Chapter 18: Chapter 17: Kobolds

Lia ended up waiting for only a couple of minutes before a goblin made its way over to the piles of junk. Once it reached her, it knelt respectfully, clearly awaiting orders. Lia had it sift through the pile of stuff in front of her, separating it into multiple, smaller piles based on what she wanted with it.

Most of the armor and weapons went in one pile, lanterns and fuel went in another, stuff she didn’t know what they would be useful for went in another, and, finally, she had a pile of stuff she wanted to try when converting things.

The whole process took about half an hour, by which point Rose had set herself up, and one of the patrols had even returned, bringing with it three cocooned goblins and their gear. The patrol looked…well, she couldn’t tell if they had suffered any losses, since she had no idea how large the patrol had originally been, but there were still five goblin foot soldiers, a few rat foot soldiers, and an ironclad.

None of them looked terribly injured, though the goblin foot soldiers had some cuts and bruises, so they had probably encountered a little trouble along the way. The group walked up to where the cocoons containing rats were, and deposited their much larger cocoons in a pile next to them, then left to go…do whatever Rose had set them to doing.

Lia scurried over excitedly, opening her mouth and willing a drop of venom to come out of her fang and drop onto the cocoon. She repeated the process with a rat, combined their cocoons, hardened the cocoon up, and looked at her options. There were the standard goblin and rat options, but there was also a set of new conversions available.

They were for a kobold, specifically a rat-type kobold. It was just Drone, Foot Soldier, Burrower, and Sentry, but each of those were prefaced with “greater” instead of “lesser” or nothing. That was probably her buffs to rats being applied to the kobolds, since they fell in the category of “rat-like minions”.

Lia made a note to convert goblins into kobolds whenever possible. Even without her influence, kobolds were smarter than goblins while retaining similar or better stats, so there was really no downside. Starting off as a “greater” whatever was just the icing on the cake, really.

She got that pair converting into a drone. She only had one drone that had actual hands, and she doubted it was close to evolving. While it was possible to gain experience from things that weren’t combat, it was a lot slower than fighting unless it was something directly tied to your Class.

Though…maybe “Swarm Drone” counted as a Class for that purpose? No one was totally sure how monster experience worked, and it was assumed that most of it came from combat, since monsters were generally adversarial by nature.

Whatever the case, having more drones that could use tools wasn’t a bad thing. So, with that started, she took a moment to go talk with Rose again.

Did you find anything interesting, Lia? Rose asked, turning to face her the moment Lia began to start walking over.

Yes. It appears that by combining goblins and rats, I can create rat-kobolds, which are then strengthened by my nature as a Rat Queen. This means that they go a step up in terms of like…lesser and greater and whatever, so I was thinking that we should try and do that whenever we can, and for that we’re gonna need more rats.

Rose paused, then nodded. I believe you’re correct. It…might be worth setting up a farm, since I imagine we’ll be using rats for a long time to come if we can translate things to be rat-like like this.

Do we…have the means to do that? Lia asked. Surely that needs like…food and water and… Lia trailed off. That…wouldn’t actually be an issue, would it?

Lia? What’s the matter? Rose asked.

Did I ever tell you why I’m so keen on getting into the market?

Rose thought about that for a moment. I don’t believe you have. I was under the impression that it was to strengthen our forces by obtaining both the goblins’ infrastructure and the goblins themselves. Is that not the case?

I mean, it kind of is now, but that’s not the original reason. Lia said. Originally, I wanted to get to the center because Amelia installed food and water dispensers in places in the dungeon, and I’m pretty confident there’s gotta be one in this market.

Understanding dawned on Rose’s face. So…you’re saying if we get that, we can solve the issue of figuring out how to feed the rats. I was going to suggest feeding them goblin corpses and…well, I actually hadn’t quite thought through the water yet. I guess they’re not monsters, so they need that a lot more than we do.

Speaking of, what have you guys been drinking?

Same as you, goblin blood.

Lia blinked. Is there…enough of that to go around? Is that even a proper substitute for water?

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Rose gave her a smile. Have you felt thirsty?

Not particularly, but…

That’s because we’re monsters now. We can partially derive our nutrition from magic in the air, especially in environments rich in magic like dungeons.

Oh. How…do you know that?

Rose paused. I can’t say. I think I might have read it somewhere, but it also feels like knowledge that even if I had my memories I wouldn’t remember where I learned it. That sot of…common sense type of thing. Is that not common knowledge nowadays?

Maybe? Lia replied. I didn’t pay much attention in my classes on monster biology except when they were about how better to kill the things. Do you happen to know why I feel so hungry when I evolve?

Ah, so you felt it too? That I can’t say for sure. Perhaps what we had eaten before is no longer enough to satiate our new form? Honestly a lot of things about monster evolution are an unknown to me, so that’s a pretty big guess.

Yeah, I figured. Lia said. A lot of stuff about monster evolution is still unknown, so I would be surprised if you did know. Thought I’d ask just in case, though.

Of course. So, should we proceed towards securing the food and water dispenser with aims to make a farm then? In the meantime, I can have groups out looking to stockpile rats for you.

That’d be awesome, thanks. Lia said. I’m going to get back to experimenting now, I’ll send the kobold your way once it finishes converting. It’s a drone, so hopefully that should help with labor.

Of course, Lia. Let me know if you have anything else I can help you with.

With that, Lia turned away and got back to her experimentation. Her next order of business was to test out the lanterns and see if she could make kobold lightborns. She wasn’t sure she would make one right now, she just wanted to see if she had the option.

And, as it turned out, she did. She pondered that for a second, then decided to check her stocks before making a decision. She had about five rats and two goblins left, including the ones she was considering making into a lightborn. She would get more goblins soon, and rats were…probably a non-issue, provided Amelia was still awake.

Well…could she split up cocoons that had been merged like this? It would certainly be convenient. So, she softened the cocoon and pulled on an edge, focusing on trying to take the rat out.

It didn’t work. Her instincts were telling her that she could undo the cocoon entirely, losing the modeling wax used in its creation and letting its inhabitants free, but that wasn’t really ideal. If she wanted to separate the contents without doing that, she would have to have something take away part of the exterior, reach in, and grab whatever was inside and pull it out.

That really wasn’t worth the trouble, so she just set the cocoon to converting into a kobold lightborn and began to look through her pile of stuff that she wanted to try converting things with.

It was a relatively small pile, containing only a few things that she thought could be helpful or interesting. There was a bow and a pile of crude arrows, a stack of paper, a small set of tools like hammers and screwdrivers, and, finally, a rather cheap-looking magician’s staff. The staff was the type that you would find as loot in many low level dungeons, barely more than a stick that could be used to channel magic, but it was a staff, nonetheless.

Too bad Lia couldn’t use it as she was now. She would have to evolve into something that had hands first. By that point she’d probably have something better, or would be able to purchase better from the Dimension of Discounts, so using it for a conversion would be no great loss.

The question was which to check first. In terms of combat, she was hoping that the bow would make an archer and the staff a mage, so those were probably high on the priority list. She wanted some sort of builder from the tools, and the paper…well, she was just curious. The papers were all things like ledgers and inventory forms, so she was wondering what would happen if she converted something with those in there. Would that affect things at all?

Well, she would have enough goblins to try all that out soon enough, so best to start with the staff. She put it in with a rat and goblin, and looked over her options with anticipation. And, to her delight, there was something available.

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