“Oh, no!” A gnome shouted and pointed. “Why is SHE here?!?”
I tracked his finger to a rather ornate lizard person riding an oversized raptor. I mean, the damn beast must be the same size as the ones who opened doors in Jurassic Park. The original movie. She had a nice spear and was charging straight at us, her duck-footed dinosaur-lizard eating ground and smashing turds like nobody’s business. Behind her, two dozen kobold riders drooling for gnome flesh followed.
> Level 74 Female Kobold [Queen].
I glanced ahead. No obstacles in our vehicle’s path. During a chase, the driver didn’t dare put the rudder down to steer it. They explained to me that they used the balance to turn, making the crew move to one side or another of the vehicle. The danger of crashing into a rock or a dune was as high as the kobolds chasing us. Back to the giant (for a gnome) raptor and Her Majesty.
“Hey you, Kobold [Queen]. This fight is between you and me!” I issued my Champion’s Challenge.
It worked on the raptor but the Queen was immune to it. Which reminds me, I am going to conquer the gnome settlement and crown myself [Queen] just to snatch a {Gnome Royalty} Perk. But that may only happen if I come back alive.
The raptor shrieked and stared at me as if it could shoot lasers from its eyes. It lowered its head and charged, heedless of the kobold woman trying to steer and control its mount. The kobold [Queen] shot me a hateful glare. I froze for a second, fearing she was Lorna. That stupid game would be the end of me. Damn, I can’t just make a harem and conquer every female around my birthplace.
I set my hook-spear on the vehicle floor where it wouldn’t fall off and drew two tiny throwing daggers. The raptor kept coming at me and I waited for the right moment.
Mind Blank (delay attack for automatical critical)
Exploit Weakness
The moment it was distracted by something, I threw my daggers, aiming each at an eye.
> Your dagger struck King Raptor for 203,364 HP of damage (Base 1d8+10d10+56 [113 -20 Reduction] x4.32 Attributes x11.18 Skill x4.82 critical x2.13 Giant Fighting x4.41 Exploit Weakness x1 Size Modifiers Ignored).
>
> You missed.
>
> You gained 1 point of [Blades] Proficiency.
Blinded from one eye, the raptor swerved to the side and wobbled, stunned because it lost eighty percent of its HP. It wasn’t down but it slowed down significantly, disappearing in the cloud of sand and shit fragments as our vehicle sped over the sand. I couldn’t attack again but we were safe for now.
The gnomes cheered when no kobolds emerged from the cloud. The spotter, however, was still on the lookout.
“Carcass!” He shouted.
A whole (dead) adventuring party appeared out of thin air in our path, above and ahead of us. I saw in horror as the bodies came straight for our vehicle. I reached for my hook-spear but there wasn’t anything we could do. I had no way to slap the bodies out of our way or make our car steer. Oh, wait!
“Right! Everyone to the right!” I shouted.
The gnomes, all veterans of desert exploration, rushed to the right side of the vehicle, causing it to sink on that side and kick even more sand up. But it turned. The Adventurer corpses crashed on the left side of the car, pushing that side down like a seesaw and throwing us up and out of the vehicle. I’d disengaged my belt to run.
I was airborne with some gnomes, staring down at the car below us. The guys screamed and flailed but I tried to keep an aerodynamic profile and avoid drag. I had to land back on the car or I would fall face-first on the poop-sprinkled sand.
Then a gnome grabbed my foot and pulled me to the side, throwing me away from the car and stealing my shoe. I roared in indignation but I couldn’t do shit. Or rather, I’d do a lot of shit in a few moments when I landed on the sand. I could feel the dry and still smelly turds breaking underneath me as I rolled on the sand, losing my momentum. It was time to test if I would sink in the sand or not.
> You are stuck in Devouring Sand. Your movement rate is divided by 10. You are sinking.
