The zone that was once Shin’s entire world had always seemed a pleasant enough place to live. It had some woodland to romp around in, plenty of birds and critters to eat, sticks and rocks of countless shapes and sizes…honestly, if not for the genocidal neighbors, Shin would have gladly named it as fine a home as any.

Then he took his first step into the zone that was literally next door, and realized what a dump they’d been living in.

Gero managed to project an indifferent air towards the lush forest the three kobolds stepped into, her club propped onto one shoulder. Momo made no such attempt, however, the little cleric rushing forward with a gasp of wonder as she tried to take everything in all at once. “Omigosh! The trees are so big! And look at those birds, and, and–!” She gasped again. “Is that a river?!”

Sure enough, there was a wide river cutting through the trees just beyond the clearing, sapphire blue and idyllic as it flowed towards them to terminate into the barrier between this zone and their own. Where it just sort of…vanished? How did that work? By all rights the river should have continued on into the pack’s zone. Why didn’t it?

Apparently hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, maybe even millions, chose oblivion over the indignity of spending even one second in the zone of Shin's birth.

As Shin gazed out over those perfect waters, a gorgeously fat trout lept out from below its surface to snap at some passing bug before splashing down again. Maybe it was for the best that there hadn’t been a river back home. Because if there had, Shin was confident he would have spent every waking second fishing from said river. He’d have never stolen the secrets of the Status Screen, he’d have never made the Plan, they all would have died.

But they would have had fish. Hrm. Tough call.

Oh well. No use wondering what might have been, or crying over non-existent rivers. They had boar-related business to attend to. “Momo, did you finish picking your spells?”

“Oh yeah, totally. I got a couple basic ones for free.” She started ticking them off on her fingers. “Lessee, I’ve got a small Heal and a Bless; I can use those all day but there’s a cooldown.”

Gero cocked an eye towards the cleric. “No attacks, though? Divine flames, giant hands reaching down from the sky, nothing?

Momo stuck out her tongue. “I’m Level Five. I think I’ll probably need a few more levels before I’m making giant anythings reach down from the sky.”

Gero shrugged airily. “Just saying. Brutes’ whole thing is bashing, and I’m already the best at that. You’ve got holy power, but can’t even make one little hand come down to smoosh our enemies. It’s pretty clear who’s winning this race.”

“Yeah sure fine anyways.” Momo primly spun away from Gero, kneeling down to fiddle with the dirt. “I do have an attack, I just need to make a talisman first.”

That certainly caught Shin’s attention. “What’s a talisman?”

“Oh, it’s how Speaker magic works! First I draw something like this,” She began to trace a circle in the ground–”And then I can use a spell slot to cause an effect on whatever’s marked, or make stuff happen in the area around it.”

“Hm.” Shin tapped his chin, moving closer to watch Momo work. “How are we supposed to make people step on them, though?”

“Well, Mister Schemer,” Momo dished up a hefty dose of side-eye for Shin. “I’m pretty sure figuring that out is your job.”

“Fair point.”

Gero tilted her head questioningly to one side. “Can you draw them in advance?”

“Yeah! With some mud or face paint I could mark us up before a fight. Then I’d be able to use my spells whenever we need them. There!” She straightened up, apparently finished with her drawing as she motioned for Shin and Gero to step back. “Ready?”

Shin nodded distantly, a bit distracted by what Momo had drawn: an empty circle, surrounded with a dark ring made by smearing her hands all the way around it. There was something…unsettlingly familiar about it. But what, though? Just staring at it was starting to make his brain itch.

Fortunately he did not have to stare much longer, because Momo made a complicated hand gesture and the drawing exploded. Gero and Shin watched silently as the talisman detonated in a blast of pure force, geysering a plume of earth and debris into the air to shower lightly down on the surrounding area. At length, Gero offered her opinion. “Not bad. It’s not a giant hand from the sky, but…yeah, okay. It’s good.”

Shin nodded. “Maybe don’t accidentally use that one when the talisman is drawn on one of us, though.”

“Oh don’t worry; the gestures are totally different. See, watch: This is a shield,” Momo twisted her hands and fingers together, “And this is the explosion.” She contorted her digits again. “See? Shield, explosion, shield, explosion. Totally different.”

The two gestures looked exactly the same. This was going to be a wild ride.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Boars, it turned out, surprisingly cute grunty boys bigger on all fours than a mongrel was standing, their adorable plumpness somewhat marred by the fact that they had giant spears growing out of their mouths. Normally, Shin would have felt the prudent play was to not mess with someone who had spears growing out of their mouth. Unfortunately, they needed the Experience.

Also he really, really wanted to eat one.

He knew that he should have been anxious. That single boar, busily crunching up a mouthful of acorns, could have probably taken out the entire mongrel pack. There would have been dark legends and hushed myths invented about it by future generations, of its grunty menace and unquenchable thirst for Blood and Also Acorns.

But Shin and his companions had already fought a Player and won. It would be a while before anything managed to intimidate them again.

Shin gave the protective ring around his thumb a little twist for good luck, settling into a steady breathing pattern before notching an arrow. He allowed himself to half exhale as he brought his weapon to bare, taking a moment to draw down on the unaware pig before releasing both his breath and his very first shot as a kobold.

