Chapter 39: Using Food as Bait

"Get up, all of you, get up." Seeing how miserable they looked, Gawain felt a bit reluctant to keep pushing them.

"Thank you, Great Expert!" Gorse said hurriedly. "What are your orders, Great Expert?"

"Just calling me 'sir' is enough," Gawain said after a brief pause. "Send someone to gather some firewood. We'll cook first. After we eat, we'll discuss other matters."

This was a stalling tactic. The opponent had surrendered so quickly that Gawain's original plans were completely disrupted and needed to be redrawn. He needed to ease the atmosphere and, at the very least, buy himself some time to understand the situation in Black Well.

"Go gather firewood!" Gorse waved his hand, and the kobolds scattered in a frenzy. Soon, the entire mountainside was filled with the sound of yapping.

Seeing this, Gawain immediately felt a pang of regret. *Could this be their stalling tactic?*

Once those kobolds ran off, they didn't come back.

Gawain kept his expression neutral. Following his routine, he set up two large hanging cauldrons by the river. After adding water, he chopped up various vegetables and meats, tossed in a handful of salt, lit the fire, and began to boil.

Most of this pack of kobolds had likely intended to scatter the moment things looked bad, even their leader had no intention of intervening.

Seeking survival for oneself had always been the ultimate rule for their race's continued existence.

The young kobolds, clearly having not yet inherited this experience, were very obedient. They gathered firewood from the surroundings and scurried back, trip after trip, working with great enthusiasm. Even when their leader, Gorse, kept making frantic eye signals to them, they didn't notice—especially once the pots boiled and the aroma began to waft out, making them even more driven.

The adult kobolds who were idling in the distance couldn't resist the smell either. Shifting about nervously, they clutched bundles of dry wood and tentatively approached, adding fuel to the bottom of the two cauldrons.

Seeing that his "food tactic" had yielded extraordinary results, Gawain was in no rush to discuss business. Instead, he stirred the two large pots even more vigorously. To enhance the aroma, he grabbed two handfuls of spices from the wagon and tossed them in.

The scent exploded instantly, drifting over ten meters away with the wind. Even Gawain felt a bit hungry just smelling it, let alone the kobolds who lived from one meal to the next.

Vic, the goblin warlock, was even worse; he stood guarding one of the large pots, drooling uncontrollably, refusing to move even an inch.

Vic had made rapid progress in other areas, but when it came to eating, he hadn't improved at all—well, not entirely; at least he didn't eat bones anymore.

These two were large hanging cauldrons used for feeding caravans, half a meter deep and one meter in diameter. With water and food, they could hold several hundred pounds. Cooking them was naturally a laborious process that would take at least two or three hours.

For the kobolds, these two or three hours were pure torture.

If they ran away, they didn't know what fate awaited them.

If they stayed, they couldn't bear the wait, and the nose-tingling aroma only intensified their hunger.

"Food is ready!"

With Gawain's shout...

*Whoosh!*

The kobolds, young and old alike, came bounding back in a frenzy. The headcount had changed.

Gawain remembered clearly that only thirty-four kobolds had knelt down with Gorse; now, there were a full fifty-three waiting for their meal.

Gawain said nothing, merely offering Gorse a meaningful smile from a short distance away.

The smile made Gorse feel a strange numbness all over his body, his scalp itching. He cursed his people inwardly for being so weak-willed, unable to resist even the temptation of a single meal.

But the problem was, it smelled incredible. In his nearly fifteen years of life, he had never smelled food this delicious.

"Line up! No grabbing!" Gawain shouted, tapping the cauldrons.

Gawain had assumed these kobolds had no concept of queuing, but to his surprise, after just one shout, they seemed to understand. In the blink of an eye, they formed a long line. They clearly followed an order of seniority, though it wasn't the "respect elders and love the young" order; instead, the able-bodied came first, followed by the young and the old.

In their eyes, ensuring the survival of the race always came first. Having the strong survive until the end was the optimal choice.

Gawain didn't bother correcting their logic for now; as long as they didn't swarm like a chaotic pack of dogs fighting for scraps, he was satisfied.

As the wooden bowls were distributed, the total population of the Black Well tribe was basically tallied. It wasn't fifty-three, but fifty-seven; a few more had been able to endure the first round but couldn't withstand the second, quietly joining the feeding line.

The two cauldrons took five full rounds to empty.

The way this group of kobolds ate was on par with Vic. The moment they left with their bowls, they would tilt their heads back and pour the food straight into their bellies. Even if it was scalding and made them yelp, they continued to gulp it down with gusto.

It wasn't just one or two; every single one of them was like that.

Before the first round was even finished, the very first ones had already run to the end of the line with their bowls in hand.

For those who tried to be clever by discarding their wooden bowls, Gawain refused to give them any more food until they sheepishly went back to retrieve them. Only then were they granted a second portion.

With his frequent excavation of his own memory, Gawain's recall had improved remarkably.

He could now clearly remember these seemingly identical kobolds after just a few careful glances, allowing him to pick them out from the crowd.

Judging by their appearance, most had only eaten half-full. Gawain had no intention of filling them up all at once; this would be an effective means of controlling them in the early stages.

There was a reason why slave owners used this method to control their slaves.

While Gawain had no intention of becoming a slave owner, in the absence of sufficient prestige and trust, he could only use such low tactics to manage things for the time being.

After this feeding, the distance between the two sides had narrowed somewhat. At the very least, the kobolds were no longer cowering and trying to distance themselves from Gawain.

Initially, Gawain had thought about giving an inspiring speech, but he had completely abandoned the idea.

Aside from the kobold named Gorse, the rest of the kobolds' knowledge of Common was limited to the simplest words for eating and drinking. Although he understood a bit of Kobold, he had no desire to deliver a speech that was half or two-thirds composed of various "yaps" and "barks."

He would stick to what he was best at.

He left Anna and Vic to guard the wagon, took his warhorse out for a stroll, and returned with two lean rock sheep on his horse.

These sheep were a local specialty of the mountains, possessing a unique ability to scale cliffs. Those steep precipices were their refuge.

It was precisely this ability that allowed them to remain numerous even while surrounded by hungry kobolds and goblins. On the eastern cliff plateau alone, there were at least a hundred, with likely many more undiscovered.

*Yap... yap-yap-yap...*

Seeing the two rock sheep Gawin brought back, many kobolds began to drool.

They knew exactly how delicious this food was.

To evade hunters, they spent their lives leaping across slopes and cliffs, meaning they had very little fat from top to bottom—only chewy, lean meat. Their four hooves were unusually large, and the climbing pads underneath were soft and fragrant.

They couldn't even remember the last time they had tasted such food; it seemed even the pups hadn't had the chance to eat it before the tribe split up.

"Where are the others?" Gawin whispered to Anna.

The number of kobolds was sparse; more than half were missing, most of whom were the young.