Defending The Kobold Village (1)

The chilly wind nights had started to disappear and were replaced by soft warm breezes that gave the feeling of peacefulness to anything that it passes through. And along with that, the sun had poked out a portion of its body from the horizon and the gentle morning light had enveloped the entirety of The Forest of Firia.

In a part of the forest, a settlement made out of large tents is looking busy as many humans can be seen running around the place. Some turned off the torches that they used the night before as lighting. And some others could be seen wearing their armors and do a last check-up to their weapons and equipment as they are preparing for a huge battle.

There's a large tent in the middle of the camp and inside there are 2 people currently talking with each other.

"General Dio, the soldiers will be ready in about another 30 minutes."

"Good job lieutenant, I will be waiting for the good news of the kobolds' annihilation this afternoon, correct?"

The one called General Dio is still comfortably sitting behind the wooden desk while the other who seemed to be the lieutenant is standing straight in front of the wooden desk as they talked with each other.

"Yes sir, the village only has tens of kobolds left and they can't even defend properly from our little siege yesterday. Today's attack will be so swift and powerful that they won't be able to have the chance to react properly..." The lieutenant said confidently to the general.

"And even if they are able to react, it will only be a futile effort as their main force had already been dealt with on the first day. And after two days of sieging their camps, we're able to determine that they don't have much strength left and there shouldn't be any chance of them defeating our forces." The lieutenant then ended his sentence with a nod as to assure the general that he didn't need to have even an ounce of worry.

General Dio then nodded as he agreed to the lieutenant's words and he also had 100% absolute confidence that the attack would definitely succeed without fail.

He initially had been tasked to be an advance team to scout the forest first by the prince as the prince had suddenly wanted to do an expedition inside the Forest of Firia.

The humans had been leaving the forest alone since the huge number of strong beasts that lived inside the forest and not to say the strong demihumans that lived deeper inside the forest is a force that the humans couldn't spare to provoke. Which one of them is stronger overall is unknown, but the sure fact is that the force residing inside the forest can't be taken lightly without caution.

And so far the humans didn't bother to make problems with the place where the strong beasts lived as the humans are busy among themselves waging their own wars for their own benefit.

The forest is known to have beasts that exponentially get stronger the deeper you go inside into the depths of the forest. And without sufficient preparations, the humans will only be additional foods for the carnivorous beasts living in the forest and even the herbivorous beasts could easily turn the humans into nutrients for the soil and plants of the forest.

General Dio was tasked to do some scouting and build a footing inside the outskirts of the forest since there should be minimal danger when exploring only the outskirts of the forest while waiting for the prince's main army to come. And in this little expedition is when General Dio found the kobold village.

Using the communication device that the prince had given him, General Dio was planning to subjugate the kobolds and use them in the expedition.

The general thought that if they could get the kobold's help to gain more information regarding the forest since they are a native of the forest and they could be used as menial labor as the humans will most likely move their camps deeper and deeper into the forest while they went on the expedition.

The general then made a plan to conquer the kobold village with the limited soldiers that he currently has with him in the advance team so that he could please the prince that he's under when he came with the main army.

An ambush plan then was created by the general and the kobolds who weren't used to tricks and craftiness were easily caught up in the plan and their main force was shaved a lot using the ambush plan.

But the general didn't expect that the kobolds that he had defeated would rather choose death than becoming the humans' 'helper' and thus his plan to get some helper from the native of the forest failed.

At first, he wanted to just move and scout other places in search of other demihumans living in the outskirts of the forest, but when he saw that the kobolds are fewer in number, and he could easily take over their village to be used as a base of operation for the main army, the general changed his mind and planned to completely conquer the kobold village.

The general was very careful with the limited soldiers that he had and even with such an overwhelming victory, he still took his time and used 2 days to probe the kobold to see if they had any other fighting force that could possibly turn the situation around, but he still found none.

And today, the third day, he decided that it's enough probing and that it's time to launch the final attack to wipe the table clean and take over the kobold village in this one attack.

The matter was considered a done deal in the general's book and thus he delegates it to his lieutenant while he will be evaluating a report of a finding goblin village from the scout that he sent out into the other direction, opposite of the kobold village.

"Lieutenant, you're confident that you will be enough to deal with the kobold village right?"

"Rest assured general, there won't be any problems and as soon as the sun hangs above our heads, general will be hearing the completion of the task from our scout."

The general then nodded once again and told the lieutenant to quickly depart after the soldiers are done preparing their equipment.

"Yes sir!" The lieutenant then bowed while putting his fist on his left chest before walking outside the tent.

The commander then returned the salute by putting his own hands onto his left chest before continuing to read the reports that the scouts had sent to him.

-----

'Come on humans, don't be a lazy *ss. The sun is already up and yet you're still not coming?'

Matthew is currently sitting on top of a tree not too far from the village and peeled his eyes open to the surroundings while he waited for the humans to come and attack the kobold village.

Matthew's impatience is slightly justified as he already waited for the humans to come right after he finished having his midnight meal, which is a few hours earlier.

He expected that the humans would deal with the village as soon as possible and arrive at early dawn, but seeing that the humans haven't arrived yet even after the sun already fully came out of the horizon, means that the humans are taking their time and didn't take the matter of kobold village carefully.

