Chương 10: Chapter 8 - Kobolds

[Soul Explosion (F): You are able to produce an explosion by touch that damages physical bodies, including your own, using spiritual essence.]"Ohoho, a double-edged sword. But I've got plenty of roots to spare." Dendron wasn't worried; he was thrilled to finally have an offensive skill.

"I should test it on a rock." While searching for one, he noticed his vision range had also improved considerably. He spotted a rock roughly the height of an average person from his old life, sitting just outside his root range. A portal would fix that easily enough. He willed a root forward and opened a portal in the same motion. Whoosh. The root shot through and emerged beside the rock. Boom! The explosion tore the rock apart in an instant, but it took the root with it.

"Agh, that hurts." Pain surged through him. It was manageable, but real. He was starting to notice a pattern: his soul-based skills all seemed to come with a price. The benefits, so far, always outweighed it.

"Pain is a cheap price for a good offensive skill," he thought. He kept experimenting after that, coiling a root around a target before detonating it, or firing several roots at once to stack the blasts into something bigger. Eventually he stopped, his spiritual essence reserves finally running dry. Satisfied with the new skill, he found himself thinking that if he'd had this against the orcs, that fight wouldn't have been nearly as close. The explosions alone would have overwhelmed the orcs.

He glanced one last time at the smashed rock. There were pieces scattered on the ground, some as tiny as his leaves, while others were half buried under the earth. Dendron considered them.

"I caused this." The thought was somewhat peculiar. Just a few days earlier, an orc could have slashed through his branches. Now, just a thought could disintegrate a piece of rock.

"I'm becoming stronger." This sounded good to him. Maybe he wasn't so bad as a tree. And then the memory of the orcs surfaced.

"... Well, maybe I still am." A few hours of rest later, beasts started closing in on him from every direction, as if something had called them all at once.

"What the hell is going on? Did they all flock here because of the fluctuation?" No answer came. The beasts surged forward like an unstoppable tide. The ground trembled first: not from one direction, but from all of them at once, a low shudder that didn't stop, like the earth itself couldn't decide which way to run. Birds went quiet mid-song. Somewhere behind him, a startled deer bolted and never made it three steps before it froze again, ears flat, caught between every direction being wrong.

The forest seemed to be emptying out. Birds burst out of the treetops in sudden flurries, and monsters ran through the underbrush, some even running directly into the path of larger predators without a second thought. Dendron could sense the fear radiating up from the roots, like the animals had known what was coming before he did. The footsteps started. Not one set. Hundreds of them. He extended his senses out as far as they'd reach and understood why. For a moment, he couldn't move.

It was his new senses that gave him all the information that he did not want: goblins, apes, kobolds, elves, ogre, orcs. And all of them closing in on him as if he was the ultimate prize. He drifted back to his old life—the one who could evade notice, the one who used to slip under the radar. He was good at it. It had made him proud of himself. But now he was the center of everything and there was nowhere else for him to run.

"This is what I get," he said, "for trying to be the protagonist." He stared in disbelief at the sheer number bearing down on him. It felt like the heavens themselves had turned against him.

"Is this fucking serious? How can a mere fluctuation attract this many beasts?" His bark seized along every inch of his trunk, leaves curling inward like a fist closing. There was nowhere for any of it to go—no legs to run on, no throat to scream through. Just wood locking rigid around a mind that very badly wanted to move. For a single heartbeat, he froze. Not the frozen state of fear. Something worse. The freeze of comprehension. He was a tree. Rooted. Immobile. Surrounded by enemies on all sides.

In that instant, he thought about the very first day: the effort to move, the missing arm, the legs he'd searched for but couldn't find, and the roots beneath him. He had accepted it back then because it posed no immediate threat. Now he was surrounded by monsters on all sides, and the joke that he had kept for days was no longer amusing. He could not run. He could not hide. He could not turn around. If they caught him, they would have to kill him right there.

In his previous life, he had quit jobs because they were too much work. He had avoided conflict because it was inconvenient. He'd spent his entire life avoiding difficult situations. And now he was trapped in a world that would kill him without hesitation, with nothing but a body that couldn't flee.

"The universe has a sick sense of humor," he said to no one. But, as he said it, a small voice in the back of his mind answered back. Maybe that was the point. Maybe the world was trying to teach you something. He didn't have time to find out what that something was. The Kobolds were closing in. He cursed himself for being a tree that couldn't walk, and braced for the fight he couldn't avoid. Whatever this was—punishment, lesson, or just bad luck—he wasn't going to find out by standing still.

His thoughts spun wildly before he forced them still.

