Mindy
Fixating on the issue, she decided to break it down.
Her devotion wasn't something she could deal with on her own. No, she'd have to rely on Gube to pull their collective weight in that regardâ¦
But how to deal with what she âcouldâ work on?
Right, she needed power, which meant she required either more goblins believing in her or more souls.
Gube could reasonably only do so much on her own. There were only so many hours in the day, and unless she was hiding her true abilities like Clark Kent, Mindy felt she had a handle on what her champion could feasibly bring to the table every day.
That meant her bottleneck was manpower.
And, simply put, not enough of it.
What she needed to do was corrupt more goblins, yes, the men were definitely out of the question, given she still wasn't interested in shoving herself up the back entrance, but there were actually more females to whom she could âstomachâ granting her power to.
There was the issue of the defiler tendrils themselves costing so much of her base power, which, at her current state, would see her in a small deficit if she tried to manifest one.
Yet, the option, strangely, wasn't greyed out when she observed itâ¦
Similarly, her ability to corrupt didn't seem to actually cost anything of herself outright, which was presumably her saving grace in this matter, butâ¦
"First things first, why can I summon a defiler without the requiredâugh, manaâ¦"
Deciding to just try it out and see what happened, Melinda found her perception of the world turned grey and washed out, save, of course, for a lone beacon of light that shone with a subtle green hue.
Gube.
"Christ! That should have been bloody obvious!" Mindy admonished, sighing as her brain made the connection. Gube was within her influence. Thus, she could manifest what little of herself she could through her precious little fanatic.
She did so a moment later, judging the brief pause in the impromptu ceremony to be as good a time as ever.
When her defiler emerged from Gube's abdomen, the honest âbest placeâ she could think of to summon it, her goblin zealot squealed with delight! Dropping to her knees as, she reverently held the tentacle with both hands, singing her dark lady's praises before snapping at those around her, demanding they do the same.
Surprisingly, all listened, with even the two notable holdouts, the old Rattles and the muscled young-hob Strong-arm, seeming to shy away with uncertainty, bowing their heads in apprehensive respect, if not outright submitting.
"Oh, great dark mistress! What does your will demand of her servant, Gube?"
Mindyâcringed just a little inwardly, feeling like things were hitting a little too close to the weird end of thing, but she was committed at this point, and if she didn't fill the imagined role expected of her by her priestess, the goddess suspected she might feel rather shitty for it all.
She couldn't talk of course, but the tendril was rather useful for pointingâ
Go figureâ¦
So, Mindy just chose a random goblin woman nearby, hoping Gube would understand.
It took her champion a half heartbeat to figure out what she was trying to convey, a sense ofâdare she say, disappointment, brief as it was, flashed across her face before she once more took upon herself the guise of her dark lady's most devout believer.
"You!" Gube pointed, rising as she singled out a lone and rather terrified-looking goblin. "Dark lady has chosen! Come, approach Gube, accept giftâ¦"
The apprehensive goblin peered around herself, confused as she was frightened, yet she still made her way towards the towering beauty beckoning her forwards for all to see.
Then, prostrating herself before a loudly annunciating Gube, who added her own vehement religious flare, the girl waited with body-wracking shivers while the loud and boisterous priestess placed both hands on the girl's rear.
"You have been chosen to receive gift of goddess! Be joyous! All will bear witness to her mercy!"
Mindyâgrudgingly extended her tendril, letting it snake its way around the shaking goblin's leg toâgod damn it⦠Keep her âsecureâ...
This time, she at least didn't feel the same maddened rush she had before, most if not all of her faculties remaining in a deviation from what she'd expected to be something like the norm. Honestly? It was incredibly appreciative, even if she did wonder why sheâd gone off the rails with Gube.
Perhaps the fact that she hadn't had any followers had sort of sent her new god-like self into a frenzy of sorts?
Maybe Gube herself was the difference.
Maybe manifesting the tendril not from the void but from her followerâtempered Mindy's godly and savage âinner Zeusâ.
Either way, she was thankful, and it allowed her to make the entire process as sterile as she could manage.
Still, she was âfuckingâ the poor woman in front of her whole clan, the girl made into a spectacle by her priestess of the faith who lorded over the proceedings with an almost smug satisfaction.
And yet, Mindy managed to release her corruption shortly thereafter, going as fast as she could simply to be done with it. Also, finding, in a very similar fashion, that the climax still seemed to make the girl pass out.
A familiar screen emerged in Mindy's purview not long after, the tiny green woman by the name of âRellâ, appearing as another lacking specimen, at least when it came to how her power âquantifiedâ those it had been bestowed on.
"She's definitely not as bright as Gube wasâ¦" Mindy mused, not needing to chew over the non-existent crunchy numbers of the goblin's absent stats to know what âdumbâ looked like.
