I received a flurry of notifications.

Congratulations! You’ve slain two Stonemen (lvl 5)! You gain 380 xp!

Congratulations! You’ve reached level 2! You receive 2 stat points

Congratulations! You’ve obtained the skill Stealth!

Congratulations! You’ve increased the skill Stealth!

Congratulations! You’ve increased the skill Daggers!

Congratulations! You’ve learned the skill Feint!

It was clear that combat was high risk/high reward in this system. I pushed the notifications from my vision and returned my attention to the dead dwarves. Aside from the damage I’d inflicted, one of them had what looked to be wooden stakes lodged into his arm, and the other’s calf had what looked to be dozens of small nails driven into it. I picked up their picks and slung them at my waist, then searched their pockets. Each one had a long stone tablet with simple marks along the side, and one of them had a small waterskin filled with some kind of foul smelling alcohol.

When I was done I turned back to look at Elle. She was staring, wide-eyed, at the bodies in front of me.

“You killed them.”

“Yeah.” That was all I could manage.

She shook her head. “You seem surprised?”

“I am. I thought I’d just let them go, but I realized that if I killed them now, that would be two I wouldn’t have to kill later.” It was a lie, and not a good one, but it seemed better that saying I'd done it because the idea excited me.

“That’s… logical, but odd. Was there much killing on your world?”

"Yes, but not anywhere near me. I don't know why I'm reacting this way."

“I wonder if it’s something to do with having a combat class, or maybe those hidden abilities?”

“I have no idea.," I said, wiping some blood from my face.

“Well, either way, I’m going to take a look at the body.” She put on a stern look and crouched down to look them over.

I gave her some space and distributed my new points into dex and speed. After that I gave everything a look.

Cormac

Half-Elf

Lvl 2 Mercenary

->XP: 730

->HP: 22

Stats:

STR: 12

DEX: 13->14

SPD: 13->14

INT: 14

WIS: 10

PER: 11

CON: 10

LCK: 8

Known Skills:

Sword (LVL 5)

Club (LVL 5)

Mace (LVL 5)

Axe (LVL 5)

Spear (Lvl 5)

Hammer (LVL 5)

Bow (LVL 5)

->Dagger (LVL 9)

Improvised Weapon (LVL 5)

Barehanded (LVL 8)

->Stealth (LVL 2)

->Feint (LVL 1)

Abilities (Racial):

Half Borne of Magic

Abilities (Class):

Anything in a Pinch

For the Right Price

A Job is a Job

Spells:

Flash Step 1x per day

Grease 1x per day

Spark unlimited uses

Pretty good progress for only being in this world for such a short time. I was also surprised that all my foes so far had been higher level than me. Even with a system, it seems that if you stab something in the right place it’ll still kill it. My health gains were low, but that was my fault for not investing in CON. Still, a high enough SPD and DEX and I could continue to avoid getting hit anyway.

Elle finished up about the same time I did. She seemed to have calmed down now that she’d had something to focus on. “No notes or anything, but I was able to discern several things.”

“Like?”

“Their base or town must be only a half day or so away. They aren’t carrying much food or water. They also ran into traps of some kind. Based on the quality of the construction I’d normally guess dwarves, but the pieces are too small, dwarven hands would’ve had difficulty making them. They also have a rather distinct smell.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. After a few moments her nose began to give off soft light, it reminded me of the bioluminescence of the mushrooms. She went back to the bodies and gave a long inhale before standing back up. “A kobold did it. An exceptionally skilled kobold.”

“Kobold? Like, a tiny lizard person?” I asked.

“I think they prefer to be called tiny dragon people, but yes. Do you have them on your world?”

“No, it’s just like with Dwarves. There are stories, but they don’t actually exist there.”

“Well, they exist here. They’ve left us alone for the most part, but I guess that the stonemen are giving them trouble too.”

I took a moment and wiped the blood off my dagger, and onto the pants of one of the dead dwarves. “Seems like this is a good thing. Enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that.”

“And all what?”

“That’s the whole saying.”

She nodded, as if storing that information, and looked back at the bodies. “Would you do me a favor and kick these two out of this mushroom patch? We may need to find them later.

I raised my eyebrow, but complied, dragging them out of the patch and leaving the bodies exposed on top of cold stone.

…

After our encounter with the stonemen and with the information we’d managed to glean from them we decided to head toward the area where the mushroom dwarves had last encountered the kobolds. It took another hour of trekking through caves, and unlike the first trip Rockelle had no questions to ask. She had recovered from her initial shock, but she still seemed shaken. That unfortunately left me with my thoughts, which I had been doing my best to avoid as much as possible. Luckily, I had plenty of inane and useless thoughts that I could sort through rather than worrying about the more important, existential ones.

I wondered if I’d ever find a way to listen to music again. It was never something I was completely into, but at the same time I had a few favorites, particularly the oldies my mom liked. Maybe I could get a bard to perform some approximation of ‘Sixteen Tons’, or ‘Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown’ . They were pretty low tech songs. My enjoyment of more contemporary stuff would probably not be possible to recreate. Though, since magic existed, maybe there was a way to rip the music from my mind and play it into the air with the right spell.

I also wondered what I wanted to do going forward. Clearly I was committed to this quest, and the system quest, but that wouldn't be forever. If I survived I'd need to find something to do in this new world. I wanted to build something, but I wasn't quite sure what that was yet.

As I was musing I kept my eyes glancing left to right and my ears focused. Rockelle was leading the way, so I didn’t have to focus directly on where I was walking so much as the space ahead of where we were walking. It was because of that that I noticed the slight discoloration of some moss ahead of us.