"Whether it is heaven or fate, as long as I want to survive, there is always a way to crawl forward." He weighed his options and settled on the kobolds first, the closest group, and the most organized. Some of the others were still spread out, waiting for reinforcements. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. He summoned several portals and struck the kobolds early, hoping to slow the wider advance before it truly began. Portals flickered open behind the group.

Through them, his roots shot out like spears, targeting the lower ranks while aiming for the leader. The first root found purchase, coiling around a kobold's ankle. His eyes fell lower. For a moment, his face showed an expression of puzzlement, but he kicked at the root and said something to his companion in a grumbling voice. His companion extended an arm towards him. Too late. Then the ground opened under it. Smoke rolled across the clearing, grass torn apart in the blast.

The creature didn't even have time to yelp—one second whole, the next scattered, its remains splattering the warrior beside it. Dendron froze for a split second. Not from pain, but from what he saw. The kobold's body collapsed. Its eyes remained open and aware, staring at nothing. He had killed before. Things that fought back. This one hadn't even noticed him coming.

"Focus," he told himself.

"You can't afford to hesitate." The next explosion was already forming. A searing, white-hot burn shot up the root and lanced straight into Dendron's awareness.

"That hurts! That hurts so much!" He shoved the pain aside and detonated five more roots in quick succession. Boom. Boom... A string of explosions tore through the ranks. Fifteen Rank 1 Mid-Stage kobolds went down, flesh scattered across the grass, blood painting the ground crimson. The blast left a wall of smoke hanging in the air, and for a moment, everything went still. Some kobolds managed to protect themselves in time, earth walls rising, armor-type abilities kicking in.

Dendron had spent five percent of his spiritual essence per detonation, all of it aimed at breaking their formation and taking a shot at the leader. But the kobold leader, Rank 2 Early Stage, reacted fast enough to wrap himself in solid metal, tanking the blast whole. His plan had been simple: kill the leader before anyone could regroup.

The surprise hadn't been enough—the leader had noticed the flicker of empty air tearing open behind his own men a half-second before each root emerged, and that was all the confirmation he needed.

"There's a space attribute enemy! Stay vigilant, find it!" the leader roared. Dendron sent four more portals and roots forward, but this time they didn't strike. They just tapped the corpses briefly before withdrawing, points climbing somewhere in the back of his mind—he'd count them properly once he wasn't about to die.

"Upgrade Soul Explosion." He decided against drawing. This seemed like the more useful call for the moment. [Successfully upgraded Soul Explosion F > E] [Consumed 100 points] [Soul Explosion (E): You are able to plant explosions that trigger only when a target enters the radius, damaging physical bodies using spiritual essence.] His luck hadn't run out yet; this upgrade fit his situation almost perfectly.

With the surprise gone, he planted four Soul Explosions across separate patches of grass, hoping the threat alone would slow the kobolds down. Four portals opened, four roots emerged, spaced just far enough apart to cover the approach. The spiritual essence cost was steep. Even with constant passive absorption, he couldn't keep pace with the drain.

"Find the enemy! Avenge our fallen!" the leader screamed, and the horde surged forward. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Explosions ripped through the grass in succession, scorching the field black. The leader's face twisted with frustration, unable to sense any enemy nearby while his warriors kept dying around him. He scanned the treeline, the grass, the sky. Nothing. Just smoke and the faint echoes of explosions.

"What kind of enemy fights without showing themselves?" he muttered. In his tribe, honor required warriors to confront their adversaries head on. This... This was something else. Something that did not follow the rules. And this terrified him more than any blade could. He struggled to find a plan that made sense. The leader surveyed the battlefield, his eyes scanning the bodies before him. He counted fifteen soldiers lying lifeless, yet no sign of their enemy was evident.

His grasp around his sword tightened into a rock-solid fist.

"Where are they?" His question was met with silence.

"Where are they?!" he shouted, demanding an answer. One of his injured comrades turned towards the woods.

"There! I—" A loud blast drowned out his speech. He jumped back, a cold shiver running through him. This one thing was certain: whatever it was that was out here, blindly storming into the woods would spell their doom. Finally, he roared again.

"Retreat! They're toying with us! We can't push forward, there could be more bombs hidden out there!" Grief and fury warred in his voice. He wanted revenge, badly, but he wasn't willing to spend more lives against an enemy who refused to even show its face. His warriors pulled the wounded back. One of them, barely old enough to wield a spear, kept staring back at the fallen—his brother, still lying in the grass. The leader placed a hand on the young warrior's shoulders.

"We'll come back for him. I promise." The promise tasted like ashes. He knew they wouldn't return. Not for the corpse. Not for anyone. He knew he'd tell himself later that retreat was the only option. That a leader's first duty was to the living. Standing there, watching the young warrior's face crumble, he knew it for what it was: a lie wrapped in duty. He'd wonder, later, if that ever stopped being true. He despised his enemy. He despised their cowardice, unseen attacks, and refusal to fight honorably.

