The first kobold burst out of the undergrowth screaming.

  It was small even compared to a goblin, barely coming up to Mira’s chest, with patchy scales and a crooked spine that made it run in a lopsided scuttle. It waved a sharpened stick overhead like a banner rather than a weapon.

  “There’s one!” Mira shouted in excitement and pointed it out. Without waiting for anyone to react, she rushed at the monster and swung her mace with al her might.

  The weapon connected with the creature’s shoulder instead of its head, launching it sideways with a loud crack. The kobold shrieked, slammed into a tree trunk, and collapsed to the ground, clutching its now useless shoulder. From the way Mira was staring at the poor creature, Alex half expected her to start licking blood off her mace.

  Fortunately, the kobold did not come alone.

  They spilled out of the trees in an uncoordinated rush, yipping and howling, throwing stones wildly as they ran. One tripped over a root and faceplanted, popping back up with a mouthful of leaves. Another slammed directly into Rhen’s spear and impaled itself through the chest.

  It died without understanding what had happened.

  Alex stepped back and watched as the uncoordinated mass of overgrown lizards clashed with the… slightly less uncoordinated group of adventurers.

  Rhen tried to keep formation and failed immediately. He stabbed too early, overextended, and had to yank his spear back as a kobold lunged at his exposed leg. Mira completely gave up on teamwork and started wildly swinging her mace around, almost braining Joras in the process. Joras… Joras just scrambled to stay alive.

  An archer surrounded by enemies was already at a disadvantage, much less when his own teammate seemed intent on letting him meet his maker.

  All in all, they fought like a bunch of new adventurers.

  ‘Yeah, that tracks.’ Alex smirked.

  Rhen took another shallow cut across the forearm when a kobold lunged with a sharpened bone tied to its wrist. Mira tripped over a corpse and nearly lost her footing, only surviving because the kobold she’d missed tripped as well. Joras fired his last arrow, then froze when two kobolds charged him at once, shrieking incoherently.

  Alex decided that it was probably his turn to step in.

  He grabbed the first kobold by the head and threw it into a tree hard enough to shatter its back, then kicked the second square in the chest. The creature flew backwards into the underbrush and didn’t reappear. The last few kobolds were swiftly dispatched by Rhen and Mira, who then anxiously went to check up on Joras.

  Joras waved them off with shaking hands. “I’m fine.”

  Rhen let out a relieved breath, then turned to Alex. “Thank you for saving my friend. I will remember this.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Alex waved his thanks away. “I’m just doing my part.”

  Silence settled over the clearing, only for Alex to break it a moment later. “So, uh, should we go check out their den? Make sure there’s no survivors who decided to stay back?”

  Rhen hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Yeah. That’s… probably smart.”

  Mira—as expected—suddenly perked up at the mention of more fighting. Joras swallowed and pushed himself to his feet, glancing in the direction most of the kobolds had come from when the fight started. “I agree.”

  They followed the trail without much trouble. As they walked, Alex even began to wonder at the usefulness of trackers in this line of work. Every time he’d encountered monsters so far, they’d been incredibly easy to find even to his untrained eye.

  They followed the path of broken branches, scuffed earth, and shed scales. It led them a short distance deeper into the forest, where the trees grew closer together and the light thinned further. Of course, they had to deal with a steadily increasing number of traps on the way, but none of them were particularly impressive.

  The ‘den’ turned out to be little more than a pile of fallen trees and snapped branches stacked together in a rough triangle. Bits of scavenged cloth, clay and bone had been wedged into the gaps, forming something that might generously be called shelter.

  Mira wrinkled her nose in disappointment. “That’s it?”

  “Don’t let your guard down, Mira,” Rhen admonished her. “We are not safe until we are back home.”

  As if to emphasize his point, a high-pitched whine drifted from the pile of logs.

  Everyone tensed up, their hands gripping their weapons, and Joras nocked one of the arrows he’d managed to retrieve after the last fight.

  A minute passed, and nothing happened. Only the whine came and went intermittently, sounding almost like… crying?

  Rhen cautiously approached the pile of logs, spear held low, and carefully pushed aside one of the branches blocking the opening. The whining grew louder immediately, thin and desperate.

  “Oh,” he muttered, and visibly relaxed.

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  “What is it?” Mira called out curiously, visibly restraining herself from rushing forwards.

  Rhen turned around to smile at them, and stepped aside to reveal the den.

  Inside, huddled together in the dim space beneath the fallen logs, were several kobold pups. They were small, barely more than scaly bundles with oversized eyes and awkward limbs, pressed tightly together as if that might make them invisible. One tried to bare its teeth, but they hadn’t even had time to grow in yet, the gesture more pitiful than threatening.

  Suddenly, the group understood why the kobolds had been so brazen in raiding the human settlement.

  ‘And we just killed their parents.’ Alex winced.

  For a second, no one spoke, then Mira broke the silence.

  “They’re so cuuute!” She exclaimed and almost dropped her mace in her excitement. “Look at how small they are, and those huge eyes! Can we keep them? Please, please please?”

  “No, we can’t.” Rhen let out a long-suffered sigh. “We’ve gone over this. You can’t keep every single cute thing you come across, especially now that we’re adventurers. One day, you’re gonna pick up some disguised monster and we’re all gonna die.”

  “We should just kill them.” Alex agreed with his sentiment.

  “What? No!” Mira jumped out in front of the babies, arms spread wide. “They’re not hurting anyone!”

