Kobolds, as monsters went, were usually pretty weak. They were similar to goblins, froggols, orcs, drakkin, and others in that they aped having societies, but any attempt to treat them as people eventually led to tragedy as they reminded everyone that they were just as malicious as any other monster, just with the ability to plan and deceive. Collectively, they were known as tribal monsters.

Spawned kobolds were universally weak and stupid, but if enough gathered in one place for long enough to build camps… They started creating stronger varieties. Each generation of kobolds were stronger, smarter, and more magically potent than the one before, which was why the extermination of such were generally pretty important, if routine, jobs.

But this group was weird. The innate magic of kobolds was in metal-shaping, which included transmutation of other materials into metal. This allowed them to make complex mechanical traps and mechanisms. The power was initially weak, slow but able to form crude but effective weapons in a few minutes. As the kobolds gained strength, they could create increasingly precise components, which are essential in creating the kind of gearwork those secret doors had. From that, Casimir could rate this group as an elite-ranked threat… but that group was barely a standard-rank threat, with the only aberration being that cannibal battle leader, and Casimir took care to kill that one personally.

As he stalked the tunnels, tracking the faint but extant trail the kobolds left behind, Casimir contemplated possibilities. Because cannibalizing the fallen wasn’t normal kobold behavior, perhaps the battle leader was deviant in their battle strategies as well, seeking to attack with the tiny fraction of the main force’s strength rather than wait for backup under the assumption that their personal strength could carry the day if there were any that were strong? It would have skewered Faron if Casimir didn’t interrupt…

The main flaw in that idea was that even ‘strong’ kobolds weren’t terribly dangerous on an individual level. Sure, once you get to the fourth generation; which required over a year of unopposed raiding of the countryside to accomplish; you started to get kobolds that could consistently beat standard-rank adventurers on their martial prowess, but that one wasn’t even that level of strength.

Casimir found the kobolds, about eighty total, conferring amongst themselves, chattering in their incomprehensible language of yips and growls… well, Casimir knew a few other scouting types who claimed to be able to understand them, but even they admitted that there wasn’t a whole lot to miss, kobolds only seemed to communicate on matters of business, only missives like ‘do this’, ‘help me’, ‘danger’, and ‘attack from that way’ ever got exchanged, even when the spies swore up and down the kobolds didn’t have any idea they were in the area.

The cavern was a more typical kobold arena, wide open so the kobolds could press a numerical advantage, with plenty of uneven terrain and trenches the kobolds could slip through for cover or flanking maneuvers. All entrances and exits were small and easily blocked off and definitely trapped, to cut off escapes. If Casimir fought them here without an overwhelming opening attack that killed at least half of them, his chances of survival were… low.

Magnus would just turn the whole floor into a bowl, and Hana would toss a whirlpool of water to churn them to paste, if they were here. Could he do something similar? Their conference made about two-thirds of them be in a relatively clear area in the middle… He does have a few bombs… Luci would just use One Hundred Arrows of Light, he could do something similar with Propel, right?

…No, he probably couldn’t. On both counts. Kobolds aren’t entirely mana-blind, even if they’re one of the less magically inclined of the tribal monsters. Metal sorcery is expected, and they can usually sense stone mana well enough, due to the similarity. He won’t be able to shape the terrain fast enough and subtly enough for them not to be able to slip the net. He couldn’t track enough targets with propelled knives or arrows to kill more than maybe a dozen? Two dozen at most. Not enough.

Still, like most tribal monsters, they had something of a weakness in their reliance on leadership. Kobolds were only threats based on their coordination, and while their chains of command were robust enough that they could still pose a serious threat even with all of their battle leaders killed, there was still that moment of chaos in which Casimir could capitalize and do some damage. Kobolds organized themselves in squads of nine, eight spearmen with a warrior to command them, with a battle leader commanding somewhere around four to nine warriors. While it was difficult to pinpoint the warriors from the spearmen purely on magic sense… the battle leaders were had five times as much magical power in their core in comparison, so they were easy enough to pick out. Monster leadership always went to the strongest varieties, as they were usually the smartest as well as strongest.

Picking out the two remaining battle leaders as well as the metal sorcerer kobolds that were accompanying them, Casimir brought out one of his quivers of specialty ammunition: wooden arrows. Specifically, they were heartwood, just like the ones he gave to Illivere, although these had wooden arrowheads instead of just being shafts. The Elven Archipelago was lousy with plant-like monsters. The internal materials of two of them represented one of their most valuable exports: Heartwood, which was a dense wood that’s as hard as steel with half the weight, and heartstring fibers, which make up the famous heartstring shirt.

