He narrowed his eyes slightly and stared at the stone.
A human shape was faintly there, half-hidden, half-revealed; another shake of the head and it was gone again. Only by concentrating could he see it.
“A kobold's lifespan is only a little over twenty years. You probably can't grasp how long a year is. You only need to know that you are already a teenage kobold, and the time you have left is nowhere near enough—not even for a genius among humans—to become a formal wizard. I can help you, ugly little kobold.”
“The Language Comprehension Art in the initiation inheritance ought to let you understand my words better.”
The voice kept sounding in Luge's head, deeply uncomfortable to the senses. Even when it spoke sentences that ought to ring with passion, he could sense not the slightest ripple of emotion from the speaker.
He paid no mind to what the other was saying. He simply calmed himself and tried to summon the concentration he used in meditation.
A figure lying on its side, dressed in a silver-gray robe, came into view.
A person. A true human.
Not a dog-headed monster that merely resembled one.
He kept concentrating, and his gaze drifted slowly on. He saw a smooth, clean chin; he saw the missing arm; and beyond that, a head missing at least a third of itself, with the one remaining eye wide open, staring at him without blinking.
If it were whole, it would look like a young man who ordinarily took great care with his appearance.
Luge's feet retreated of their own accord.
“You're still alive?”
He couldn't put words to what he felt then—fear laced with curiosity.
The freak's missing arm was gone from the shoulder. It looked as though an exceptionally sharp longsword or axe had come down at a slant from the top of his head, carrying off those vital parts of the body in an instant and leaving a neat, even line behind.
“So you do understand the common tongue after all. You really are unlike other kobolds. Don't back away again—don't waste our time. The moment you leave this place you'll forget everything to do with me, and there's no telling how long it will be before you come again. There may be no next time.”
The freak, horror of a face and all, kept stuffing his voice into Luge's head.
Luge stopped. He studied the other's mouth—it did not move as he spoke—and that unnatural posture, and that unblinking eye.
This half person probably couldn't move at all.
“Have we met before?” Luge said casually.
“Be patient, kobold. Once you become a true apprentice wizard, you should be able to remember me.” The Half-Man was still spilling out his cheap, counterfeit exclamations, entirely without rise or fall. “Your progress astonishes me. You can already look at me directly for this long.”
At that, Luge shook his head. Once he stopped forcing his mind to focus, the figure blurred back into a barely discernible outline.
“Curious little kobold. This is a gift from me, a reward for your progress. There should be something inside that you need.”
A small pouch appeared out of thin air and flew in an arc to Luge.
He had no choice but to raise a hand and catch it, and his mind jolted as he did—this little thing actually responded to mental power. Plainly it was no ordinary cloth bag.
“I've wiped the mark from it. You can use it after a fashion, but you can't control it finely—each time, all you can do is tip everything out. When you become an apprentice wizard and learn the arcane mark, brand it on the pouch, and it will become your own storage pouch, fully under your control.”
“Thank you.”
Luge's face was utterly sincere. After a slight hesitation, he bowed to the illusory figure.
He didn't dare refuse.
“You've already got a good grasp of the common tongue. I had assumed that even once a kobold understood the words and phrases, it would still be hard for him to change his way of speaking right away,” the Half-Man said slowly. “You really are a unique kobold. That too is a reward for the bit of amusement you've given me.”
Luge grinned foolishly and said nothing. He thought kobold grins were all hideous, but what else could he do right now besides grin foolishly?
He was deeply doubtful as to whether he had really met this person last time.
The other had said there was something he needed in this little pouch.
Which meant the other knew what he wanted.
Suppose everything the other said was true—giving him the Black Codex, his lucky survival, his return to this place, this meeting, and now a small storage pouch full of things. It was as if nothing had been said, and yet as if everything had been said. There was no legendary contract binding him, but he could already see an invisible chain.
“Ugly little kobold, I hope you can keep surprising me. Judging by that display of mental power just now, you've mastered at least three runes. That astonishes me too. At your rate of progress, the time you have left is enough to grasp a zero-ring spell at a basic level and become an apprentice wizard.”
“Interesting. Perhaps you will be the first kobold wizard in the Earth Cave…”
As the Half-Man spoke, his figure gradually thinned out until it was barely visible.
Luge kept his head low, holding a humble posture.
He didn't dare and didn't want to say too much; by instinct he didn't want to appear too clever. Yet he also didn't dare act too stupid—after all, he couldn't remember last time's visit, and didn't know whether the two of them had spoken. But he trusted himself: even if they had spoken last time, he certainly wouldn't have behaved too outrageously.
Perhaps he should be happy. As a kobold, he really ought to be happy.
Once he had reasoned that out, he lifted his head again and showed a bare-skinned, toothy grin.
He had gotten what he wanted, so he really ought to be happy: he could keep walking the wizard's road, half-understanding as he was. In the initiation inheritance the Black Codex had brought him, a few lines mentioned formal wizards—how becoming a formal wizard exalted one's form of life and greatly extended one's lifespan.