Briefly, she considered just leaving her with the initialized system and being done with it, but that wasn't exactly what was needed at the moment.
Gube had really been selling her whole âblessingsâ thing⦠and if the very first devotee that she granted her power to, after all that grifting, wound up looking exactly as she previously had with no noteworthy changes⦠Well, Mindy didn't think it would end amazingly for anyone.
"What we need is a little showmanship," The goddess whispered, nodding her head with the thought. "But what can I actually do here?"
None of the attributes were greyed out, which was good, but, Mindy had a sinking suspicion that, much like how levels worked in games, the higher the number, the greater the power sink.
It was likely an exponential process when she really sat down and thought about it; after all, if the system was gamelike at its core, then it should mimic the idea close enough for her to anticipate how it worked.
And with the attributes, simply put, not there to begin with, even Melinda's paltry reserves of divinity seemed to be enough to raise her up, if only a littleâ¦
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But that left her with something of a conundrum.
She couldn't just spread what she could out, no, Mindy needed what she accomplished here to âpopâ.
It needed to be big, it needed to be memorable, it needed to be a reason for her goblins to venerate her beyond some notion that she was a minor deity of something stupid like poorly cooked venison.
Idly, she considered her options, strength looking like the obvious choice for no greater reason than it would like as not have the greatest visual appeal to the creaturesâ¦
Still, once she started sinking stats into something, she knew there was no going back, so if it didn't turn out as she wanted, it would all just be a disaster.
Annoyed and unable to make a decision in the moment, Mindy's gaze drifted towards the goblin's species, noting there to be a drop-down menu that was available to click on.
Hesitantly, given the permanence of her actions, she clicked on the arrow, her curiosity getting the better of her, only for Mindy to discover there was a perfectly non-grey alternative to the âbaseâ goblin that had appeared, the name familiar as she herself had been the one to coin it.
"Eldritch goblinâ¦"
Well, if nothing else, assuming the new girl at least took upon herself more of Gube's âuniqueâ traits, she genuinely thought that might just be enough.
Flashy and showy for the sake of the drama and all that jazz.
Sure, the goblin might not be as capable as Gube, but she didn't need her to be either. It was just shock value. Yet, If she had an army of these little critters running about like locusts, then, yeah, obviously that would work for any long-term goalsâ¦
She mentally selected the option in question, noting how her devotion hardly seemed to dip. However, what emerged from the window once the decision was made was, undoubtedly, Gube's âunfortunatelyâ ugly duckling of a sister.
While the spine had been straightened and she was taller, nails turned to talons, and her shape contouring to a more lethal grace, she was still âgoblin-esqueâ, if that made any sense to anyone but herâ¦
"Maybeâundomesticated fits better?" She mused, considering it for a time. The girl wasn't ugly per se; in fact, compared to normal goblins, she was no doubt pretty⦠But it was just that when compared to Gube, it just looked so lacklustre.
In all honesty, the goblin actually looked like she'd gotten a significant facelift, all things said and done. As though the goblin species were inherently âuglyâ at their genetic level while her new goblin species, with Gube as its original example, took slightly after her chosen champion becauseâfuck it, shy not?
"Magic rules for the win, baby!"
She suspected it had something to do with magic, regardless of what was happening or her own opinions on the matter, Melinda's working theory rattling around along the lines of Gube being something of her very own baseline before all the extra points in her stats.
Mindy was reasonably sure she'd made the Eldritch variant of her goblin somewhere before she'd finished finagling her appearance, but after the stat adjustmentsâ¦
So, maybe her system was sort of trying to balance things out and going for a middle-of-the-road kind of deal? Honestly, Rell wasn't bad when pitted against the average human girl. She really wasn't; makeup, of course, discounted.
Well, Mindy still had power to spend, not much, mind you, but with a âweightyâ seven percent in reserve, the goddess decided to just go all out.
Changing her new worshiper's species had cost two percent of her total power. And, she managed to push four points into physique without much of an issue.
Again, It wasn't Gube levels of sinful allure, but the woman, at least in the window, definitely shot up from a wretched âtwoâ as a normal goblin to a passable human five, and now she was definitely eking out towards a generous Hollywood sevenâ¦
If Gube was an Eidolon of beauty, even by Mindyâs standards, then Rell was at least a Playboy model by goblin onesâ¦
Cute and pretty, in her own snaggle-toothed sort of wayâ¦
The fact she'd managed so many points with so little power before the physique line had greyed out was, if nothing else, empirical proof that things got pricy the more they grew in quality. She'd observed how much devotion it had cost her, and while the leap from zero to two and two to three had been a single percent respectively, three to four had cost double that amount.
