Chapter 89: Female Kobold?

[You gained 70% energy of Kobold Scout (Level 15)]

[Congratulations! You have reached Level 39]

-All stats are +1

-You acquired 1 Stat Point to use

He put it into Mana.

Not that it ever felt like enough but every point counted when his portal skill drained the full pool.

He kept going. Found three more patrol groups over the next two hours and by the time the sky started turning orange he’d killed enough that the notifications were stacking faster than he could read them.

[Congratulations! You have reached Level 40]

-All stats are +1

-You acquired 1 Stat Point to use

Level 40. All stats at 51 base!!!

I feel like a beast now.. I almost died to a single slime when I came here first. Now I’m cutting through kobolds and trolls.

While he cleaned his scimitars and started heading back his mind wandered to practical things. The village needed more than walls and weapons. It needed infrastructure. If his child was going to grow up here this place needed to be better than a collection of old wooden houses with an aging tree in the middle.

He thought about water purification. On Earth you could buy one of those gravity-fed filter systems from Amazon for like forty dollars. Or UV sterilizer pens for camping. If he could bring a few water filters through the portal the village drinking water would improve overnight. Salt production too because right now they were rationing the ten kilos he’d bought from Earth and that supply wasn’t infinite.

A solar-powered phone charger would be useless here without signal but a small solar panel could power LED lights. That’s something. Maybe I should look into portable solar setups when I go back next time.

He was planning his next Earth shopping list in his head and walking with his scimitars loose at his sides when he heard something that made him stop.

A voice. Tiny and terrified and speaking words he almost understood.

He crouched and moved toward the sound. Through a gap in the underbrush he saw her. A kobold. Small, maybe four feet tall and female based on the narrower build and the slight curve of the jaw. She was trapped under a fallen branch that pinned her leg to the ground and she was crying and talking to herself.

But not in kobold grunts or Beastin language.

In Elvish!

Broken, butchered, barely recognizable Elvish but Elvish nonetheless. She was repeating something that sounded like “help” and “please” in a pronunciation that made Rosa’s “stupid fish” incident sound fluent.

Eren stepped out of the bushes with both scimitars drawn.

He tried to remember it but he was damn sure he didn’t do this to weird Kobold. This one made this by itself, or herself?

There were female kobolds before but this one was the only one really close to humanly-elfly charm or shape. She almost looked like a dragonic featured cosplaying human. Short, mini and cute.

Yes maybe she was too weird to be called cute but her face filled with despair gave Eren a weird feeling of sadism and relaxation.

Great.. Now weird kinks start to show up after now having sex for three days. Emily was probably right about this hormones and urges getting stronger. I shouldn’t get any fetishes for magical creatures!!!

He wanted to punch himself after looking at the kobold and finding her cute again!

No.!! STOP!!!!

Luckily when female kobold saw him and froze completely, her eyes went wide and she started shaking so hard the branch on her leg rattled against the ground.

She wasn’t a threat. She was maybe Level 6 or 7 based on her size and she had no weapons even if it wouldn’t make any differences.

His body was almost scimitar proof with recent level ups and strength and endurance stats are over 50.

He sheathed one scimitar and raised his free hand palm-out. “Hey. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The kobold clearly didn’t understand his Elvish either because she just shook harder. But she responded with more broken words. “No… kill… please… friend…”

Wait. She’s speaking Elvish. How the hell does a kobold speak Elvish?

That question was big enough that he sheathed the second scimitar too.

He knelt near the trapped leg and the kobold flinched away but couldn’t go anywhere. Eren grabbed the branch and lifted it off her with one hand because at Level 40 a fallen tree branch weighed about as much as a pencil.

The kobold scrambled backward on three limbs, her injured leg dragging. She stopped about five meters away and stared at him like she couldn’t process what just happened.

“You… not kill?” she managed.

Eren sat down on the ground to make himself smaller and less threatening. It was a trick he used with the wolves early on because predators didn’t sit down in front of prey. “No. I not kill. Who taught you Elvish?”

The kobold’s face scrunched up with effort. “Elf… in forest… edge. Two group. They… give words. Trade.”

The nomad elves Emily talked about. They’ve been trading with the kobolds? Or at least talking to them?

The kobold’s Elvish was painful to listen to. Every word came out wrong in some way and she mixed up tenses and genders constantly. Eren found himself weirdly sympathetic because he remembered exactly what it felt like to struggle with a language everyone else spoke naturally. Those first months learning English in school back in Turkey had been pure misery.

He reached out slowly and touched her shoulder. She flinched but didn’t run. “It’s okay. You don’t have to use perfect words.”

Then he had an idea.

He focused on the same skill-share function he’d used with Rosa and pushed Basic Elvish toward the kobold. The system hesitated for a second like it was checking something before the notification appeared.

[Skill Transfer Attempted: Basic Elvish – Quality: Minimum]

[Kobold (unnamed) has learned: “Basic Elvish”]

The kobold grabbed her head and squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them a few seconds later her expression had changed. Not fluent by any stretch but the fog behind her eyes had cleared slightly.

