Dragging a half-conscious kobold through the mud wasn't exactly on my to-do list today. Especially not this one. Hoarder. One of the first. Always sneaking food, always a little too nervous. One of the ones I thought I'd lost a long time ago. But here he was, barely breathing, clutching a satchel full of junk like it was treasure. Alive. Somehow.
The medical tent wasn't the usual "slap some moss on it and pray" disaster either. It was real. Organized. Cots made of stretched vines. Healing potions sorted by color and strength. Even a team of medic kobolds in little white scrap-cloaks, barking orders. I half-dragged, half-carried Hoarder inside. A medic ran up—tiny, determined, wielding a clipboard like a weapon.
"No bleeding on clean moss!" she snapped.
"He's dying!" I barked back.
"No bleeding!"
I rolled my eyes and dumped him onto a cot. "There. Now he's bleeding on your moss."
The medic hissed and immediately started dousing him in healing solution. Good.
I sat back, heart hammering. It'd been...months. Cycles? Hard to tell down here. Since he left. Since I sent out those desperate little expeditions, hoping to find somewhere, anything better than this crumbling dungeon hole. Most never came back. Some maybe couldn't. I'd stopped thinking about them after a while. Not because I stopped caring. Because it hurt too much to wonder if it was my fault.
Hoarder stirred, coughing weakly. His eyes cracked open—still sharp. Still stubborn.
"You're alive," I said, keeping my voice steady.
He coughed a laugh. "Not...for lack of monsters trying."
I pulled a stool closer. "Tell me."
Between shaky breaths and sips of foul-smelling potion, he talked. They'd gone out like I asked. Scout for expansions. Safe spaces. Other kobolds to bring back. Except the dungeon shifted—the way it does sometimes, twisting tunnels, sealing exits. Cut off. Trapped between new monsters and collapsing caves. Most of his group didn't make it.
He survived. Barely. Stealing scraps. Hiding. Always moving. Always circling back, trying to find Ashring again.
"I kept looking," he rasped. "Because you said…we were building something better."
He clutched his satchel tighter. Inside, scraps of hand-drawn maps. Monster notes. Dried roots and moss samples. Proof he never gave up. Proof someone still believed.
My throat went tight. System pinged softly.
[Returning Survivor Detected: Loyalty Bond Reinforced]
[Village Unity +1]
[Emergency Resource Bonus: Survival Instinct Boost (temporary)]
I leaned forward, tapping claws against my knee. "We're still building," I said. "Still fighting." He smiled—tired, but real. Good. Because we were going to need every last scrap of stubbornness he had left.
Outside, the ground trembled again. Not panic-tremble. Preparation-tremble. Ashring's heartbeat. I stood up. "We've got a war council to run." He gave a tiny thumbs-up before passing out again. Typical kobold timing.
The camp buzzed around me. Not in panic—not this time. It was busy, fast, a hundred problems shouting at once—but organized. Ashring wasn't trembling anymore. It was moving. It was ready.
I didn't waste time gathering everyone again. We'd done enough speeches already. Now it was orders. Fast. Sharp. Moving.
Splitjaw, spears on his back, was already organizing the chokepoint squads at the first trench. I caught his arm as he passed.
"Focus on fast engagement. Hit, fade, hit again. Don't let the monsters group up."
He grinned a savage grin and jogged off, shouting for flanking teams. Good.
Embergleam stood by the east barricade, inspecting a cluster of flame-mutated kobolds with smoldering claws and molten breath.
"Ember!"
She looked over, one eyebrow raised.
"You're skirmish leader. Mobile harassment. Burn the big ones first!"
She gave a sharp nod, a little too eager. Note to self: supervise the burning.
Stonealign and Artist were already knee-deep in construction chaos. The outer palisade gleamed under layers of mosscrete and rune-bolted wood. Fresh pit traps gaped just past the chokepoints. Artist yelled something about auto-trigger systems and I decided not to ask. I just thumped Stonealign on the shoulder.
"Prioritize the western edge fallback trenches. Collapse them behind us if we retreat!"
"Already drawing the charges," he said, proud.
Bitterstack was somehow in three places at once. Medical caches. Food stockpiles. Evacuation paths. I flagged her down.
"You're logistics command now. Keep the wounded moving, don't let supply lines snap."
She scribbled something furiously and stormed off barking orders. Perfect.
Seedfoot was elbow-deep in what looked like a very angry tangle of vines.
"You get trap duty. Control zones only. No spontaneous jungle warfare again!"
He squeaked, nodded, and waved a vine in agreement.
Even the moss golems—lumbering, slow, but relentless—were stationed smartly this time. Guarding fallback positions. Waiting for signal triggers to move as battering rams or living barricades. It wasn't just about survival anymore. It was about fighting back.
I passed Scribble—the kid—with his too-big staff and his too-bright eyes. He was carving steady, slow barrier sigils into the wall stones.
"Scribble."
The name stuck after he covered half the old market wall in protective runes one night. Nobody knew what half the symbols meant, including him. But the walls held. Good enough.
As I crossed the camp, I saw others too. A baker now running supply routes with military precision. A fisher organizing fallback water stores. Dozens of new kobolds moving like gears in a wild, stubborn machine. Ashring wasn't a miracle. It was stubbornness, stacked layer by layer, until it could stand on its own.
I climbed up the lookout post and scanned the battlefield. The strategy was simple:
Force monsters through natural choke points.
Scatter them with fast harassment squads.
Trigger collapse trenches to cut off retreats.
Lure Gorak into the dead zone: a thick, alchemy-rigged field seeded with moss bombs and mana detonators.
If Gorak breached that, hit him with everything we had left. Not just survive. Control. Own the ground they thought they could take.
System pinged.
[Defense Readiness Level: 72%]
[Raid Event: Monster Surge | Countdown: 22 hours]
I flexed my claws against the rough wood, feeling the hum of the camp around me. One more day. One more wall. And we might just pull this off.
Okay, Ashring. Let's see how stubborn we really are.