Thanks, System. The reason the gnomes didn’t know this fucking sand had a name and such an effect was that nobody survived falling on sand. I managed to stand up and started the slowest run ever. But each step reset my sinking as I had to land a foot on the sand again. It was hard and it felt like the sand was sucking me in, grabbing me to stop this gnome from escaping. Worse yet, I had to walk with one shoe and one barefoot.
Around me, I saw the horrified faces of my fellow gnomes. They stared at me and cried for help but I could barely stand by myself. Holding a panicked gnome would only doom us both. The stupid fucker with my shoe was already down to his ankles, waving the footwear on his hand.
“Give me my shoe!” I demanded.
“By Wyxnos’ mercy, save me, woman!” He begged, forlorn.
I jumped up and removed my other shoe. I landed on the sand and skipped, trying to avoid stepping on long-forgotten crap. It was useless. Then I took aim and threw the shoe at the gnome, hitting him in his oversized nose.
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“Fuck you and your uncaring god! Why did you have to grab me!” I protested, angry at him. “You can keep them both. I’m going to hobbit it!”
The wind turned and the dust cloud from the vehicle covered us. I couldn’t see shit, relying on my {Titan Skin} to navigate. But I was kilometers away from the mountains, almost in the middle of the desert. All I could sense was the slowly sinking gnomes.
That is, until [Queen] Kobold and her retinue entered my sensory bubble. The wind took the cloud away and I saw two dozen angry kobold riders and their mounts barreling toward me.
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The raptors seemed offended that I was walking (actually trying to run) on the sand. They screeched and shrieked as they demanded their riders to let them attack me. The [Queen]’s raptor, however, didn’t wait for permission. The giant one-eyed duck-feet dinosaur came straight at me, baring its sharp teeth.
“Gnome! Surrender!” The [Queen] demanded.
I grinned. She gave me exactly what I needed. “Let’s negotiate the terms of my surrender!” I said and used [Diplomat]. We could have no magic, but the System still enforced its twisted social rules.
> Champion’s Duel Canceled.
I didn’t mind. Survival came before a small burst of Exp. Now I had a choice to make. I could fight these kobolds, and I’d probably win. Then I’d be stuck in the middle of this shit-show, with a literal shit-storm raining down as poop and urine kept teleporting above at random. Or I could negotiate my surrender which meant the kobolds would take me, prisoner, to their camp.
Anywhere was better than being stranded here. I doubt the gnomes would come back for me and I didn’t fancy my chances of walking back home. I would have to escape the kobolds, but that would be super easy, barely an inconvenience, I guess. And if I died, I died. I didn’t feel like I was losing too much by re-rolling it here.
“You come as a prisoner. We feed you, you work for us,” she said.
“No torture, no wounding, no shackles, manacles, or prison cell. I can walk in your settlement freely and I won’t start any fights.”
“You give us magic juice,” she demanded.
Skipping from one foot to another like the sand was unbearably hot and I was one of those Sahara lizards was annoying me. “What magical juice?”
She licked her muzzle with her forked tongue, “magical juice gnomes have. From your crotch.”
The other kobolds were removing the living gnomes from the sand, including shoe-guy. The gnomes were unconscious, probably bludgeoned into by the small cudgels in the kobolds’ hands.
“I’ll give you the juices from my crotch, but I’ll collect it in a bottle or something. No licking.”
“Then we have a deal,” the [Queen] did that odd licking thing again.
> The negotiations were successful. You gained 2 points of [Diplomat] Proficiency.
I had no idea if I should hope I read that right or if I read that wrong. Did they want crotch juices? “Magical” crotch juice? Did the “Gnome Nectar” work on kobolds as well? Could the kobolds and gnomes even mate? Weren’t they oviparous? So many questions.
The [Queen]’s raptor, which had a fantastic healing ability, better than mine in this dead-magic realm of people shitfaced on dick drugs. But it did not regrow its missing eye. I digress. The raptor bit my clothes and picked me up like a kitten. Then the pack of kobold riders ran back to their place.
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They made me surrender all my weapons. I didn’t mind as I was a martial artist.
