"Umm… Sir, what's going on?" Gobta stood between Gabil and our group, holding a spear. Why? Because Ranga had offered him up as a sacrificial lamb.
"Beat him, Gobta!"
"Whoo! Smash his face in!" Risa cheered happily.
"But… why…?"
"Don't worry about it, Gobta! How about this. If you win, I'll have Kurobe make you your very own sword. And if you lose, I'll have Shion cook you a five-course meal!" That did it. There was fire in Gobta's eyes, now. He'd still probably lose, though.
"You sure, Lord Rimuru? You'll really have Kurobe make me my own weapon!?"
"Have I ever lied to you, Gobta?" I asked.
"Umm, no… but you have kinda withheld things…"
"You're just imagining that."
"Really? Okay!" Man, I liked talking to Gobta. So easy.
"You know what, Gobta. You can have this sword, if you win." Risa burped up a sword. Pure magisteel, the thing's handle was covered in magic carvings. I could tell that it was at least Unique in grade, probably some sort of experiment of hers, based on knowledge from Dold and the Sage. I knew she spoke directly to the Sage on a regular basis, and one analysis of that sword proved that she was learning a lot from it.
"I got this!" Gobta affirmed, greed in his eyes. While Risa and Kurobe's talents were roughly equal, maybe, nowadays, Risa's swords usually had crazy, off the wall effects. For example, her Solslicer could handle the force of a high-level fire spirit, and when the spirit was infused inside it, basically turned the user into a high-level fire spirit. In fact, in that state, the sword could be considered somewhere between Unique class and Legendary, the class above it, making it one of the strongest swords on the planet. I guess that's what happens when you put a high level spirit into a sword, but still, the fact that it could handle that force was definitely a product of Risa's talent as a swordsmith.
"Alright, lizardman. If you wish us to lend you our powers, then show us what powers you have. Begin!" And with Ranga's declaration, the battle started.
"Hmph! Goblin, hobgoblin, even if you're an ogre, it does not matter! You are no threat to me, a mighty lizardman! The descendent of dragons-"
"You've got a lot of openings, man." Ignoring all of Gabil's boasting, Gobta hurled his spear right at Gabil. Annoyed, Gabil easily batted the spear out of the way.
"Fool." Gabil muttered, but it was already too late. Having executed a perfect shadow motion, Gobta jumped out of the shadow behind Gabil's back, kicking the lizardman in the neck with a powerful spinning motion. Even with his scales protecting him, it was clear that Gobta's kick was a critical hit. Gabil flopped to the ground, instantly unconscious.
…
After Gobta beat Gabil, which apparently only surprised me, the lizardmen took their leave, dragging an unconscious Gabil along with them while the rest of us celebrated. Risa gave Gobta his sword and spent ten minutes explaining all of its functions to him. Apparently, it used processed stones from A-rank monsters as a sort of core, inside the handle. Basically, the core acted sort of like a hard drive for a computer, with thousands of tiny carvings inside it that responded to certain things in certain ways. It also housed the force of a B-ranked monster, placing it in the exact middle of the Unique class. If it wasn't so frail, she said that it'd be nearly as useful as Solslicer, but if you hit the hilt in just the right way, the magistone inside would stop working. There were carvings on the hilt to prevent that, though. Another problem with the sword was in the fact that it was so powerful that she'd needed to place safeguards on its full power. If Gobta didn't fulfill certain requirements, he'd never get full use out of the sword. As it stood, Gobta could only get about 20% of the sword's abilities working, but it was still far and away better than any other weapon he could use. I would've been jealous, if I hadn't commissioned my own sword from Kurobe. I liked things simple and easy, after all.
…
After the lizardmen left, we decided to hold a meeting in a small hut I'd had built near the center of town for these kinds of purposes. We needed to figure out what to do about all of this going forward. I had Rigurd send for the other town leaders. In the end, we had Rigurd, Rigur, and the Goblin Lords, Kaijin, the Kijin (minus Kurobe, who had other things to do), Risa and I. That was pretty much all of the top brass in town.
Kaijin represented the town's production and building interests. Basically anything that the dwarven brothers as a whole had a hand in. Rigurd was basically in charge of the town, politically, with Rugurd, Rogurd and Regurd as his ministers. Then, we had the final Goblin Lord, Lilina, in charge of general management.
Then, we had Soei in charge of intelligence, Rigur in charge of town security, and Benimaru and Hakuro in charge of our new military. Our government was new, for sure, but we had all of the framework down already, with me and Risa overseeing it all to smooth any problems out.
Honestly, I had a lot of plans down the line, like a new research department headed by Kaijin, with Risa's direct oversight, and I already had a few goblins apprenticing under Kaijin and Kurobe, learning how to smith.
As a side note, I actually had apprentices working with all of the dwarves. Thanks to Risa and the Sage, there was a manual to magical carvings, with pictures on every page, going around, printed on paper made from some sort of tree bark. Dord was learning almost as much as he was teaching, when it came to his famous magical carvings.
As for Myrd, despite basically never talking, he was doing a pretty good job teaching our goblins how to build quality housing.
And Garm was working with Shuna to teach a brand new generation of goblinas how to make quality clothing and armor. Even though none of the hobgoblins were capable of learning as quickly as Risa could, we'd eventually have more than enough people capable of quality production, so that Kurobe and Kaijin could move on to more specialized work.