"Hm… Rates aren't great, but I suppose it will do for now." Technoblade said with a nod of approval as monster after monster came falling out of a hole in the ceiling of the chamber he had dug out for them, screaming in panic in the few moments before their body's collided with the stone cone in the center of the room.
Bones would shatter and the monsters would then roll down the side of the cone so that they wouldn't bunch up and make a mound to break the fall of later monsters, instead spreading out along the rim of the massive cone.
Making a monster grinder hadn't been too difficult.
Techno had gone to a high monster spawning area called a 'dungeon' and found a nice large room within it. He then dug a hole in the center of the room, going down a hundred feet, which is where he created a large cavern. After that, he dug a tunnel leading back out to the surface, avoiding the dungeon's area.
He then returned to the dungeon and turned the room onto a slanted floor, polishing it until it was super slick, so that any monster that spawn there would slide straight into the hole.
After that, he used the stone and dirt he had dug up that day in order to fill the entire rest of the dungeon up, so that only that single room was left as a possible spawn point.
Just like in the SMP, places like this one had a minimum entity count and every time a 'cycle' finished, the dungeon would immediately spawn more monsters in order to make sure that there were at least 25 monsters in the dungeon. Then those 25 monsters would slide into the hole that Technoblade made, fall a hundred feet, break every bone in their bodies, and then be sitting ducks for the party to finish off for easy EXP, and he could absorb all of them into the Legendary Holy Sword to keep the area from piling up.
The set up took around 5 hours, and was a lot less complex than most that Philza would make, which made it less efficient. With Phil's set ups, the screams of the dying were so rapid as to be like a singular unending wail.
With a cycle being around 15 seconds for this dungeon and 25 monsters every cycle, averaging level 16 and being worth about 150 experience points a piece, with a little more given to the person who secured the kill, Technoblade would be making 10,750+ EXP a minute, or 16.2 million+ EXP a day, which should be enough experience to grow from level 1 to level 41.
Of course, that was if they kept up a constant watch, which Technoblade planned to.
"Chilza and I will take the first 4 hours. The rest of you sleep in the room I made over there. After that, you two and the rest of the monsters will take over and we will switch every 4 hours until we are done." Technoblade instructed the children, pointing towards a thick oak door he placed in the side of the wall, thick enough to block out the sound of the monsters' screams of terror.
By the time 4 hours were up, they should be around level 32, if Technoblade's math was right. That would be more than enough to protect themselves even if something went wrong.
…The rate at which the EXP requirements increased was pretty damn steep. He'd use this place himself for a week or so and then move on to find something better. After that, the place could be used to safely train more orphan slaves and young monsters for his army, as well as generate corpses that he could drain energy from for upgrading his Legendary Holy Sword and create enchanted equipment.
The kids didn't argue with Technoblade when he told them to go to sleep. They were already a little tired just from following him around all day. So they went to the little room and went to sleep in the large bed that he had bought before leaving the city.
And so Technoblade started his rounds, circling the bottom of the cone and stabbing each of the monsters in order to secure the kill EXP and absorbing the corpses into his sword.
There were five varieties of monsters that were falling down, including cave troll, bugbears, giant moles and two different types of imps. They unlocked five new forms for Technoblade's sword and allowed him to 'master' those forms by repeated absorptions, giving him small stat ups and letting him learn the 'Air Strike Sword' skill.
This wasn't actually that much compared to the variety he could get by walking around the surface, but this was more about building a solid foundation for his eventual army anyways.
What was really interesting, maybe even revolutionary, was the discovery that he was actually getting 'coins' for each corpse he absorbed through 'item drops', around 20 copper coins on average for each kill, on top of the other item drops.
He could stab things for coins! He'd never have money problems ever again!
Technoblade did two circles around the cone before stopping as he found Chilza attacking the corpse of one of the giant moles, attempting to tear through its fur and eat it. "Hungry again are you? Here you go." Technoblade said, bringing out a bag of monster meat from his sword and laying it out for the bird.
Chilza was apparently a type of monster called a Filolial, a large flightless bird that the people of this world used to pull their carriages. They were omnivores and would eat just about anything, but started off eating softer things as babies.
Technoblade had been feeding Chilza on smashed golden apples at first, but he had been growing rapidly, and was already triple the size he had been when he had first hatched. He was already ready for meat.
