Chapter 40: [Arc 1] Chapter 33: Before the battle: The Cavalry is born

*thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump*

'What's that?', was the thought of almost all the monsters at the sahuagin settlement, I included. There has been around a week since we arrived, and, to be honest, conquered the sahuagins. And now, an unsettling sound had reached a said settlement, no pun intended.

I climbed the watchtower the sahuagins had fashioned from a high boulder. What I and the sahuagins on guard saw, was a large group of raptors, coming straight towards the settlement. Their numbers are around 90, 1.5 times the sahuagin population.

To make things worse, our defensive wall Sent, and our living arsenal Riri is out on a hunt. Sure, I don't think either me or Virt would get killed by raptors at this point, but the sahuagins won't come unscratched outta this.

While I was formulating a defense plan (massacre them with a rain of poison), Virt got ahead of me, already walking towards the group of raptors. I know that he's evolved and all that, but doesn't he have any empathy for his former race? That's too cold-hearted, even for me. We're talking about Antarctic level coldness here.

That is what I believed would happen, but the raptors started to greet Virt all of a sudden. Oh wait, are those guys...

"These monsters, your friends?" - Bihamut

And there came the boss. Bihamut walked towards Virt while keeping an eye, and spear, aimed towards the raptor group. I don't understand what Virt said since he won't have a language skill, but from their expressions, I think he's right. Then these guys must be other raptors that have the same views as Virt and co.  

So now what? We went from just four people (monsters) to over 60, and now, what, 150? That's one heck of a population boom, alright.

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To include the newcomers, or more like, having the sahuagins match the raptors in both numbers and strength, w came up with the idea of having some of the raptors become mounts for the sahuagins. You know those fantasy movies, with goblins and orcs and whatever, riding wolfs and such? I got the idea from there. 

The raptors all have the [Cooperation] skill from the get-go, so all that was needed was to have the sahuagins getting used to it. 

... I did it again. After learning the concept of fighting together with a mount, the sahuagins and raptors adapt to the idea with light-speed, and there were even a few talented ones who obtained the Rider class. And I'm not talking about as a Main Class but as a freaking Sub Class! I lost to some fish-heads! Ah, the humiliation...

Speaking of the sahuagins progress, some of them has started to learn linguistic skills for writing and reading. With those, they have made tablets out of rocks, and write whatever I'm teaching on them, then they store them in storage skills they've obtained alongside the linguistic skills.

For some reason, they've been asking me questions about stuff that shouldn't be useful in the labyrinth, like how to make a fire, cooking, farming, and many more. Are they planning on escaping the dungeon? Then why did they make a settlement instead of just leaving when they evolved at the higher-level tunnels?

Thinking about it, haven't the sahuagins started to make preparations from the moment we arrived (attacked) at the settlement? Is this because we influenced them? I-I'm not gonna take responsibility! T-this is all Virt's handwork!

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Back to the point, we are a group of 150, plus some more. And what problems does such a group have? Logistics, that's what. We're going empty of food!

Shelter and clothes are okay, with the settlement and the armor-makers, but the food is a different problem. Due to the three evolved big-eaters, our food stocks are dwindling at a neck-breaking speed. And that's before we got the raptors to take care of as well!

The solution to the problem is the turtle snakes. They're propped with nourishment, more than any health food back on Earth. That, and they're the size of a car. Even one of them would keep a family of 10 sahuagins bellies happy for a day. That's a fact since I gave away the remains of the turtle snakes I had left in my storage, after taking only the useful parts to make medicine of. That will make sure we won't be damaging the dungeon's ecosystem too much, like right before those three evolved.

Then there's the problem of acquiring the turtle snakes. Unlike other monsters of the dungeon, they are lone wolfs, not grouping together with their kind. Even the boss-hydra didn't have any subordinates to help him, so it must be a racial trait.

If I, or one of the dino-trio, could collect a huge number of turtle snakes at once, then there would be no problem. But when we have to search the dungeon, then we're too understaffed to do it. Virt and Sent have turned too big to enter most of the tunnels anyway.

We could train the sahuagins and un-evolved raptors to hunt the turtle snakes, but they are the strongest non-boss monsters for a reason. Excluding us evolved freaks, no one in the settlement can fight a turtle snake on their own, and expect to survive the encounter. Even the rats from back then needed to sacrifice many of their comrades to defeat that one.

Therefore, we would need something more than just regular training. We needed EXP and a shitload of it. The logistic-group of armor-makers and collectors don't need it that much, but the hunter-group is a different story. But, fighting in a team means dividing the EXP rewarded for each kill. Even I haven't leveled up in a good while now, though that's more because I've been slacking on the killing. By no means, it's because I'm lazy. Someone needed to do all the teaching, you know!

What's the most effective way of leveling up in games again? Power leveling? That sounds too risky, there are no revival spells here after all, even with our magical dinosaur Riri at service. Then there's the problem of finding strong opponents, which was the problem from the beginning, argh!

Virt won't fight the T-Rex yet, so there's certain that he won't challenge the two other bosses either. They're a worse match-up for us anyway. And if we fought them, wouldn't the meaning of powering up the sahuagins and raptors dissape-, wait a sec! That's it! The reason for Virt wanting to make an army!

He wanted someone who could inherit his will of defeating the T-Rex in case he and the other two failed! I know there are many raptors here who have deserted the T-Rex, but there were around 1000 raptors that watched the fight between the two T-Rexes back when I was only a Grey Demon. That's just 1.5% of the total raptor populace.

I don't think there are so many raptors that follow the T-Rex by their own free will like the royal guard. The reason must be that most of the remaining raptors don't have a hope of winning. Even if they could win, the winner would just take over as a new tyrant T-Rex.

But now, there is living proof that you don't need to evolve into a T-Rex to obtain strength. The problem must lie in the [Pure Water Dependency] skill. Kinda like a hidden effect, which restricts the evolution possibilities. In that case, all that's needed to do is to remove that skill, which is a simple task to do.

All that's needed is to give the skill-holder a name, then the skill goes poof. Virt and co have therefore been busy in naming the raptors, one by one. Bihamut helped them as well, even giving some of the more talented sahuagins names so that they could help as well. Me? I don't care. This is their problem. I'm busy anyway, like thinking of the food problem.

Oh yeah, that was what I was trying to solve now. I'm getting distracted too easily. Now then, going for power leveling with quality won't work, because of the lack of easily findable big guys. Then, what about quantity? Is there someplace with lots of monsters hanging around? Hmm, there! That place! It will be risky, but only I can do that work. And if things go okay, then I'll have reduced the dungeons war potential big time! Let's just hope Virt and Bihamut agree with me...

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