Glancing blow. Annoying.

The boar clearly agreed, spittle and acorn mash splattering from its maw as it squealed in outrage at the fruitless attack. It immediately hefted its substantial bulk to charge headlong towards Shin, hooves kicking up loam and tusks gleaming as the kobold quickly drew and released another bolt. This time the kobold struck true, but the boar was completely unfazed by the arrow piercing its side. It seemed clear that the stampeding beast would crash into Shin before he’d manage to get off a third shot.

And then the boar barreled over the talisman Momo had prepared on the ground, managing a confused sounding oink before it was engulfed in an explosion of force.

By the time the showering dirt settled the boar was left wobbling on its hooves, still standing as much due to shock as anything else. So stunned was the oversized pig that it didn’t even notice Gero bursting out from the underbrush, roaring in challenge as she brought her club down in an overhead swing that utterly obliterated the beast’s head.

Shin carefully re-quivered his arrow as he inspected the total ruins of what had very recently been a boar. “Right. So…maybe that was a bit of overkill?”

Momo shared a somewhat sheepish look with Gero as she emerged from her observation spot, flattening her ears. “I used a Level Two spell slot.”

Gero didn't seem to want to make eye contact. “I can’t use that attack again until I sleep for a full night.”

Woof. “Well, no use crying over blown cooldowns.” Shin crouched down, extending his hand towards the remains of the boar. “So we’re supposed to reach out and…Ah!” He drew back as a window appeared between them, ‘Collect Loot? (Y/N)’ marked across it. “Can you guys see this, too?”

Gero nodded, reaching out to select ‘Yes’. “Group stuff must not be hidden like the Status Screens are.” She clicked the screen and the boar vanished, leaving behind a neatly wrapped pile of cleaned and butchered boar meat. “Easy.”

The three kobolds stared down at the meat for a moment, and Shin had to reflect again on how much things had changed for them in just the last several hours. Some of those changes were obvious, like their new shapes and new Classes and all of that. But others didn’t even occur to Shin until he realized that they were all acting in some new, unexpected way that nevertheless felt perfectly natural.

The bounty of pork was a perfect example. As mongrels, such an unprecedented windfall would have immediately triggered a free-for-all for ownership, followed by a gorging of raw meat, followed by several days of contented napping. That was the normal way of things.

But as kobolds, Shin and Momo instead set about forging while Gero built a campfire with the tools Moots had lent them. Gero nodded approvingly when her companions returned bearing herbs and mushrooms, giving the latter a quick sniff and rejecting some as toxic before dumping the rest into Moots’ pot alongside the pork, popping on the lid, and then hanging it over the crackling fire.

And then they waited. No mongrel in the history of mongrels had ever waited a second longer for food than was strictly necessary. They waited even as the pot began to give off increasingly irresistible smells, waited even past the point where a sneak peak revealed that the meat certainly looked cooked through. And even once they determined it was fully cooked, when Momo bowed her head for a silent prayer Gero and Shin did so as well.

The moment she’d finished, though, they upended the entire pot onto the ground and messily devoured the steaming hot meat with their bare hands, juice and drool and more than a little dirt smearing their faces in a display of primal indulgence. They’d come far, but not that far.

By the time every speck of pork had been consumed, Shin remembered enough of his civilization for an insistent question to burn its way out of him. “Hey Momo?”

The little cleric looked up, one of her sleeves stuffed into her mouth as she sucked the stray drippings of pork juice out of it. “Mhp?”

“When you prayed before. Who were you praying to?”

“Whu’ mn?”

“Well, clerics have Gods, don’t they? Which one do you have?”

Momo considered that for a moment, spitting out her sleeve. “Umm…Status.” She quickly referred back to her sheet, a thoughtful frown creasing her pretty face. “It says…’The Kobold God’?”

Kobolds had a God? Mongrels sure as shit didn’t. Gero tilted her head. “That’s it? No name or anything?”

“No, it’s…hrm.” Momo reached out to touch something, her frown deepening. “It keeps giving me an error message. It says the Kobold God is ‘Undefined’.”

Undefined? Shin twisted his thumb ring distractedly, working through that particular tidbit. “Does it say why?”

Momo started to shake her head, then reconsidered. “Well, not exactly? But it keeps saying our…” She glanced back at her sheet, “‘Tribal Strength’ is only Three. Maybe we need more of that?”

Now that was interesting. After Shin had familiarized himself with the ins and outs of his own Status Screen, he’d imagined that he had decent enough grasp on the systems of his new world. But this new revelation seemed to hint at the outline of something so massive that he could only begin to guess at its shape. Individual systems like Levels and Classes had been their goal as mongrels, but now? Now they were talking about Tribes. About Gods. They were talking about systems built upon systems, the sort of intricate machinery where one foundational choice could wildly define or upend every other choice that came after it.

Shin instinctively knew that such systems were dangerous. That it was all too possible for one innocuous-seeming decision to permanently hinder their growth. But every risk was equally an opportunity. Just as these systems would try to entrap them, he would endeavor to break them. To wiggle in through the cracks, pilfer the choicest treasures, and pile them up so he and his friends could stretch out on top and cackle madly.

And he would get started on that right after eating two or three more boars. Scheming, Shin was discovering, was hungry work.