Techno chuckled to himself as he watched the bird digging in to satisfy the hunger that always came with rapid growth, before returning to the grind of stabbing dying monsters.
He continued his grind, letting his mind wander as he did, thinking about his old friends and his plans for the future.
The monster grinder was a good source of both experience and meat, but you needed more than those if you wanted to start a war. You needed manpower, weaponry, information, and most importantly, potatoes.
Once he had more personal, he would expand this place out, building up his underground organization. He would need blacksmiths, cooks, and farmers in order to make it a fully independent settlement. He'd also need to arrange for some form of lighting so that the crops could grow underground.
Shouldn't be that hard.
After that, he could hunt down some bandits and force them to become his goons, getting them to spy on the state of the nation, the King and the other 'Heroes', none of which Technoblade would trust as far as he could throw them… though that was probably pretty far.
The grind continued for another hour before something caught Technoblade's ears, pulling him out of his thoughts and setting him on high alert.
It was a faint screaming, half buried underneath the screams of the monsters falling to their deaths… and it was coming from the room where he had sent the orphans to sleep.
Technoblade rushed the door and threw it open, sword raised, ready to cut down whatever had somehow managed to sneak past him into the sleeping quarters.
Only as he took stock of the situation did he lower his sword.
"Mommy. Daddy. Please… Don't…" Orphan #1 cried in her sleep as she was taken by night terrors, the little girl holding tight to Orphan #2 in her sleep. Orphan #2 looked up at Technoblade with sorrowful eyes as he held his friend, trying to comfort her in her sleep as the ghosts of her parents haunted her.
Sighing, Technoblade closed the door and returned to his grind, now with something else to think about.
The pair of orphans were fresh, which would make it easy to get them to depend upon him, and would make the training process easier as well. But it also meant that they were still shaken from the experiences that robbed them of their families. Hopefully, the need to survive would allow them to get over it, the same way it had for Technoblade himself when he lost his parents and was abandoned in a Nether Fortress as a child, forced to fight a practical army Skeletons, Wither Skeletons and Blazes in order to survive.
It was the need to survive that had forged him into the Blade. That, and the desire for vengeance. The desire to make the ones who did that to him regret that they hadn't killed him when they had the chance.
Perhaps he should actually try talking to the children. Find out what it was that haunted them. To see if, like him, there was something that they would need to exact vengeance upon.
But that could wait. For now, there were monsters that needed stabbing.
"Alright orphans. Wake up. It's time for your shift." Technoblade said.
Keel groaned slightly, but did push himself up in the bed he had been made to share with Raphtalia, something that had made sleeping very difficult for him. Not only because of the girl's nightmares, but because… well, she was a really cute girl.
With her long brown hair, tea colored eyes and the way she puffed out her cheeks whenever she was frustrated, Raphtalia was extremely cute, and growing up together in the same village, and being the same age, Keel had developed something of a crush on her. So sharing a bed with her and having her hug him tight for comfort hadn't been good for getting a good night's sleep, and 4 hours was a pretty short nap to begin with for a child.
So Keel was tired, and it was only his stomach demanding food that pushed him up and got him to rub the sleep out of his eyes.
"Keel, is that you?" A voice that was only slightly familiar asked from right next to Keel.
The boy choked as he looked next to him where Raphtalia had been sleeping and found a much different girl in bed with him.
It was a commonly known fact that Demihumans aged as they grew levels, and Raphtalia seemed to have aged four or five years, and was now well into her teens. Her growth spurt had caused her puffy cheeks to become more rounded, and her clothes were now stretched tight over a slightly curvier body.
She was still cute, but now with all the evidence of soon becoming a beauty equal to her mother.
Looking at her, Keel's face started to heat up.
"Raph… you're… you're." Keel couldn't find the words and just ended up stuttering, making him more and more embarrassed, though Raphtalia's next words caught him off guard.
"Keel… you're a girl?"
"...Huh?" Keel said, not knowing why his friend would say such a thing. Of course he was a boy. His father had always told him so.
Keel couldn't see that his own body had grown to be around 13 years old and was now slightly curvy, with still small but noticeable breasts.
"So much for having a breeding pair. Guess the slave trader didn't check to make sure what equipment you had on you." Technoblade sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "Well, whatever. I've got food for the both of you. Eat all you want and then get to work."
