A boisterous meal came to an end.
He did not know whether it was dinner, breakfast, or lunch. In any case, he had eaten to his heart’s content.
Luge lay with his head on the black codex, one leg crossed over the other. His little feet swayed twice, paused for a beat, then began swinging again as he plucked a thin grass stalk from the edge of his grass skirt and picked his teeth with it, his dirty feet swaying all the while.
This meal had exceeded his usual capacity; he had eaten as much as half a plump grub.
He had been trying hard to eat more and sleep more so he could grow taller and stronger, but the eat-sleep, sleep-eat cycle never went smoothly. Fortunately, he later picked up this treasure of a book.
He thought the black covers on both sides of the book were made of something like insect shell.
Suddenly, footsteps sounded, echoing through the sprawling network of caves.
Luge slowly sat up and reached for his usual long staff.
The pleasant post-meal leisure ended for no clear reason.
The footsteps were not chaotic, but like urgent drumbeats, which meant there was only one person coming, and that person was in a great hurry.
He held his breath, pricked up his notched ear, and pressed his back against one cave wall.
Gradually, though, he relaxed.
As if to confirm his guess, that familiar voice immediately sounded.
“Brother Luge, I knew you would be here. Did you get enough to eat?”
The figure stopped in front of him. It was a kobold in a grass skirt like his own—a kobold, but for lack of a better word, a girl.
A kobold girl taller than he was.
“Aisjin, I told you, you do not need to run when you come to see me.”
He looked at the kobold girl somewhat angrily.
Doing that was very frightening. He was a neurotic little kobold who often lost fur because of insomnia.
“Oh, it is because... happy!”
Aisjin did not speak fluently, and her jumbled words often made it tiring for Luge to listen.
And that was after she had often chatted with him. In the past, when she tried to express something, it was so frustrating it made one want to pluck the fur on both sides of one’s head.
And such a one as her was already another oddity among these kobolds. He had even wondered whether she, like him, came from another world. Unfortunately, the facts proved he had overthought it. The kobold girl only barely looked like a person when she was with him; ferocity and bloodshed were her other side.
“We have a master! A strong, powerful, and wise master! The Gray Longneck Holy Lord!” Aisjin was so excited that her words became incoherent. She paused, as if trying to organize her language, then continued, “The master wants to see all the kobolds now, all, Brother Luge, let us go welcome the Holy Lord together...”
He looked at the excited kobold girl and could not quite process it for a moment.
His mouth slightly open, he was silent, as if frozen.
Oh, I see. So I am not a qualified kobold yet; I have not considered myself a kobold, he thought.
This difference was not about whether one shed fur or got bugs; it was mental, a fundamental difference in thinking.
He only wanted to eat and sleep well, to improve his scrawny weakness. He did not want to get himself some master at all. Or rather, even if the tribe had this so-called master, he would not go gather and show himself; he preferred to remain solitary.
Aisjin clearly did not think so. She had come to drag him to see the master. She had run all the way, wanting to share with this friend, the only kobold she could chat with, to share the joy in her heart. She was genuinely happy.
Their group of kobolds had occupied this place. Their numbers were certainly not small, but by kobold standards they were only a small tribe.
To be precise, they were a small tribe expelled after losing a competition, who had come here to breed and eke out survival.
The legendary powerful kobold tribes served mighty dragons. Sparks bursting from a dragon’s breath could melt rock. Those kobolds were taller than ordinary kobolds, had thick powerful tails, and their bodies were not covered only in patchy mixed fur; they all had scales like dragons.
All these things were in Luge’s mind, as if naturally engraved in every kobold’s brain.
And as exiles eliminated in competition, they did not even have mines to dig.
“Now?” he said.
His curiosity had always been urging him to go take a look.
Aisjin nodded vigorously, looking truly happy.
So-called serving a master meant that while receiving protection, the kobolds had to hunt and offer food to the master. This was the most basic requirement.
“What does the Holy Lord look like? He will not swallow us in one bite, will he?”
He stroked the fur on his chin and tilted his head toward Aisjin, trying to make this friend have doubts.
