Esstrey moved quietly for a being so large, mainly attributed to her unique way of movement over terrain. A small stream of water is always between her tail and the ground, holding her upright while she moves forward. In her arms, she carries two kobolds, one sleeping, while the other keeps tripping over her own words in an attempt to praise her. On the sleeping kobold is a blob of blood, doing its best to imitate angry pacing.

"Why won't you tell me what element I am?" Sofia slaps Esstrey's ears, making them twitch a bit.

"Because it would serve you no purpose, we lack the materials for you to actually follow that path, and as long as that's true such knowledge is a liability." Esstrey ignores the tantrum thrown by Sophia, and simply keeps moving in the direction that the conscious kobold told her some food and blood would be.

"I can't even identify myself! It just says [Hidden] for all my traits! Why did you even configure me to your mystery element if you didn't have enough of it? Did you set me to [Time]? [Space] maybe? Hell, it could even be [Metal]." The little slime is trying to measure Esstrey's pulse while mentioning all kinds of different elements not commonly used for slimes, but trying to read the pulse of a blood mage is about as effective as one can imagine.

"It's called playing the long game, how long have you been alive again?" Sofia simply pouts at that, and faces away from Esstrey while crossing her imitation of arms.

After some time of only Mirya's incoherent babbling, the group finally arrives at the kobold village. Esstrey asks where food is kept, and Mirya manages to convey that the granary is in the center of the village. Esstrey makes her way through the village, with kobolds watching her every move. None dare move against her, and not just because she's carrying two possible hostages. The sole kobold standing guard at the granary is shaken awake by the sight of the massive mermaid in front of him, and he weakly points his spear at Esstrey.

"Here, hold these." Esstrey puts the two kobolds in the arms of the guard, who collapses under the weight of the two weakened kobolds. As she enters the granary with Sofia, the village gathers around Kuda and Mirya.

"Mirya you live! Is good!"

"I not seen Kuda this tired since sleep curse!"

"Mmmm... newcomer smells like fish."

The chieftain of the kobolds makes his way through the formed crowd, and looks furiously at both Kuda and Mirya.

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"You brought witch here Kuda? Granary is important that it isn't eaten!" At the chieftains words, kobolds stop looking excited and start looking more hostile towards the shack the huge mermaid disappeared in.

"Foolish chief! Great one isn't witch! Great one is mighty dragon born, child of serpent!" At Mirya's words, the kobolds begin to bicker among themselves in awe, the newcomer had not only cured brood mother, but was also related to the dragons?

As if timed perfectly, Esstrey leaves with an entire stalk of mealroot in her jaws, she easily shreds the mealroot as if it doesn't also double as tough rope. The slime that was with her has significantly grown in size, but still seems a bit sluggish. Sofia looks warily at what must be half the village having gathered in front of their food stockpile to ambush who raided it, but she looks to Esstrey before making any moves. Esstrey for her part simple looks amused at the display in front of her, if it was an ambush they had already failed.

"The state of affairs of your stockpile of food is rather sad, you won't survive if pickings are difficult even once you know." Esstrey's words are meant to be a comment to throw them off-balance, but instead the kobolds whisper between themselves.

"Food hoard... not big enough?" One brave kobold mentions toward the titanic being.

"...Yes, I suppose you could refer to it as a hoard. It's rather pathetic, if I'm being honest." Rather than be saddened by Esstrey's words, the kobolds all look to each other completely ecstatic.

"Newcomer is drake-kin! Kobolds will grow hoard big again! Foods! Golds! Trophies!" The words spread like a mantra, and soon the entire village is scrambling about while scouring the entire swamp for everything edible. If the kobolds have this kind of vigor all the time, they would be a great power on the basis of being the most industrial race in existence. It doesn't take long for the first foraging parties to return with all kinds of edible and inedible plants that looked vaguely like the mealroot Esstrey was munching on a moment ago.

"Great serpent, my fourth partner sick with coughs. Would great one consider curing him?"

"Great serpent! My foot hurt! Please make stop!"

Pleas for medical aid quickly come in, along with kobolds offering food, and Esstrey eats her way through the offerings with impressive speed. She didn't know how starved she was until a moment ago, and she feels the parasite within taking a greater share than before. Was it holding back? It mattered little, at the rate that the kobolds were collecting you would think someone would have called for a revolution. If the kobolds wanted her to fix the ailments of their kin, that was something she could easily do.

Esstrey started dragging kobolds into the granary turned hospital one by one, curing disease was trivial with Esstrey's exceptional control over blood, and curing wounds was simply a matter of using some of the potions she had acquired in combination with her blood magic. Disease is easily solved by promoting the production of white blood cells and guiding them within the diseases, while injuries were only there because the kobolds lacked the capacity to cure it in the first place. They did often show an oddly high aptitude for magic.

Things would have kept going smoothly if it wasn't for the arrival of a coach carrying the sigil of the local duchy.