Big Goldtooth truly lived up to his name. Apart from being noticeably more muscular than the other Kobolds, his most striking feature was that gleaming gold tooth. Like a nouveau riche show-off, the fellow had brazenly replaced one of his front teeth with a piece of pure 24-karat gold, practically blinding the young master's pay-to-win dog eyes... Speaking of which, he still hadn't obtained that famous engineering product himself.
He was annoyed, extremely annoyed. Anyone would take a strong dislike to those nouveau riche types. Yet there were always people who thought highly of themselves, showing off everywhere while ignoring everyone else's feelings... As the saying went, those who strutted around usually had little to show for it. Truly wealthy people would never be so superficial.
Aige was now suffering from a severe case of hatred for the rich. A mere Kobold dared show off in front of the young master? If he didn't teach the bastard a lesson, he'd be letting down all his fellow transmigrated otaku...
For now, though, Lord Aige was being a complete coward, sitting on the floor off to one side...
"Sitting on the floor" was a term frequently used in online games. It meant resting to speed up recovery, restoring one's condition, health, and mana to their best. This was especially noticeable in World of Warcraft, where that accursed system meant players had to eat bread and drink water to recover after nearly every monster before they were fit to challenge the next one. Mages spent the most time sitting on the floor... Players of this class hardly needed bread when they went out leveling, but they drank water by the dozen to replenish their mana.
Things weren't quite so exaggerated on the Azeroth Continent. There was no such infuriating setup where a mage was practically out of mana after taking down a single enemy, but excessive mana consumption remained a major problem for mages...
On the battlefield, a mage with mana was a god and had to be protected like a lord; a mage without mana no longer had any value at all... So said a certain famous battlefield commander.
For that reason, many mages were extremely particular about managing their mana and would never casually cast many large-scale spells unless they had no other choice. They had even developed a great number of special skills to conserve mana...
Mages on the Azeroth Continent were broadly divided into three schools: fire, frost, and Arcane. Although there were also some obscure, niche mages, such as those who used poison, they could generally still be classified into these three schools. This matched the mage class in World of Warcraft very closely.
Fire mages were the most powerful of the three schools, and the special effects of the additional damage from many fire spells were excellent. They were like artillery on the battlefield... The weakness behind the power of fire spells, however, was their high mana consumption, giving this school the worst staying power. A real man lasted only five seconds!
Frost mages were comparatively weaker, but their spells had the slowing properties of ice, and coupled with several area-of-effect spells, their battlefield control was exceptionally strong. Their ability to stay alive was also first-rate... On the other hand, they lacked short-term burst damage.
The Arcane school was comparatively more balanced; its greatest characteristic was its lack of one. In fact, Arcane had many amusing spells, or tricks, that were very useful in certain circumstances. This category of magic had the greatest variety, was the most complex, and was also the most mysterious... But compared with frost and fire mages, who focused on actual combat, Arcanists knew too many things in too many fields. One misstep and they could easily lose focus, so their performance in actual combat generally wasn't as eye-catching as that of the other two schools. Their staying power, however, was generally very strong, and they had all kinds of strange control methods. Used well, they were gods.
Getting oneself into peak condition before fighting a boss was an excellent habit. Otherwise, charging in rashly could easily result in being knocked right back out just as rashly... Though this Goldtooth wasn't a boss monster at all.
On the Azeroth Continent, monsters were divided into the following categories: normal monsters, rare monsters (silver elites), elite monsters, leader monsters, bosses, and legendary monsters (usually legendary heroes).
The most interesting were rare monsters. This rank did not necessarily indicate strength; one shouldn't simply assume a rare monster was weaker than an elite. "Rare" only indicated how difficult it was to encounter one. For example, some named leaders could be classified as rare leader monsters, much like the classifications in World of Warcraft.
The big Kobold before him was a named rare leader monster, more than a little stronger than an ordinary leader...
Aige was torn. His current assets were one Goldshire Footman, two Wisps, and himself, a level-eight mage. Though he had just learned Polymorph, it clearly wouldn't be useful in this fight. Goldtooth was obviously a loner, with no guards at his side, but his own strength was even greater...
Sure enough, the quest item was on him. Plainly enough, the show-off idiot had hung the unusually shaped gold necklace directly around his thick neck. There wasn't a trace of beauty to it... Only vulgarity!
