
"sigh."
The two weeks were long, and the monotonous act of ordering the goblins to train and giving the rewards was not at all tiring. It was just that the child would have preferred if he were to do something more worth the passing time.
Luckily, something did come up.
"Finally, the two female goblins are giving birth."
These two female goblins were the ones that mated with the hobgoblin, not the male goblin. Meaning that if he has made the hob-goblin right, they should be born as hob-goblins.
...
Last chapter for today, but there is still one more for this week.
And oh, creation is hard, if you appreciate my work, leave some stones. If you don't have that, then a comment could go a mile