The Gamer Chapter 1651 – Worship of the Shiny One (Patreon)

“No.”

“…N-no?”

“No.” Lydia tapped the pommel of her sheathed weapon. “My love, how come these missions with you so often derail?”

“It hasn’t quite derailed yet.” John stepped forwards. “Ehem, if I may explain. My name is John Newman and I am the owner of this Mine. This is Lydia, one of my lovers and a ruler in her own right – but not of this space.”

The kobold looked back and forth between the two of them. “But… she has so much more shiny than you do.”

“I assume that means shiny means-“ John stopped for a brief moment to blow up an approaching Tunnel Dragon with a Blast Ray, “-shininess is a symbol of status in your realm?”

“Uhm… it’s not in yours?”

“No.”

“…N-no?”

“No.” John scratched the back of his head.

“Would you prefer I headed back up?” Lydia suggested.

That would solve the issue. Still, John shook his head. “We’ll solve this diplomatically.” He turned his attention back to the kobold. “Would you be so kind as to guide me to your people? I would like to inform them about what this place is and what I would wish our relationship to be, going forwards.”

The kobold glanced back and forth between the two of them. “Do as he asks,” Lydia ordered.

“As you wish, oh shiniest one,” the shortstack babbled then got on her feet again. “This way.”

‘Yeah, this is going to be awkward.’

______________________________________________________________________

It was awkward.

They had been led into the depths of a warren. The transition between Mine and Kobold Kingdom was marked by shimmering, prismatic lines where the different kinds of stone met. The same prismatic effect hung in the air, albeit much weaker, like a washed out soap bubble. It was the same kind of visual effect that accompanied the forceful overlap of two Protected Spaces. John had last seen it when the Order of the Golden Rose had invaded New Libraria.

The air on the other side of that veil was different, more humid. John heard the distant sound of drops falling into vast cavern lakes echoing off the walls. They had been smoothed over the years by hundreds or thousands of kobold claws scratching away at them, making the tunnel a mostly straightforward, elliptic hallway.

Decorations had been half carved, half painted on the wall. They depicted great dragons and sparkling stuff. The metal paints used shimmered in the light of Lydia’s cape. ‘Maybe I should have brought Nathalia along…’ John considered. ‘Aclysia or Beatrice…? No, they might start a maid cult down here… then again, would that be bad?’

The cave they were in led into another, larger cave. Dozens of kobolds were using it, carrying ingots, pieces of ore, and scrap above their head. They nearly dropped it at the sight of Lydia, but barely managed to curb their enthusiasm when their guide stepped in front. “I am guiding the shiniest one and her beloved to the elders!”

“”Shiniest one!”” the kobolds shouted in unison, then followed them along as they went down that broader tunnel.

The occasion gave John the opportunity to scan over the other kobolds. As the choice had teased, the women of this species of kobold were all short and stacked. Typically, this came in the shape of big tits and wide hips, but sometimes it was just the latter. Interestingly, there were no kobolds with big tits but small butts.

The men, of which there were fewer, were bigger than their female counterparts, but not by much. If the women were 1,10 on average, the men were 1,20 metres. They had the same arrangement of draconic additions: decorative scales framing their features, clawed legs and feet, and a tail of moderate length. Also like the women, the men were clearly adults, just fun-sized.

The large corridor led into an even larger corridor, which finally led into a giant cavern. It reminded John of that underground area of Skyrim in three senses. First was the sheer scope of the underground, second were the glowing crystals and bioluminescent mushrooms all around, and third was the gargantuan structure at the centre of it that reached from ceiling to deep underground, at least if the various tunnels leading in and out of it at ground level were something to judge it by.

The building did not match the architectural style of the carvings or the other buildings that surrounded the central hold. The kobold structures were crude but practical. They used their much lighter weight and lesser size demands to stack structures that, for a human, were too flimsy but served them just fine. Those structures were made from cobblestone, glued together by alchemical liquid.

The tower, by comparison, was made not only from solid stones, cut to perfection, but also stones that clearly had been hauled in from elsewhere. Massive blocks of a reddish grey contrasted with the surrounding dark grey of the inside of whatever mountain or cavern they were in. It had windows too large to be made for kobold usage.

