image [https://i.imgur.com/aTdIBAt.jpg]
When I poked my spear around the corner, I saw the workers’ boss heading in my direction. She walked by herself and moved at an irritated pace. Her tail whipped, her whiskers twitched, and her paws clenched as the creature stomped toward me. I Slipstreamed behind the level 5 kobold and dropped her with a single critical hit.
When I opened my combat log to see what happened, I noticed I hit her for 168 damage, far more than a normal crit. The interface confirmed my location, Graytooth City, giving me a double damage bonus for fighting inside a foreign settlement. Knowing my attacks would mete out higher numbers emboldened me to hatch a crazy plan.
Aggression wasn’t necessary against Mousetown’s citizens. Level 2 creatures had less than 20 health, but there seemed no harm in overdoing it. Besides a white core, I plucked up another Ring of Obedience. The backup ring made Hawkhurst twice as powerful against kobold armies.
Then, I did what I dreaded—I rubbed my hair, face, underarms, and robe in the blood and guts of the freshly killed kobolds. I could hide, but I couldn’t hide my scent. The best I could hope for involved masking it.
Keeping a waterskin and a handy wet cloth let me wipe my face if I needed to talk to someone. Being covered in gore might complicate my neighborly intentions.
With the boss gone, I observed the workers’ behavior. They showed no signs of industry, and even some sauntered off with barely a nervous glance. Their lackadaisical nature wasn’t the behavior of workers whose boss lurked around the corner.
When my Slipstream cooldown refreshed, I tested my new disguise.
I pulled over the hood of my Cassock of Rewind to cover my face and hunched over. The slipshod disguise seemed enough for such lazy workers. These tunnels might be the only place in Miros where such a charade might work. When I stepped through the corridor, the construction crew glanced at one another. My entrance included no hostile gestures, but they backed away at my approach. Some stood and gawked, and most others gave me a wide berth.
I picked up my pace and rounded the corner as if I’d traveled this route a hundred times. My audacity mirrored the ruse I pulled in the Bottoms—I acted as if I belonged there. No one panicked, so the trick must have worked.
The broad hallway branched open to a newly excavated space. I passed more workers, all of whom avoided my path. The route opened into what looked like an underground city street, except everything stood under construction.
A latticework of woven roots supported a ceiling over the city scene. Three-story buildings dominated the street—each cocooned in scaffolding. Crossbeams, pillars, and makeshift platforms filled the space, looking so haphazard and rickety that a single Compression Sphere might flatten the neighborhood like a house of cards.
Streetlamps and braziers lit the underground avenue in long, connect-the-dots intervals. Their amber lights articulated the ceiling’s contour with crosshatched shadows from the latticework. Beneath the canopy of earth, roots, and scaffolds buzzed dozens of adjacent construction sites.
Single-digit level kobolds filled the street and buildings, though none reacted to my entrance. Spending too much time gawking at the area increased the chance of someone smelling me out. I forced myself to move through the bustling street while taking it all in. Sparing no upward glances at the scaffolds leaning against one another, I willed myself not to gape at the precarious construction, playing my role as a larger-than-average citizen en route to his daily commute.
Why would kobolds build an underground neighborhood? Why make buildings at all? It wasn’t as if they needed shelter from the weather. If running Hawkhurst has taught me anything, it is that nobody builds city blocks all at once. They grow organically, one structure at a time. Building everything at the same time gives the neighborhood a fake feel—like it’s a recreation.
I couldn’t tell the difference between the architecture and its scaffolding. My hood limited my vision. When I passed an empty worksite, I ducked inside. My casual pace almost blundered my subterfuge. I mistook a gap in a scaffold for a doorway and nearly fell through an opening in an open pit. Raising my arms for balance, I crossed zigzagging beams over an unfinished floor. Leaning timber supported the precarious ceiling above.
I turned to see if anyone followed, but it looked as if I still traveled alone and unnoticed. Scorch made little noise in one-shot kills, and Aggression’s potency proved enough to prevent looky-loos from prying into my business.
While I felt grateful that my disguise still held, the kobolds’ complacency surprised me. They hadn’t gone berserk when a hunched-over figure appeared in their midst. Looking up, I saw handholds where I could climb. I shimmied through the unfinished ceiling to the second floor to find a higher vantage above the street.
I approached the ledge and took in the scene, marveling at how this crazy shantytown remained standing, given its surrounding activity. The cavern over the avenue tapered beneath a weave of tree roots reminiscent of the dormitory silo. Mouse Town’s ambition awed me, even if its scope paled compared to surface settlements.
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The street’s width gave the impression of leading toward the settlement’s center. Since the more exciting things happened downtown, I followed it. If a dictator reigned, they probably did so in the middle of everything.
While the scaffolding blocked my line of sight, it provided cover and means to travel. I hopped and climbed across the platforms suspended above the street, looking for inroads to the city’s center.
