Dragon God’s System

Since I was in the middle of giving a speech, I barely glanced at the system notifications. Instead, I called for my maids, “Bjóna, Forsjá, Duga, Týja, and Fylgja, please come forward. You five have been helping me longer than anyone else here. Therefore, I would like to bestow my bloodline to you.”

They eagerly stepped forward while the other kobolds looked on in anticipation. This time I was prepared to allow everyone to see what was happening. One by one, I repeated the process of giving them my bloodline. Whether they had better self-control, or were aware that they were being watched, none of them treated my finger like a popsicle. Instead, they swallowed the blood essence before immediately sitting down.

I nodded as I watched them begin the transition from high kobold to draconic kobold. The other kobolds watched, mesmerized by what they were seeing. No one said anything, which made the moaning of the maids even more noticeable. After seeing how many of the male kobolds responded, I had to resist the impulse to smack them on the back of their heads.

Soon, there were five more draconic kobolds. I continued giving my blood essence to another twenty kobolds. My plan was to transform twenty-five kobolds each day. When I gave Alsvartr my blood essence, my maximum health point total had dropped until after I had a long rest. Since I didn’t have enough health points to change everyone at the same time, I had to space out the transformations over four days.

After everyone I was going to transform that day had gone through the transformation, I tried to see if there were other changes. However, none of the kobolds showed any notable differences. I was a little disappointed. I had hoped that some of them would turn into draconic sorcerers or possess greater intelligence.

Then again, I was probably asking for too much. The kobolds were already a little stronger and a little tougher. Every one of them also gained the ability to glide. They even had a weird blue fire breath attack. From what I could gather, since they had been red kobolds, they shared an affinity to fire like red dragons. For some reason, my bloodline had changed the fire breath that some red high kobolds possessed into blue fire breath. I wasn’t sure how. I wasn’t even sure how the blue fire was different from normal fire.

Of course, there were a lot of things that would take a lot of time to figure out. One of the biggest questions I had was how much their children would inherit. I also wanted to know if there would be any change in the chances of those children gaining even more draconic gifts, such as flying instead of gliding. My dream was to see numerous flying draconic kobold sorcerers.

Despite the physical changes, nothing else changed over the next few weeks. Well, that wasn’t quite true. The kobolds seemed happier than was normal even for them. Also, they seemed a little more energetic while “bathing” in the warm pools each morning. I guess the biggest change, besides an increase in the number of rooms in the city, was that one of those rooms was filled with forty kobold eggs. That meant, in two more months, we would have 140 kobolds in the city. Unfortunately, it would take five years for the kobolds to grow into productive members of the city.

Actually, now that I thought about it, that might not be a good thing. In another few weeks there might be another batch of eggs. A few weeks later, yet another batch. This meant that within a year’s time, almost 1000 kobold wyrmlings might have hatched. Considering the fact that there were only a few kobolds who could act as caregivers, I really needed to take some drastic action.

I needed to decide to either halt egg laying, which, frankly, wasn’t going to happen, or find new kobolds to act as caregivers. The problem was the question of where I could find those caregivers. To alleviate the situation, I decided to send Geyma and a few other kobolds back to Einvaldskonungr City. Once there, they could let Dróttinn know how much progress we had made in creating our city. She could also recruit any kobolds who would like to join us.

Due to the fact that she had become a draconic kobold with wings and dragon breath, I wouldn’t be surprised if hundreds of kobolds volunteered. Of course, that brought another problem. Currently, I could feed about 400 kobolds with my magic by creating dragonberries. If we included food from other sources, we would be able to feed more. However, much like other newly created kobold cities, establishing a stable food supply would be difficult.

Unlike most newly created kobold cities though, we were doing much better. This was partially due to the dragonberries and partially due to the head start the Dungeon Core spell had provided. If that wasn’t the case, my kobolds would have been malnourished, and thus much less likely to lay eggs. That would have meant that we didn’t need too many caregivers. That might explain why only a few had been sent with me.