The change totaled a complete four percent of her maximum devotion before the stat was locked. And, if the pattern remained as she thought it might, it was no surprise that Gube had practically flat-lined her reserveâ¦
Though when she really tried to work out the numbers, they still didn't quite mesh in her head.
If things were simply doubled at semi-random intervals, she'd have hardly managed half of what she'd done with Gubeâ¦
"Needs more data," She mumbled, moving on to decide where the final points should go.
With the change to the goblin's physiology, physique had been the obvious choice. After all, sex sold, and despite not holding a candle to her sumptuous priestess, Rell was practically a supermodel when compared to those around her.
Since that stat was locked out with her final three percent, Mindy decided the poor creature could do with a slight bump to her intelligence. Bringing the statistic up to a goblinoid respectable three.
She was about to call it all quits with her last percent in tow when her blinking devotion ticked a single point over the edge; another a lone percent manifested in a serendipitously perfect way!
She quickly tossed the extra towards the intelligence of the soon-to-be Eldritch goblin, grinning at her luck. Then she waved away the window and focused upon what was happening below, watching with fascination as Rell was enveloped in inky darkness, only for the cocoon of bleak shadow to dissipate around her, leaving the young woman âchangedâ forever more.
"See!" Gube screamed, holding both hands in the air as she gestured to the heavens themselves. "Dark lady blesses goblin! Rell reborn as Gube! Rell gifted power to consume souls! Rell will grow mighty as she serves her!"
A ragged and uncertain âcheerâ filled the chamber as the taller and pleasing goblin female rose from her prone position, blinking as though seeing the world for the first time, much in the same way as Gube had herself.
She followed a growing pattern, staring at her hands and arms, now slender and smooth, feeling at her pert bosom, which, while not nearly so gifted as Gube's, was both firm and shapely when compared to the drooping wrinkles that were present before. She wasn't so much as elegant and serene as the priestess, but, in Mindy's world, she'd been a definite lookerâ¦
It made Melinda question if the golden rule of âtenâ was what she was dealing with. Surely, Gube's handful of points above that weren't the equal of the above-average looking humans on earth. And, after Rell's transformation, Mindy wondered if âtwoâ and âthreeâ were more the average for goblin kind, and anything beyond that natural statistic had an astonishing effect.
Was there a soft cap on stats?
Diminishing returns beyond a certain threshold?
Surely Mindy couldn't really imagine Gube looking much better than she already did, so what exactly would happen if she put another, say, thirty points into physique? That being said, it wasn't like good looks were ââeverything; here⦠And the stat did alter quite a bit more than offering mere vanity points.
God, she had so many freaking questions that she was practically tearing her damned hair out! She needed to prioritize creating more Eldritch goblins.
She needed her army fueling the machine of war a.s.a.p.
She needed to get this whole âgod businessâ rolling before getting caught out and challenged by a potential rival.
A moment later, Mindy had yet another epiphanyâ¦
Slowly, pulling up Rell's status page and eyeing the distribution of souls, she stared at the bar for several long moments in silent thought.
It was the same as Gube's, but that in and of itself was something of an issue. It wouldn't do for Mindy to grant another goblin her power, only for the creature to grow beyond the capacity of her chosen's ability to quickly deal with or put down.
Her chosen goblin needed to stand at the pinnacle, forever and alwaysâ¦
But how to achieve it?
Sure, she could just reduce their share to something practically anemic, it wasn't like the goblins would know the difference, but that didn't completely solve any future problems. After all, what was the point of giving them the power but not letting them benefit?
No, that line of thinking would just leave her with âslightlyâ better goblins and a grind the length of the Great Wall of China.
Still, she needed Gube to persist as the penultimate power to her own⦠and the only way she could really think to do that wasâ
"Pyramid scheme!"
The goddess grinned at the thought of it, the idea brilliant as she considered how fast Gube would grow in strength if, say, eighty percent of what all other corrupted goblins made would transfer to Gube herself, who, in turn, lost seventy-five of everything she got to Mindy.
In effect, giving her priestess a sort of passive income of her own that should keep her well atop the curve with enough of her flock running about⦠"Late stage capitalism to the rescue⦠who'd have thought?"
Maybe it was a little too late for Rell, but having a second in command that was in every way inferior to herself, without the passive souls or the reduced share, was actually sort of idealâ¦
As for the rest?
Well, it wasn't like she really felt âtoo badâ as they would still have access to the system and level, it would just be slower.
Some hard work would be good for them, after all.
Still, it wasn't even like it would be that different when compared to Gube as she was now.
Hmmmâ¦
She'd see about making the change as soon as she could.
For the time being, Melinda contented herself to plot and scheme, returning her focus to a reinvigorated oration that saw Gube parading her new sister before all those around them, her positively glowing expression practically oozing self-satisfied confidence as all the goblins knelt before her, Mindy's mind filling with the eager prayers of nearly all in sight.