With my hood over my face, I looked down at the street scene, getting a better view of the spectacle. Construction sprouted on either side of the thoroughfare, all unfinished. They looked more like junkyards than construction sites. Muddy ditches, groundwater, and piles of earth plagued the street’s axis. Each job looked started and abandoned several times over.
When I spotted ratipedes pulling skids of earth, I breathed a sigh of relief that I stood above them and likely beyond the range of smell. Even though their level ranges only reached the teens, I didn’t want giant, many-legged rats alerting the population of my whereabouts.
The image of fighting the entire Graytooth city reminded me to check my command interface for updates in my campaign.
Active campaign
Kobold Unrest
Description
Graytooth kobolds are out in force. Prevent their scouts from finding Hawkhurst and reporting its whereabouts.
Morale
42% (worried)
Objectives
Neutralize kobold threat to Hawkhurst
Reward
0 to 40 glory points
I hoped to get more information about the restless kobolds, but nothing in the campaign’s description changed. Hawkhurst’s morale jumped from 19 to 42 percent and would rally more when Fabulosa appeared bearing news of Winterbyte’s demise. But it would be at least a day until she returned.
As the avenue curved, I hopped from one platform to another. As I traveled, the buildings grew closer to completion, and the gaps between the scaffolding grew. A few kobolds wore stitched leather and linen—dressier than the worker’s scraps, skins, and rags.
A pack of kobolds encircled an oversized rat nearly as tall as a human.
Name
Bix the Counter, Graytooth Highborn
Level
8
Difficulty
Easy (green)
Health
140/140
Bix stood so far away that I could barely read his nameplate, and he faced away from me. His size explained two things. It explained why the hallway ceilings weren’t as low as the goblin mine. It also explained why pulling over my hood had been enough to disguise me. I studied Bix’s pear-shaped silhouette. It seemed I needed a little padding to masquerade as a highborn.
I entertained ideas on how to mimic his profile. I considered tying a backpack around my waist or wrapping sacks of textiles around me. Either might pantomime a highborn’s bulk, but I ultimately decided against it. Hunching over produced a similar effect, and adding elements to my costume introduced unknowns to combat that I didn’t want to explore. If these sacks caught onto my weapons and tripped me up, it would epitomize how my day had been going. Besides, I felt silly enough smearing myself with rat guts.
Bix entered an opening on the opposite side of the street. As much as I wanted to maintain my course toward the town’s center, chasing a highborn might improve my chances of finding the chief. A rat that could count might also speak Common.
I opened my Slipstream interface and measured gaps between my perch and scaffolding across the street. When I found a jump I could make, I swooshed over and hurried into an opening in the rock. I hesitate to call these doors or windows because the unfinished sections could have been either.
After climbing down to where Bix and his entourage disappeared, I splashed myself with water from my inventory, wiping off the muck on my face. To have any chance of diplomacy, I needed to look less like a maniac. After washing, I followed my quarry, leaving the busy streets behind.
Cut and uncut roots supported the earthwork corridors. Afraid of losing Bix and his posse, I quickly rounded a corner and nearly ran into a pair of level 4 kobolds. Each stood on opposite sides of a finished passage—likely guards at their posts.
With my hood still down, I bluffed my way by walking between them—as if I hurried to make a meeting. A guard issued an accusatory squeak the second after I passed. The sound made me realize I had no tail. From behind, I wasn’t passing for a highborn.
I didn’t turn around until I finished my six-second cast of Scorch, followed by a 2-second Shocking Reach. The spells caused a glorious 48 and 46 points of damage, respectively, enough to one-shot each of the guards. After lifting another pair of Rings of Obedience from their fingers, I considered them roughly captain-level bosses.
The finds included a keyring. Kobolds with keys! I must be on the fancy side of town. Picking up my pace, I passed intersections toward narrower passages, holding my course until I saw a dozen kobolds outside an open door at the end of a hall. As I approached, I maintained my highborn disguise.
The door looked to be to an office, probably belonging to the highborn. However, it looked well made, even by human standards. Its heavy metallic hinges, locks, and fixtures weren’t ornate, but they held the sturdy wooden door together. The doorway stood ajar, and the office beyond wasn’t large or lavishly decorated.
Some kobolds stood taller than others, but none reached the highborn’s size. Dropping my hood revealed my identity, prompting them to retreat into the office.
I held my open hands aloft in a universal gesture of peace. These weren’t food bearers, servers, or laborers. They dressed well, by kobold standards and should recognize the subtleties of open negotiation.
“I come in peace. Do you speak Common?” I spoke in a soothing voice and over-enunciated every syllable.
Bix craned his neck around the doorway to watch. He stood at least three feet taller than the others, so I could easily make out the facial features he made when he hissed, pointed at me, and squeaked the unmistakable command to attack.
Diplomacy in The Book of Dungeons would be more straightforward if NPCs could see nameplates. They’d know I wasn’t one to be trifled with if they saw my level. As a warning, I thumbed the ring around my finger. “Bix, old boy, if you think fighting me is going to be easy, you’ve got a big surprise coming.”
The kobolds attacked me with little regard for the shiny metal band around my finger.