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I watched the reporting man talk with Hector I noticed a note of derision in his voice. But he seemed to treat Hector with all seriousness as Iris's neighbor gave a calm straightforward account of what he had seen and outright admitted that since he had no proof of what he had seen, he didn't expect to be believed.

But with the way his world was changing, he still felt the need to report what could be a danger to other people. It was just what he felt what the right thing to do, regardless of how it made him look.

I remembered that he had been using a machine to cut Iris’s grass on her land, at least until she began making Ernesto do it since she claimed doing work around her yard would give him a cover story. Hector seemed to just be a good man who looked out for others.

If I had a voice of my own, I would be tempted to reveal my existence rather than have him stand out there facing disbelief, or even humiliation. But only tempted.

Iris was not so tempted as the three adventurers gathered around her computer to watch the live broadcast.

The old woman bit her thumbnail as she glared at the TV. Then she turned that flare at Molly as the healer suggested, "Maybe we could bring him in on our side, a fourth person wouldn't hurt."

Iris shook her head. "He's soft. A nice guy, but he'd be useless in a fight. And Tark is hardly giving us any room to fight in down there by trying to fit too much into a small space. We barely have room for the three of us and Buttercup."

Their conversation went on from there to try to figure out how to deal with the roaches while outside the reporter and his camera woman packed up and headed off.

Hector watched them leave then walked over to where the fight had occurred and bent over after a moment to look more closely at the cement street.

Then he rushed over to his house and emerged a moment later with a damp wad of white tissue which he dabbed down onto the street where blood from the owl had spilled out. I had no clue why.

The various plans for the roaches went from whatever bug spray was, to wet blankets and a drink called a Molotov cocktail.

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I was rather hoping for the last one since I was already looking forward to one of the tiny shot glasses of tequila, and the definition of cocktails sounded interesting. So some of this Molotov would be nice as well.

The conclusion they reached was the bug spray would take too long to work, so they either had to kill the roaches as soon as they came out, or just ignore them until they could take down the Kobolds.

After typing in several words into her computer and some suggestions from the other two, Iris eventually found a video showing a shopkeeper using a canister and a lighter to produce a small spray of flame up to a good five feet away at a pair of men who where trying to rob the store.

They flinched back from the flames but ultimately the fact they had guns made the shopkeeper surrender, but the flame attack did convince the three of them to give it a try. Molly took off on her bike for nearly an hour before she returned with a bag of cans and lighters as well as another bag of breaded chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and biscuits.

They used the cans on their next trip, the sprays of burning paint that they aimed at the emerging roaches shot out the expected five feet in yellow flames. Then it burned away on the floor after it landed, which made the three kobolds hesitate inside the low side room they had spawned in until Ernesto rushed up close into the cloud of surviving roaches still flying about and hosed the three kobolds down with flames.

The heat from the burning paint itself didn't do that much damage to creatures larger than roaches, but it did cling and keep burning. The fumes from it also ended up choking both the kobolds and the boy to the point that Molly had to use her new spell to clear the toxins out of his lungs while Iris used Ernesto's club to finish off the kobolds who finally left their room to try to throw themselves into the water filled pit.

Well. That was all sorts of horrible. But they did find a solution to the problem so I saw no more need to repeat that encounter and had Envoy leave a note saying as such leaning up on Iris's computer screen.

They seemed wearily pleased to hear that they didn't need to deal with the roach swarm again as Iris read the note out loud.

Of course, now I need something else to replace them.

Luckily, the evolution room had finished up by then.

An evolved squirrel proved to be larger with bright red fur and longer claws and I immediately selected it for the entry room as the leader of the pack. It looked to be capable to do some real damage without being too much of a threat paired up with normal squirrels.

The evolved raccoon was only a little larger but its black mask fur covered its entire face. The evolved spider, however, was much more intimidating with a body that was six inches long and its legs covered an area an entire one foot around. But the intimidation factor seemed to be about it as they were still rather fragile. Scary in a fight, but not much more of a danger.

The kobold proved to be more interesting as my dungeon element finally came into play with the evolution room giving me access to a Copper rank two Electric Kodold.

[ You have unlocked the Mage job ]

Well, that seems like a good replacement for roaches.

I switched out the spiked kobold in the big fight room for a copper rank one mage kobold to serve as the leader and put three copper two raccoons in place of the roaches. I put three spiders into the jumping room and laid out some webs for them to climb out from underneath the stone slabs as the adventures jumped their way across the pit.

Finally, I called up a copper rank three kobold mage. It emerged from the summoning circle in a crackle of electricity and bowed toward the direction of the core instead of saluting. It was a good three inches taller than the original copper one kobolds but it was scrawny, almost gaunt in appearance. It also had an almost metallic gleam to its blue scales.

I named her Zap. Although I wasn’t sure if she was female, she did pick out a tiny pink dress from the collection of baby clothing that had been stolen from the great garage sale robbery. So I went with her choice.