The Kobold’s Magic Book

Looking at the ordinary-looking thin brown book that the old kobold had in his hand, Matthew guessed that it was made using animal skin instead of paper.

The old kobold opened the book and turned each page as if checking if there's any defective parts, and by looking at the old kobold turning the pages without slowing down from the beginning, Matthew guessed that there's no problems and everything was fine.

Noticing that Matthew is trying to peek at the book, the old kobold said,

"Do you want to read it?"

"Yes!" Matthew said without hesitation.

"Can you read it?" The old kobold asked Matthew once again.

"Umm…."

'System, can I read it using the translation function?'

'Yes, the translation system includes reading and writing too.'

Matthew raised his eyebrows while silently praising the system for its incredible usefulness before continued saying,

"Yes, I can!"

The old kobold looked at him with interest as he gave Matthew the magic book carefully, afraid to leave a mark in the already old-looking book.

When Matthew finally put the thin book in his hand, it was actually so thin that it felt more like a booklet than a book.

Matthew opened the book and looked at the first page. At a glance, the writings on the book looked like a bunch of symbols and lines jumbled up together, but after Matthew tried reading it, suddenly the jumbled up lines made sense onto Matthew's eyes and it only took him about a second to be able to recognize the writings in front of his eyes as if he had used the language as his first language.

Now that the words in the book made sense, Matthew realized that the magic book is not really a 'magic book' that enabled him to suddenly learn magic or give him magic power like a grimoire or any other magic books that he had seen from movies and films.

After reading the first few sentences, Matthew knew that the magic book that had been passed down from the old kobold's predecessors is a note.

'Don't rush and try to gather the fire elements in a hurry. Without proper control and getting used to the feel of it, either you lose control of the fire or the fire doesn't manifest at all.'

Flipping to the other pages, the style of writing seems to differ after a few pages indicating that there's a high chance that multiple people contributed in writing the book.

'I've found that using and manipulating fire from the environment is possible by merging the fire in our control onto an existing fire source and also...'

'It's not recommended to use the fire wantonly in the forest since there's a high chance the fire will go wild and.... A vast amount of trees might burn down and although the kobolds' living space will expand, I certainly don't recommend you, my descendants, to do such things.'

Reading at this certain part of the note Matthew thought,

'Did this certain kobold mage really burn a certain part of the forest down?'

Matthew then continued reading and the last sentence of the note is,

'This is certainly not from my own experience or any accident of sort as this is only a conjecture that I thought of one day, without a particular reason. Yes, no reason at all.'

'...' Matthew read the last sentence again and sighed,

'Yup, he really did it…'

Matthew quickly reached the last page of the book and he found a series of letters that were spaced out from each other just like the basic English alphabet tablets that you can find kids use for learning how to read and write.

'I guess that's how they teach the next generation how to read the notes in the first place.'

Matthew finished skim reading the booklet after only about a minute because none of the knowledge will be applicable to him since he couldn't even use the kobolds' magic in the first place.

He returned the book to the old kobold carefully and the old kobold received it with caution as he placed the book on top of the open cabinet before saying to Matthew,

"I've prepared it for the kid, how's it going on your end?"

"Well, I've made some arrangements and expect him to come to you every morning starting the day after tomorrow okay?"

Matthew said it with confidence and didn't stutter at all, but the old kobold opened his eyes wide and he even moved closer and grabbed both of Matthew's shoulders while saying in an excited voice,

"Really!? HOW??" He said while shaking Matthew's whole body intensely.

"I've been coaxing and convincing him to do it for years, yet you only tried for a day and he's already willing to do it!?"

Seeing the old kobold is overly excited, Matthew decided to say,

"Calm down a little Mutt, he hasn't really said that he would do it, but I've made a little bet with him and if I won which is very likely to happen, then he would be willing to learn magic from you every morning as per our earlier agreement in the bet."

Hearing the real circumstances from Matthew, the old kobold calmed down himself a little, but in his eyes, Matthew could see a small fire of hope was still burning strong and the old kobold's wish to pass down magic to the first kobold kid had been rejuvenated.

The old kobold then firmly nodded his head to Matthew while saying,

"I'm counting on you, Matthew."

"Don't worry Mutt, I will do my best. I also wanted the kid to learn magic and be your successor." Matthew said while returning the old kobold's sincere gaze.

The old kobold then released Matthew's shoulders from his hands before asking him,

"So, what can I help you with?"

"Ah, I almost forgot about that. Can you tell me where can I find the village's carpenter?"

After being told the direction of the village's carpenter workshop, Matthew said his goodbye and thanks to the old kobold. Before that, he explained to the old kobold that he wanted to build something to train the kobold kids and he needed the carpenter since he didn't know how to do woodworking.

"Just tell the head carpenter that I sent you there and I have approved the things that you wanted him to build."

"Just a little tip Matthew, if you want your build to be well-made quickly, you should try and pique his interest."

Matthew didn't fully understand what the old kobold meant, but he still nodded his head once again before going outside the house and went to the other side of the village, opposite of his house and he found a unique looking house, that's slightly different from the other kobold houses.

The building was bigger and wider compared to the other kobolds' houses and sounds of people doing work inside the building could be heard from at least 10 meters away from the building.

Matthew approached the building and as he wanted to knock on the door to politely introduce himself, he realized that the door is also a cloth door, so he was troubled slightly as he didn't know anyone's name that he could call and after thinking about it, knocking may not seem to be the best choice as he could hear several knocking sounds from inside the building.

Matthew scratched his head as he thought that he should have asked the old kobold to accompany him, but in the end, he decided to just protrude his head slightly onto the cloth door.

Inside the building, he saw several adult kobolds were cutting and shaping woods with their bone tools and some were rubbing the woods with a cloth with a rough surface.

'Are they using sandpaper? Come to think of it, the chairs and tables in this village are certainly made from sanded wood since they have a smooth surface.'

The working kobolds were so busy that they didn't realize that a head and its pair of eyes were watching them working closely, except for one kobold that looked like he came from the same generation as the village chief.

When Matthew's eyes were scanning the kobolds working, the old-looking kobold noticed Matthew's head was popping out from the cloth door.

"Hey! You there! What are you doing here?"

Matthew heard a strong voice coming from the middle of the room. Matthew then looked at the source of the voice.

He saw another old-looking kobold sitting on a wide-looking chair in the middle of the room overseeing all the other kobolds working. Matthew looked closely to the other old-looking kobold besides the village's chief, then he looked left and right as if confirming that the old-looking kobold was actually talking to him.

However, Matthew's lack of response earned him another shout from the old-looking kobold, and with the stern-sounding voice that came out of his mouth, it almost felt like a threat.

"Don't just look around and do nothing, it's bothering me! Go back if you don't want anything!"