Luge sat slumped sideways, touching the rock wall in a daze.
In this pitch-black world, everything seemed frozen in place. Gradually, only the sound of his breathing remained. He consciously slowed his breath, and then he could hear his own heartbeat.
A drop of water fell from the cave ceiling.
It struck him right in the face.
He raised a hand to wipe away the dampness and gave the thinning, patchy bristles on his head an offhand scratch. The motion pulled at the wound in his left flank, bringing a slight spark of life back into his vacant eyes.
Scraping by all day in the caverns, muddling through without ever seeing the sun—he had no idea how many days had passed. It was as if time no longer had anything to do with him. He only knew that he had gone hungry many times, had eaten many times, and sometimes had to endure hunger continuously.
A patter of footsteps sounded.
A figure a head shorter than him felt their way forward through the darkness.
The newcomer stepped up to him, chattering out a torrent of words laced with obvious concern.
Luge swallowed his sighs.
He looked over the visitor.
During this time, his sole stroke of good fortune was having happened to rescue the kobold before him—Aisjin, a kobold maiden slightly shorter than himself.
Aisjin was one of the few kobolds he had encountered whom he could actually communicate with.
"Brother Luge, I knew you'd be here! How is your wound?" The kobold maiden, Aisjin, drew close and looked up at him, gently speaking as she picked between her teeth with a claw. "The Master is already gathering everyone. He might lead the tribe out to hunt."
Luge froze for a moment, then braced a hand against the cavern wall and unsteadily climbed to his feet.
"Black Claw Holy Lord's appetite has grown again," he remarked with a sigh.
"It's not Black Claw Master! Black Claw Master... has become food, swallowed in one bite by the new master! Now we follow the stronger Gray Longneck Holy Lord! He definitely won't be eaten so easily." Her speech was much better than before, at least bordering on fluent now.
Leaning one shoulder against the wall, he rolled his eyes at her words.
Ordinarily, he preferred solitude.
First, it spared him beatings; kobolds were never stingy with their fists when it came to their own kin.
Second, he liked to relish the sensation of starving alone. Enduring hunger could be said to be an essential part of every kobold's life.
This period of solitude hadn't actually been long.
His stomach had only growled through one bout of hunger, yet out of nowhere, dynasties had changed. Sounds like the new object of devotion might have a rather long neck.
Aisjin continued picking at her teeth with one hand while holding out the open palm of her other hand toward him.
"For you."
Luge's brow twitched, already having an inkling of what it was.
He leaned in close to look.
It was a palm-sized chunk of charred meat, its burnt smell failing to mask a raw, rancid odor up close.
The kobold maiden knew he preferred cooked food.
He looked up at Aisjin's other hand. The claw she was using to pick her teeth gave off a soft, faint luminescence.
"Did you eat those glowing mushrooms again?"
"Not a lot! I listened to you—I didn't eat many. Nothing bad will happen, I'm strong."
Aisjin patted her belly and pushed her outstretched hand forward once more.
He scratched the long hairs near his ear. A kobold's ears were situated almost at the back of the head, something he had never quite gotten used to. What was more, he had recently noticed he seemed to have lice.
He scratched and scratched at the patchy tufts of fur.
The kobold girl held her hand out quietly.
"Half and half."
He picked up the charred, half-raw meat, summoned his strength to rip it in two, and placed one half back into the kobold maiden's palm.
Beaming, Aisjin shoved the meat into her mouth in one gulp.
Luge watched her cheeks bulge and chew, then raised his own portion to take a bite and chew vigorously. But on his bald, canine face, there was none of Aisjin's blissful satisfaction.
The charred roast meat went down his throat before he had even chewed it thoroughly, instantly soothing his stomach.
*I can survive two more days,* he thought to himself.
Mooching off the meager scraps of a kobold maiden naturally felt terrible, but he didn't want to starve to death.
He let out a long breath, releasing a sour stench.
Suddenly, his brow furrowed again.
An inexplicable sense of déjà vu washed over him.
He felt as though he had once scolded Aisjin for eating glowing things before.
"Brother Luge, why haven't you swallowed yet?" Aisjin asked with a grin.
"I..."
He suddenly realized the chunk of meat was still sitting in his mouth.
He opened his palm in front of him and spat it out. Sure enough, it was that piece of meat.
He had heard that many old kobolds experienced this sort of mental decline in their final moments, sometimes even losing control entirely and dying amid wild shrieks and hollers.
*Am I dying too?* Wild thoughts flooded his mind.
*But I'm not old! Even if I die, I'd die of starvation! Could hunger have rotted my brain? Besides, I haven't even become a wizard yet!*
As he wailed internally, a sudden shiver ran through him.
He looked down again.
What rested in his palm was no longer a piece of meat, but a round orb radiating an ethereal glow.
The glimmering light was mesmerizingly beautiful.
The surroundings began to tremble, swelling into an earth-shattering tremor.
He instinctively reached out to shield Aisjin, but before his motion was half-finished, everything dissolved with a roar.
He opened his eyes.
A flicker of anger flashed across his gaze.
Peace had returned to the world, and the distant dripping echoed just as before.
Luge looked down at the orb pinched between his fingers, and at the nurturing bag at his waist, which had been vibrating furiously.
"Thanks, little guy. You can rest now," he said, patting the bag.
"Your mental power is so weak. Are you a low-level apprentice wizard too?"
Gazing at the sleek, round pearl in his hand, he began talking to it like an idiot.
"Wandering around out here as such a low-level apprentice is very dangerous. Did you grow up in some big city? One of those Earth Cave Cities? The dangers of the Earth Cave are beyond your imagination..."
"Are you really not going to say anything?"
"A few days ago, I ran into a snake, and even that snake knew how to talk with mental power."
Even as he spoke, Luge had already completed the charging of two spell models. One was Boiling Spirit, cast as a precaution to sharpen his focus and offer mild resistance against mental bewilderment; the other was what he was secretly doing right now—imprinting an arcane mark onto the orb to tag it.
"Insolent fool!"
A psychic pulse brimming with intense emotion surged from the orb, and the arcane mark failed to take hold.
Suddenly, an ethereal glow flared, and the orb began darting wildly up and down. Luge gripped it tight, darting and dashing alongside it in every direction. He had sensed early on that this thing would try to bolt, which was why he had attempted to brand it with an arcane mark. Seeing the stalemate, Bull's Strength quietly infused his body.
"I am a limit apprentice wizard! To think I'd be... You're a kobold?! If I had known, I wouldn't have bothered with dream-luring! What a waste of my mental power!"
Partway through its sentence, the orb's voice abruptly spiked an octave, piercing Luge right where it hurt.
Luge was about to curse back when he froze. The orb also ceased moving.
"Friend... it looks like you've cracked."
Chapter 28