Sneaking into the kobold village was as easy as finding a gap in the wooden palisade. Turns out the logs of the wall were made from the stems of mushroom trees. They turned into something like wood when dry, except the stems inevitably twist and warp as they dry, making it impossible to make anything not ramshackle.

Inside, the buildings were not any better constructed, it seemed a miracle that any hadn’t collapsed yet, or perhaps, the Kobolds simply rebuilt them when they did. From the way the twisted stems were thrown together into rough cones, it hardly seemed that they put much effort into building them. I suppose when you live underground, there’s not much need for watertight buildings, they likely served more as places for privacy and territory markers than anything else.

In fact, sniffing some of the buildings, I determined that yes, each building was marked by its owners in exactly the way you’d expect of doggos.

Moving on, I explored the haphazard village. There were piles of trash littered about, mostly bones filled with determined beetles trying to scavenge the last bits of meat the Kobolds had failed to eat. Most of the bones were pretty chewed through, and they all were broken to extract the marrow. There wasn’t much leftover for the beetles, but the casual way the kobolds ignored the infestation of bugs roaming between the various garbage piles, meant that it was easy for me to restock my insect bomb ammunition. I took the time to silently kill a few to store away for later reanimation.

It was as simple as using my new strength, five times greater than two days ago, to casually swipe my claws at a few bugs while stealthed. They fell apart into gooey shredded bits with a single blow.

Swipe skill (novice) has evolved to (apprentice)

I felt a whisper of additional information in that announcement. The system had reevaluated my skill after seeing me use my swipe with serious intent, rather than the playful bap I’d first gotten judged on. The ranks awarded were based on how well you knew the skill, not the other way around. It would have been faster if I’d demonstrated a devastating swipe the first time I’d used it, as I would have gotten a high starting rank. But it wouldn’t be hard to improve in rank if I continued to use swipe to deal as much damage as I could, though only one rank per day, per skill, could be advanced.

It didn’t occur to me to wonder how I’d suddenly learned this, but I was certain it was true. The system had whispered into my brain, and I’d accepted it without question.

So far I had remained unnoticed as I continued to study the village and its inhabitants. I learned a bit about how the doggos in the village lived. There were straw piles of some sort inside each building that served as bedding, I noticed. I also saw that the same material, dried mushroom tree stems, chopped into smaller bits, was being used to prepare a large bonfire in the village’s central area. That fire pit was surrounded by large rocks and the distance between it and the nearest hut was substantial, creating a large clearing that took up much of the village’s total space. The doggos were very concerned about losing control of that central fire, and had taken precautions.

I paused to think about that. Lifting a paw I opened up the party chat. I saw there were a few messages I’d missed. Mostly from Jason complaining that I’d dumped his mom on him, and how dangerous it was for her so close to the village. Those messages I ignored. I suspected that he’d planned to sideline me to try and hog the XP for himself, by arguing that it was too risky for me to risk myself while carrying Katrina in my storage.

Katrina had sent me a message asking me that if I saw a bow and some arrows, that I should store them for her. She was an expert archer and would be better able to defend herself, even with no mana, if she had a bow.

I typed a message to Katrina, “How flammable are dried mushroom stems?”

The reply was; “VERY flammable, that’s why we only use them for firewood. You should definitely not use any fire magic in the village while any of the hostages still remain inside.”

That last message was clearly not meant for me, as I wasn’t the pyromancer in the party, and my bugs didn’t produce fire or sparks when they exploded; only poison and chitinous shrapnel.

The whole village was a firetrap waiting to happen. Honestly, if it had been up to me, I’d have periodically patrolled the whole region for kobold villages and just tossed a torch on them preemptively, you know, as a method of pest control. Sometimes, the simplest solutions were best.

Then again, it wasn’t a very large village, the kobolds would have time to run out the front gate, so most of them would survive. Also, the captured villagers would probably die, not that I cared much about them, but Katrina would probably back out of her promise to become my servant for a year if I didn’t save at least some of the cat people.

Ok, so fire wasn’t the best solution this time. I wandered about the village checking the larger of the huts to see if I could find anything interesting. The largest hut turned out to be a nursery, filled with many tiny kobold puppies who could barely crawl, attended by a number of female kobolds who worked in rotating work shifts.

After examining the kobolds roaming the streets, I got the impression that the village was full of mostly female kobolds and male kobolds either too young or old to march with the main war party. Only a scattering of male kobolds armed with stone knives and stone tipped warped spears of dubious value remained.

