The goblins scrambled to obey.
The women — perhaps fifteen of them, ranging from young adults to mothers with children — were arranged in a line, their bodies trembling, their eyes wide with a mixture of fear and hope.
I looked at each one.
Cataloged them.
Cross-referenced with my memory of the original story.
The first was young, barely adult, her body slight but with a frame that suggested she would develop curves after evolution.
In the original story, she had been named — I did not remember the exact name — but I was not going to use the original names.
I was writing my own story now.
“You,” I said, bouncing toward her.
“Your name is Bitch.”
The goblin woman blinked.
She did not understand the word — it was in the common tongue, a language she did not speak.
But the act of naming was what mattered.
The magicule transfer, the bond, the evolution.
She gasped.
Her body glowed.
The magicules flowed from me into her, and her form began to shift, to grow, to change.
The next one.
A mother, holding a child.
Her body was fuller than the others, wider at the hips, heavier in the chest.
After evolution, she would be — spectacular.
“You.
Hooker.”
The next.
“Tricksy.” The next.
“Cumdump.” The next.
“Slut.”
Each name was vulgar, degrading, a private joke between me and the part of my consciousness that was still a man sitting at a keyboard writing fanfiction.
The goblins did not understand.
They heard only the sound of power, the resonance of a True Dragon granting names, and they accepted them with tears of joy and gratitude.
The husbands — the male goblins whose wives I was renaming with obscenities — cheered.
They clapped.
They wept with happiness because their women had been chosen, had been named, had been elevated.
‘You have no idea’, I thought.
‘You have absolutely no idea what I just named your wives.
And you never will.
Because you do not speak the common tongue.
And by the time you learn, it will be too late to change it.’
The naming continued.
I named every goblin — the men, the women, the children, the elderly.
Each name cost me magical energy, a measurable drain that the system tracked meticulously.
「Magicule reserve: 47% remaining.
Naming efficiency: optimal.
Evolution catalyst: active.」
The men received functional names — warrior-type names, practical and straightforward.
The women received the names I wanted them to have.
The names that would define their identities in my new world.
The woman I had named Cumdump — the mother, the one with the full body and the child — looked at me with an expression of such gratitude, such devotion, such complete and utter adoration that I felt a pang of something.
Not guilt.
Not remorse.
Just — acknowledgment.
‘You are mine now’, I thought.
‘All of you.
And when you evolve, when your bodies change, when you become the beautiful, curvaceous hobgoblin women I know you will become — I will enjoy every inch of you.’
The naming was done.
The goblins cheered.
The village head — whose name I had changed to something dignified, because even I had limits — organized a feast, a crude celebration with roasted roots and river fish and fermented berry wine.
Then night fell.
And the howling began.
The sound came from the forest.
Deep, resonant, layered — not one wolf but many, a pack, their voices overlapping in a chorus that made the air vibrate and the goblins freeze in terror.
The dire wolves.
Exactly as the original story.
I had been waiting for this.
I sat in the center of the village, in the open clearing, and I listened to the howling grow closer.
The goblins fled to their huts, barricading their doors, clutching their children, their eyes wide with the ancestral terror of prey animals hearing the approach of predators.
Sii stood beside me.
Her staff was raised, her face pale but determined.
“Master,” she said.
“The dire wolves — they are coming.
We should—”
“No.”
I walked — bounced — to the edge of the clearing.
My sensory awareness swept outward, mapping the approaching pack.
Twenty wolves, maybe more.
Large, powerful, each one the size of a horse, their magicule signatures bright and sharp against the ambient field.
And among them, one signature that was brighter, stronger, more intense — the pack leader.
The star wolf.
The one the original story had named Ranga.
I did not make preparations.
I did not dig pit traps.
I did not organize the goblins into defensive formations.
I did not waste time on strategy, because I had something the original protagonist had not — power, and the knowledge of how to use it.
“Cast fire,” I told Sii.
“Around the perimeter.
Do not aim at them.
Just light the boundary.”
She understood.
She raised her staff, channeled her mana, and spoke the incantation.
Lines of fire erupted from the ground, forming a ring around the village — not an attack, but a barrier, a wall of flame that illuminated the clearing and cast long shadows into the forest.
The wolves emerged from the tree line.
Twenty of them, their fur dark, their eyes glowing, their teeth bared.
They hit the ring of fire and stopped, snarling, pacing, the flames holding them at bay but not for long — already, the bravest ones were testing the barrier, gauging its strength.
One wolf leaped through the flames.
It landed in the clearing, its fur singed, its eyes wild, and it charged directly at me.
I struck.
Not with a weapon.
Not with a spell.
With my body.
I launched myself — my small, round, slime body — at the wolf, and I activated Dissolution at maximum output.
My body engulfed the wolf’s head, my enzymes breaking down flesh and bone on contact, the process faster than before — stronger, because I had eaten five monsters and gained their abilities and their mass.
The wolf died in three seconds.
Its body collapsed, the head dissolved, and I absorbed the remains in a single, efficient motion.
「Dire Wolf absorbed.
Ability acquired: Keen Smell.」
The other wolves saw.
They understood.
The snarling stopped.
The pacing stopped.
Twenty dire wolves, each one a predator capable of tearing a goblin village apart, stood in absolute silence and watched one of their own die in seconds.
I turned toward the pack leader.
The star wolf — Ranga, though he did not have that name yet — stood at the edge of the clearing, his fur black as midnight, his eyes blue and blazing, his body larger than the others by a third.
He was intelligent.
I could see it in his eyes — not animal intelligence, but genuine, sentient awareness.
He was assessing me, measuring me, deciding.
I released my aura.
Not a fraction this time — a controlled, deliberate pulse of magical pressure, amplified by everything I had absorbed, everything I had become.
It rolled outward from my body like a shockwave, hitting the wolves, the goblins, the trees, the very earth itself.
The goblins dropped.
Every one of them, their legs buckling, their bodies pressing flat against the ground, their faces in the dirt.
The wolves — every one of them, including the pack leader — dropped to their bellies, their ears flat, their tails tucked, their bodies trembling.
The forest went silent.
Not quiet — silent.
Every creature within a mile of the village stopped, held its breath, and waited.
“Surrender,” I said.
“And I will let you live.”