“You.” I point to a kobold who isn’t doing anything. He yips in surprise then quickly gets to his feet. “Yes, lord dragon.”

“Anon is fine.” Will they please just call me by my name.

“Yes, lord Anon, yip!”

It just keeps happening. “Come with me.” I beckon him outside of the cave. He follows, wagging his tail like a puppy. It’s a different reaction than normal. “You’re not scared?”

“Why would I be? Yip!”

“You shouldn’t be, lot of the other kobolds are. PTSD from the dragon and whatever.”

“Yip! Never met him.” I look down at the kobold. His eyes are bright and full of curiosity. His scales are thin, his height is short. He must be young.

“Have you completed your classes?” I have expanded the curriculum farther than just Common. They now all learn basic math, geology, basket weaving, just anything that would be useful to them.

He nods his head vigorously, yipping at each nod’s apex. “Completed them last month.”

“How old are you?”

“Two months.”

They grow up so quickly. It’s good to get young blood into the system. Kobolds only live seventeen years. The shamen and warrior kobolds won’t be around forever. I need younger kobolds to start taking on leadership roles.

“You will be the kobold whom I will teach all I know about fishing.”

“Yip! Sounds fun.”

I lead him to the river. “You…” Really wish I knew his name. “You, look for a good long stick.”

“Yip! Right away my lord.”

I examine the river while he scampers into the once burnt forest. Nature has an amazing way of sprouting back up. You can barely tell that I once burnt it down. I continue down the river side until it shallows out. There is a place where the river is only a few feet deep. In these shallows I can see many fish going about their fishy lifes. The kobold brings me a stick. I pull out one of my daggers and sharpen the stick to a point.

“Alright, the trick is to aim underneath where you see the fish. Light refracts water.” I aim my spear for a suitably sized fish and then throw the wooden spear. It sticks into the river bed, pinning the fish. I retrieve the spear, remove the fish, then hand it to the kobold. “Now you try.” He nods vigorously as he grabs the spear and wades into the shallows.

“Yip!” He shouts as he throws the spear. He gives me a large smile then goes to collect the spear. Pulling it out there is nothing on it. His smile fades.

“Keep trying buddy, you’ll get the hang of it soon. I’m going to head up to the cave and get supplies for all the other types of fishing.”

All the other types of fishing…..We got pole fishing, net fishing, cage fishing, bow fishing, fly fishing, noodling. There’s a lot of types of fishing that I’m going to cram inside this one kobold’s head. He’s a quick learner, he’ll figure it out.

I return expecting him to have caught a fish already, but he’s nowhere to be found. The spear is on the bank. The fish I caught is gone. He wouldn’t just run away, a runway would take a weapon with them and he didn’t get swept down river because then the fish I placed on the bank would still be here. I focus on my senses. In the distance I can hear frantic yipping. I expand my wings and fly towards it.

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Through the trees I can see him. He’s tied to a stick and being carried over the shoulders of two hobgoblins. Hobgoblins are larger than regular goblins, standing at around four feet. A group of six regular goblins walk in formation around them. One of those goblins is carrying two fish. Flying ahead I see their destination. There’s an impromptu camp set up. In the middle is a large cauldron over a burning fire. I fly back to my kobold’s kidnappers and land in front of them. “Hey, Kobold, I see you caught a fish.”

He yips as he turns his head towards me. “Dragon lord Anon help me.”

The hobgoblin in back turns to the kobold. “That no dragon. That human, stupid dinner.”

“Air cutter!” I send the spell at their knee height. It slashes through the front and back hobgoblin’s knees. They drop my kobold as they fall to the ground. I fly in to grab him. The other goblins surround me, but I just fly upwards and flash them the peace sign. They don’t have any ranged weapons so I’m safe.

“That was a close one, right…” I wanna say a name, I had the spot in the sentence for a name in my head, but once I reached it there was no name to fill it. The sentence sputtered out like an old engine. “What’s your name anyways?” I need to ask that more. With Kobold Shamen and Kobold warrior I can call them by their race names, but I have over a hundred regular Kobolds. It’d get confusing if I called them all Kobold.

“Name?”

“Kobold not have name.”

“How do you refer to each other then?”

“By most prominent feature.” That just sounds like bullying.

“What do the others call you?”

“Big head.”

“Do you like that name?”

He shakes his head.

“Well, then I will call you Yip.” Naming him after what he constantly does isn’t much better on my part. But he seems to like it.

“Yip! Yip!”

I drop Yip off at the cave entrance. “I’ll teach you the rest later. Right now I need to take care of some goblins.”

I can see for miles while flying. What at first I thought was only one goblin camp is actually a large amount sprinkled through the forest. There are two camps within five miles of my mountain. The camps only get bigger the farther out you go. Until you reach the largest of all. I fly low above it, floating from treetop to treetop around the perimeter. There are multiple cages in the camp, full of women. Some human, some with ears and tails from many different species of demi-humans. There is a large throne in the middle. Upon it sits a muscular green man. An orc? He looks in my direction and smiles. I’m half a football field away and hiding in trees. How did he see me? I inspect him quickly then examine his stats as I fly back to my cave.

Name: Dick Tater

Level: 100/200 Race: Goblin, Goblin warrior, Orc, Orc Chief.

Skill: Swordsmenship(Master), Nightvision(Medium), Common[English](Major), Leadership(Medium), Algebra(Minor), Calculus(Major), Geometry(Medium), Tinkerer(Medium), Craftsmanship(medium) Titles: Chosen, Human slayer.

Holy shit, it’s the smart black dude from the anime club. I review that sentence in my mind. It’s a little problematic for me to call him the smart black dude from Anime Club, but in my defense he was one of the only two black people in the anime club and I refer to the club leader as the fat white chick with purple hair. I’m not racist. I just have a kobold minded naming sense. My only memory of him is the time he got into an argument with a /pol/ browser about systematic racism, how all technology is stolen from Africa, and other black supremacist rhetoric. He said that all whites were descendants of slave owners then pointed at me. Asking me about my family tree. “I’m a second generation immigrant. My family had to flee from Germany in WWII cause jewish heritage.” That made both parties very annoyed with me.

Eitherway, this needs to be reported to the baron. I fly home and retrieve the message crystal from my bag. When I left the baron’s estate he gifted me with many things. A merchant’s pass, seeds for my fields, a message crystal to contact him, and a teleportation scroll for emergencies. I have to be brief or the message gets warped.

“Orc leading goblin army. In the forest. Don’t know if I can fight him alone. Has many slaves, human and demi-human.”