Identify skill (novice) has evolved to (apprentice)

I found a large hut that contained only a single large bedding and an assortment of random treasure. This must be the chieftain’s hut, I decided, noticing that most of the treasure was just things stolen from the cat tribal fishing village. The bedding was actually a pile of dirty, once high quality silk clothes, many of them torn and bloodstained, tossed in a careless heap. From the funky smell, it seemed the chieftain had already used the bedding for things other than sleep. Likely he had stayed in the village with all the females for a rather selfish reason.

The treasure included scraps of metal, pots and pans, steel knives, and a small chest full of copper and silver coins. Of note, a well made and cared for bow that looked too high quality to be of kobold manufacture, leaned against one wall. I popped the chest and the bow into my inventory, but didn’t see any arrows. Likely it had been left behind as a prize while other looted weapons like swords had been taken with the main war party. I doubted the kobolds would have much skill in archery if they couldn’t make pieces of wood straight enough to qualify as arrows.

The final thing of note in the village, all the way in the back across from the town’s only gate, was a holding pen full of somewhere between thirty and forty children of ages between eight and twelve. The pen was placed against the back wall of the village, but none of the many gaps in the wall were large enough for any of the children to escape through. I saw evidence of determined digging though. Given a few days, the children might manage to escape by tunneling under the wall, assuming the doggos were too dumb to notice.

One young cat girl didn’t have that kind of time, sadly. I found the chieftain, who was the largest meanest looking of the kobolds. He was the only one wearing a silk loincloth. My new and improved identify skill showed him as a . He was instructing a pair of elite to drag the cat girl away from the pen towards the bonfire. She was to be tonight’s dinner, I realized.

I decided that Katrina had been rather optimistic, the kobold’s hadn’t wanted to fatten up the children. They’d simply decided that the best way to keep their food from rotting was to eat them one at a time without killing the rest. A large pole at the middle of the bonfire was used to securely tie the screaming girl.

I looked away. There really isn’t anything I can do to save that human, I thought to myself. Already the entire kobold village was gathering to watch. It was to be dinner with a show, I realized. The chieftain stopped his subordinates from lighting the fire with handheld crude torches to give a speech.

“Tonight we dine well! We eat good tender cat flesh! I am chief! I was wise to help the werewolf! Look how much food we have! We will not go hungry for many days! Our warriors will return with more food! Praise me!”

Ah, I’ve found the only thing worse than a doggo, I thought to myself as the crowd cheered, drowning out the sounds of the sobbing children watching from the pen, I've found a doggo politician. The chief was cementing his power by cooking a child alive.

Well I was glad that Jason wasn’t here, because he’d long since have attacked already, damn the consequences. I prided myself on being smarter than that, but even I was annoyed. Not so much by all the suffering on display from the cat eared children, but rather by how overly proud and arrogant this chieftain was. He held his arms up and gloried in the praise, then turned to nod at his henchmen to light the fire.

He planned to watch the spectacle from as close as possible without getting burnt himself. The rest of the herd of kobolds were watching from a safer distance, in a semicircle around the chief. The whole tribe had gathered, except perhaps, for one or two females in the nursery with all the puppies.

This is the perfect time to attack, I realized. Not because I wanted to save the girl, but because the kobolds were all crowded together. I popped out my four undead bugs and told them mentally to spread out to cover as much of the tightly packed crowd as possible. Then they would wait for my command. Given how common the beetles already were, it was no surprise that the kobolds completely ignored them.

I typed a quick message in the party chat. "Watch the gate, they’ll be coming out in a panic." I ignored the questions my message promoted.

A plan had formed in my mind. You see, when I’d evolved my swipe and identify skills, I’d been thinking about how skills worked. The system skills boosted a person’s natural skills. I was in control of my body, unless I used an activated skill like when I’d accidentally jumped myself high into the air. But even if I didn’t use mana to activate my skills, they made my actions more effective anyways. It was as if my claws had grown slightly longer and sharper, or my observation of the kobolds had been made easier by having my attention drawn to details like grey fur. If I wanted to make the most out of my indimitate skill, and spook all the doggos, it wasn’t enough to just turn on the skill. I needed a show. A show like the one the chieftain was putting on. A show they’d all see and be impressed by.

