Frowning, I was quite annoyed with my size yet again. The rocks were way too heavy for me to move. As it was, just the shields were almost beyond my strength. Even the alchemical fire wouldn’t have much effect since the soldiers had used rocks instead of wood. As for my telekinetic gift, I might be able to move a few of the lighter rocks, but some of them were definitely beyond my abilities.

I would also have to concentrate on each rock, and it would take a while. The chances of the invading soldiers giving me time to remove the rocks was also very close to zero, so that wasn’t really an option anyway. Actually, I could use my telekinetic gift to carry another alchemical fire bottle further down the tunnel. While the distance I could carry it wasn’t much further than my throw, it was almost twice the distance. My little arms just didn’t have the strength to throw it too far.

Taking another bottle of alchemical fire out of a bag, I used my telekinetic gift to levitate it to the ceiling and slowly moved it along the ceiling until it was as far away as I could extend my gift. I was so startled that I lost my concentration on the bottle when another arrow hit the shield I was hiding behind. Fortunately, it dropped from the ceiling among the enemies. It bounced off one of them and fell to the floor to break. Unfortunately, I must not have hit too many of them since I only heard two people screaming in pain.

It felt like my heart was trying to escape from my chest and run back down the tunnel to safety. However, despite a lot more fear than I would ever admit to anyone, I shoved the large shield I was hiding behind closer to the enemy. I soon reached the soldier who had been stabbed in the leg by the poisoned spear. By that time, he had finally stopped convulsing. Shivering, I stopped in front of him and threw another bottle of alchemical fire around the shield without looking.

While I wasn’t certain I would hit anyway, at the very least it could prove as a deterrence. Luckily, a couple more soldiers started screaming in pain. Unluckily for the first two soldiers, as soon as their fellow soldiers helped them put out the flames, they were hit with the new bottle of alchemical fire. Taking another chance, I took a quick peek around the shield I was holding and breathed another twilight breath attack on the soldiers.

Apparently, this was enough to make the soldiers retreat. Having two waves of soldiers die to a single kobold hiding behind a shield was disconcerting. Of course, it could have been the screaming group of kobolds who were running toward the invading soldiers with more bottles of alchemical fire held in their hands. Being mostly untrained or newly recruited soldiers, their will to fight broke before the approaching group of kobolds reached me.

They swept past me, bottles of alchemical fire flying at the backs of the soldiers. These soldiers bumped into the soldiers behind them, who fearing a mass attack, also started to run away as fast as they could. I stood there, watching in bewilderment, amazed once again at the ineptitude of the invading soldiers. Their commander had been weak, as were the soldiers themselves. It was starting to be obvious that the inexperienced commanding officer had brought an equally inexperienced group of soldiers.

Seeing that the group of screaming kobolds were about to run past me, I resisted the urge to run forward screaming as well. I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that I felt the impulse to join the mob. Instead, I ran forward and cast the Sleep spell on the retreating soldiers. Each time I cast the Sleep spell, several soldiers would fall down. This scared the other soldiers even more when they noticed the kobolds ruthlessly stabbing the sleeping soldiers as they ran past them.

I tried to conserve some spell points, so I also used twilight breath whenever I recharged enough energy. However, before too long, I ran out of spell points. Despite this, the enemy rout was well underway and no longer needed my assistance. Soon, the entire tunnel was cleared of the enemy soldiers.

Since I had run out of spell points even though I had the Soul Collector class feature, I made a mental note to learn some new spells. Only spells that had something to do with spirits could be cast using the spell points from Soul Collector, which I currently didn’t have any memorized. The one spell the feature worked with was the Zone of Death spell, which was considered a spirit spell. That also might explain why it did necrotic damage. I was really annoyed that I had spell points because of the feature but was unable to use them. I needed some type of spirit-based spell that I could spam on low health targets.

