A week quickly pa.s.sed and the was visible change in the small Goblin community. Every Goblin was armed with a spear or a small dagger, some even both. Will"s brothers had grown enough to join the hunts as well, and they were also armed. Will had taken a small hunting trip just him and Chief, and he had shown the Chief about sneaking and surprise attacks on their prey. Chief was ecstatic in realizing the fact that they could have more hunting parties in smaller groups without a significant risk of life.Will had earned enough respect with the other that he didn"t have to go hunting to earn his food, which left him time to experiment with his other ideas. The first thing he tried was domesticating the boars, but that had ended in a ma.s.sive failure. None of the Goblins were strong enough to handle a boar, and the wooden fences he had created were too weak as well. The first boar they capture had crushed the fence with one charge, and broken Will"s leg as it escaped. He made a crude splint and a makeshift crutch out of leather straps and some branches. The broken leg didn"t concern him much as Goblins had great regenerative abilities, he estimated the leg would heal in a week, maybe two.
Will"s second attempt at domesticating was with hares. He had told Chief to tell the rest of the Goblins: that if they found any hares out in the wild, try to catch them alive. So it ended up with Will having 9 hares in his possession. He separated all the males because he knew they would turn aggressive if they were placed together, and tried to pair them off with the females. However some of them escaped by digging under the small fence he had created. Will was upset but still managed to prevent half of them from escaping. He considered his domestication plan a success, at least for now. The hares didn"t have much use outside of providing meat, but since Goblins didn"t have any habit of farming, they didn"t need any heavy labor through animal domestication.
Farming, that was another thing Will had been considering, but it would be too hard clear any land without using horses or bulls. But he didn"t give up on the idea, there were other things they could farm. One was certain herbs, they didn"t require a lot of s.p.a.ce and they didn"t require a lot of maintenance. However since Will lacked knowledge in what kind of herbs were useful, he put this idea on hold. The second farming option was mushrooms. Mushrooms could be cultivated in the caves themselves, didn"t require sunlight, just moisture and some sustenance which could be provided by animal leftovers or even the blood they got when slaughtering the animals they ate. Will also lacked knowledge in what mushrooms were edible, so he turned to Chief for advice. Chief just told him to test the mushrooms on other Goblins, since even if some of them were poisonous, Goblins had a certain amount of poison resistance so they wouldn"t die.
After spending a couple of days giving various Goblins a variety of local mushroom samples, he had a good idea of what was poisonous, what was edible, and even one particular mushroom that had an adverse effect of increasing focus and reflexes at the cost of severe dehydration. This was a great find, he could maybe make this into a crude pill in the future, but he first had to create the farm itself.
Will found a suitable place for the farm in another dome shaped cave, this one had a very small hole at the top of the dome, it let in some sunlight and some air, but not enough to affect the mushrooms. He then spent a couple of hours dragging some dead tree trunks into the cave, and rolled in some smaller "boulders" as well. He divided up the room for three different types of mushrooms, he chose the two mushrooms that provided the most nutritional value, and also the "adrenaline" mushroom, which is what he called the mushroom with the adverse effects. After carefully placing the mushrooms in their designated areas, he took a stone bowl filled with blood and carefully spread it out on top of the mushrooms. He didn"t put any innards or other leftovers afraid that too many insects would swarm the room and ruin the mushrooms.
Will was finally satisfied with his efforts, he told the Goblins not to enter the mushroom cave for a while and hopefully he would see results within a week. He was done with "innovating" the Goblin community, and decided to put his focus back on creating tools, maybe even some more advanced ones.
Two months after he was born into this world as a Goblin, Chief approached Will in an almost jubilant mood. "Sow is ready! Time to mate!" Chie exclaimed. Will was stunned and had no idea how to react. [Mating? I"m only two months old! And with whom? As far as I know there are no female Goblins.] Chief grabbed Will by the arm and dragged him towards an area of the cave system he hadn"t been to before. Once they got in to the cave room, Will almost threw up at the stench. He fell to his knees with eyes wide open, he couldn"t believe what he was seeing.