I was just your average burnout. Now I’m a kobold in a dungeon where everything wants to eat me—and frankly, I get it. I look delicious.

Reincarnated as the weakest possible monster in the worst possible place, I start with nothing but panic, backward knees, and a skill called Civilization Mimicry—which is sealed. Because of course it is.

But survival isn't the story.

This is the story of what comes after.

Of finding meaning in the scraps. Of building law from ashes. Of kindling memory in a place designed to erase.

Because even if the world sees kobolds as nothing, I’ve seen what we used to be.

And I’m going to bring it back.

Firelight by firelight. Burial by burial. One fragile tradition at a time.

Because if the world wants kobolds to be nothing?

Then I’ll teach it what nothing becomes when it learns to dream.

The high ground is tactically superior. Everyone knows that. It's Strategy 101.


But when the high ground is a crumbling shelf the size of a dinner plate, and your tank has just fallen twenty feet below you into a pit of hungry mouths, the high ground can go hang itself.


"Boss!" Relay squeaked, pressing himself against the rock wall as a pale claw scrabbled over the lip of our ledge. "They're climbing! They're fast!"


Splitjaw was visible in the flashes of my sword's light. He was at the bottom of the sinkhole, a dark island in a sea of pale, undulating flesh. He was swinging his broken spear like a bat, smashing chitin and bone with every stroke, laughing that terrible, breathless laugh of his.


But he wasn't moving. He was pivoting on one leg. The other one, was folded under him at an angle that made my stomach turn.


"He's stuck," I realized. "He's not tanking. He's drowning."


I kicked the claw away from the ledge, sending a crawler tumbling back into the void.


Chapter 97 - The floor is Teeth