Chapter 253. Rebellion.

This is the first time you have been attacked during this challenge. Your map will reveal where the attack is occurring, and if you focus on any of your minions in the area, you will be granted vision in a small radius around them.

At least the system told me how to figure out where the attack was coming from. I pulled up the map linked to my headquarters and saw a flash of red inside the cavern, back at the edge of the explored area. There were no minions there currently, but I could see that two of my kobolds had been there and that they were now dead. The map represented the dead kobolds as a grey dot with an x through it. With no active kobold’s around, I couldn’t view the area directly.

“You, can you lead my minions to this area?” I demanded, pulling one of the kobolds lurking outside the headquarters inside to show them the map. Thankfully, the system allowed me to project the map onto the wall of the headquarters, making things easier.

“That where other kobolds live. The try to kill us or force to join them. We want to live here and go outside, they want to stay in cave,” the kobold said, shaking in fear as it looked around at all my minions surrounding it.

“Lead us there, quickly. I won’t allow these rebels to harm our people,” I ordered, forming up my minions as we moved past my headquarters and deeper into the cavern.

As we got close to where the red light was flashing on the map, I ordered my mana slayer drone to activate his Stealth Field Generator and lead the way. It was darker here, with no light from the entrance reaching this far into the cavern. At least it wasn’t completely dark, and the glowing fungus on the walls allowed me to navigate without too much difficulty.

Other than a few larger patches of glowing fungus, we were inside a rocky area with plenty of nooks and crannies in the walls and floor for someone the size of a kobold to hide. The drone stopped at an open spot near where a partially harvested patch of mushrooms was found.

The soil here was torn up by signs of a struggle, and there were blood trails leading deeper into the cavern. Our guide chose this moment to flee back to the village, and rather than cause another casualty, I let him go. There would be time later to instill some steel into their spines, but for now, the frightened creature was only acting on its instincts.

A bit further in, I heard several yipping kobold voices arguing, and saw the flickering light of a campfire. With the noise these kobolds were creating, my team was able to approach without being noticed. They must have had little fear of the other kobolds coming to retaliate against their attack, and given our guide’s reaction, their lack of concern was probably justified. Unfortunately for them, me and my minions were now running things inside this cavern.

“Spread out a bit, everyone, we’ll start with ranged fire, then move in after we’ve softened them up,” I ordered to my team. Sitting around a small campfire made from burning mushroom stalks were nine kobolds. Unlike the ones in my village, these guys looked better fed, and seeing what was cooking on the fire, it was clear they were supplementing their fungus diet with some old-fashioned kobold cannibalism.

The enemy was unarmored and carried sharpened wood sticks and crude stone daggers as weapons. Glurk, Khurr, and Elida with her new sling, made ready to fire. I also pulled my magic missile wand and picked a target. On my command we fired, and four of the feasting kobolds went down. Glurk was the fastest at reloading and had a second shot out before the enemy even had a chance to respond.

With over half their number down, one kobold shrieked out a pathetic war cry and charged. The other three survivors fell to the ground and covered their heads like kids trying to hide from the boogeyman. My mana slayer drone dropped from stealth right in front of the charging kobold and carved him up with little trouble. That left me with only the three cowering enemies.

“You three, did you use to be part of the tribe?” I asked.

“No kill, please, no kill,” one of them whimpered.

“Answer my question or die,” I commanded.

“We part of tribe, no want to starve, so leave and eat what we can,” one of the kobolds replied.

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“That doesn’t seem to be working out too well for you if you need to eat your former tribe to survive. Now that I’m in charge, I’ll solve the food issues for our village. Do you want to return to the tribe? If you do, you’ll have to work hard, but we’ll see that you’re fed enough,” I asked.

“You would bring us back to tribe? You let them kill us for you?” the kobold asked, finally uncovering his head to look at me directly.

“I’ll take you back to help us build the tribe, not for revenge. There’s too much to do and not enough hands to do it. If you work, you’ll live,” I promised.

