It didn’t take long for us to reach the same forest I was teleported to. Ironically enough, the spot where I met Nedror wasn’t too distant from us either.

“Do you have anything that might have the scent of the ferals on them?” Merdu asked.

“Well, the armor I am wearing now was worn by their victim previously. Will it do?”

“Unlikely, but it’s enough to lead us to her corpse, which is more likely to have the ferals’ scent on them.” He said.

I took off the bracer on my arm and handed it to the kobold, who sniffed at it returned it to me.

“Follow me, I have a lead for us to follow.” He said.

***

Fifteen minutes later, which was a lot faster than the hours I took aimlessly wandering in search of an exit to the forest, we found the gore filled spot where Lyra’s sister died. More specifically, we found the spot with her broken carcass, where not even her bones were spared as the kobolds broke them open to eat the marrow within.

Lyra stepped forward and kneeled before her sister’s mangled corpse with a dark expression on her face.

“I am sorry, but could you give me a moment?” she asked.

The four of us kept a respectful distance away from Lyra, giving her some space to grieve. In the meantime, we began discussing where to go from here.

“Is this enough for you to catch the Kobolds’ trail?” Phlora asked.

“Aye, it’s more than enough. Their stench is strong enough to spread for dozens of meters, even hours after the deed was done.” He answered, his own face darkening.

“So, have they gone far? Anything about their equipment and levels? Do they have any other ‘friends’ for us to worry about?” Nedror asked.

“I don’t know how far they are exactly, but I have a strong and recent trail to follow, and feral kobolds do not tend to leave the forests they’re found in. As for their abilities, levels, and equipment, I didn’t find anything special, but ferals tend to punch above their weight due to their ritual killing and consumption of sapients.”

“Where you find three, you’ll almost certainly find more, Nene.” Phlora chuckled, though her smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter though; we’ll kill every last one of them. They can’t outrun me.”

As we spoke, Lyra laid the remains of her sister against a nearby tree and began quietly chanting something I was too distant to hear. Her sister’s remains began to slowly sink into the tree, which itself began to glow faintly and grow in size.

I used appraisal to see what I was looking at, and I wasn’t disappointed with what I saw. What was once a ‘regular’ mythical rarity tree had transformed into something else entirely.

[Petty Elven Divine Tree]

Within this tree lie the remains of a fallen elf. This tree serves as both a grave and a beginning of new life, granting vitality to the world around it and allowing the soul of the elf within to pass on peacefully to the next life. As a sacred object to all but heretical elves, this tree enjoys the elven race’s protection and will permanently mark the souls of those who damage it, bringing an entire race’s wrath upon any desecrator.

I whistled.

“Damn. Remind me not to fight anywhere near any of these divine trees.” I said.

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“Nearly everyone already agrees on that point, Kiara.” Phlora giggled.

“Desecrating graves and holy sites is a bit much for most races, even if a relentless army of elves didn’t promise to chase you to the ends of the world for it.”

Soon enough, Lyra was back.

“Let’s go. I am going to strangle the vermin who did this.” She said with a rare no-nonsense tone.

Merdu nodded silently and headed deeper into the forest, and the rest of us wordlessly followed after him.

***

“Hold.” Merdu said, raising a hand to stop us.

“I smell many ferals – we’re likely near a camp full of them.”

The five of us gathered around as Merdu continued to sniff out the local area. Lyra, meanwhile, began taking off the clunkier bits of her armor and laying them down gently on the ground.

“You guys stay here. I am going to scout out what we’re dealing with, and then I’ll be back.”

Barely moments after she was finished with her sentence, Lyra was already gone.

“Sooo, Merdu, can you smell out our three friends amongst the rest of the feral kobolds?” I asked, and Merdu nodded.

“Easily. The issue is going to be killing them all without letting any of them escape. The real challenge lies elsewhere – feral kobolds have particularly good instincts to being herded and grouped, and they’ll quickly scatter the moment they feel they are outmatched. With their bloody ritual magic, asexual reproduction makes exterminating them all a nightmare.”

Nedror sat down and threw a question of his own at Medru.

“Since you’re answering questions and everything, mind telling us what the difference between ‘feral kobolds,’ as you call them, and the implicitly ‘non-feral’ variety like yourself?” he asked.

To his credit, Medru took the question in stride and answered.

“Kobolds, unlike most other sapient races, have strong primal instincts. It’s no secret that our lineage evolved into sapience directly from monsters, and the instinct to hunt for sapient creatures – particularly because of their classes and the threat they pose, have yet to fade in our blood. Savages who chose to renounce society and give in to these primal urges are ‘feral,’ and they’ve developed many of their own classes, weapons and magic, much of which are equally powerful as they are profane.” He said, contempt clear in his voice.

“Even if other races look to all of us as potential ferals, the truth is that ferals pose the greatest danger to other kobolds. It only takes one in an entire tribe to give in for a bloodbath to ensue. Taboos can only hold off the promise of power to the foolish, the short-sighted, and the immoral for so long. As a result, kobold society inflicts the death penalty on anyone participating, endorsing, or even making excuses for those savages, and rightly so. It’s why accusing a kobold of savagery or comparing them to non-sapient beasts is such a grave insult to our kind.”

“…”

With a background like that, I suppose it wasn’t hard to imagine why Medru reacted so violently to being called a ‘mutt.’ Even Nedror seemed to get it, judging by how silent he was being.

That said, how come the feral kobolds didn’t have forbidden-rarity classes? I’d think hunting and eating sapient creatures would do the trick.

“Well, all’s well that ends well. We just have to wipe out the ferals, and all will be well, wouldn’t you agree?” Phlora said.

Before anyone could respond to that, the bushes near us began to rustle, instantly raising our guard. Just as I was about to launch a fireball at the bush, Lyra emerged out of it with a frown on her face.

“We have a problem.” She said.

“We’re dealing with an entire fenced village of feral kobolds.”

***

As Lyra guided us to a hidden vantage point, we quickly saw what the issue was. Instead of a fenced village, it looked more like a bandit encampment. Thick palisades surrounded the entire compound, with plenty of stone and dirt huts being fashioned together haphazardly. A large bonfire was in the center of the settlement and was surrounded by large, bloody magic circles written with blood in a jarring, primitive variant of Akashic that I failed to recognize. I did recognize that it oozed profanity and barbarity, and it probably wasn’t something I should try to replicate. At the end of the camp was a fancier shack, likely the place the leader of these savages called his own.

“So, how are we going to deal with this?” Nedror asked, scratching his head.

Just by the count of the present kobolds out of their abodes, there had to be a hundred or so of the kobolds. Luckily, not one of them seemed especially dangerous, with only their raw stats as rank S creature being noteworthy.

“Well, I’d say they did half our job for us. These thick wooden walls won’t stop them from jumping out of the settlement, but it’ll make them sitting ducks in mid-air for us to slap down. The problem is that five of us won’t be able to keep all of them in at the same time – not to mention the fact that we’re severely outmatched in both numbers and firepower.” She sighed.

Silence loomed over the five of us as we all brainstormed for a strategy to deal with our friends here – or at least it did, until I spoke up.

“…Say, what if I had a way to deal with that?” I said.

“If I could make them all line up to fight us one at a time while also ensuring that they have nowhere to run, would that solve our issues? Hypothetically speaking.”

Phlora gave me a big smile.

“Why, it definitely would. It wouldn’t be a fight; it’d be a massacre. Hypothetically speaking, of course. What about it?”