As it turned out, including the alpha, eleven direwolves died during the battle, so I was able to take one of the corpses, learning the skills Keen Smell and Coercion from it. I spent the night attempting to mimic a direwolf, to little avail.
Meanwhile, Rimuru spent the night thinking. Just over seventy goblins were in prime fighting shape, ten of them too young to reliably fight unless its an emergency situation. Meanwhile, eighty-nine direwolves had survived the fight. With their intrinsic healing skills, the few injured wolves were already fully recovered overnight. When morning came, he had the goblins and direwolves pair up and live together. Each goblin capable of fighting found itself with a direwolf partner, with a handful of wolves left over, including the new leader, who'd decided to serve Rimuru directly, and another wolf, assigned to me.
After pairing up, Rimuru decided to hand out names. For some reason, each and every goblin in the village simultaneously began screaming and cheering for Big Bro.
He started with the old village elder. He added a 'd' to the name of the poor goblin's dead eldest son, who's name was Rigur, making him Rigurd. Immediately, I could feel magic flow from Rimuru to the goblin.
"Naming takes magic?" I asked Rimuru, noticing this. He went silent for a moment, talking to his skill.
"Alright. I'm naming the goblins today. I'll name the direwolves tomorrow. Risa, make sure you don't name anyone. It could be dangerous, since you're not me." Rimuru announced.
"Don't tell me what to do! Wolfie, come here."
"Woof! I'm here, Master!"
"From now on, your name is Raya."
"Understood, Master!" Raya glowed for a moment, but nothing dangerous happened, and it didn't cost me too many magicules. Meanwhile, Big Bro groaned, before going on to ignore my antics. He named the goblins all in one fell swoop, before spending the night meditating. He named the direwolf leader 'Ranga' the next day. Since Ranga was the leader of the direwolves, the rest of his pack didn't particularly need names. Apparently, so long as they weren't special cases like Raya, choosing to take a name from me, the entire pack would take on Ranga's name. Raya would receive some benefits from it, as well, but lessened, since she now had a special place in the pack.
Apparently, she'd gain benefits on par with Ranga's though, since she got her name directly from me.
Over the next day, the goblins and wolves began to evolve rapidly. Rigurd seemed to regress in age, back to his prime, growing nearly six and a half feet tall. The majority of the goblins didn't quite grow that much, but they definitely took on a more humanoid appearance and mental state, their intelligences growing by leaps and bounds.
Meanwhile, the wolves grew bigger, their coats taking on a black sheen. Officially, they became Tempest Wolves. Ranga seemed to be about a step away from becoming something even stronger than that, though, being nearly twice the size of any others in the pack.
Except for Raya. Her evolution had gone slightly differently from the rest of the pack, since I'd been the one to name her. She wasn't quite as big as Ranga, but I'd say that she was almost on par with him in terms of sheer power. Unlike the others, her fur had flecks of white in it. Apparently, she'd evolved into a Whiteshadow Tempest wolf.
The day after the wolves evolved, we had a celebration feast. With the goblins and wolves all working together to gather food, they could cover an impressive amount of terrain and take out stronger monsters than they would've been able to do alone. Unfortunately, none of what they hunted were strong monsters, so I was a bit annoyed.
The day after the feast, Rimuru began dividing up the work and making rules. Three rules, actually.
Don't attack anything sentient unless given no other choice.
Do not fight among your friends
Do not look down on other species.
The first rule originally was 'do not attack humans,' but Rimuru rethought his wording after remembering his conversation with me, prior to the fight with the direwolves.
Rimuru explained his reasoning behind each of the rules to the hobgoblins and goblinas, but honestly they didn't seem to care too much about the reasoning. To them, Rimuru was some sort of god, to be obeyed no matter what.
And then he laid down the basic assignments for everyone in the village. Adjustments were to be left to Rigurd, who Rimuru designated 'Goblin Lord,' which apparently acted as a smaller version of a name.
When I mentioned this, Rimuru consulted his Great Sage for a moment before explaining it to me. "Apparently, giving a monster that you've named a class helps focus their evolutions, to an extent, making them slightly stronger." After that, he gave Rigur the title of Goblin Captain, just to make him a bit stronger. Still, though, Rigur wasn't as strong, physically, at least, as his father, which was weird. Back when we met him, Rigurd had been a doddering old man, about to randomly keel over at any time.
The next afternoon, Rimuru told me that he was going to a place called Dwargon, along with a small team of goblins, led by Rigur. At first, he wanted me to stay back here and protect the village, but frankly that wasn't happening. He couldn't stop me from going with him if he tried.
Apparently, the point of the trip was to recruit people who could teach our goblins how to build better things. As it stood right now, I was the only one in the village who knew anything about crafting, and my knowledge was all thanks to experiments that I could do inside my stomach.
I couldn't fit a house inside my stomach, so I couldn't make one, and clothes were complicated and difficult, too. Not that I really tried to make them at all. I was a fighter, not a crafter.