I might have made a mistake by assuming the Kobolds to be the weakest among the members of the monster race. I’ve recently realized, if you pit an untrained Kobold against a similarly untrained human, the Kobold would probably win.

In other words, if they were thoroughly trained, then the Kobolds could tap into their hidden potential and easily surpass humanity. As these thoughts filled my mind, I watched Axe swing his Battle Axe in a frenzy, and looked back to the events a while ago…

The pack settlement is situated in an open area of the forest where lairs were made in the ground, but several trees blocked access to the central square. It all started when I decided to cut those down, and asked Axe to do it…

“Wafuh, wauuh, garuaouu.” (Hey, Ax, cut the trees over there.)

“Gurua, kuua~n.” (But boss, that’s impossible.)

Ax was second to Buster in terms of size, but despite being the second biggest Kobold in the pack, he possessed a rather timid and reluctant personality.

“Guuruuh, kuaru wooan.”  (Don’t give up right away, just agree to it.)

“Kyuuun!?”

A dull sound echoed as I kicked Ax on the shin.

“Fauh!?! Kuu, kuan.”  (Ow!?! Alright, I’ll do it.)

And so, Ax reluctantly swung away at the tree with his Battle Axe, but…

It seems that the Battle Axe was made for fighting and not for chopping trees. Being unable to cut it well, he cried and whined repeatedly.

“Kuu, kuuafaan.” (My hand, my hand hurts.)

“Gaouuh, garuguoua voruaaoon!” (You’ll be fine, just get over it and it’ll go numb!)

As the sound of me firing him up echoed over his sobbing and whining… He suddenly snapped.

“Guruaa, guu, guruaa~n!?”  (Stop, stop it already~!?)

“Uoaa!!” (Uooo!!)

Flailing his arms around like a small bullied child while repeatedly saying ‘stop’, the huge, well-trained Kobold cleaved the surroundings in all directions with the Battle Axe in his hand.

“Gua, guruaan!?”  (Rather than me, isn’t it you who should stop!?)

The Battle Axe that he swung haphazardly hit the spot where the tree had been previously cut, causing it to fall in one blow.   

“Au?” (Huh?)

Unfortunately, the tree was going to fall in the direction of the guys from the village who came to watch, and a dumbfounded Kobold cub looked up just as he was about to be crushed underneath it.

“Kyu!? Kyuu!”

“Guruaaa!!” (Buster!!)

“Uoooh, gurua!” (Leave it to me, chief!)

Buster, who was nearby, caught and supported the tree trunk that had almost crushed the less-than-a-year-old Kobolt cub who missed its chance to run and, slowly lowered it to the ground. The sight reminded me again of the Kobold’s infinite potential.

After that, we calmed down Ax who was still grumbling and asked him to cut the rest of the trees on the central square, leaving the logs on the outskirts of the settlement. It would be nice if we could make use of the logs, but…during my time as a mercenary, I more or less had some experience with woodworking since fixing dormitories and mending tools was part of my job. But no matter what, specialized tools are still a necessity for any woodworking.

It’s not impossible to make similar tools out of obsidian, but it was preferable to make the tools out of iron, and we needed to have a furnace for any kind of metalwork. And we would need a heat-resistant hearth made out of volcanic rock and an iron hammer to forge, but… we don’t have any iron, so that means we would have to use stone hammers in the beginning after all?

 Yes, that’s right, we would have to prepare some crude tools first, and then we could build some high-precision tools with them later on. There’s the flint used for making a fire that we took from the adventurers the other day, so aside from that, it was necessary to procure some iron ore.

Thinking about this and that, I finally realized the most essential thing. To collect iron, a pickaxe was necessary, so we needed to make a pickaxe out of suitable rocks first. In other words, it was necessary to complete “all the stone tools” first to acquire iron.

(What a pain……)

In any case, we would be going to the mines deep in the forest. We would only be making a preliminary inspection, as there were no means to transport it even if we dug up the iron, it’s likely that we would be moving the settlement depending on the situation…

Well, if we keep on robbing adventurers, they would eventually notice and destroy us, so we had no choice but to look for other alternatives.  And so, the three of us — Buster, my sister Dagger, and I went on a month-long journey.

As a general rule, it is important to consider taking a route that focuses on bodies of water when going on a journey since the amount of water living things need is so large, that it would be difficult to carry it around.

The average horse, for example, drinks approximately 30 liters of water in a day. By contrast, a reasonable load for each horse is 90 kilograms. In short, the most a horse could survive in a place without bodies of water is around three days, provided that it would only carry its own drinking water and nothing else. Taking this into account while using the common sense of my days as a mercenary, the most we can move around in a place without a water source would be at most four days, and it would be a death march if we fail to find a water source during that time.

Therefore, we too will be relying on the river that runs through the forest as we advance.

 Also, the riverside is the perfect hunting ground for the animals that live in the forest.

“Wuon!” (I’ll take a shot!)

I aim at the deer with the bow and arrow that I’ve recently finally learned to handle properly lately. Unfortunately, it’s not a monster, but a normal deer…

For some reason, we feel a part of their life force and magic flowing into us whenever we defeat a monster, and if we continue hunting them, it feels like we could aim to increase our levels.

 (I was a little off the mark……)

I looked back and saw that my arrow had hit the deer’s torso.

With this, I can now say that I am a great Kobold Archer. Not really, it’s just something I came up with when I was naming my friends on a whim…

Despite being hit by the arrow, the deer was still desperately struggling, and as it tried to stand up, my sister gleefully charged at it with daggers at both hands.

“Wu, wuaooonn♪”  (Meat, we can eat meaaat ♪)

“Kiiiaa…… a……”

After the deer stopped moving, Buster, who hid at the other side in case I missed my shot appeared and lifted our food by its legs. 

“Guruu, guuagauu voa.” (Chief, let’s prepare this somewhere we can hide in.)

Now, it’s time to eat.

Not one of us Kobolds could keep ourselves from drooling.