The reason why it paid off to have some pure heartwood arrows, arrowheads and all, on hand was because some monsters had either protection against metal things specifically, or had some kind of allergy to life mana, and wooden arrows could deliver that a lot better. In one notable case, the blood of a vampire ignites when exposed to wood, which is strange but there are more violent alchemical reactions out there in monster biology so Casimir doesn’t question it. In this case, he was using it to prevent the metal sorcerers the kobolds had from detecting the projectiles too early.

Sneaking into the ambush room to a good vantage point wasn’t easy, but it was do-able, and it was a lot easier to pick out his exact targets as well as at least a few of the warriors now that he had eyes on the room instead of just sensing the stone or using magic sense to pick them out. Lining up each shot as he slowly gathered force mana, after about five seconds he launched the eight arrows, skewering most of the kobold’s leadership in the head and splattering their subordinates. Running a finger loaded with force mana along the quiver he had taken then from, each one was teleported back to their recall rune. The enchantments were only good for a single recollection per arrow per hour, which was great for assassinations but not so good for pitched battles. For what must have been the thousandth time, he resolved to get back to trying to master space aspected mana.

But there was a reason Casimir was listed as an assassin, and that reason was because of how many of their tools he used for his work. He drew his new sword as he dropped down from the ceiling above the exit and cut down the few kobolds that scrambled to cut off any escape, making extra sure to lop off the head of the warrior competent enough to do that so quickly. “I’m keeping this.” Casimir said to himself as he ducked through the tunnel once more, without the metal sorcerers they can’t just close it in a second, they need to actually work the mechanisms in order to seal things off.

Now he was back in more familiar ground, with poorly coordinated kobolds rushing through a narrow gap. With a weapon that had an extra two feet of reach, he was able to parry the spear thrusts and lop off the heads of every fuzzy little bastard that tried to stab him without a problem. Well, at least for the first twenty, then the number of bodies got too large to hold and he had to back off from the wave of meat, and once the kobolds got to spread out a little bit in the larger tunnel? Casimir erected another stone wall and started to book it back to his students.

With the kobold response in chaos, there wasn’t anything stopping the group from leaving with their new prisoner, after all.

----------------

There was one bright side to Casimir arranging for his students to meet Master Southwind for the first time while carrying an unconscious man’s body along with a sample of the first room’s complex locking mechanism: It meant that she went straight to business. The whole story was told within minutes, and with a minimum of drama.

“So let me see if I’ve got this straight.” Master said, not amused but also not angry. “You found a hidden kobold enclave in the old guerilla tunnels, and they’re friendly with this Herald guy?” Casimir nodded at the summary. “...Why are the kobolds such a big deal?”

“They’re weird, that’s why.” Casimir explained. “The thing about tribal monsters is that, like all monsters, they have a certain amount of ingrained behavior, and that behavior changes based on how powerful and thus intelligent that monster is. If you see signs that they're acting in a certain way, that’s a sign that there are stronger varieties of monster around and you need to tell the adventurer’s guild so they can send a stronger team to deal with it.” Casimir tapped the salvaged mechanism. “This is good metal, and it’s more complex than can be achieved outside of trained specialists in magical metal shaping. You need strong kobolds to get this kind of thing, a warren that’s gone undestroyed for at least a year, more likely two or three years, and the fact that no one’s ever seen a kobold in Anima before… There’s a lot of possible explanations, but none of them are good.”

Another nuance about tribal monsters was that they didn’t tend to form in the same place as each other. You could occasionally get situations where you got kobolds in the mountains but the nearby desert had orcs, for example, but like most monsters, the variety you’d see if you stayed around one place was limited, usually less than twenty or thirty kinds. On Anima, you mostly saw drakkin. Little lizard fuckers that, like dragons, were natural wizards that could use a few simple spells, but with a wide variety of mana types. They also liked screwing with the geomancy, trying to manipulate the environment to produce a real dragon they could serve and learn from. Needless to say, they were exterminated when found with extreme prejudice.

“I see.” Master said, slightly confused. It made sense, while some people heard ‘archmage’ and thought ‘one of the deadliest people on the planet’, the truth of the matter is that all that was required for the title was mastery in multiple disciplines of wizardry. Archmage Southwind was very respected in the fields of curses and enchanting, and did some collaboration in the negative magic journals, and was capable of at least holding an intelligent conversation on other magical topics, but monsters? Battle? The only reason she even attempted to learn these things was in how it helped her design enchanted goods, and she usually just bounced ideas off of Casimir whenever she needed to do that. “Well, if it’s a problem, it’s a problem. What do we do? I’m not sure I like you trying to resolve it on your own.” She gave a reproachful look at Casimir, conveying that she knew quite well that if his students weren’t there he would have spent a lot more time down in those tunnels.

Peter slammed his fist on the book in front of him. “We take them out, together! They’re not so tough.”