Keel was still in shock hours later, during their third 4 hour shift.
Finding out that his father had lied to him about his gender, not telling him that boys were supposed to have penises, was something that rocked his world. …Not that Technoblade seemed to care that much.
While Raphtalia started to become conflicted about how to address her old friend, Technoblade said it was fine. If Keel wanted to self-identify as a boy, then Techno would treat him like a boy. He told Keel it was okay to continue to refer to himself as male or switch to female. It was his choice and Technoblade would respect it.
Not that this made things much easier for Keel.
He and Raphtalia had eaten enough for twenty men that day, and with each hour that passed, they seemed to continue to grow. But while Keel's growth halted when he had the body of a 15-year-old girl, Raphtalia continued until she resembled a young woman of around 18 years. …A very beautiful 18 years old.
Thrust into the middle of puberty, suddenly finding out that he was biologically a girl, and his childhood crush turning into a beautiful woman, left Keel in a very confused state. If he was a she, then why was it that he had these kinds of feelings towards Raphtalia? That wasn't right. Girls weren't supposed to like other girls.
But even so, Keel couldn't even look at Raphtalia, dressed in the leather armor that their master had provided for them, without feeling a fluttering sensation from his head to his toes.
"Keel?" Raphtalia said, causing Keel to jump and his sword thrust to miss the monster's heart and get it in the arm instead, making it even more injured than it was before, but still not killing it.
"Y…Yes?" Keel stuttered, correcting his attack and finishing it with the next hit, putting it out of its misery.
"I was looking at my status page, and I think we were supposed to have grown to level 41 by now, but I haven't. And there is some kind of star next to my level now. I'm not sure what it means." Raphtalia said, pointing towards something that Keel couldn't see. Presumably her status page.
Keel opened up his own and checked, seeing that he was also level 40, and that there was a star next to his level too. "I've got one too." Keel said tilting his head. "I've never heard about anything like that before."
Granted, they had never heard of anyone suddenly jumping from level 5 to level 40 in just 24 hours, but Technoblade seemed to be an otherworldly force that made the impossible possible.
"You think we should ask Master about it?" Raphtalia asked Keel.
"Hm… Probably. Our shift is almost over anyways." Keel said.
Leaving the tamed beasts to continue to bite the monsters falling from the ceiling, Raphtalia and Keel went over to the room that had been reserved for sleeping.
Opening the door, they looked in to see Technoblade sprawled out on the bed, with the largest Filolial they had ever seen lying there with him.
Chilza had grown to be ten feet tall and for some reason puffed out into a massive ball of feathers, looking much bigger than any normal Filolial.
Technoblade was grunting and tossing about in his sleep a little, mumbling something to himself as if trapped in a nightmare. Raphtalia and Keel glanced at each other before Raphtalia spoke up. "Um, Master!?"
"BUTTONS!?" Technoblade shouted, bolting up into a sitting position and sending Chilza, Raphtalia and Keel and tumbling to the ground in shock as he panted rapidly, his massive black pupils, which had dilated to be twice their normal size, looking all around before he finally started to regain control over himself. "Oh thank god it was only a dream. I thought I was back in 'Find the Button' again."
"Are you okay, Master?" Raphtalia asked him nervously.
"Yeah. Don't worry about it." Technoblade said, getting up and starting to stretch. "Is it my turn on the grind again?"
"No. It's just that something came up." Keel said, shaking his head. "We stopped growing levels, and there is some kind of star next to our levels that we don't understand."
"...Hagh?"
Having read a few of Keel's interactions, I'm pretty sure he/she is a lesbian, and in love with Raphtalia.
He/she comments both about finding Raphtalia beautiful as an adult, and thinking her cute when they were kids. He/she also, despite being alright with Naofumi, tries to support someone other than Raphtalia being in a relationship with him, despite knowing Raphtalia's feelings for him.
Technoblade has had casual dealing with both transexuals and homosexuals, so none of this is a big deal to him. He's only slightly annoyed by not having a breeding pair of slaves.
Sorry to the one guy who thought that Techno was having some kind of Harem like situation here. Technoblade is basically replacing Philza as the guy who is everyone's dad. He's just a more violent dad, who teaches his kids valuable life lessons about stabbing.