Chapter 52: Plans and Misjudgments

In front of the portal of the new lord, Garrick Holt.

"Goblin One is ready for launch!"

"Launch countdown, 5.4..."

"One!"

"Launch!"

With a burst of flame, a rocket that was crude in every possible way shot into the sky.

Several small green-skinned goblins rode inside it.

Gears and parts rained down from it and its alarms never stopped screaming, yet the goblins stayed calm and kept taking notes. They watched the land through special spyglasses and reported what they saw to their companions below, in the goblin tongue, without a stumble.

"Forest sighted! Its area runs twenty-four kilometers from west to east, and from north to south..."

"River sighted. Its basin covers..."

"Another group of intelligent beings sighted near the desert. They look like orcs..."

Their companions wrote everything down for their lord at top speed.

With the goblins’ help, Garrick’s map of the continent was filled in at an almost absurd speed.

It was faster and wider than any new lord could have imagined. In just a few minutes, Garrick had charted nearly a third of the entire continent. The edge of the sea had already appeared on his map.

Even Koda had not managed that.

But that was the limit.

"Warning! The rocket is about to break apart!"

"Warning! The rocket is about to..."

The moment the alarm sounded, the goblins strapped on parachutes made by the gnomes and shot out of the rocket in specially built safety seats.

Pure white parachutes suddenly bloomed in the sky, each painted with the slogan "Gnomes are the best, goblins eat *."

A few seconds later, the rocket, its job done, broke apart into a heap of parts and fell burning to the ground.

* * *

"I have the map..."

"Hm? What’s going on here?"

Garrick had come to the continent in person, and his gnomes and goblins had used their one-use high-altitude gear to see how things stood. Now he was surprised by what he saw.

He had not arrived second, as he had planned.

He was third!

Before he planted his banner, Isolde Winter’s banner and portal already stood on the continent.

And in a corner of the land, another strange portal, carved with black and red runes, had long since been standing.

Strangely, there was no banner anywhere near that portal. It was as if its owner did not care about such details, important as they were, yet not truly practical.

’I can understand Isolde arriving before me. She is not far behind me in research, and mastering portal technology was never going to be hard for her,’ he thought.

’But who is behind this portal with no banner?’

Garrick thought it over from every side and still could not settle on the owner’s identity.

’Forget it. Right now the most important thing is to set up a new base for expansion, take the continent’s resources as fast as I can, and make up what my land has spent.’

’Next, I need to make contact with every power around me as soon as possible. Only with a proper two-way line can I trade with them, and through trade I might even build deeper alliances!’

Every lord came to the continent for one reason. They wanted the rich resources there, to keep building their lands and to reach their own goals.

The goal was the same for all, but the way to reach it differed from lord to lord.

Some chose to plunder and claim land, crude but fast, taking what they wanted by force.

Some chose trade, slow but steady.

Others chose diplomacy, helping a strong power destroy another, and then taking their own share of land and resources.

Still, in the early days, most lords tried many methods at once, using as many means as they could to get what they wanted.

Garrick was one of them.

Now that he had charted the land around him, he planned to contact every nearby power as fast as he could, then decide his next step.

The weaker ones he would absorb. The stronger ones he would trade with and ally with. The very strongest he would avoid.

But all of that was only a plan in his head.

A plan was called a plan because it was so uncertain.

Garrick did not yet know what the continent had become.

He had only just built a branch base at the edge of the desert, and before he could send out a single "diplomatic mission," the natives’ "diplomatic missions" arrived first.

But what the envoys carried near Garrick’s base were not gifts. They carried swords!

"Just as I thought, we found them!"

"The great chieftain was right. Evil outsiders who stand for ruin and death have come down near our homeland!"

A savage orc riding a dire wolf roared, and without a moment’s hesitation led the dire wolf warriors around him straight at Garrick’s newly built branch base.

Before Garrick’s forces had even arrived, the orc had received a direct order from his great chieftain: patrol the entire orc territory without rest, and kill any outsider found.

By coincidence, Garrick’s arrival had unknowingly confirmed the shamans’ prophecy.

So the orcs, who wanted only to protect their home, saw a strange people and a great many strange devices in Garrick’s force, and made the most natural judgment.

’Garrick, with his gnomes and goblins, is the evil outsider who stands for ruin and death!’

Garrick had wanted to talk with the orcs first, but he found, helplessly, that they hated outsiders. The only kind of talk they would accept was the physical kind.

He had expected the natives to be aggressive and had prepared a counterattack in advance.

But at this stage, even with the counter ready, the orcs’ last desperate strike turned his newly built base into a field of ruins.

Looking at the wreckage before him, Garrick could have wept without any tears.

And he was not the only one who suffered.

Isolde Winter, famous for her flawless management, had fallen into a hard fight the moment she entered the continent too!