But more than anything, he despised himself for not being strong enough to defend his tribe.

"Fall back!" he yelled again, his voice crackling.

"Fall back, now!"

"Forget the gains. We keep pressing. Our losses just keep piling up." Dendron watched them leave. The young kobold clutching his brother's body. The leader who made a promise he knew he could never keep. The warriors who obeyed and suffered because of it.

"I did not wish for this," he whispered into the silent clearing.

"All I wanted was to be left alone." The forest didn't answer.

"But that's not how this world works, is it. You're either the one doing the leaving or the one being left behind." As the Kobolds pulled back, Dendron let out a breath of relief, short-lived. The rest of the beasts were still closing in, and there was no way he could hold off all of them. He forced himself to focus, and after a few minutes, a plan finally took shape. With half his spiritual essence gone, he decided to step back and let things play out on their own.

Every force converging here wanted the same thing, which meant conflict between them was practically guaranteed without him lifting a root. His mind had been too scattered to see that clearly at first, the danger too immediate and his thoughts running wild. Now that he'd calmed down, the plan finally made sense. Killing came easier this time than it had the last. The guilt that had once left him hollow for hours had thinned into something quieter, a dull ache he barely had to acknowledge anymore.

But the horror he expected was nowhere in him. He recalled his first experience witnessing death. Hours would go by afterwards and all that he would do was to reflect on it—the look on his face, the blood, the realization that there had been life just a second ago. Now there was nothing left but numbers. Fifteen. Five explosions. Eight points. Rank 1 Mid-Stage. He surveyed the corpses. One, two, three. Counting was too easy. At the fifth corpse—a kobold hunched awkwardly, one arm pinned beneath its body—he paused.

But he kept moving. Then another. And another. After a while, he stopped looking at their faces entirely. Rank 1 Mid-Stage. Rank 1 Mid-Stage. Rank 1 Peak Stage. His eyes drifted to the soul cores instead. The rank. The energy. The points.

"One Rank 1 Peak..." He stopped.

"But the rest are mostly Mid-Stage." There was an odd sort of calmness in his voice. Neither disgusted nor hesitant. Just calculative. Dendron stared at the corpses again. Just a few minutes ago, they were living enemies. Now they were resources. Silence filled his mind. When had he begun viewing them as numbers rather than creatures? It bothered him. Not because he pitied the fallen, though. Perhaps that was what bothered him most. He wasn't even sure whether pity was the right response to such situations.

[Successfully absorbed...] The system continued announcing the results. Dendron listened: the ranks, the points, and somewhere during that process, the dead were no longer corpses. They became numbers. He wondered if that habit had been inside him all along. Maybe too much so. Dendron was silent.

"When did they become numbers?" No response. And he wasn't sure whether he wanted one. He looked at his roots. They were stained with blood. He didn't know when that had happened—during the fight, the absorption, or somewhere in between.

"I can't tell if this is survival," he said, "or just getting better at pretending." That realization should have concerned him more than it did. He had felt sick after the orcs. Now he simply felt... tired. No relief. No disgust. Just acceptance. As if this was the new normal for him.

"I'm getting used to this," he said to the empty space.

"I don't know if that's a good thing." He thought of Luan. About how Luan would have helped him fight if he had been present. And then he considered whether he wanted Luan to see who he had become. He came to realize that the answer was no.

"Kill or be killed..." he whispered. He let the silence sit a moment before he made himself move on. There was still work to do. He turned to absorbing the corpses left behind by his planted explosions. [Successfully absorbed Rank 1 Peak Stage Soul Core] [+8 points] [Successfully absorbed Rank 1 Mid-Stage Soul Core] [+4 points] [Successfully absorbed...] [Points: 98] [Draw a random skill (50% success chance): 50 points] He looked over the tally, and something in him reached for the numbers instead of the bodies they'd come from.

"One Rank 1 Peak Stage and eight Mid-Stage. Not bad." The more skills he had, the more options stayed open to him.

"Draw!" A panel appeared, and he lit up at what he saw. [Spiritual Essence Storage (F): You now possess a storage beside your soul core that can hold 20% of your soul core's capacity.]"No way am I this lucky. It keeps giving me exactly what I need."

"Empty for now, but that's fine. It'll be useful eventually." He was satisfied. He let the satisfaction settle. And then he felt it—the familiar weight of guilt, reduced by repetition but still present. It was getting easier. That was the part that bothered him most. The silence that followed felt heavier than the battle itself. A few minutes later, a powerful fluctuation rippled through the area. The air grew heavier, and every monster nearby seemed to feel the same suffocating pressure settle over them.