“I go with you, if you promise no kill,” the kobold said, standing and looking at his two companions. After the newly recruited kobold dished out a few kicks and slaps, he managed to get the other two joined up. I had the goblins escort the trio, just to make sure there were no shenanigans on our walk back to the village. As we made it back to the headquarters, a system prompt appeared.

You have quelled the nascent rebellion among the kobolds. Your people’s morale has improved from Rebellious to Moderately Hostile.

You have brought back some of the rebels and allowed them to rejoin the tribe, this was not looked upon favorably by a majority of your tribe. Your people’s morale has changed from Moderately Hostile, to Rebellious.

Improve your village and give your tribe purpose to improve their morale. If morale remains hostile for too long, a new rebellion will occur, drastically reducing your available population.

The system controls seemed to kick in and I didn’t have to give the former rebels any orders, they just joined in with the other kobolds. Nobody tried to shank their former enemy, but I had to get cracking if I wanted to prevent another rebellion. First off, I needed to finish figuring out my headquarters.

Linking back up with the interface inside the headquarters, I resumed where I’d left off inside the infrastructure tab. Both the mushroom farm and the housing complex had an upgrade available. I had to confirm my desire to activate both upgrades and heard some surprised chittering from the kobolds as things started to change.

The fence around the mushroom farm extended about twenty feet on one side. Fresh, rich soil appeared, and new clusters of mushrooms began to grow at a rapid pace. Two more of the kobolds milling about, including one of the former rebels, joined the four mushroom farmers to help with the harvest.

The handful of rickety huts that constituted our housing complex expanded as well. They were still ramshackle affairs but would fit more kobolds inside when it was time for them to sleep. With the upgrades completed, the system confirmed that I’d done something to help the morale situation.

Your expansion of food production and housing has improved the morale of your tribe. They are now Moderately Hostile. Continue to build and improve your empire in order to improve the morale of your people.

Typically, all your newly created structures will start at rank 0, with the upgrade granted by your arena certificates, all newly created mushroom farms and housing complexes will start at the current rank of your headquarters.

It was nice to see my kobold empire was only moderately angry with me. Oh well, that would change as we built this place into something more than it currently was. Next up was the defense tab, and it was pretty sad.

Defenses.

Fixed defenses:

None.

Warriors:

None.

Militia:

None.

Create a barracks to begin training your population for war.

I had more building to do, but the build new structures tab was locked, and I got a system message to complete the tutorial before I could begin to add or upgrade any additional structures.

Trade:

None.

Another thing that waited for my intervention. I wasn’t sure who or what we were going to trade with, and at some point. I’d have to decide whether we wanted to focus on conquest or growing relationships through trade. Knowing most summoned beings, they would opt for going aggressive and fighting anything in their path. Thankfully, it didn’t appear that there was any PVP element to our challenge. What the others did shouldn’t affect me directly.

The final tab was population, and it gave me an exact count of how many kobolds lived under my mostly benevolent rule.

Population.

Kobolds: 27.

I had 27 subjects, but I only counted 19 inside the cavern. The others must be out scavenging in the forest or something. Using the map, I found an option to show existing subjects. Green dots began to appear, and as I suspected, there were eight kobolds grouped together out in the forest.

Shifting my view over to one of the kobolds in the forest, I could see that a strong work ethic wasn’t something that had been instilled into my people. Two of the kobolds were half-heartedly picking up fallen branches to haul back to the cavern, and the rest were just lazing about, doing nothing to contribute to our mutual success.

You can now choose where the resources your people gather are spent. In order to build a sustainable economy, you should spend your resources on building a variety of structures for your starting village.

It was time get this village to grow, and for me to decide just how I wanted to play this arena run. Do I go aggressive and make my kobold nation into one of conquest and destruction, or do I go with gathering great wealth through trade and alliances with the other factions that I’m sure were lurking in this land?