I’m an idiot. I could’ve tried this with the kobolds since day one.

“Better?” he asked.

“Better… yes. Words make more… shape now.” She was still struggling but the improvement was obvious. “Thank you, big elf-man.”

“Eren. My name is Eren. What’s yours?”

The kobold pulled her injured leg closer to her body. “Griks.”

“Griks. Why are you out here alone?”

Griks looked at the forest around them like the trees might be listening. “Ran. From the group. They go to… map-making. The master sends groups to look at the forest. Learn paths. Find… where the elf village is.”

Master. Emily’s mother’s warning about something in the forest. The runic symbols on the trees. Everything kept connecting.

“Who is this master?”

“Don’t know real name. Everyone says master.” Griks pulled her arms tighter around herself. “He looks like elf-people. Tall, covered in thick clothes. Only his eyes show and they… glow. Red, like fire-stones.”

Not an elf then. Or at least not a normal one.

“What does the master want?”

“Collects things. From elf-blood. Makes… servants. Kobolds who go to him don’t come back the same. They follow orders and their eyes change.” Griks was shaking again but this time from fear not cold. “My group was small. Scouts. We ran from him two seasons ago but most were caught again.”

Eren’s mind was racing. Someone or something was operating in this forest with the ability to control kobolds and other creatures. Collecting elf blood. Making servants.

That sounds like a class ability. Something like mine but darker. Way darker.

His own Charming Voice and Love skills could influence how people felt around him but the effect was temporary and superficial. If this master could permanently control intelligent creatures that was a different level of power entirely.

“How many does the master control?”

“Many. Kobold clans, maybe three. Some troll groups that come from north follow him now. And…” Griks hesitated like she didn’t want to say the next part. “There are bigger ones. In the east. Orcs. Orcs are his real soldiers. Kobolds just… find things for him.”

“Orcs?”

“Big. Very big. Smart-fighters. They don’t attack places they don’t know. Master sends kobolds and trolls first to learn the land. Then orcs come.” She looked at him with eyes that begged him to understand. “The attacks on your village? Those weren’t real attacks. Just scouts. Mapping.”

Eren’s hands went cold and he clenched them to stop the shaking that wanted to start. Every kobold patrol and troll group they’d fought had felt like a real threat. They’d lost three villagers. If those were just scouts…

“You’re saying the actual attack hasn’t started.”

Griks nodded slowly. “Master has a war-beast too. Some kobolds say they saw it. Big flying lizard-thing with no wings but… like a dragon but smaller? Eight or nine meters long. Drake, we call it. Master rides it sometimes.”

An eight-meter drake. This master has an eight-meter war drake and we’ve been celebrating because we can beat Level 20 trolls.

“I need you to come with me,” Eren said. “To the village. You’ll be safe there.”

Griks looked at him like he was insane. “Elf village? They kill kobolds.”

“Not if you’re with me. I promise. But you will be with me and if you try harming anyone, I will exterminate all your kind in front of your eyes!” Eren’s eyes and whole body released a strong, convincing bloodlust but he didn’t know it yet.

He thought his charisma stat worked for the nodding kobold. It didn’t believe him entirely but she also didn’t have anywhere else to go and she was terrified of this monster elf man.

She let him help her stand and he supported her weight while she limped alongside him.

He needed to get back fast. Emily needed to hear this. Everyone needed to hear this.

Eren focused on his mana pool. It was sitting at 560 total with items and the Dungeon Heart Fragment had recharged to full. He activated Door Master targeting the village center.

[Door Master activated – Mana Cost: 650/650]

[Door Master has levelled up: Level 6 > Level 7]

[Door Master Level 7: Mana efficiency for time of the portal improved. Maximum distance expanded]

The portal shimmered open in front of them. Griks screamed and tried to bolt but Eren held her firmly. “It’s safe. It’s a door. Trust me.”

He stepped through carrying half a kobold’s weight and emerged in front of Emily’s house just as the evening light was fading.

Emily was on the porch cleaning her katana. She looked up, saw Eren and opened her mouth to say something. Then she saw the kobold clinging to his arm and her mouth stayed open without any words coming out.

Fury was at the garden gate. He sniffed once toward Griks and his ears went flat.

Rosa was sitting in the doorway with her notebook. She looked at the kobold, looked at Eren, then wrote something in the notebook without changing expression.

But it was the figures at the edge of the garden that made Eren’s throat tighten.

Selena stood with her arms crossed and a warm smile that was a little too inviting. Lyra was beside her, red-faced as usual but standing straighter than Eren had ever seen her. They both looked at him with an expectation that had nothing to do with the kobold.

Emily followed his gaze to the two women, then back to him. Her face was perfectly calm. “Welcome home mister. Busy day?”

Eren looked at the terrified kobold on his arm, then at his pregnant wife, then at his ex-girlfriend looking smug, then at the two elf women who were apparently scheduled to carry his future children. Not today but they looked eager to get closer with those almost not-working cloths…

They were almost naked, damn it!

He couldn’t look away now.

Maybe I should’ve stayed in the forest.

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