After coming up with a possible solution to one problem, that being finding caregivers for the wyrmlings that were going to hatch within a couple of months, that left me with another problem. I needed to feed those wyrmlings. A lot of it would depend on how many kobolds chose to join us. Keeping everyone fed for three or four months shouldn’t be a problem. Hopefully we would have other sources of food ready by then.

A lot of it would depend on the broodmothers and mushroom farmers. In fact, every day I had sent Alsvartr out to use the Control Bats spell in the hope that it would help develop a local bat colony that could be used as a food source someday. If we were able to increase the population of bats, spiders, and worms, I would feel much more comfortable knowing that I could use my magic freely. On the downside was the fact that I wouldn’t be able to use magic except to create enough food for our city to survive.

One unexpected, but pleasant surprise, was the discovery of a salt pool that was fed by the sea. One of the inventive kobolds had even managed to design a way to trap some fish, which had already started to alleviate the food shortages. One of the scouts had also discovered a couple of bat colonies. Because of this, I wasn’t too worried about the future. If worse went to worst, we could survive with those resources for a while.

Even though we were able to solve most of the issues that rose over the next few months, a few problems remained. Geyma returned with almost three hundred more kobolds. While most of these kobolds were not caregivers, we still had enough to meet the needs of our forty new wyrmlings. As for the wyrmlings themselves, they were hatched as true draconic kobolds. In fact, several of them had large enough wings to one day support flight.

I was even able to transform every single new arrival into a draconic kobold. Needless to say, my faith points increased dramatically. In fact, each day, more faith points were added to my information sheet. The problem was that I actually had no way to spend those faith points. Apparently, they were useless to me unless I had some type of spark of divinity. Although I might be viewed as a god to the kobolds, that didn’t actually turn me into a god.

By the time Baron Réttr returned with the veteran soldiers, almost everyone, and everything, had been transported away from the old city. From what I could gather, the kobolds took the city’s loss in stride. Once a city grew too populous, it would often break into many smaller villages throughout the area. The only difference this time was that the main city had been abandoned.

Of course, this made the day-to-day life of each kobold more difficult. All of the kobolds had to work harder until their villages became more established. Many of the kobold villages had to deal with malnutrition due to lack of established resources. The fact that we were taking in the excess population that those villages couldn’t feed helped them survive the transition with no loss of life. Each day, a trickle of kobold settlers would arrive that would need my blood essence.

The main problem I faced was the lack of experience points. While I had managed to gain some experience since we arrived at the cave where we built the city, it wasn’t anywhere close enough for me to level up. My progress to the next level had slowed to a snail’s pace. As for the bat colonies, I didn’t want to risk exterminating them since we would need them as a food source. While I could gain some experience by farming bats, I had to be careful not to kill too many or drive them away.

A few weeks later, a massive influx of refugees arrived at our city. Apparently, green kobolds from the Groenneitr Tribe had invaded several of the red kobold villages. Most of the Einvaldskonungr Tribe kobolds were able to successfully escape. This was only due to the fact that the green kobolds didn’t seem to care about killing the red kobolds. All the green kobolds seemed concerned about were the minerals, ores, and other treasures that the red kobolds had managed to procure.

By stealing Einvaldskonungr’s offerings, Groenneitr had basically declared war on the red dragon. Even if the green kobold tribe had done it without the permission of Groenneitr, Einvaldskonungr wouldn’t care. More than likely, Einvaldskonungr had probably already been awakened. Red dragons were notorious for their short tempers. If even a single coin of their hoard was touched, they would fly into uncontrollable rampages.

Something about the whole situation bothered me. While I suspected that the green kobolds were up to something, I doubted they would want to start a war between the two dragons. From what I could gather, both of the dragons were about the same age. Because of this, Einvaldskonungr was much more likely to win.

Unless, of course, there was a catch. Why would Groenneitr antagonize a stronger opponent? Green dragons were nothing if not planners. What they lacked in raw physical power, they made up with cunning and deception. That meant that if the green dragon was confident enough to instigate a fight, he was definitely planning something. Either he had a secret trump card, or someone else was trying to cause a conflict between the dragons for their own benefit. Whatever the reason, things were about to get interesting again.