In Summation

A week had passed since that fateful day when you'd expelled the bugs loitering in your new dungeon.

Not much had happened in that time, you and the goblins had slowly cleared the rest of the mines, harvesting rail pieces where you found them, trying to map out the semi-sprawling expanse of it all.

Once you found all the dead-ends, you'd moved on to Phase 2, creating your dungeon. A far harder task than it seemed at first.

Thankfully, due to Boba's presence, you bypassed basic traps like pitfalls and tripwires, not that you wouldn't use them as well, but it opened up more powerful traps to protect yourself, such as basic arrow launchers and iron gates that couldn't be broken down so easily. You were even able to take it one step further upon acquiring the numerous vials of venom, courtesy of your previous occupants, so the arrows were now poisoned.

All in all, it was starting to shape up nicely, with one major problem... the goblins were too stupid and kept setting off the traps themselves, resulting in multiple causalities per day, with no way to heal them. You'd tried using the same magic the girl did in town, no effect, you'd asked Boba to try, in case you weren't smart enough, same result.

Finally, you'd had the idea to carve small tunnels throughout the dungeon, allowing the goblins to traverse the place easily, avoiding both the traps as well as any invaders should you get overrun.

Unfortunately, you, being of normal size, couldn't fit into said holes without ruining their purpose, but that was okay, you were intelligent enough to avoid setting off the traps... you'd thought, but then you'd fell into a pitfall trap, gotten skewered by the spikes waiting at the bottom, died... set off the arrow traps, didn't get poisoned because you died... learned that just because you were the master of the dungeon, you still didn't have a key to any of the gates, Boba did as their creator... and last, but not least, wandered outside to hunt for a harvesting spot for some food, and got lost, mauled by a bear, didn't die, so you had to wander through the woods bleeding and mostly dead to find your way home.

After that, you started designating teams of goblins to accomplish your goals. Well, technically you had before, but as they made much slower progress than you or Boba, probably due to the byproduct of having higher intelligence translating to better understanding, you two had taken over much of the work. The fact that the sudden apparency of quality had only reinforced this idea as shoddy quality traps tended to break more often and had to be repaired, by, you guessed it, you or Boba.

But hunting for food was a simple task so you started sending teams off to hunt for food, you located some ore veins deeper in the mines that respawned every 8 hours and had teams mining them. Thankfully they'd picked up how to mine easily enough.

You still had yet to locate the supposed gold vein in the mines, but you kept looking. You had teams of goblins, chopping down trees outside for wood, a hard lesson in harvesting itself.

Not every tree could be harvested for wood, thankfully, rather than destroying half the forest in this venture, the tree just didn't fall down, but the simple-minded goblins couldn't tell the difference and had to be shown the specific harvesting locations. Luckily, after several trips, you noticed that a few goblins had started to have (designated job:?) listed just under their 'names' and seemed to have a better understanding of how to do their jobs.

All of that led to today, as you embarked on a new mission, with a team of four goblins beside you, sans Boba.

You set off in the early morning with a singular purpose, to locate a nearby stream, river, brook, you'd even settle for a pond.

You'd left Boba behind as while she was very smart and good at creating traps and whatnot, she apparently had a much lower Stealth level than you, possibly due to her not being on the frontlines as much, either way, she was in charge of the goblins in the mines, finishing up on a new room she'd started on a few days prior called an Alchemy Table. It was supposed to allow her to make healing potions like the adventurers, but would need a large supply of water, hence the mission.

Boba only knew the basics of how it worked from the previous goblin camp, as it was the shaman's duty, but she always saw lots of buckets of water being brought in so water you'd gather.

As you creeped through the woods, you noticed the goblins following along, not quite as quiet as you, but doing a good job, nonetheless. But you'd noticed their seemed to be more goblins than previously, not just with you, but in the dungeon.

At previous role call, an invention that seemed to go mostly over the goblins' heads, you'd had 29 of them wandering the mines.

Unless you were losing your minds, you'd started with just under 20 of the little buggers, but Boba hadn't said anything, too busy with her work, and the other goblins didn't seem to notice. Even now, you'd left with four, but six were following you.

2 Daggers, 2 Bows, 1 Spear and 1... Bucket?

One of the goblins was carrying a bucket over his head, with what you seriously hoped wasn't poop given how one of the buckets kept turning up in dark corner full of shit and piss.

Looking it over, nope, this little goblin had instead brought an empty bucket with him, absolutely useless in a fight, at least he'd be able to carry the water back, but if you got attacked as animals tended to congregate around water, he'd be useless as anything more than a sacrifice for your survival.