Chương 89: Previously on Grub of The Ironfang

Winter changed the Ironfang tribe in ways that went far beyond simply surviving the cold. The cavern that had once offered little more than stone walls and shelter from the worst of the weather became increasingly organized. A fitted wall and door closed most of the broad entrance against wind and snow, while a ventilation shaft allowed smoke from the fires to escape without leaving the cavern open to the cold.

The work also helped produce something the Ironfang had never possessed before: Builders, goblins whose repeated construction work was recognized by the System and supported with instincts of its own. Grub continued working beside them through the winter, but increasingly, they no longer needed him to solve every problem first. When deepening snow threatened to bury the exterior opening of the smoke vent, he deliberately left the problem to the Builders.

They devised crude chimneys that extended the vents above the snowline, with Grub contributing only a few improvements after they already had a solution. Their work spread throughout the cavern. Storage racks replaced disorganized piles, supplies gained proper places, and eventually the tribe began excavating additional space rather than simply trying to fit more into what already existed.

Grub used Stone Chip to help carve out a new chamber, and the constant repetition pushed the Spell to Level 10, where it evolved into Stone Fragmentation. The Medics were changing the tribe just as significantly. Their System-supported instincts gave them a better sense for wounds, fever, swelling, infection, and whether a treatment was actually improving a patient's condition.

Combined with the cleaning routines Grub had introduced and the plants the tribe had learned to use, goblins who might once have been written off as weak or dying were instead treated and returned to work. Frostvein and Mistbloom became regular parts of the tribe's medical stores, along with bark, needles, resin, charcoal, and whatever else Grub's Herbal Insight and repeated experimentation had proven useful. Other experiments were less medicinal.

His work with Blackthorn Berries and wild honey eventually produced a crude alcohol the Ironfang enthusiastically adopted under the name Thornbrew. Those changes did not go unnoticed by Dravak. After questioning Grub, Throk, Kesh, the Medics, and the Builders about what the System had begun recognizing within the tribe, the Chief made another decision that would have been almost unthinkable when Grub first arrived as a slave. He named Grub his third Lieutenant.

Throk objected, but Dravak made the limits of the position clear. Grub wasn't replacing Throk as commander of the Warriors or Kesh as leader of the Scouts. He was being given a place in Council because he repeatedly saw possibilities neither of them naturally did, and because enough of those possibilities had made the Ironfang stronger that Dravak wanted his voice where decisions were made. Grub almost immediately used that authority for something much less dramatic than war.

Before winter buried the remaining useful plants, the tribe spent roughly two days gathering everything they could reasonably preserve without stripping the forest bare. Frostvein and Mistbloom filled their stores, along with more Blackthorn Berries, Quickleaf, Nettleroot, and other plants that would become difficult or impossible to replace until spring. Quickleaf was already useful, if unpleasant. It could heighten focus and reaction for a short period before leaving the user exhausted and nauseous afterward.

Nettleroot was more dangerous. Herbal Insight told Grub the plant had poisonous properties, but not how to prepare it safely, and experimenting blindly with poison seemed considerably less appealing than making bad alcohol. Then deep winter settled over the Northwild, giving the Ironfang something they had rarely possessed for long: time. The eleven direwolf pups grew rapidly alongside the ten children raising them.

The large black pup with gray paws eventually became Ashpaw, while Sable, once the smallest of the litter, grew large enough to carry Grub herself. The Builders helped develop simple riding harnesses, and the children spent much of the winter learning to stay mounted through the traditional educational method of falling off repeatedly. Grub learned alongside them.

Hunting from Sable's back allowed the pair to travel farther and pursue prey more efficiently, while repeated hunts taught Grub to cast from a moving wolf and taught Sable to recognize the shifts in his weight. By the time the snow began to recede, the wolves were no longer helpless pups or an investment in some distant future. They had become one of the Ironfang's greatest advantages. Spring brought another change. When Dravak called Council, Grub revealed something he had recently discovered through Identify.

Rika, the girl who had naturally spent months organizing the other children and their wolves, had become System-blessed with a Class called Wolf Commander. The children themselves had matured enough to begin contributing as adults, and Grub argued that dividing them among the existing Warriors would waste what they had already become. Their bonds with the wolves gave them something no other Ironfang possessed. Dravak agreed.

He named the new group the Fangs of Winter, for the goblins and wolves who had grown their fangs together through the coldest months of the year. The System responded to the decision as well, recognizing the other nine young goblins as Wolf Riders while Rika remained their Wolf Commander. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. For Grub, it was another sign that the Medics and Builders had not been isolated accidents.

The System seemed capable of recognizing new roles that developed naturally inside the tribe, even if he still had no idea where the limits of that process lay. The Council then turned toward a more immediate problem. Kesh's Scouts had spent weeks studying the neighboring tribes. To the north, the Red Tusk had already been larger than the Ironfang before attacking and conquering the Bristlehide tribe to their west. Now they were absorbing at least some of the survivors and growing stronger.

Attacking them directly would have been suicidal. Ignoring them indefinitely didn't seem much better. To the east were the Duskroot, a much smaller tribe that had survived winter in far worse condition. They were isolated, weakened, and vulnerable enough that the Ironfang could probably defeat them. The problem was what victory normally meant. Grub learned that goblin conquest was brutally wasteful.

