It should be noted Loyee and Diana periodically check-in. Loyee, usually for official business. Diana because she is absolutely amused by our kobolds. She even invites some of her divine friends to join her to watch. We try to be nice hosts by providing them with berry and fruit juice. The look on her friends faces when they realized the drinks just materialized beside them as they watched the kobolds was near priceless. If only Diana did not catch wind of it, that would have made it perfect.
It did not take long after the kobolds to figure out how to survive properly to start running into the ultimate trick of Krypt, old age. It seems that the kobolds we spawn start at a young maturity. Somewhere between two and three years old and the average lifespan is somewhere between ten to fifteen years. Twenty if they are lucky. Oddly when the kobolds reached their twilight years, a new one was born. This surprised even Loyee, it seems that it is natural retention of inheritance born from the decreasing ability of the elderly. It is an offset adaptation of Boss that caused it. Speaking of Boss, he is no longer solely a menu entity like me or Vision. He became our, well, boss. We never realized it until he crawled out of the central chamber to go hunting. Cherry was ecstatic because having a dragon as your first boss was not an everyday affair. Considering we have only one boss, it does not seem too unusual.
It was in the middle of the fourth generation of old kobolds when we finally got our first outsider visitor. A small human child no more than eight to ten years old. Hunter found him in the woods passed out from exhaustion and blood loss. The multiple cuts were from more than twigs and briers. Someone deliberately tried to kill the boy. By his dress, he was not a regular individual. His garments were exotic in quality compared to what the forest could provide. Cherry called him a noble. This sent a shock through the kobolds. Death by another’s hand is something none of us want to experience and letting a noble die sounded like a sure way to do it.
Mathew slowly awoke to find himself looking at the ceiling of a log cabin. Obvious signs of age, as well as maintenance, were apparent. Then the pain struck him. The memories of being cut by those he thought were his guards caused him to start shedding tears thinking about those he knew were loyal being cut down. This caused him to return to his injuries. Whoever treated him or saved him did not have a good supply of cloth. As his clothing were used as bandages being held together by crude plant fiber twine. Then realization came to him and he reached for his neck and he was relieved his royal symbol was still there. With that finished he began his self-check and looked around. Along with the primitive bed he was on, there were four others. Also well used. Given the size and stature of everything around him, he figured some down on their luck dwarves had settled in the area. He would feel fortunate to fall into one of the light god’s followers groups. He could bargain his return to his father. Based on the lack of evil taint and markings, he knew it was not a dark god. So when he moved the animal skin to thank his rescuers, he nearly collapsed when a kobold had her tongue sticking out over a copper pot. She ignored the new addition to the room as she got a bowl and dipped out what she was cooking then handed it to him. Seeing meat in the bowl, Mathew became reluctant till he saw the still half butchered deer on a table. The kobold then started to push the bowl into his hands more insistent and he took it. Finding a newly carved wooden spoon he began to eat as he watched the kobold continue to work on the deer.
The stew was rather bland in Mathews’ opinion. He had been raised in a royal setting. Which meant higher class meals than the slightly rich in mana pickings of the land. Yet, the slightly rich part is what puzzled Mathew the most. It has enough mana in it to be completely drenched in the low-density mana. Not enough to bring real change, but enough to vitalize everything it touched. Almost as if a new dungeon appeared and decided to just go idle for a few centuries. Could these kobolds be part of Loyee’s ilk he wondered as the door to the front of the cabin opened? With it came maybe the biggest male kobold he had ever heard of. In one arm over its shoulder, he held a large bundle of firewood. Enough wood to burn at least a week continuously. Which says something to the kobold’s strength alone. Yet in its other hand’s grip were copper rods. As plentiful as the firewood. The kobold that was cooking drops what she was doing and goes to a copper ring on the floor. The male kobold goes down the secret passageway and the cook returns to the stew. Before the big one could come back to a large female one as impressive as the former one that came in in the same manner. She carried a wooden box. Mathew could not contain his curiosity as she sets the arrowheads in the box on a table with dozens of wooden shafts and bird feathers. One of them was fletching arrows. On another, she left several small blades. These the cook took interest in as she exchanged them for those she was using earlier. The large female gave a few low tone hisses, presumably in annoyance, before leaving with her box. With that, the large male came back from downstairs and quickly grabbed a bowl of stew set out for him by the cook. He took it, looked at Mathew, then went to a bare spot of wall. Not daring to begin eating yet. It was not long till the large female came back, but not before the cook took the butchered meat outside and she came back smelling of smoke. He never considered them preserving it.
The next kobold to come in told Mathew to be more courteous with this one than the others. He had the eyes of a serious hunter. He took off his bow and hung it on the wall before setting his makeshift quiver on the fletcher table. The hunter was much leaner than the other three kobolds. Putting an emphasis on speed and range over endurance or strength as the two that came in before him appeared to have. Still, he took his bowl of stew and waited by the fletcher table. The last kobold to join them was something of a match for the cook. She was about the same as the cook but an obvious stranger. His eyes, however, were just as sharp as the hunters. This could be told by the bounty he brought in. Herb, all lower tier magical, and several roots and fruit also lower tier magical. This latest kobold gave each of them, including Mathew, a piece of fruit before grabbing her own bowl and settling in. With her settled the cook moved the pot off the fire and grabbed her own meal and settled in. In unison, the kobolds started speaking the same thing in their reptilian tongue. He had no idea what they were saying but he got two clues. The names of two deities were spoken, always being translated for all to understand who is being spoken about. As he thought, Loyee the neutral goddess of dungeons and Diana the neutral goddess of magical creatures. If his theory is true then these were dungeon monsters who survived their bound dungeon being destroyed. Which would explain the concentration of mana in the area. As soon as that mana ran out, the kobolds will be dead in a week unless they were bound to another to feed them mana. Because he was saved by them, he felt he owed it to them to save them from such a fate, but he was not a tamer. That is a rarely trained class used mostly for scouts or stable masters. As tamers rarely grew strong enough to tame something strong. Mathew knew, just like every other class, that tamers could be strong. In fact, he knew it was one of the stronger classes, as there are legends of a dragon tamer who managed to tame an entire dragon collective once. Still, he felt he had to try.
