I hated birds. What kind of self-respecting adventurer used an overgrown chicken as a mount? And not even for something useful, but to assault a poor, harmless girl living in her own castle? It’s not like I wanted to kill their friends!

I just defended myself when they came for me, it wasn't my fault I didn't want to die and had to take some extreme measures to survive my assured death. My new body didn't even look different from a normal human body, ignoring the improvements I made. It wasn't like I cared about their strange adventurer's guild, they could do what they wanted as long as they left me to my own devices.

Sure, currently those devices mainly consisted of plotting the fall of a certain kingdom, but really, what did they care, vagrants that they were!

I continued moping about the unfairness of fate as I looked at my previously clean castle top. A really beautiful castle top too, at least until they decided to fill it with bits of humans and big birds. Really, what kind of idiot did not secure their castle against incursions from above in a world like this?

It just cost a little bit of magic to do it too. Just a few hundred, razor-sharp wires of magic, arranged in a thin-meshed net, flying right over the top of my castle. and everything bigger than a fly got shredded when landing.

Well, probably the kind of idiot that didn't want to clean their castle from giant birds every time they were attacked. Ah well, no matter. I just focused a little and all the blood, destroyed gear, skin and feathers floated upwards. My spiders always needed something to eat after all. Time to get back to more important activities. Plotting and doing my research. After all, true immortality didn't come from nothing. Just being unaging was not enough, no. I want to transcend even death! And I would if my research bore fruit.

An evil grin spread over my face, the look on all those peoples faces once I returned from beyond my premature grave. It’d be more than a little delicious.

Because, honestly my death really was just a matter of time, considering how many people I killed.

Someone too powerful for me to defeat would come in time, come to take me out. But that didn't really matter. I didn't care if that kingdom died now, or a few thousand years in the future, as long as I was the one responsible for their downfall!

“Chief, we are ready to go.”

“Good, don't let me stop you.” Ves'ra said, smoothly rising from her sitting position.

A week and a half. They had been walking towards the mountains for a week and a half, and now, they stood at their feet, scales perfectly adapted to the grey of the mountain.

“Did anyone see our prey already? If not, let's just move forward, we’ll find it eventually.” She asked.

“No chieftain.” All kobolds said.

“Let's go then.” She said back.

After a week of walking through the same endless canyons Ves'ra had to admit a change of plans was needed. These mountains were huge, and you couldn't really see anything from deep in the canyons. What to do though? Canyons were the safest place to be, too small for anything really big to enter. But they needed to change things up.

What though?

Get a better vantage point, after all the bird really should be big enough to notice. And something that big needed enough food too, so she wasn't all that worried about finding it.

“I will ascent a mountain if we don't find it soon.” She said. “Is it still immune to our scrying magic?”

“It is, we know it lives somewhere around here, but it somehow can avoid any further tracking.” Tes’va explained.

The view was glorious. Normally, Ves'ra wasn't a kobold to appreciate nature, after all nature just was, but she had a sweet spot for mountains. The simple, white mountaintops, the grey stone, and the green forests deeper down, they just made a perfect picture.

But she wasn't here to look at nature, she was here to spot their prey.

Nothing, but Ves'ra already expected that. A little mana left her body, building herself a small protection against the glaring sun, and a way to keep the heating spell she had to constantly use, being this far up cooled her down real fast without magic. Being cold-blooded really had some disadvantages sometimes.

There! Ves'ra had been sitting up here for nearly two days, watching nature, killing and eating the occasional animal that got a little too curious, but she finally spotted the bird. And it was a big bird. Nearly triple Arvog’s size the bird really reminded her of a powerful eagle.

She didn't know all that much about powerful bird monsters, but she had read about the most common of them. A Roc. Great.

Rocs had no innate magic themselves, but their scales made them nearly immune to all magic in turn. Killing them was rarely worth the effort, considering their incredible strength and the need to kill them via physical power.

Perfect. Her plan would work then.

After all, a stone club-shaped by magic was still a stone club and thus perfectly capable of clubbing that overgrown chicken to death.

Ves'ra returned her attention to her unsuspecting prey, following its progress with watchful eyes. The last three days weren't something she wanted to repeat, so she’d watch the roc for now, and stay for a few hours, to see if it returned. Following it now, only to find out that they followed in a hunt would be quite embarrassing.

About four days after she left her village Ves’ra returned to them.

“I know where we have to go.” She said.

“Where to?”

“We need to go east. I saw it a few hours ago, flying west, but it returned with prey in its claws later on.” She explained. “I'm probably going to have to climb a mountain another one or two times, that thing is so fast it can easily cross double the length of this mountain range in a few hours.”

“Let's get moving then, we have a lot of ground to cover.”

“Let's.” Ves'ra agreed.