Tribes fought until one side broke, killing useful adults on both sides before the survivors were enslaved, punished, or slowly absorbed. Chiefs were usually killed, resistance was met harshly, and even after a successful conquest, integration could take months while prisoners were beaten, starved, worked, and forced into submission. Under normal circumstances, those losses might have been accepted as the cost of victory. With the Red Tusk expanding nearby, they became much harder to tolerate.

The Ironfang needed more Hunters, Scouts, Warriors, and simply put: more goblins. Killing half the Duskroot to conquer the other half, while potentially losing Ironfang of their own in the process, defeated much of the purpose. So Grub proposed another way. Rather than fight the Duskroot tribe, he would fight their Chief in a one-on-o ne duel. If Grub lost, the Ironfang would withdraw. If he won, the Duskroot would surrender without a larger battle. The risk was obvious.

Grub was System-blessed and possessed magic, but he was still a mediocre fighter compared with an experienced Warrior. One successful duel, however, could preserve nearly the entire strength of the tribe they were trying to take. Grub also wanted to change what happened afterward. Instead of trying to break the Duskroot through hunger, beatings, and forced labor, the Ironfang would do almost the opposite.

Prisoners would receive food, water, warmth, clean furs, and medical treatment, but initially not be asked or forced to work. Grub wanted them comfortable enough to stop fearing immediate death and idle enough to begin hating their own uselessness. If pride and boredom eventually pushed them to ask for work themselves, the Ironfang could begin turning prisoners into participants without first giving them months of cruelty to resent. Dravak accepted the gamble, and t he next two weeks were spent preparing for it.

Grub trained with Throk and Kesh, learning distance, timing, footwork, and how to read an opponent well enough that mistakes did not immediately become fatal. Two weeks didn't make him a Warrior, but they made him considerably harder to kill. He also hunted relentlessly with Pebble Toss until the Spell reached Level 10 and evolved into Stone Spear. Combined with Stone Fragmentation, that gave Grub a particularly unpleasant possibility: a spear of stone could be fired first and fragmented afterward.

During the same preparations, Grub finally reached Level 5 and received his first Class choice. Uneasy with how much knowledge and instinct the System could place directly into his mind, he rejected several narrower options and chose the Special Class Earth's Disciple, which offered greater flexibility. He used his additional choice to take the Spell Earthen Skin, giving his small and decidedly non-Warrior body some badly needed protection. The rest of the tribe prepared just as deliberately.

Builders constructed cages before any prisoners existed. Medics assembled supplies before anyone was wounded. Kesh's Scouts refined their knowledge of the Duskroot hollow, while Rika and the Fangs trained for mobility and intimidation rather than a frontal battle. When the Ironfang finally marched east, they did so expecting to win without needing most of that preparation. At the Duskroot hollow, Grub issued his challenge, and t heir Chief, Hask, accepted.

Before the duel began, Grub chewed Quickleaf because he needed every advantage he could get. Hask was faster, stronger in a fight, and vastly more experienced. A System ability pushed his speed even farther, allowing him to dodge the Stone Spear he used to open the fight, causing it to miss completely and bury itself in the ground nearby. The training with Throk and Kesh kept Grub alive as Hask closed the distance and pressured him.

Earthen Skin gave him room to survive mistakes that otherwise might have ended the duel, and as Hask's initial advantage began to fade, Grub finally found chances to answer. He eventually traded a spear to the shoulder in exchange for stabbing Hask in the thigh with his own spear, effectively crippling his mobility. His second Stone Spear was nearly dodged, but struck Hask and buried itself deep in his shoulder. Grub asked for Hask's surrender, but Hask refused, insisting he could still fight.

Grub could have used Stone Fragmentation immediately to kill him, but h e didn't. Instead, he pointed toward the first Stone Spear lying harmlessly in the ground and detonated that one. Then Grub offered Hask a simple choice. Surrender, or Grub would do the same thing to the spear still buried inside his body. Hask yielded, and b ecause the duel had decided the fate of the tribe, the Duskroot yielded with him.

The Ironfang had conquered another tribe without needing a tribal battle and, more importantly, without killing the strength they had come east to claim. Twenty-eight Duskroot remained alive. The prisoners were disarmed and secured while Ironfang searched the hollow for anything worth carrying home. Furs, weapons, food, tools, cord, and other supplies were gathered, while the Medics immediately began treating the sick and wounded rather than allowing victory to begin wasting lives afterward.

Among the Duskroot's possessions, Grub found something else that interested him immensely. Nettleroot. The Duskroot had been using the poisonous plant in their traps, proving they knew how to prepare something Grub had stockpiled for weeks without daring to experiment with it himself. Hask wasn't yet willing to give away everything he knew, but the discovery alone told Grub that the Duskroot possessed useful knowledge in addition to useful bodies.

When the Ironfang finally left the hollow, all twenty-eight Duskroot went with them. The seven pregnant prisoners and two goblins too badly wounded to manage the journey were carried on the Fangs, while the others began the two-day march under guard. The first half of Grub's plan had worked. The Duskroot had been conquered without being destroyed. Now he had to find out whether defeated enemies could become something more useful than prisoners.