Goldtooth had been somewhat moody these past few days. In the Kobold tribe, he was an undeniable oddity. Most other Kobolds liked things that were thick and hard, such as ores and various copper ingots, but his taste alone was exceptionally refined... Gold was his favorite. Only that nouveau riche color was worthy of setting off an extraordinary being like him.
He had been born with a burly build and a muscular, powerful body. In this small tribe, his word was absolute. Some time ago, one of his underlings had shown good judgment and presented him with this beautiful gold necklace, which he had picked up somewhere. Goldtooth, who had always loved glittering gold, was naturally delighted and rewarded the underling with a girl on the spot...
Female Kobolds were communal property in the tribe. But no matter how capable a man was, he couldn't possibly handle so many strong women, so they were generally distributed according to need, assigned to the strongest male Kobolds or those who had contributed the most to the tribe... Naturally, the right to mate with virgins of suitable age belonged to Goldtooth alone.
When the boss ate meat, he had to let his underlings have some soup, didn't he? Goldtooth thought himself quite wise and mighty now, having grasped the essence of ruling his subordinates... Perhaps the Kobold race would begin its rise with him!
Although the tribe dealt with ore all year round, most of the veins were low-grade ones like copper and tin, and the ore they produced was mostly bartered. Gold was an absolute rarity among the Kobolds. It wasn't that they had never discovered a gold mine, but the tribe's forging skills were truly poor. So far, no one had heard of a Kobold who could smelt gold... As things stood, all their gold items had to be obtained from other races.
A tycoon had to have gold to match, didn't he? The big gold tooth in Big Goldtooth's mouth had been taken from an unlucky merchant's corpse. That unfortunate human merchant must have been a dishonest profiteer; otherwise, why would he have such a brazen gold tooth set in his mouth? The Kobold soldier in charge of scouting had reported it to Big Goldtooth immediately. Without another word, the fellow had mobilized his troops and wiped out the small merchant caravan...
The men were all killed, while the women were raped on the spot and then stabbed to death... That was how they had always done things.
Ever since obtaining that "beautiful" gold tooth, he had felt that his old name was no longer worthy of him. He then announced to the tribe that from that day forward, Goldtooth was his real name... Though to this day, everyone still treated it as his nickname.
With the elegantly shaped gold necklace around his neck, Goldtooth felt that his charm among women had multiplied, and that their affection for him also seemed to rise especially fast when he tried to win them over... Speaking of which, with a setup like affection points, was this a dating sim?
Come to think of it, if this fellow was the protagonist, then what about the heroine? Wasn't that a bit too twisted?
In any case, Lord Goldtooth was definitely a powerful member of the tycoon faction... Lord Aige was now agonizing over how exactly to deal with him.
They were both level eight. Aige was a level-eight mage, while Goldtooth had completely exceeded his expectations by being promoted to a rare leader, which was certainly much stronger than an elite. Could his relatively fragile one-star minions withstand him?
He hadn't expected his opponent to be so powerful. If he had known earlier, he would have summoned at least one more minion to join the fight... But now, it was nearly dark. Wasting another precious minion card just to deal with a Kobold, only for the minion to disappear soon afterward-it would disappear at six in the morning-was too great a loss.
At this hour, he intended to return to Hall Farm to rest after dealing with Goldtooth... Wasting a card now would truly make it a single-use item.
He did have quite a few cards in his pack: Priest class card Inner Fire ×1, and neutral minion cards Leper Gnome ×1, Angry Chicken ×1, Witch Doctor ×1, Murloc Raider ×1, and Boar ×2. But if he wasted a card just to deal with Goldtooth, wouldn't that be giving the fellow too much credit?... At the very least, whether beating him would make up for his losses was uncertain.
After thinking it over again and again, Aige decided to be a miser for once and take a risk...
"Frostbolt!"
"Fireball!"
Goldtooth roared and charged, spouting Kobold curses that Aige couldn't understand as he swung something he had picked up from who knew where. It was clearly different from the mining picks ordinary Kobolds used... The fellow's weapon was unmistakably an oversized mining shovel.
With the Kobolds' toolmaking skills, it would have been difficult to make a "weapon" like this, fashioned entirely from iron. A cold glint occasionally flashed along the sharpened edge of its enormous blade; one look was enough to tell that this deadly implement was extremely sharp. The grip on its solid iron shaft was thick and hard, and a crosswise handle was welded firmly to the very end, allowing the user to put both hands to work when necessary.
The designer had thoughtfully wrapped the grip there in a layer of high-quality wool, making it comfortable to hold and excellent at absorbing sweat... And it could be removed for washing anytime, anywhere!