As a kobold, if it really was as the Half-Man said, then lifespan was a dead knot. Becoming a wizard and changing his fate was like the antidote, but the antidote was right there in front of him and out of reach—the fate of a short-lived species was like his own skinny little arms.
He knew he would surely come to this place again. The invisible chain already held him fast.
The Half-Man's figure faded bit by bit until it disappeared from sight, and not once did he say what Luge was supposed to do.
That, instead, left him feeling as wretched as if he were shedding hair all over—and from anxiety and tension his back really was dropping a great deal of loose fur; if he shook himself hard a couple of times, it would surely come sifting down.
Holding the little pouch, he tried backing up two steps. This time no voice came to stop him.
It looked as though he could leave now.
The sudden joy of gaining spell knowledge did not quicken his steps.
He had never expected things to turn out like this. Before setting out he had meant to come scavenging; in his imaginings, whoever lost the Black Codex might well have lost more than one book, and he'd planned to widen his search area in hopes of picking up a book crammed with spell knowledge.
On the way back he stayed as cautious as ever, working out the markers at each junction while keeping an ear on the sounds around him.
After all, he was still a scrawny, powerless little kobold, and the greatest weapon in his hands was still that long staff. As for the Black Codex head-bursting method, who knew whether it would be of any use against an underground beast.
He was gradually past the halfway point.
The return journey was much faster than groping his way forward had been.
He heard a burst of sobbing. At first he couldn't believe it; then he listened closely, and it really was crying.
He stopped at once and checked whether he was on the right route.
That crying was definitely not made by a kobold—he had never heard such weeping among the tribe. It sounded more human; the timbre was like a heartbroken child whose toy had been snatched away, but with a slight difference—now and then it was accompanied by a faint humming.
On tiptoe, he slowly backed up to the previous junction. He was certain he hadn't taken a wrong turn, but at this moment he decided to break his earlier resolve and deliberately take a side path, to skirt around that sobbing which made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
Having come this far, he was confident he could detour for a stretch and then get back on course, and in the end make it back to his own little den.
For the rest of the way his nerves stayed taut, and the horror stories he had once read echoed in his head—things like weeping that followed a person wherever he moved—but fortunately none of that happened.
Hurrying along on light feet the whole way, he finally reached his safe den on an empty stomach.
The kobold girl was waiting there.
“Aisjin?”
Having just been through a string of bizarre events, he was genuinely delighted to see a familiar face the moment he got back.
“Brother Luge, are you going off adventuring again? It's very dangerous. If you get lost you'll starve to death…”
Aisjin clearly still remembered what he had told her before.
“Look, I brought grub meat this time. To get back faster, I didn't even have time to eat the last piece.”
He showed the kobold girl a small chunk of grub meat.
Listening to Aisjin's halting, ugly kobold speech, he suddenly wanted to master that spell which let a person pick up the Earth Cave's common tongue in an instant.
Of course, even if he did learn such a spell, he would only ever use it on Aisjin. He had no intention of changing the other kobolds.
Kobolds, for all the dog in their name, have no lovely fluffy fur, and are absolutely not cute.
Quick to anger yet cowardly; they gather in packs yet are never united.
One moment they can lunge like mad dogs; the next they scatter in panic.
These dog-headed things are generally short, and most of them like to go about hunched over, with wrinkled skin, sparse hair, and protruding mouths—exactly like a little old man who can leap up and bite, or a hairless big rat with a dog's face.
If you had to name some merits, there were probably only enduring hunger and being just barely able to see in the dark.
The kobold girl seemed stronger than before. The tribe's food must have been quite good lately; perhaps that Gray Longneck master hadn't been squeezing the kobolds too harshly.
“Did the Gray Longneck master forbid catching those bugs?” he asked casually, suddenly remembering.
“There's no Gray Longneck Holy Lord anymore. We follow the Black Claw Holy Lord now. It has beautiful long black fur, it's stronger, wiser, and it has big, powerful claws…” Aisjin said.
They changed masters fast this time, he thought.
Every change of master could be counted as a crisis of sorts for the kobolds.
At least, that was how he saw it.
Serving—or rather, following—a new master and figuring out the master's habits: that process inevitably cost a good deal.
And a change of master also meant the tribe had just suffered a brutal defeat. With the old master's death, a great many tribesfolk had died. Every step of changing masters was paid for in spilled kobold blood.
But kobolds thought quite differently.
Some kobolds even believed that the heavier the casualties, the more it proved they were welcoming a more powerful master.
Of course, the universally acknowledged best kind of master was one who was powerful but fond of long sleeps. The kobolds only had to prepare a sufficient quantity of food before each time the master woke.
If luck was bad and they got a stupid, greedy, savage one…
then it would quickly drain the kobold tribe dry. In past periods when the hunt went badly, injured kobolds and useless scrawny ones like him were all gathered together and offered straight to the master, to become the master's next meal.
But now that grubs were everywhere, things would naturally change somewhat.
Chapter 5