Dog and Human
The Earth Cave.
A nameless little corner.
Luge smoothed out a piece of insect shell and a small strip of animal hide, set them in a dry place on the cave wall, and fiddled with the fine vine cord until it was neat.
After days of effort, he was finally going to own his first piece of clothing. If he pieced these things together, he could put an end to this state of being barely covered.
Granted, it would probably only make a pair of shorts.
It wasn't just for looks, though. Clothes like this would greatly help with hunting.
Just imagine being able to wear shorts and run wildly through all kinds of harsh environments. A warm happiness welled up in his heart for no clear reason.
He had never thought he could be so easily satisfied.
He would even be moved to tears by a pair of shorts.
He steadied himself, took out his sleep book—actually, he preferred to call it the Black Codex.
His insomnia had been terrible lately. He had picked up the black book by chance, and whenever he opened it and carefully looked at two pages, he felt woozy. After repeating the process a few times, he could always get a good sleep.
So far, he hadn't even managed to turn to page three.
It wasn't because the book worked especially well. Sometimes he had to flip back and forth seven or eight times before falling asleep, and lately it took more than ten.
The reason he couldn't turn to page three was that the book seemed glued together. It was clearly thick, yet no matter how he tried, he couldn't open any of the later pages. Of course, this didn't matter much to him. He couldn't understand the words or pictures anyway.
He scratched at the scraggly fur behind his ear and caught a playful little bug, which he casually tossed into his mouth.
"It's been itching all the time. So it's bugs again..." he muttered.
If he could shed fur and breed bugs, then he thought he was already a qualified kobold.
The little interruption broke his reading mood.
He shifted into a more comfortable position, swept away two small stones poking him from underneath, and focused again.
The second page contained only a single pattern that filled the whole page. If he stared at it for a while, the pattern seemed to come alive and squirm slightly before him.
He didn't know how many times he had looked at it this time. He had forgotten to count. The woozy feeling finally reached its peak.
He closed the book and stopped resisting, slipping it under his head instead.
The thick book made an excellent pillow.
In an instant, short and long snores began alternating, echoing through the empty cave where few came.
He dreamed.
He arrived at a familiar-looking restaurant.
The delicacies on the menu made drool drip uncontrollably from the corners of his mouth. His eyes could hardly keep up, constantly scanning up and down, left and right.
"Serve the food! Serve the food! Hurry up!" he shouted from the table.
From simple urging, it gradually turned into furious roaring.
It was as if all the anger in the world was churning in his belly.
His face began to change too. First his facial skin became slightly wrinkled, then sparse brown fur appeared, then his mouth gradually protruded, while his body shrank.
All kobolds were born looking like this. What was so strange about it? he thought.
The simple, old restaurant table had somehow turned into a solemn, heavy jujube-red table. Its long tabletop was inlaid with elegant curved decorations, and he was pounding it with both fists until it rattled loudly.
The food finally appeared on the table.
Two plates, one on the left and one on the right.
The two plates were placed before him, but he couldn't see what was on them. He lowered his head and stretched his neck forward, his dog eyes straining to open as wide as they could.
On the left plate was unexpectedly a black book, while on the right plate was a pair of shorts made from insect shell and leather scraps of varying sizes.
He woke with a start.
Panting, he sat up and looked around blankly. Then he raised his eyebrows and fell backward, landing heavily again.
Grumble! His stomach began to growl at just the right moment, as if afraid he would feel lonely.
This time, he probably hadn't slept long either, he thought.
He rested his head on his arm and squinted at the materials barely arranged in a hollow in the cave wall. They looked like they were on display, like rows of shining medals.
In the early days of his insomnia, whenever he barely fell asleep and then woke up, he would always forget that he was a kobold.
Sometimes he sank into strange thoughts.
For example, having become a kobold, was he still himself?
Was he really living in this strange world now? Could this be a very, very long dream?
Later, only when his stomach growled did he firmly nod. He was still himself.
He looked at the things on the wall and decided to postpone his plan. He would get another piece of insect-beast shell or animal hide and make the item more perfect. As long as the materials were good enough, it could be regarded as making a piece of armor.
Grumble—
He rubbed his belly, stood up, and picked up a long stick topped with a beast fang.
With his short legs, he scurried along the twists and turns and left his secret little nest.
As he walked, he adjusted the grass skirt around his waist, which was about to fall apart. This old companion would have to keep him company a little longer.
He sighed that he always wanted to get everything done in one go.
Actually, that was exhausting.
Kobolds had no clocks. They measured time by their stomachs and other strange things.
For example, they gathered somewhere after being hungry three times, then went out together for a tribal hunt.
In this area, kobolds were mostly hunters, as long as they didn't get separated. The shift between hunter and prey was often extremely smooth. A separated kobold was, at best, a piece of walking, shedding, smelly meat.
Luge looked at his skinny arm holding the stick. Even among kobolds, a short race, he was one of the thinnest and smallest, like a malnourished child.
After participating in tribal hunts twice, he had never gone again.
A thin, small kobold like him was regarded as useless by the tribe and often used as bait during hunts.
There were generally two kinds of bait in tribal hunts. One was ordinary bait to lure prey. The other was for emergencies. For example, if an unexpected subterranean beast intruded midway through a hunt, a bait would be needed to lure the intruder away and ensure the hunt succeeded.
