บท 62: Chapter 62: Sleep

It was in the middle of the day, when the forest was most beautiful. Below the glaring sun was a large forest that spanned for hundred of kilometers. This forest was a special forest.

This was because instead of trees, this forest was actually made of mushrooms. Giant mushrooms no smaller than the trees grouped together to form this large anomaly.

These giant mushrooms came in many sizes and colors. One mushroom could be more than ten meters tall, while the other could be only a few centimeters long. But be they green, red, or blue, all these colorful mushrooms contributed in their own way to make a spectacular scenery. And on one of such mushrooms sat an interesting creature.

The creature looked like a white tiger with red eyes. If it was only that, one could have passed it off as an albino variant of that kind. But other than the unique color scheme and the red eyes, the tiger had wings.

White and beautiful bird-like wings hung on its back. With those sharp and intimidating eyes, the tiger looked coldly towards a certain group of green-skinned creatures down below.

These green-skinned creatures had arrived a few days ago and were looking around aimlessly. The creatures weren't searching for anything in particular. They picked up basically any ordinary junk on the ground as long as it seemed interesting.

During the days that the creatures had appeared, the tiger had been watching them. But even as the days went by, the creatures didn't do anything substantial. The fought with local creature and collects some things here and there, but all these actions weren't alarming to the white tiger.

In the end, the creatures left the mushroom forest, yet the tiger still could not understand why they were here.

The tiger looked at these creatures as they left the forest. From the giant mushroom, a trace of intelligence could be seen in its eyes, but its thoughts were a secret known only to it and it alone.

From the day the creatures entered the forest, not once did they notice the tiger.

Even the child was oblivious to its existence.

...

"My expedition didn't yield any substantial results," The child sighed as he ordered the goblins to leave the mushroom forest.

A few days ago, the child had ordered about five goblins, one gremlin, and three hobgoblins to return to the mushroom forest.

This was the place where a certain hobgoblin ended up waking up after the first clash with the kobolds. At that time, the child was still occupied with defending against the kobolds and had no time to explore the forest. But after the situation had stabilized, the child had finally gotten the time and manpower to get the goblins to explore. But sadly, there wasn't much if anything of interest in the forest other than the mushrooms themselves. Who apparently could glow in the dark. The few creatures that live there were not that special while not many plants could live in this mushroom dominant area. So the exploration didn't really yield much results.

Of course, the exploration didn't only reach up to the mushroom forest. The child had ordered a lot of goblins to try to map out the whole world.

Because this was a rank-one world, the actual size is unlikely to even reach a country's size back on planet Earth. So mapping out the world should be possible. Still, it would take a long time. But that was acceptable to the child. As dungeon takes a very long time to rank up, so he belived that he would be in this world at least for the next 50 or 100 years.

It would not be a waste of time to map out the whole world and know exactly what could be of danger to him in this world.

And it seemed his approach was truly not a bad idea. In the end, a few of the goblins found a few other kobold packs living in the forest.

Luckily, the child was quick to assign a few tamer gremlins to actually communicate with these packs. Otherwise, another battle would have occurred once more.

After meeting these kobolds, an agreement was made between them and the goblins. The goblins would not hunt or encroach on their territory, while the kobolds would not get into theirs. It was a simple agreement between the two. And agreement that was greatly attributed to the fact that the goblins were able to 'easily' wipe out one of the packs in the forest.

Through this misunderstanding, a verbal agreement was reached.

With some explorer goblins going out and the fortifications slowly improving, it seemed like life for the goblins had reached astable equilibrium.

And with this present peace, the child had more time to focus on developing stronger goblins. After all, he can't stay in this world forever. Sooner or later, he would have to leave this world for a higher one. As his rank will at some point increase, the third-order energy provided by this world will soon be far from enough. So at that point, he could only leave.

But the higher he went, the higher the risk and danger he would encounter. As higher-level worlds have higher-level and smarter inhabitants, the tricks he used to take out the kobolds won't work as well. And since the child never truly believed himself a crafty person, he does not believe he could play a game of wit with more crafty humans or even more smarter species. So he wanted to take the muscle route. Well, at least his goblins do that. As at the end of the day, might makes right. As long as you are strong enough, no amount of panning can stop you.

The good thing is, his plans to get stronger goblins seem to be on the right track.

Slowly floating with the dungeon core was a green-skinned creature that curled its body, not unlike a newborn baby.

From afar, the creature looked no different from a hobgoblin. But on closer inspection, the differences were evident. This creature had two sharp tusks protruding from its mouth. Its nose was a little darker than usual and was slightly protruded. On its back, the creature had a short tail. A tail, not like the gremlins that are long and were used for balance. The tail seemed like something forgotten by evolution. Very small and likely has no use whatsoever.

But these differences weren't the most striking. Instead, it was the thin growth of hair on the creature's head all the way to its back. Which was a stark contrast to the hairless hobgoblins.

With all these features combined, it made for a very ugly creature that should only appear in children's nightmares. But although it was ugly, it could be considered a dream for the child. This creature was the closest he has ever gotten when it comes to making a goblin that could house a kobold's consciousness.

Sadly, the creature hasn't truly met the standard. A few more adjustments were still necessary before he could call it a success. So at the moment, the creature could house neither kobold consciousness nor goblins. So the child could only dissolve it because he found it a failure.

"But since this creature was able to inherit the kobold's regenerative ability, it should be close to being considered a success."

Because the regenerative ability was considered a magic-based ability, it was not too hard for the child to actually crack it. The hard part for the child was actually putting it on a living being. Making it such that the creature will continue living without any problems cropping up every time it breathes.

In the end, the child succeeded. But telekenetic communication and the transformation seemed like a far-off dream. This was because the telekenetic communication was genetic, while the transformation was mystic. The genetic one was basically closed off for him, while the mystic one was hard and elusive.

Regardless of the difficulty of finishing this creature, the child continued studying further ways he would continue to change the creature's body in order for it to be recognized by a kobold's consciousness.

"I guess it's time I try to change its reproductive organs too. Since the kobolds were hermaphrodites, then the synchronization rate with the body should be better than when it's either female or male~AHHHH!"

Suddenly, the child started screaming in agony!

...