The morning sun broke over the Jura Forest in shafts of gold and amber, cutting through the canopy in diagonal pillars that lit the village clearing like beams through a cathedral window.
The air smelled of wood smoke and cooking roots and the sharp, clean tang of magicules — a scent I had come to associate with home.
My home.
My village.
My goblins.
I stood at the center of the clearing — bounced, rather, on a flat stone that served as an impromptu podium — and looked at the assembled hobgoblins.
They were arranged in loose rows, their newly evolved bodies standing tall and strong, their faces bright with the kind of fierce, unquestioning devotion that I had done absolutely nothing to earn except exist and give them names.
The dire wolves flanked the gathering, Ranga at their head, his massive star-furred body settled on his haunches, his blue eyes fixed on me with an intensity that bordered on worship.
The village head — the old goblin I had renamed Gopta, because the name had a certain ring to it — stepped forward.
His evolved form was dignified, his green skin weathered to a deep forest shade, his white hair pulled back in a topknot.
He bowed.
“Lord Dragon,” he said.
“We have gathered as you requested.
But — forgive me — we do not know what to call you.
What name should we speak when we pray?
What name should we carve above our gates?”
Behind him, the hobgoblins murmured.
The question rippled through the crowd — whispered between wives, passed between guards, echoed by the children who clung to their mothers’ legs.
“What should we call him?”
“The Lord Dragon?”
“Lord Veldora?”
“No, no — he did not say that was his name—”
“Silence,” I said.
Not loud.
Not harsh.
Just — firm.
The kind of voice that carried not through volume but through pressure, each syllable weighted with enough magical resonance to settle the air itself.
The murmuring stopped.
Instantly.
I looked at them.
At all of them — the hobgoblins, the wolves, the children, the women whose bodies had transformed overnight from gaunt survival into curves and muscle and health.
My creation.
My people.
“You can call me Rimuru,” I said.
“I am Rimuru Tempest.”
The name settled over the clearing like a blessing.
I felt it leave me — not the magical drain of naming another creature, but something subtler, a resonance between the word and the world, the universe acknowledging that a being called Rimuru Tempest now existed in this reality.
Gopta dropped to one knee.
Then the guards.
Then the women, the children, the wolves.
A wave of submission, spreading outward from the center, every body lowering, every head bowing.
“Rimuru Tempest!” Gopta called out, and his voice cracked with emotion.
“All hail Rimuru Tempest, Lord of the Tempest Federation!”
‘Tempest Federation’, I thought.
‘He came up with that himself.
I only said Tempest.
The old goblin added Federation.
Ambitious.’
I liked it.
“Rise,” I said.
“All of you.
We have work to do.”
I looked around the village.
The huts were sturdy — improved dramatically by the evolution, but still crude by any real standard.
The palisade was stronger, the paths clearer, the organization better, but it was still a goblin village.
Mud and wood and desperation dressed up in slightly better clothes.
I needed dwarves.
Master craftsmen.
Builders who could take this collection of huts and turn it into a city — a real city, with walls and roads and buildings that would last.
And for that, I needed to visit the Dwarven Kingdom.
Dwargon, the Armed Nation, carved into the mountains to the west.
In the original story, the protagonist had taken a small group — Gobta and a few others — and traveled to Dwargon’s gates, where he encountered adventurers bullying monsters, entered the city, met the dwarf craftsman Kaijin, and eventually recruited him and his three assistants.
The path was clear.
The steps were known.
I just had to walk them.
I formed my team.
Gopta — the village head, because I needed someone who could negotiate.
Galmund — a hobgoblin guard, because I needed muscle.
Rigurd — no, wait, I had renamed them differently.
I went through the mental list, cross-referencing my memory of the original story with the names I had actually given them.
The goblin who would become the captain of the guard — I had named him Garm.
The scout — I had named him Hakurou, because the old man reminded me of the original character.
The young one — Gobta.
I had kept that name, because some names were too perfect to change.
Ranga, of course.
The star wolf would accompany me, his massive form serving as both mount and intimidation.
And Cumdump.
I saw her emerge from the tent.
She was — disheveled.
Her dark hair was loose, tangled, falling around her face in wild strands.
Her leather chest band was missing — torn apart by my tentacles the night before — and she had wrapped herself in a crude cloth that she clutched against her chest with both hands, bunching the fabric over her breasts, holding it in place with a grip that suggested she expected it to be torn away at any moment.
Her legs were unsteady.
Her thighs pressed together as she walked, the motion careful, deliberate — the gait of a woman whose body was still recovering from the events of the previous night.
Her inner thighs glistened faintly.
Her face was flushed, her eyes downcast, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
She did not look at anyone.
She did not speak.
She simply stood at the edge of the clearing, holding her clothes against her body, trembling.
‘Did the Lord — did he — with me — did we—’
Her internal thoughts, still within range of my bio-absorption link, were a spiral of confusion and shame and something else — something warm and persistent that she was trying very hard to suppress.
She remembered the sensations.
The tentacles.
The cocks.
The ridges.
The overwhelming, annihilating pleasure that had erased her capacity for rational thought.
But the details were blurred — dreamlike, fragmented, the memories of a woman who had been taken to the edge of consciousness and pushed over it.
‘Was it real?
Did Lord Rimuru — with me — a mother — a common goblin woman — did he—’
She did not know.
She could not be certain.
And that uncertainty was written across her face in a blush so deep it darkened her mauve-green skin.
“You,” I called, bouncing toward her.
“Follow me.”