In theory, if the bait survived, he would receive a slightly larger share of the spoils after the hunt.
But that was only in theory.
Kobolds were not kind or loving creatures.
Sometimes they even cheered when a bait died, because that meant less food had to be shared. Also, kobolds were never stingy with their fists when dealing with weaker kin in daily life.
So after that, he had always kept far away, and he had solved his food problems by toughing it out on his own.
Being thin had its own way of surviving.
Fortunately, life had improved a lot recently.
He quietly approached an exit that few kobolds usually used.
This area occupied by kobolds was made of cave after cave and pit after pit, with tunnels crisscrossing inside. The scale was astonishing. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to have a quiet little nest of his own.
And the kobolds' so-called going out to hunt simply meant going from this small cave area they occupied to a larger, more open underground space. That was the kobolds' hunting grounds. It was so vast it was like a small world inside a cave, with tall spindle-shaped mushrooms towering like giant trees in the distance.
Of course, Luge did not dare go there. That was a place for tribal hunts.
Luge sneaked out quietly like a thief, holding a stick.
In truth, he didn't even know how many exits there were here, and he was sure the other kobolds didn't know either.
Those fellows' brains were like broken things, closer to beasts than humans. They couldn't even say a long sentence, and it was difficult for them even to describe a simple thing clearly.
If there was anything most human about them, it was their ability to hold grudges.
After walking a short distance, he looked back. He didn't see those three disgusting figures, and he let out a slight breath of relief.
Feeling the mud beneath his feet, his short legs churned all the way, while he tried not to make any noise.
He only dared to make a living around here.
Whenever sounds of various sizes came from any direction, he became so nervous that the fur on the back of his neck would fall out. Then he had to decide whether to stay where he was and keep quiet for a while, or to get away as soon as possible.
Luge also had to thank these dog eyes of his.
A kobold's eyes could barely make out things in the darkness, which kept him from being completely blind.
He carefully made his way to a small gully.
This was his secret granary.
He casually picked up a withered leaf by his feet, went into the gully, and used the beast fang at the tip of the stick to cut his palm. He gently wiped the blood onto the leaf.
Then he picked a shallow pit and, based on past experience, placed the leaf in a suitable position—preferably between two relatively close shallow pits—and began to wait patiently.
These strange shallow pits contained one to three white grubs as thick as an arm. They were plump and extremely delicious. The grub meat was thick and difficult to swallow when eaten raw, but if rolled around in a hot spring, it became chewy and satisfying.
Unfortunately, fat meat worms could not provide him with materials for crafting.
As far as he knew, these fat white grubs had already appeared all over the kobolds' hunting area. Many kobolds secretly went to catch the bugs and no longer participated in tribal hunts.
Fat meat worms were gradually changing the kobolds' hunting habits.
The biggest reason they had become a top food choice was that there was no danger in hunting them. No one had ever seen the adult insects that gave birth to them.
There were only the shallow pits left on the ground, which could hardly be called worm nests.
He gripped the long stick, lay flat on the ground, and stared at the shallow pit.
The difficult part of catching these fat meat worms was not to be impatient. One had to lure the worm out of its hole.
The shallow-pit nest was full of a white substance. When the meat worm was startled, it would spit frantically, and its saliva would quickly fuse with the white substance into a large lump. It soon became extremely tough. With his thin arms and short legs, he could smash at it until he collapsed from exhaustion and still fail to break it open.
He had postponed making clothes partly because he was also eyeing this substance. It was practically a natural armor material: highly moldable and hard. The only difficult problem was the smell.
Once this stuff was smeared with worm saliva, it developed a strange fragrance that lingered for a long time. Just smelling it could unexpectedly increase one's appetite. Not to mention that he himself couldn't stand it; if he wore it, he might attract wandering subterranean beasts.
After a long wait.
The wonderful harvest moment arrived.
He happily carried the stick on his shoulder, feeling that his steps were so light.
Two fat meat worms were strung on the stick.
If he ate sparingly, they could last a long time.
Although this place was not far from the kobold cave cluster—he hadn't even reached the kobolds' hunting area yet—he never stayed here for long.
In his memory, that gully had not been there until recently, so there hadn't even been any catching worms down there. He was somewhat averse to this place deep down, so he tried his best to be a qualified timid kobold.
Luge carefully made his way back and safely returned to his safe nest.
Though the place couldn't really give him much sense of security.
Along the way back into the cave cluster, he guessed that many kobolds in the tribe had gone out, which was why the journey had been so smooth and he hadn't met a single annoying fellow.
Probably because the bugs were too easy to catch, no one wanted to wander around the caves, and no one wanted to come and lie in wait to rob travelers.
First, he untied the rope around his chest and took down the sleep guidebook from his back.
A solid, flat, thick book, and water-resistant too—what else could it be? Of course, an excellent piece of tableware.
He was simply too hungry, both tired and hungry, so he decided to eat this meal raw for now and think about taste for the next one.
He happily divided the food and happily ate.
He hummed a little tune cheerfully, as if he were not a kobold sitting in a broken-down cave and using a book as a plate.
And he was enjoying the benefits of being a kobold: as a qualified kobold, he automatically ignored the stickiness and astringent sourness of the grub meat. With one bite, he felt his stomach immediately become much more comfortable.