Going back earlier in time, the time when he just arrived at the area after he had finished eating the bear.

While Matthew waited for the humans to come, Matthew didn't just stay idle all the time. Although he started patrolling the area earlier when he felt that the night had changed into dawn, while he first arrived at the area, Matthew didn't necessarily start patrolling right away because he predicted that the humans will definitely not come in the dead of night, but instead in the early morning and he didn't want to waste his energy.

But of course, Matthew wanted to be productive and started to think of things to do while he waited for dawn to come.

He wanted to create traps to make his job later easier, but again, he didn't know where the humans will come from, and creating traps all around the kobold village is just exhausting for him and with his current speed, he won't be able to create many traps.

'What kind of traps you ask?' Matthew continued his inner monologue,

'Pitfalls of course! With my current ability, making pitfalls is the only viable option. But without exactly knowing which direction the humans will come from is just not possible with my current skill set. If only there's earth magic or something that I can use, it will be so much easier to make stuff like that.'

Matthew sighed, but he knew from the start that his trap-making scenario is not really realistic and possible, so he just shrugged the idea off his mind and started to think of other things to do.

'Exercising is just plain dumb because it will exhaust my energy and it will create a lot of noise and I might scare the kobolds and put them on their guard for nothing.'

'Speaking of energy… My aura reserve is missing a quarter of its reserve and aside from sleeping I don't know how to replenish them..'

Although Matthew really wanted to catch himself a couple of hours of more sleep time, considering that no such things as alarms exist, he didn't want to risk oversleeping and a whole village of kobold has to perish because of it.

Matthew already has a plan in mind on how to deal with the humans, and if the power standard of the humans is similar to the kobolds and they didn't have any countermeasures against something invisible, then it should work perfectly against them.

With Matthew's current aura reserve that had been upgraded after his third evolution, three-quarters of the aura reserve is plenty enough to go completely invisible for a little bit more than 30 minutes.

Although half an hour didn't seem like much, it is plenty enough to terrorize the humans when an invisible force just constantly attacked them from nowhere and they don't have an ability to even see where the attacks are coming and who had attacked them, let alone retaliating, the most they can do is to retreat back to their camp and they will think a lot before trying anything again.

'But how do I replenish them without sleeping? If what makes it fill up is my body resting properly, then can I just rest my body really well, but at the same time, prevent myself from falling asleep. Can I do that?'

Matthew then started to climb up a tree since he felt safer there as he had never seen the boars and the deers climb up trees, and he had never met any spider again ever since going into this side of the forest, so Matthew feels that climbing up on top of a tree and resting on one of the widest branches of the tree is the safest place he could choose right now.

"Alright now, what's the best resting method other than sleeping..."

Matthew tren tried to think up the answer, but he knew deep inside that sleeping is very precious and nothing can ever take its place inside Matthew's heart.

But now he really can't afford to fall asleep so he still needed to think of something else.

'If this goes on, then I will be exhausting myself trying to find a way for myself to rest more effectively.'

Fortunately, an idea soon come up inside his mind,

'I have never tried it before, but I've researched enough about it having benefits such as relaxing the body, strengthening the mind, and even relieving some stress.'

Matthew then got into a comfortable position where he wouldn't feel tired even after staying in the same position for quite some time. Since he is on top of a large branch, Matthew could comfortably sit at the branch with his back leaning against the tree trunk. His legs were hanging on either side of the branch for balance and his hands were on top of his thighs.

'Okay, this should be comfortable enough.'

Matthew then started to recall the video tutorial that he had watched on a certain popular video platform on the internet about basic mediation.

Matthew had initially watched the video as he wanted to try and fix his bad habits and start doing some good ones that are beneficial for himself. But in the end, he never actually succeeded in doing so as trying to be successful in the music industry is the same as burning and sacrificing a lot of his time.

Matthew then relaxed his whole body, and started focusing on his breath and trying to block all the other voices inside his talkative head and just focused on his breathing, feeling the air coming in from his nose into his lungs as he breathed in, and feeling the air going out of his mouth as he breathed out.

Matthew repeated the process at least a hundred times or until he lost count before he nervously checked his aura reserve.

He then connected his consciousness to the glowing white orb, and after it successfully connected in just a second, Matthew could actually see a slight difference as the glow is just slightly stronger than before.

"It actually worked!"

Now that Matthew knew the meditation method somehow work to replenish his aura reserve, he didn't think about anything else and started meditating again until he felt his butt hurt from too much sitting to take a little walk around the area.

He then repeated the process again and again after finally dawn came and his aura reserve was almost back to full capacity.

The impatient Matthew had wanted to throw another tantrum when the humans still haven't arrived after waiting for another 10 minutes after his last complaint, but with his sharp wolf ears, the sound of hooves could be heard from a certain direction and Matthew could tell their numbers are a lot and by the sound of the hooves, Matthew could determine that it doesn't belong to any creature that he had met before.

Matthew quickly went into the direction where the hooves came from and soon he heard other things such as the clanking of metal, neighs of horses, and the voices of humans speaking with each other.

'Well, finally…'