Advancing towards the hold made the crowd behind them swell from dozens to hundreds. Already it was apparent that the number of kobolds living down here exceeded the number of people that lived in the Guild Hall itself and possibly that of the Hudson Barrier in its entirety. “ooooooh”s and “aaaaah”s were a constant companion.

John managed to be more amused than irked at the treatment he received. Evidently, Lydia was just too shiny for him to even be acknowledged beyond a stray glance. Strimata did not help the endeavour. One moment of Lydia’s hand being away from the handle was enough for the whimsical rapier to teleport itself next to her.

Standing upright, it sang in chimes of a glockenspiel, before Lydia picked it up and rammed it back into its sheath, much to the general disappointment of the adoring public.

They entered the hold unopposed. There were fully armoured guards by the main gate, but they stood aside, in awe of Lydia. Their guide brought them up through the massive structure, towards a chamber at the centre of the central building. Woven banners depicting a pickaxe with wings hung from walls so much older than themselves.

John was still trying to figure out if this was the standard fantasy trope of kobolds squatting in dwarven ruins or not. The architecture could have been from dwarves or any other powerful previous civilization, it wasn’t quite stereotypical enough to place it.

More important was the inside of the hall. Surrounding a throne carved into a crystal formation sat six old kobolds. The elders were all wizened old people, five women, one man, roughly matching the gender ratio that John had seen so far. Like most Abyssals, they had aged quite well, being somewhat attractive despite their wrinkles and the diminished strength of their spines.

“Stay seated,” Lydia ordered, before the elderly kobolds could get out of their cushy chairs.

“Elder council, I bring to you these most shiny visitors! They found me in the new tunnels!”

“Yes, thank you,” John stepped forward. After another three seconds of getting ignored, he looked to Lydia for help. He could brute force the issue by using his magically boosted presence, but he felt like he could just solve this diplomatically.

“I am Lydia Augusta the Fourth of House Hohenzollern, I am here as a visitor of my beloved.” A wave of her hand finally caused attention to shift to John. “Listen to him, for he is the one that equipped me with these sparkling artefacts that you appear obsessed with.”

Now John fully had their attention. “Quite so,” he seized the opportunity. The explanation of what happened followed. “I’m a powerful mage with a rather unique set of abilities. To make a long story short, I have permanently connected your Kingdom to an underground structure filled with dangers and ores that you can only harvest using special pickaxes you can get from the surface. I would like to engage in a lucrative trade relationship with you.”

“Ehem.” One of the women cleared her throat. “I must understand. You geared this most shiny one?”

“I did.”

“And you have connected us to a realm of vast riches?”

“Infinite, technically.”

“Please sit upon this here throne.” The offer was half a plea, and the other elders, plus all of the guards stationed around the edges of the room, all nodded in eager support of it.

John glanced up at it and scratched the back of his head. “What would this mean, officially speaking?”

“You would be king of Minizan! We will gladly be vassals of one blessed by so many shinies!” Universal agreement, leaving John with a difficult decision.

Difficult only by his own making, he had to admit. ‘By all objective measures, taking that offer has no drawbacks. It’s just my own principles that keep me from taking it.’ “So we are clear, I don’t have the time to come down here frequently to help you govern,” he informed them. “You would have to carry on as you are.”

“Yes, that’s fine, we will serve you, provider of great shinies, however is most appropriate.”

John still eyed the crystal throne. The title of king was inevitable, although he would have assumed he would achieve it by marriage rather than an underground realm of shiny-obsessed lizard humans. ‘Would this be enough to clear your condition?’ the Gamer sent the question to Ehtra and Metra.

The two Metracana began a contemplative discussion on the matter. While it went on, he went to ask a few more questions.

“If you allow me, I’d like to first learn what your realm is. Are these caverns the extent of it?”

That was just the first of many questions John needed to ask to get a clear picture. Because the kobolds were so utterly focused on the matter of swearing fealty to one so shiny, he had to circumvent their various pleas and assurances in order to extract actual information.

Minizan, apparently, was a Kingdom that frequently drifted and connected to other realms. Drilling down on their origin mythos, it sounded like they had come from Earth and found this empty chamber some 800 years ago. Minizan connected to underground cave systems, which the kobolds then explored by being sneaky.