My intimidation skill would work better if I used it while doing something rather intimidating. And how had I earned my master intimidation skill in the first place? I’d fallen from the sky like a tiny god. A furry meteor of doom.

I glanced up, the kobold village was actually near one edge of the massive cavern, so the roof was “only” a hundred or so feet in the air. I wouldn’t be able to land with as much force as last time… or would I? I had another little burst of genius as I studied that rather flat section of roof above my head. It looked flat enough to jump off.

Triggering my focus skill and my epic jump skill with 10 mana, I shot up into the air, still stealthed, and unobserved. With heroic effort, using all my coordination, natural cat skills, and the advantages of the increased perception of time the focus skill brought, I barely managed to rotate my body so that I hit the roof feet first. This was no easy task, but I’d estimated well. As my paws touched the roof, I’d already almost reached the top of my jump’s arc and was moving slowly. Now, I still had 60 mana, so I could only spend 10 more mana to do a mana boosted epic jump back downwards. I saw the ground rushing up towards me with terrifying speed, even through the 2x time dilation of my focus skill. I was moving at nearly a hundred miles an hour as the head of the kobold chieftain grew larger and larger in my sight.

I activated my pounce skill, 40 mana left, my paws were covered in a glowing barrier of crackling white mana as I slammed down upon the unsuspecting chieftain’s skull. At the very last moment, I used my last forty mana to detonate all four of my bugs at once, hitting the crowd of kobolds with deadly chitinous, poisonous, landmines at the very moment their chieftain exploded.

You have killed an enemy more than twice your level with a single plunging attack. Title Death from Above awarded. +1 strength, +1 coordination, and damage from any attack that involves dropping onto a target from above is multiplied by 1.25x

The explosions were rather gory. Certainly, the chieftain’s explosion was the most impressive, as with all the damage multipliers involved, I carved through his skull and torso, literally cutting him in half with the blunt instrument that was my whole body tipped with two mana covered paws. His skull was pretty much detonated like a watermelon hit by a sledgehammer, but I also forced his two headless halves to either side as I continued my way through his body. Blood and gore bathed everyone and everything nearby, briefly dimming the bonfire that wasn’t fully lit.

Then there was the shockwave, as I smashed down into the ground beneath the now shattered chieftain, I triggered a burst of wind and dirt, as with as a loud *Thud*, I created a small crater at the point of impact.

Then the bugs exploded, scattering their deadly chitinous fragments into the tightly packed crowd of kobolds, filling their lungs with toxic green gas. That’s what started the screaming. I’d triggered my intimidate skill to active mode, switching off stealth so they could see me, but in their collective shock at seeing their chieftain explode as I appeared, they’d been briefly unable to process fear. The pain from being peppered by bug bits and breathing in poison gas snapped them out of their stupor. My oppressive fear aura washed over them like a tidal wave.

You have terrified an entire village of sapient creatures into a mindless panic. Intimidate skill (master) evolved to (grandmaster). Gruesome Eater title further improves your skill to (Epic).

“Tiny Terror! Tinyterror! Tinter! Tinter!” The crowd screamed in panic as they trampled over each other to try to flee my terrifying presence. I would later learn that one of the kobolds I’d killed yesterday with poison had lived just long enough to whisper that name to one of the other hunting packs, then a report had been sent back to the village to inform the kobold chieftain. From that, rumors had spread, and they’d been whispering about me for over a day and a half. Just long enough for my legend to grow in their fevered doggo brains.

Even the kobold elite warriors, the level 10s the chieftain had kept by his side to help him enforce his rule, fled, turning their weapons not on me, but rather the rest of the villagers as they cut a swath through the confused mass in an effort to reach the front gate first. I started receiving kill notifications, starting with the chieftain’s death, but I turned them off so as not to be distracted.

My attack had an unforeseen unfortunate consequence. The shockwave had knocked a few bits of burning mushroom wood embers into the surrounding huts. The kobold village was quickly lighting on fire.

You have gained a level! You are now level 6!

This was fortunate, for although gaining a level does not heal any wounds, it did refill my mana instantly with a surge of power. I was now at 75 mana. Enough to pop out three more dead bugs, and instruct them to go blow up, one at a time as I reanimated them, at the chokepoint that was the front gate.

I inflicted large amounts of additional damage as the kobolds were forced together in tight proximity as they desperately struggled to flee. A few more kobolds died. In the distance, I saw gouts of flame as Jason had much the same idea, firing his flame jet into the crowd of kobolds trying to escape through the narrow gap. More kill notifications started popping up.

