After reaching Dróttinn’s room, I could tell that he was very busy based on the number of kobolds entering and exiting his room. Because of this, I thanked the maid for her help and let her know that I was going to stay for a while and that she didn’t have to stay. Hearing this, she nodded and quickly left, most likely having a lot to do. However, before dismissing the maid, I asked for her name. I was kind of ashamed that I hadn’t asked her that already. It turned out her name was Bjóna.

There also didn’t seem to be any type of line outside, so I stood there for a minute. I then noticed that every minute or so, kobolds would arrive and go without announcing themselves, so I entered as well. I really hadn’t seen too many kobolds except for the kobolds who were fighting in the side entrance tunnel.

I had to scratch my head after noticing something. While not every kobold that entered the room wore jewelry, most of them did. In fact, if the kobolds sold all the jewelry they were wearing, it would probably buy enough food to feed every kobold for years. I could only surmise that maybe there wasn’t as much of a shortage of food as I had first imagined. I bet that if there was more food, the kobolds would just lay more eggs.

Finally, I didn’t see any point in watching any longer and stepped inside the room myself. Once inside, I used my stealth skills to move to the side and watch what was happening without being observed. I was starting to have second thoughts about being a chieftain of my own village. Instead, I needed to be the dragon and have a chieftain serve me.

“Chieftain, one hundred and thirteen eggs in chamber three are about to hatch. However, one of the eggs is failing to harden,” an old kobold said sadly.

“Keep an eye on that egg,” Dróttinn ordered. “If it doesn’t begin to harden by tomorrow, let me know. How are the other chambers doing?”

“They are doing well,” the old kobold answered. “There are no instances of premature hardenings in the chambers.”

“Is there anything else I need to know?” Dróttinn looked at the old kobold, who shook her head. Seeing this, the chieftain made a shooing motion while he turned to address the next person. That was when he noticed me.

“Ah, welcome Gothi Nóttormr,” Dróttinn said, motioning for the others to step back while he spoke to me.

“Thank you, chieftain. I know that you are busy, but I wanted to volunteer my assistance should it be needed,” I said. While I had wanted to talk to him about my future, I really didn’t want to talk about the future while surrounded by everyone. I could always talk to him after the invaders were driven off.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“I appreciate that,” the chieftain said. “I will consider how best to use your talents. Did you have anything specific in mind?”

I could tell that Dróttinn was feeling a little frazzled. While he was obviously extremely busy, I could also tell that he was also still trying to remain polite to me. “Actually, yes. I was hoping that our tribe might have some spellbooks or scrolls that I could copy into my spellbook,” I replied. While I hadn’t thought about doing so before, I definitely needed a way to expand my choices of spells.

“Now that I’ve asked, I’ll let you get back to work,” I said. “I know that you are very busy.”

“I will always have time for you,” the chieftain said. “I’ll see what I can do and have someone bring any spellbooks we find to your room.” With that, he turned back to the others and was quickly lost in a new conversation.

Fighting an impulse to frown, I instead plastered a smile on my face and turned around to leave. As I was stepping back into the hallway, I allowed the annoyance I was feeling to show on my face. While I could have been imagining things, it seemed like Dróttinn viewed me as one more challenge that he had to deal with.

In fact, it was almost as if he wanted to keep me separate from the other kobolds since he was always sending things to my room. It was as if I was his dirty little secret that he kept stashed away in a room. I was starting to feel like a kept kobold. On the positive side, I was apparently less of an issue than the invaders though.

Sighing, I stood in place for a moment while reflecting on my recent actions. I was pretty sure that I hadn’t been as mercurial in my past life. Yes, I had trouble making decisions sometimes. However, I also didn’t like change and stuck with whatever I was doing because doing something else would stress me out. I did have to admit that my hobbies could change and were often obsessive.

For example, I would spend ten hours a day, every day for months, playing video games. Then I wouldn’t play video games at all and would instead read fantasy books ten hours a day, every day for months. I also had to admit that if something wasn’t interesting, I would lose interest quickly once I was bored. Because of this, there were numerous other hobbies or projects that I never finished because I got sidetracked on something else. Despite this, I rarely changed jobs.

Lately though, my decisions seemed to be more whimsical or impulsive. While I could attribute this to a young kobold brain that is still in the process of developing, I also had to wonder if it could be because of the chaotic favor I had received. It seems like I was being much more capricious recently.

I had to wonder if it was a kobold thing, a chaotic favor thing, a developing brain thing, or something else. If it was a chaotic favor thing, would that mean that I might start getting more and more evil because of my evil favor? Did the alignment even matter? Alsvartr didn’t even have an alignment marked on her information sheet.

Was assassinating someone and killing dozens of other humans evil? Or was it considered good since I did it to protect my fellow kobolds? Was I evil because killing them didn’t bother me at all? Did it not bother me because I subconsciously felt like I was dreaming or in a game? Was it because of the fact that they were invading, and I was a kobold? Was it because I was considered chaotic evil in alignment? Wondering about these questions, I wandered through the kobold city, not really paying attention to where I was going as I tried to figure out if I was destined to become a villain.