And sneaky they were. John had Observed a multitude of them since entering. Strength and Endurance wise, they were poor, but they had high Agility, Intellect, and Charisma. They would be bad in a fight, but they could certainly flee well or make themselves cute enough to warrant protection. This was, apparently, their standard survival strategy as well.

When they contacted locals in whatever Kingdom they were currently in, they either attempted to stay unnoticed or swore their fealty to whoever they were dealing with. They then exchanged their services as expert spelunkers in return for food and… refreshment of their gene pool. Eventually, the Kingdom drifted away, they went through a period of isolation (sometimes accompanied by some rather terrible starvation, as the population had bloated more than the edible mushrooms could sustain), to eventually surface elsewhere.

It was a pretty simple way of life. The more shiny someone was, the better. If shinies and food were provided, the kobolds served their interest, if not, then they hid away and waited for rosier times. As for who had originally inhabited this place, they had no answer. They had found no bones or scripture, for what it was worth, leading John to believe that the original inhabitants had used this highly mobile Kingdom to get to greener pastures.

That was in and of itself an interesting thought experiment. Were there people that used Kingdoms to travel to other Kingdoms? What kind of culture would that be? Were there entire, multi-Kingdom empires out there that had never or not in a long time interacted with Earth? John hoped he would find out over his long life.

More interesting for the current situation was whether Minizan would continue drifting while attached to the Mine or if it was permanently lodged now. As per the Building description, the connection points would shift on the daily, so it was definitely still moving in some way.

John kept on looking at the throne. Beyond his current position, the Metracanas came to a conclusion. ‘No,’ Metra presented the answer.

‘Why not?’ John asked, purely out of academic interest.

‘Absent monarch of a distant, small kingdom like this is not enough to fulfil what we deem the position and tradition of a king to stand for.’

John just hummed. He couldn’t argue with them on the matter. Their understanding of kingship in the context of their oath was entirely their own to say what was enough and what wasn’t. Objective definitions of language were difficult enough at the best of times. Agreement on a concept like ‘king’ between languages and cultures several thousand years removed from each other was hard – very, very hard.

“So, would you sit?” she asked again.

John was still torn on the matter. Slowly, he nodded. At the end of the cost-benefit analysis, he couldn’t justify denying the kobolds what was their working tradition. It would make everything that came after this that much smoother and the only counterargument was his personal preference in terms of titles.

Ascending the steps carved into the crystal, he soon reached the seat. It was about the right size for someone his height. Turning around, he hesitantly lowered himself into the seat. For a moment, it felt like he was sinking. He concentrated on the view he had. The elevated position. He liked it. He knew he would like it, that’s why he didn’t like it. He could feel Siena and Stirwin both prowling at the edge of his consciousness, eager to hook into stray thoughts that went in the direction of humility or arrogance. Once they did, they would either try to tear that thought to pieces or embolden it.

For the time being, he gave neither of them any fodder or room to criticize. His hands came to lay on the armrests of the surprisingly warm material. His mouth felt dry. His voice reflected that. “I still prefer to go by president,” he informed them.

“Alright, President John,” the kobold council accepted immediately. They weren’t true monarchists. That made this easier. “So, what orders do you have for us, provider of shinies?”

That, at least, he had planned beforehand. It had been intuitive that the kobolds would be expert spelunkers of the sneaky kind, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to navigate or survive on this layer. Thus, they provided a service that was valuable: good intel on these lower layers that even the most experienced groups could utilize. At a minimum, they could tell Fusion’s miners the way the tunnels currently looked. At a maximum, they could join that party as a semi-permanent or permanent member.

The deal struck was therefore simple. By and large, the kobolds would remain down here, where they were comfortable. Miners and kobolds would, where they came across each other, work together. Miners would protect kobolds and the kobolds would scout and share intel. In return, the kobolds would receive either part of the yield or whatever other services they fancied, including being led up to the surface.

The kobolds could, if they wanted to make that leap, migrate to the Guild Hall permanently. They could also just visit. In either case, John would have it so there were periodic food deliveries to these depths. The size of them had to be limited, considering the difficulty of the route, but he would still make that effort. In return for the food, the kobolds would send back products of alchemy and smithing made with the metals they themselves mined.

It was a minor exchange of resources and services, all things considered, but it added to the charm of the Guild Hall and offered the potential migration of excess shortstacks (and short men, for those that were into that) to the surface.

So that was quite something.