In the end, it was another failure. The goblin refused to become my citizen, so I sent it to le racoons.
However, as they say, failure is the mother of success. I was actually able to obtain some important information this time. It seems the requirements for citizenship granting were:
1. Be intelligent enough.
2. Be aware of my existence and have sufficient affinity.
3. Be able to recognize and accept me as their Sovereign.
And as I thought about it, it actually made sense.
After all, imagine wandering into an unknown place, and then suddenly some guy asks you to become his follower when you have no fucking idea who that dude is. Would you accept?
Haiya….
What a pain in the ass.
How the fuck do I leave a good impression on the goblins now? Do I bribe them with a lot of food?
Well, I could try to become like an unknown god who blesses them with endless food!
But… how much food would it require? One hundred steaks per goblin? Or one thousand?
It was uncertain. It could very well sink hundreds or even thousands of points just trying to domesticate these guys. Hell, there was no guarantee that food would work in the first place!
But… it's not like I could think of any better idea for now, so in the end, I decided to go with it.
Alright. Commence Operation Goblin Domestication!
But before that, to buy food, of course I would need more points. A lot of points, to be precise.
So I would need to save up points again—probably by killing more goblins first. After all, once I started feeding them, I wouldn't be able to kill them anymore, since doing so might damage their trust in me if they found out this guy had been feeding their friends to raccoons!
Thus, I set a clear goal in mind: stockpile 200 points before commencing this domestication operation.
***
And so, for the next few weeks, I farmed those goblins like there was no tomorrow. Every three to four days, another group of goblins would show up to donate points to me.
That said, I did feel bad for the raccoons. They weren't happy at all. The poor little guys always had their rest disturbed and were constantly on high alert. I noticed their fur getting more and more ragged—obviously, the goblins were stressing them out. At this rate, I might end up chasing them out of my castle, which I absolutely did not want. By now, those guys were basically my tiny little pets.
So, I decided not to bother them anymore.
Instead, I came up with another way to kill those goblins.
Turns out, it was actually super easy!
I could just drop heavy stuff on them!
Somehow, whenever I chose to release an item from my inventory, I could choose not to place it gently on the ground, but instead… drop it!
There was a limit, though. I could only drop items from up to twenty meters above floor level. (For example, if I chose my second floor, I could drop items from a height equal to the floor height plus twenty meters.) Even so, that was more than enough.
So when goblins came, I simply baited them into my front yard and then—
BAM!
Fifty kilograms of stone came crashing down from above, crushing them to bits! That was equivalent to five units of stone, since 1 stone turns out to be exactly 10 kilograms.
It's also the same for iron and wood.
And thanks to that, the racoons finally had their well deserved peace.
But there's big problem with this approach, though.
Because I crushed those goblins so badly, the corpses sold for far less since they were heavily damaged. Still, as long as I didn't have to bother the raccoons again, I was satisfied with it.
Then, as I kept doing this, another idea came to mind.
Instead of crushing them with stones… what if I dropped something sharp?
So, I immediately tried that with the next group of goblins!
For five wood and one stone, I crafted a wooden spear. Then I carefully aimed it so that it lined up perfectly with the goblin below…
And sploosh!
Skewered!
The goblin died instantly!
Compared to my previous method, this turned out to be even better. First, the corpse remained in near-perfect condition and could be sold for maximum value. Second, I could always retrieve the spear back into my inventory, so it didn't really cost me anything to kill the goblins.
And so, on Day 78…
I finally did it. I reached my point goal!
Points remaining: 216
Now, it was time to get my first citizen!
***
However, on Day 80…
Instead of the usual two or three goblins…
A large group arrived. No fewer than thirty goblins!
They didn't enter my territory. Instead, they stopped right in front of my gate, shouting loudly.
Leading the group was a goblin who seemed much older than the rest. Its face was deeply wrinkled, and its body was covered in tattooed paint. It wore all kinds of bone accessories and held a long wooden staff topped with a deer's skull, like some kind of shaman.