The trip took three days, I’m not shitting it. I mean, metabolically speaking, I didn’t shit anymore and this desert didn’t need more of that. The raptors’ duck feet didn’t sink in the sand and they just crouched at night and slept. The kobolds would sleep on their saddles, while we gnomes had to content ourselves with laying on the rear back of the weird dinosaurs. The alternative was to surrender to the ever-encompassing shit-stained sands. Eventually something teleported on top of the group but the raptors had a sense for the dimensional disturbance and avoided whatever was coming.
The kobolds took food and water from the dead bodies that were slowly sinking in the sand. Dead things took a few days to sink while living gnomes sank way faster, in about an hour by the rate my fellow prisoners sank. But the interesting thing was that they were almost respectful with the bodies and carcasses, taking only what they needed and leaving the rest behind. I managed to get a Core from a monster I’ve seen in bestiaries but never met in person. It would be interesting to know if it was still magical after dropping here.
Talking at night was a huge no-no. The gnomes tried the first night and they were promptly bludgeoned to sleep by the kobolds’ cudgels. I still needed only 10 minutes of sleep per day, and I slept with one half of my brain at a time so I could stay in a vigil state all the time.
The kobolds’ village was located about three-quarters of the way from the north of the dead magic zone or about sixty kilometers from the southern edge of the desert and a hundred and thirty kilometers from the gnome caves. They occupied a hill that rose above the sand protected by had four layers of wooden palisades going up the hill. I could even see some arid vegetation growing above the palisade, and the moisture was higher than in the desert. Aside from the mountains to the north, it was the only feature in this vast dead magic zone that wasn't sand and a few sparse rocks, this was a veritable oasis and I was sure they had a water source. I estimated it was home to around forty to fifty thousand kobolds and an unknown number of raptors, but probably in the thousands.
They had enough strength to wipe the gnomes if they wanted to. As the party entered the village, I checked that the average level was above forty, with a few kobolds in the sixties and early seventies. The reason for that was that they butchered the raptors for meat and materials as I saw several kobolds wearing raptor-leather clothes and accessories.
The outer ring was where they raised and bred the raptors. I saw several young raptors in pens and kobolds carrying slabs of meat from the monsters to feed them. The second ring had the kobolds’ workshops and tanners. Their crafts mostly involved leather and bone. I didn’t see a single smithy. Then I entered the third ring. Here the kobolds lived and I saw several gnome prisoners doing heavy labor, happy as peas in a pod.
Unhinged too. They seemed to be on drugs, with stupid grins. They didn't wore any shackles or restraints and didn't carry any weapons. It was too surprising, considering the gnomes hated the kobolds with a passion.
“That’s old man Vorrick Genponosick! Wyxnos’ merciful salvation, he’s alive!” One of the older gnomes shouted.
“Wixnos smite me alive! Wretix Wemmedoban you finally got captured!” Vorrick said and ran toward the raptors. He didn’t seem very good in the head. “We’ll take the new guys from here,” he told the kobold.
The raptors lowered their legs and we slid down. The gnomes from my crew went to meet and greet the gnome prisoners. I noticed the prisoners wore no pants, with a leather rectangle covering their front and back. Judging by the bare skin exposed on side of their hips with only a leather strap going across front and back, they had nothing underneath.
All of them stared at me and their eyes went wide. Vorrick elbowed his friend, “Wyxnos’ curses, Wretix! Why did you bring a woman to the desert?”
The gnome prisoners’ eyes went wide and they stopped what they were doing at the word, “woman”. Some of them even let their jaws slack. I felt like Martin Sheen playing Captain Willard as he first saw Marlon Brando’s rebel camp where everyone was high on LSD. Then the flaps of the prisoner gnomes’ loincloths rose slightly. Eww.
Maybe the kobolds were not the biggest threat to my continued survival. I looked around and found the shoe guy, still holding onto mine, both of them. I approached furiously and he dropped them, running toward the old prisoners. All of their heads tracked me. If I was going to run away, at least I would do so with some footwear.
I put on my shoes and prepared myself. Vorrick approached, grinning.