  “But they will.” Alex explained patiently. “When these things grow up, they’ll do the exact same thing their parents did, except this time the villagers caught in their trap might actually die. Are you okay with having their blood on your hands?”

  Mira visibly deflated.

  “I thought so.” Alex pushed past her.

  The kobolds, maybe sensing his killing intent, hissed at him and tried to scramble away.

  “Sorry, little guys. I gotta do what I gotta do.” He picked up a branch.

  Thwack.

  The whining abruptly cut out, returning the clearing to silence.

  “Well…” Rhen cleared his throat. “We still need to collect proof of completion from the kobolds, so… should we go back?”

  The others muttered their agreement and followed him back to the site of the battle. After a gruesome fifteen minutes spent cutting off kobold ears, they finally set off back to the village.

  “I appreciate the help you’ve provided for our village.” The mayor bowed his head to the party, hands clasped in front of him. The tension he’d carried when they first arrived was gone now, replaced by open relief.

  Rhen waved it off awkwardly. “It was our job.”

  “Still,” the mayor said. “You have our gratitude. All of Tirat’s.”

  With the thanks out of the way, Rhen cleared his throat and asked the practical question. “Are there any caravans heading back to Luterra soon? Or merchants we could travel with?”

  The mayor shook his head. “None until next week at the earliest. We’re just a small unimportant village, so we don’t get regular traffic here.”

  The party exchanged looks.

  “Well,” Mira said after a moment, forcing some cheer into her voice, “it’s only two days on foot. How bad can it be?”

  “We don’t have any tents or comping supplies,” Rhen reminded her, then sighed. “But we don’t really have a choice. We’ll stay the night and leave in the morning.”

  Rooms were offered again, along with food that everyone scarfed down as fast as possible. The evening passed quietly. Eventually, one by one, they turned in.

  Except for Alex.

  When he was sure that everyone was asleep, Alex slipped out into the night.

  Moonlight filtered weakly through the canopy as he reached the clearing, silvering leaves and roots but leaving most of the ground in shadow. The bodies were still there, scattered where they had fallen earlier, unmoved and undisturbed. A lot of the blood had already soaked into the earth, turning the soil dark and sticky beneath his boots.

  The smell was a different matter. Alex gagged as a waft of shit and rot made itself known in his sinuses. Although nowhere near as bad as the mass grave in Crebes, there was still something to be said about the smell of decomposing lizard.

  “Well, as the French say, bone apple teeth.” He wrinkled his nose.

  Kobold blood tasted surprisingly spicy.

  Having braced himself for something truly putrid like the goblin variant, Alex was pleasantly surprised by the taste of kobold. Sure, he wouldn’t call it delicious, and it burned as it made its way down his throat, but it was at least palatable. The power he felt surging through him also helped.

  He finished draining one body and moved on to the next.

  As he worked his way through the group of monsters, Alex noticed that most of them didn’t contain much blood. A quick check revealed that these were the ones killed by either Rhen or Joras. As users of piercing weapons, their targets usually bled out. There’s no need to explain why that’s a bad thing for someone trying to get blood.

  The ones killed by Mira and himself, however, were much more rewarding. Alex had only killed two, but both of them had been from blunt attacks, whether it be a kick or a throw. Mira needed no elaboration, since her weapon of choice was a mace.

  When he finished draining the last kobold, Alex flexed his limbs and filled them with mana.

  “One, two, three… eight.” He nodded in satisfaction, feeling the power coursing through him. “Seems I’m one step closer to fully infusing my body. I wonder what that’ll do.”

  As of now, Alex could completely saturate both arms and both legs with mana at the same time, leaving only his torso and head untouched. When he tried to push further, a tremendous resistance pushed back, forcing him to give up.

  ‘Still,’ he suddenly turned around and punched a tree, snapping the two-foot-wide trunk in half and sending the whole thing crashing to the ground. ‘I’ve come a long way from where I started. If I had to go rescue Grenil from the Miganos estate as I am now…’

  Wiping the regretful look off his face, Alex frowned. Speaking of the rescue, he vaguely recalled that he’d somehow bent blood through the air when he was escaping the place. Sure, that had been in his… other form, but the fact that he’d done it showed that it was something he was capable of, he just didn’t know how yet.

  ‘I have been thinking of new ways to use my magic,’ he thought. ‘Might as well give it a try.’

  He turned back toward one of the corpses and focused, drawing his awareness inward and then outward again. He didn’t try to force mana into his limbs or reinforce himself. Instead, he reached gently, the way he had during his experiments earlier, and extended that intent toward the blood soaking the ground.

  He imagined it moving.

  Just a bit. A trickle. A tremor. A twitch.

  Nothing happened.

  Alex frowned slightly and tried again, this time changing the approach.

  Still nothing.

  The blood remained stubbornly where it was, unmoving and indifferent to his focus.

  He tried several more times, each attempt slightly different from the last. Faster. Slower. Broader. Narrower. He even tried striking various poses. Each one ended the same way, with the blood refusing to do anything at all.

  Eventually, Alex exhaled and let his mana retract fully.

  It made sense that it wasn’t something he could easily replicate. Given how long it had taken him to simply infuse himself with mana, it would have been more surprising if he could pull off something much more complex on the first try.

  Although he felt regretful that his idea didn’t pan out, he was still satisfied overall. He’d advanced his rank up progress, helped some people out, and reached the next threshold of mana. Tomorrow, the party would head back to Luterra, where they would be paid.

  All in all, this mission could be considered a great success.

  Alex set off back towards the village, a pep in his step.