“Wait.”

Rockelle looked at me. “Your elf ears pick something up?”

“My eyes actually.” I pointed at the discoloration. Then I looked around. There was a rock near me. I lifted it and tossed it at the patch. It gave way a little, but didn’t fall. I slowly approached, took one of my new picks and pushed the rock down a bit more. That caused the entire patch to fall. I peeked over the edge of the newly made hole and a number of pointed stakes. The hole was too small and the stakes too short to do more than maim someone of my height, but the trap would’ve spelled doom for a dwarf.

Congratulations! You’ve obtained the skill trapfinding!

Nice, that was a skill I had a feeling I’d be boosting by a few points soon. “I think I’ll take point from here on. Just unlocked a trapfinding skill.”

She nodded. “At least this means we’re probably getting close.”

We walked a ways further before I spotted another trap. This time there actually seemed to be a faint glow around a tripwire that had been placed in front of a cave entrance. I was careful to cut it from as far away as possible, but I still wound up with a small needle embedded in my hand. I plucked it out with a wince.

Rockelle took it and smelled the tip. “No poison. That’s something you should be wary of with your low CON.”

I nodded, grimacing a little from the pain in my arm, and we continued walking. As we went the traps started to appear more and more often. I disarmed two more pitfalls, and nearly fell through the third one. After that was a club that swung across the top of a bridge of stone over a chasm, and finally a small patch of stone that set off another volley of needles. By the end of the gauntlet I’d received two more ranks in trapfinding.

We reached a slightly more open cavern, with two pathways out of it and decided to take a break. By this point we were well past the areas where Elle knew her people had encountered kobolds before. She pulled some type of dried meat from her pack and we ate in silence, worn out from all the near brushes with death that had occurred that afternoon.

I suddenly heard a kind of whistling. It was an odd tune and before I could react to it a small figure emerged from one of the paths. It was a little taller than a dwarf, and was covered head to toe in a mix of brown and gold scales. When it saw us its yellow eyes widened.

For a few moments I looked at him, it looked at me, Elle looked at it, it looked at her, Elle looked back at me. Eventually I just held my dried meat in his direction.

“Want some?”

He bolted and I listened as his footfalls echoed throughout the caverns and back to us.

Elle was smiling ear to ear. “What a fascinating creature!” She pulled out a sketchbook and a piece of charcoal from her pack and started writing and sketching in it.

“Do you think we should follow him? Or leave?” I asked.

“Hmm? Sorry I need to write this down.”

A new sound started coming from the pathway, but this time it was much louder. There were a lot more feet scurrying in our direction. I considered drawing my dagger, or grabbing Elle and running, but I decided the best move was to stay where I was without weapons drawn. I likely couldn’t outrun the kobolds in unfamiliar terrain, particularly if I’d missed any traps, and even if I could I doubted that Elle could. She had been breathing heavily before we’d taken our break and while my long legs could carry me quickly her short ones likely would not.

I took another bite of my food and stayed seated, chewing slowly. The footsteps grew louder and the room began to fill with kobolds. Many were wielding weapons of different kinds, but they all looked uncomfortable with them and the majority had their weapons pointed down rather than directly at us. The only things they looked comfortable with were what looked like small blowguns. The group was colorful, with a number of brown and gold ones similar to the first we’d seen and the rest in varying shades of blue, red, and one that looked to be mostly silver. The tallest of them stepped forward in front of the rest. He was a head taller than Elle and two heads shorter than me, with red scales and yellow eyes.

“Who iz zis that invades zee caves of the buried clawz? That threatenz zee territory of Zevrac Dragon Blood”. He emphasized the last words by puffing out his chest. I assumed the chief he referred to was himself.

I gave a slight seated bow. “I’m Cor, and this is Rockelle. We didn’t mean to invade. Well, we did mean to find you, but I don’t think ‘invade’ is the word I’d use.”

Zevrac stepped toward us and pointed a spear in our direction “You look for uz? Why?”

“Well, we encountered some stonemen recently. They had been injured by your traps. Rockelle here and her people have also been having trouble with the stonemen. We thought maybe, since we share a common foe, we could work together.”

The lead kobold furrowed his brow and scratched at his chin with a clawed hand. “Zis is sensible, but we have not encountered one such as you before. What are you? Zome kind of long dwarf?”

“I’m a half-elf actually, but you can think of me as a long dwarf if you’d like. Doesn’t really hurt me.”

“What do zee dwarves offer to contribute to zis allianz? It must be zomething grand to match what my tribe can offer.”

I paused. I had not thought this far ahead and was completely unprepared for the question. I looked over at Rockelle, but she was too busy drawing, writing about, and even sniffing around the Kobolds.

I thought back to what Elle had said about the PER stat. Mine was a little above average. I’d have to really lean into who I was to make it go to work for me. “I’m going to be completely honest. I came to you before I asked the mushroom dwarves if they’d want an alliance.” I braced myself as I finished. This could go a lot of ways.

The lead kobold simply nodded. “Zis is wise. It iz better for zee strong to set zee terms.” He gestured to another kobold, it looked to be the same one that had whistled his way into the cavern earlier. “Zis is my broodling Zevrack. He will accompany you to zee village of zee dwarves. I give him full authority to negotiate on our behalf.”

“Your name is also Zevrac?” I asked.

“No, it is Zevrack,” responded Zevrack who came to stand closer to me and Elle. “Can I still have some of that meat?”