Chapter 117: The Kobold Valley Where Church and State Are One

Taking kobolds to war is like bringing elementary school children on a field trip; if you’re not careful, they can get lost in an instant.

The only difference is that no parent would blame Fiza for being too harsh with the punishment.

As long as she cracked the whip hard enough, most of the kobolds, afraid of pain, would remember to stay with the main force.

Fortunately, the lost kobolds, once they regained their senses, could rely on their excellent sense of smell to catch up with the main group or even find their own way home—provided they weren’t devoured by wild beasts.

At a large pool upstream by the river bend, Fiza ordered all the kobolds to strip off their gear and jump into the water for a thorough wash before allowing them to return home.

Especially the black-furred kobolds, who had probably never bathed before; their bodies were caked in mud, their black fur almost matted into clumps, with only a few patches gleaming faintly.

They were filthy to the point of being greasy.

Back at the kobold valley, there awaited a large bathing pool filled with hot water and sulfur.

The golden-furred kobolds, handled by Fiza, were much cleaner and had grown accustomed to regular bathing.

They disliked splashing about in cold water but longed for the warm bathing pools in the valley.

However, the pool’s capacity was limited, and producing a full pool of hot water consumed a great deal of firewood, so it was usually heated only once every few days.

Only the strong kobold guards could bathe frequently; the weaker ones had to wait ten or fifteen days for their turn.

Most of the time, they had no choice but to wash in the river, as ordered by Fiza.

Fiza’s hygiene standards for the kobolds were almost entirely modeled after those of the Riverbend village.

In the northern lands, due to the harsh cold climate and lack of economic resources, the villagers of Riverbend were filthy, resembling people who hadn’t bathed for centuries.

Ulyan, a veteran of the elite legion, could not bear it but was powerless to change the situation.

Upon arriving at Riverbend, the village temporarily adopted a primitive communal system, turning into Ulyan’s autocracy.

He gradually implemented militarized management, spreading some of the barracks’ rules into the village.

For example, obeying orders, abiding by regulations, and maintaining hygiene.

These ideas coincided with Leo’s vision; Ulyan was responsible for building bathhouses and latrines, while Leo ensured the villagers actually used them. The overall hygiene of Riverbend improved greatly.

Even the messiest modern people were cleaner than the original villagers, and after Ulyan and Leo’s joint efforts, most villagers began to maintain basic personal hygiene.

As the infantry of Riverbend received special care, they were naturally the first to be reformed.

After all, having comrades who didn’t even wipe after defecating was rather unsettling.

Once Riverbend was firmly established, Ulyan and Leo agreed to include personal hygiene in the militia’s assessment criteria.

After Fiza had the kobolds thoroughly cleaned, she led them back to the valley.

Following the invention of explosive barrels, the valley’s once worm-eaten, riddled stone walls, which had never collapsed, were completely destroyed in less than a month.

On one side of the valley, a massive breach several dozen meters wide appeared, gleaming with metallic luster—highly iron-rich hematite scattered everywhere.

Many kobold miners were still busily smashing ore with clanging sounds, packing it into baskets, while others carried loads to the smithy or the Riverbend peninsula.

Leo contributed two wheelbarrows to Fiza for replication, hoping to improve the kobolds’ transport capacity.

But mass production had yet to begin, so most of the ore and pig iron ingots were still carried on the backs of kobolds.

A clear, hard-packed path now connected Kobold Valley to Riverbend, bustling with ore-carrying kobolds shoulder to shoulder, coming and going endlessly.

Even small kobolds followed their parents and elders, struggling along with ore pieces as large as their heads.

After Leo took away Riverbend’s armed forces, the entire village entered a halt, on guard against possible attacks.

But the kobolds were unaffected; they treated it as if the hunting party had simply not returned, and the remaining dogs continued operating normally.

Had they ever learned the saying “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face,” they surely would have used it to mock humans.

Kobold Valley was now much more open than before, with many sheds and huts built.

Kitchens, warehouses, latrines, smithies, carpentry shops, barracks, and plazas all took shape.

An old, shedding kobold leaned on a cane at the valley entrance, greeting his kin.

He was the kobold shaman. After the tribe lost its magical heritage, shamans became useless.

They could only rely on their wit to concoct crude stories and ballads, perform inherited shamanic dances, and scrape by for a living.

During a dance intended to bless the smithy furnace, the old kobold shaman, his legs trembling with age, collapsed into the fire pit from exhaustion.

When he climbed out, his fur was singed off, and one leg was broken.

The tribe deemed him worthless and prepared to abandon him to the wilderness to fend for himself.

But Fiza saw things differently.

She believed that as long as the old kobold could still speak, teach the young ones songs, tell stories of the sacred kobold mountain, and identify unfamiliar herbs, he was still useful.

So she only took away his thorned headdress, feather cloak, and the title of shaman—but ensured the tribe cared for his food and drink until his natural death.

Now, Fiza held the dual highest titles of chieftain and shaman of Kobold Valley, achieving a theocratic rule with absolute authority.

Fiza entrusted the gnoll pups to trusted female kobolds—the “ferocious kobolds”—but some of these pups were secretly eaten by resentful black-furred kobolds along the way, reducing their number to fewer than a hundred.

The black-furred kobolds also brought dozens of their own pups, unaware of the valley’s current state and fearing the gnoll pups would encroach on their own offspring’s survival space.

Coupled with prior grudges, they continuously and secretly bit and devoured the gnoll pups during the journey.

By the time Fiza discovered this, at least twenty were already dead.

When the black-furred kobolds entered the valley, it was like a country bumpkin stepping into a grand estate.

They had never seen human-like buildings, various production facilities, open-pit mines, or the cheerful, laughing kobolds.

It was already outrageous that the old kobold wasn’t thrown into the wilderness; how could those female kobolds be leisurely playing with their pups instead of gathering and working?

These inexperienced black-furred kobolds were herded into a steaming hot bath at the valley entrance.

The bath was heavily dosed with sulfur to kill the lice and germs they carried.

Kobolds who had returned early to deliver the news of victory had already instructed the females to follow standard reception procedures to welcome their new kin.

Poor black-furred kobolds, having just endured a cold bath and feeling unprecedentedly clean, were forced into the scalding water, nearly singeing off their fur.

Some small black dogs, fearing they were about to be boiled and eaten, struggled wildly in the water, their features distorted by terror.

Meanwhile, over in Riverbend, Leo’s infantry and Basaka longbowmen were also warmly received by their kin.