Master was fortunately smart enough to see the immediate issue with that. “Didn’t you have quite a bit of trouble with just a few dozen kobolds?” After Peter froze up, she turned to Casimir. “How many kobolds do you expect to find?”

Casimir waved vaguely. “Well, some of the possibilities are things like only a small number of kobolds are here from a larger but foreign warren, but given the quality of the traps? Somewhere upwards of one thousand kobolds.”

“Far too many for all of you to take on.” Master concluded. She swept up Illivere in her arms and cuddled the unflappable girl. “It would break my heart if anything bad was to happen to any of you.” Always the attentive student, Illivere went limp as she was squeezed by the exceptionally tall elf.

Hanna coughed to get everyone’s attention. “Ah… We could post a job in the adventurer’s guild?”

Casimir snapped his fingers and pointed towards the shy girl. “She gets it. This is a big job, and we’re not really suited towards it. When I was running solo, I would never have been given a job against a tribe of drakkin or kobolds or whatever. Sometimes I was just attached as a scout or trap expert for a team that was given such a job, but never solo. Anything I could take on alone could be taken by a team of lesser rank with less overhead.” Really, preparing for hordes of enemies was long overdue, in Casimir’s opinion, but when you never have to face them, it was an easy thing to put off.

Master set Illivere back down, the girl flushed as she took some deep breaths now that she was capable of it. “Well, I suppose I could contribute some money to the job…”

Waving her off, Casimir explained. “Nah, no need. Tribal monsters, and this goes double for kobolds, also don’t have the kind of valuable materials in their corpses that regular monsters do, just some low-quality cores for most of them plus whatever scrap metal you can carry off, so the guild has a budget from the government for this kind of thing. Trust me, once Purz takes a look at this machine, he won’t even wait for the capital to confirm the quest before he sends for a team suited to it.” Guild policy made sure that all guildmasters were at least veteran-ranked adventurers over the age of thirty, and that pool was usually tapped to help assign quests and assess the adventurers, to help see which ones were competent at the work. It was the main reason why about one in three guild halls had one of those subordinates that really ran the place, but it was good policy when it worked, like with Purz.

Who would he give the job to, though? “Given the cowards we usually see at the local guild hall, he may need to bring in people for this.” Academia was one of the sleepiest places Casimir had ever seen, when it came to quests. Yeah, the monsters here were all stronger than on the mainland, but when you live on an island, the usual monster-extermination sweeps the military makes are actually capable of keeping things clear for the most part. It was why he left, back when he was a recent graduate. “I’m not sure how well the mage knights would handle a trap-filled kobold warren if we went to them.”

Faron seemed offended at the idea of the mage knights not being amazing. “Those traps weren’t that bad.” He mentioned.

Casimir chuckled. “That’s another reason these kobolds were weird.” At the confused looks, he elaborated. “These kobolds were being very subtle, focusing their mechanical skill to keep the hidden portion of the tunnel network they made around the real tunnels hidden. That’s not normal kobold behavior, a normal kobold warren would use a heavily fortified and trapped underground base as a staging ground for quick raids, killing as many intelligent beings as possible while also looting food and metal to further enhance their war machine.” The best way to explain intelligent monsters and their malice, in Casimir’s opinion, was that monsters were in an eternal war of extermination against all other nations. “Normally their traps are lethal things, pits, spikes, swinging blades, primed crossbows… That kind of thing.” The designs of those doors just screamed kobold make… except for… the facades…

Peter was the first one to pick up on Casimir’s idea. “What is it, Teach? You think of something?”

“Ah, just a thought about the designs.” Casimir said, waving it off. “The internal mechanisms are kobold make, through and through, but the disguises were a bit too… artistic. It’s a clue.” One that pointed to dwarven sensibilities, to be honest. “I’ve never seen kobolds hide a door in a mural before…” That isn’t to say that they can’t blend in their hidden passages, but Casimir was certain that the mural wasn’t there before the door was installed. It was kind of a strange place for a mural, after all.

“Maybe these documents will answer some questions.” Master said, leafing through them. “The code wheel?” She asked as she held out her hand. Casimir passed it over without comment. “Casimir, why don’t you get some food started while I work through this? Tea, too.”

Of course. “Alright. Do any of you four have to leave right now?” Casimir asked his students. All of them shook their heads. “I’ll escort y’all home after the meal. Any objections to mealbread? It’s a dwarven recipe from the Fractured Mountains.” It’s also Master’s favorite to eat while working, so he’d be stuck making one just for her anyway if he made anything else.

With no objections, Casimir started preparing the flatbread, beans, and other assorted ingredients for the creation of the portable tubes of food.

This is going to take up the entire break, isn’t it?