He believed she possessed that kind of thoughtfulness different from other kobolds; it was only temporarily buried by joy.
For a weak kobold tribe, the master they served was usually a somewhat clever, strong underground beast. The protection gained was mostly just a bit more courage.
They had had a Holy Lord before, that powerful master. It was said he had been stabbed to death by a group of lizardmen with short spears in a conflict. Luge had not witnessed it; he only remembered it was called Black Long Fur, or maybe Black Fang Holy Lord.
“Maybe I should learn to like him like you do, but every time, before I can, the master changes again,” he said.
Hearing this, Aisjin fell into thought.
Luge watched her quietly, his head tilted.
Aisjin suddenly shoved something into his hands, then started walking away in silence, farther and farther. But unlike when she had come running, this time she walked slowly.
Only when Aisjin’s figure had completely merged into darkness, beyond even kobold eyes to see an outline, did he lower his head to look at what was in his hand.
It was a neatly shaped, glossy piece of insect shell, presumably a gift Aisjin had prepared for him.
A small interlude is a flavoring of life.
He placed the insect shell nicely, choosing the most suitable and beautiful spot.
The spot happened to be just the right size; after adjusting the angle slightly, it fit perfectly. Placing it there was soothing. His careful arrangement, a simple action, felt like a huge undertaking.
Luge examined it and raised an eyebrow.
He spaced out for a moment.
Then, as planned, he continued his pre-sleep preparations that he had repeated countless times, opening the thick black-covered sleep codex.
He opened it and only glanced inside; his heart calmed.
Calmer than any time before.
In that instant, he became the center of the world, as if only he existed in the pitch-black world.
The words and patterns he had looked at countless times twisted before him as usual, but this time, imperceptibly, they faded until they disappeared. When he came back to himself, he felt as if he were rising. The distance between him and the book pages had not changed, but it seemed a strange perspective emerged from the crown of his head and rose upward.
A dim light flashed within the book, and the sensation of riding clouds and mist vanished instantly; his consciousness crashed back down.
At the same time, he opened the eyes he had closed without realizing it.
In the moment before opening his eyes, he saw a quiet space with a calm sea surface.
“Demonic Mark Meditation Method.”
Luge murmured to himself and gently stroked the cover of the black codex with a hand covered in scars and grime.
He finally recognized the words on it.
After that light flashed, he had gained some sort of inheritance: not only recognizing this script, but in an instant being able to speak and write it.
“The common tongue of the Earth Cave world? Wait—it seems... it can no longer help me fall asleep. I probably will not have time to sleep anymore...”
He grinned with his dog teeth, no trace of regret in his words, his eyes wide and round as if glowing.
He took a small, angular rectangular object in his hand. He had picked it up together with the black book. He had not known its use until now, but he had kept it well, never carelessly throwing it away.
In this moment, he learned its purpose.
The long object looked like white jade; on it were ten small dots, each representing one standard unit of mental power.
It was a mental power testing device for apprentice wizards; by cultivating the Demonic Mark Meditation Method from the black book, once successful, one could become an apprentice wizard.
Though he still did not understand what an apprentice wizard was.
But he knew this was an opportunity. Following the usage method in his mind, he gripped one end of the white stone bar hard and focused his mind. The stone emitted a soft, faint white light, but not a single dot lit up.
This meant he had not yet reached the mental power standard of a first-rank apprentice wizard.
He opened the black codex and began reading carefully from the first page.
The mental power space is also called the meditation space. Those who successfully open the meditation space and see the mental-power sea have made preparations and possess the qualifications to cultivate a meditation method. However, the impact of opening the meditation space makes one’s mind extremely tired; at this time, it is not appropriate to begin the first meditation, and one must rest for at least a day.
He read it over and over. The book’s earlier descriptions of the meditation space and mental-power sea, combined with his own condition, were indeed correct: he truly had the qualifications.
But one thing did not fit: he felt no fatigue at all; he was even very energetic.
He could begin cultivating the meditation method right now.
Chapter 2