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Seeing this, other kobolds flooded into the tunnel and started unblocking all the arrowslits and resetting the traps. I stood near the entrance watching as the soldiers started to reorganize outside. However, this process was not completed quickly. Of course, neither was what the kobolds were doing. Unblocking the arrowslits took time, as did repairing and resetting the traps.

Still, I couldn’t help but be proud to be a kobold when I compared the two sides. The humans were milling around in an unorganized fashion like sheep while waiting for someone to tell them what to do. They had even been herded out of the tunnels like a herd of sheep by a sheepdog. As for the kobolds, they were working quickly and efficiently. “Yeah,” I muttered, “the humans might be taller, but we showed them who was the boss.”

I didn’t even notice at first that there was a group of kobolds who were dragging the bodies of the soldiers deeper into the tunnels. At first, I thought they were going to loot the bodies, but then I realized that the kobolds apparently viewed everything about the soldiers as valuable. The weapons and armor could be used, melted, or sold. Gold could be collected to buy supplies. As for the bodies, I fervently hoped the kobolds were intending to feed the bodies to the wereweasels or the worms.

The happy times didn’t last long though. I soon noticed that an officer had arrived and started to organize the soldiers outside the tunnel entrance. Seeing that they might decide to push forward once again, I was getting ready to inform the other kobolds when a lookout gave a bark, I mean a yell, to alert the other kobolds. Dozens of kobold heads swiveled to the tunnel entrance. Then, without anyone saying a word, everyone started retreating back to safety in the depths of the tunnels.

I was a little perplexed by the other kobolds. As soon as they saw the soldiers break formation and start running, they jumped on the enemy soldiers like a gnome on a copper coin. However, as soon as they noticed the humans might be ready to fight again soon, they started retreating. Still, something about the strategy seemed right.

In the words of Oliver Goldsmith, “He who fights and runs away may live to fight another day; but he who is battle slain can never rise to fight again.” While scurrying back with the other kobolds, I pondered this quote and decided to use it in the bible I would make for my followers. In fact, there were some other good quotes I could use as well. Sun Tzu had a lot of them I could borrow, and borrowing was certainly a kobold strength. In fact, one of them was especially apt, “Great results can be achieved with small forces.” That seemed tailor made for kobolds.

Once we had retreated back into the safety of the tunnels, a new line of defense was established. Since I had run out of spell points and was exhausted from the short battle, I decided to go back to my room. On the way, I decided that I really needed a pair of gloves or a belt that would give me a giant’s strength. I could already tell that my arms were going to be sore the next day from trying to carry around that stupid shield.

While walking back to my room, I tried to remember any quotes that I should add to my Kobold Bible. I had already added it to my list of things I needed to accomplish. I could impart my words of wisdom upon my kobold followers and lead them from obscurity to superiority. By the time I arrived back to my room, I was smiling. I was very pleased with how the day had turned out. While it was still early in the morning, I decided it was time to take a nap, but not before snacking on some mushrooms.

I was tempted to start writing down quotes for my kobold bible, but I didn’t want any of the maids to see what I had written before I was done. Although I could have written what I wanted into a spellbook or something similar, I didn’t want to have to carry it around with me, at least not until I was stronger. As it was, I was struggling to carry around the bags of food that I needed to snack on.

Because of this, I started organizing my thoughts only in my mind, at least until I was satisfied with how it looked. I was a little afraid that I would change my mind about something and then have to explain to any of the maids who might have seen what I had written. As for what I would include besides quotes, I needed to learn more about what life was like for other kobold tribes. In fact, I probably needed to see what life was like for the humans and other races as well. After all, I might want to expand my domain to include other races someday. Therefore, I didn’t want to create something that would exclude other races.

After I finished eating, I laid in bed while ideas raced through my mind about the utopia I would create. I could be the first kobold Jesus. Then again, scratch that. I had no desire to be a martyr. No, I would be more like Mohammad or one of the other prophets. Eventually, I fell asleep with dreams of church doctrine and dogma running through my head.