Damn him for stealing my XP, I thought to myself, the poison would probably have gotten most of them eventually. Luckily, I did get a fair share of kill participation both from my bug explosions and from the support role of “crowd control”.

More kill notifications popped up that I ignored. I briefly considered finding more bugs and sending them after any stragglers, but the bugs had wisely fled the village as it started to burn, and none were in sight. Then I was distracted by new notifications.

You have gained a level! You are now level 7! New ability unlocked: Summon Death Wasp (novice).

Good news then, I purred happily to myself, though no one could possibly have heard me over all the screaming. I ignored the screaming and purred louder, beginning the process of grooming myself free of blood as the death and mayhem spread.

The cat girl behind me started screaming too, as the bonfire, briefly quelled by the blood, began to resurge and the flames reached her kicking feet. I considered ignoring the noisy girl too, but the system had forced my empathy to grow to half of what could be called average for a human, and even my tiny heart was forced to feel pity.

It was a new emotion for me. I hadn’t really pitied Katrina. I’d mostly just considered saving her as possibly beneficial for my own needs, and rescued her as an afterthought. This was the first time I actually felt the desire to help a human for no particular benefit at some minor risk to myself. I didn’t like the feeling at all.

Flattening my ears in frustration at this unwelcome emotion, I hopped on to the top of the pole in the middle of the slowly growing bonfire, then bopped the human girl on the head to store her in my inventory.

Then I jumped over to the pen where the rest of the cat eared human children were all huddled against the wall, sobbing in terror as they watched me approach. Ah, I’d terrified them as well. Actually that made me feel better. I’ve just made a herd of human children cry in fear, I thought to myself, I’m not a nice kitty; I’m a scary alley cat. I did remember to deactivate my intimidate skill, though, so the children would stop peeing themselves. They were still scared, but now, they were able to maintain bladder control.

I walked through them, parting them as they struggled to stay away from my bloodsoaked form. I think that perhaps they thought I’d just disintegrated one of them, as they didn’t know what had happened to the girl I’d stored away. I found a narrow gap in the village palisade wall behind them and walked through.

Standing on the other side of the wall, looking back at the terrified faces staring out at me through a gap too small for them, I typed out, "Katrina, come behind the village. Pick up the kids."

Then I popped out the girl I’d rescued from the inventory. She fell to the ground, landing on her behind in stunned confusion. “What… I’m alive? The fire? Ah! The Tinter!” She backpedaled on the ground, trying to scoot away from me.

Ignoring her antics, I walked back through the gap and bopped another child into my inventory and then walked back out through the gap and popped him out of my inventory into the area outside of the village. After seeing me do that twice, the other children stopped fleeing from me and crowded around the gap reaching out to me. That made it faster.

Quickly, one at a time, I moved all the children into my inventory then outside.

You have successfully rescued over thirty children from a fiery death. Hero (Novice) title awarded. +1 strength, +1 coordination, +1 constitution awarded. Your karma score is improved by 10 to -5. New karma rank: (Tsundere).

Wait what? Where the doggo had that karma rank come from, and what can I do to get rid of it, I wondered angrily, that rank is just embarrassing.

You have slaughtered over fifty (kobold) puppies by burning them to death, you monster. Your title Enemy of Canines has evolved to Nemesis of Canines, providing 1.5x XP gain and 1.5x damage against canine type creatures. Your karma score is reduced by 15 to -20. New karma rank (Terribly Heartless).

Much better, I thought to myself.

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Titles, Jobs, and Blessings Insect Necromancer Provides skills related to the reanimation of dead insects. Dimensional Traveler +2 to all stats, also provides understanding of all languages. Unlocks dimensional storage inventory system. First of Your Kind +2 to all stats Rocket Man! +2 to strength, +1 rank to jump skill Nemesis of Canines 1.5x damage towards canines, and 1.5x more exp from killing canines. Hostile reaction and passive taunt effect on all canines that see titleholder. Gruesome Eater +1 rank to intimidate skill, 1.25x damage multiplier with bite attacks +50% resistance to nausea effects. Hero (Novice) +1 strength, +1 coordination, +1 constitution Death from Above +1 strength, +1 coordination, and damage from any attack that involves dropping onto a target from above is multiplied by 1.25x Traveller's Blessing (unknown)