The room was clearly designed for someone taller than the kobolds, as every furniture in the place was bigger than they would need. If I consider my beastmen body the size of a small child and the kobolds the same size as me in this body, that means the house they put me in was made for multiple adults evidently by the multiple sets of chairs and beds. As the one in charge of the dungeon itself told me that this entire floor had a time dilation going on, I decided to use one of the beds to rest a little as I felt the lack of sleep building up inside me. The moment my head hit the pillow on the bed I was asleep.

I woke up and lifted my head, but hit it on something hard. I quickly lowered my head and turned to see what I had hit and was confused when the only thing I saw was wooden planks. I tried to look around, but everything seemed the same, except they were less than half what they were yesterday. I noticed the reason everything felt so small as I saw my yellow scaly tail. I had shifted back to my dragon self in my sleep and hadn't noticed.

The bed looked like it was just waiting for the perfect moment to give in and its legs broke together with all the wooden frame as it couldn't bear my full weight. It caught me by surprise and made me almost jump, but I managed to contain myself as I fell with the bed on the floor.

"Well, it was just a suspicion before, but now I'm sure. I'm a lot bigger than before" I said to myself.

The last time I compared sizes, I was the size of a big dog, but now I was bigger than a horse.  And considering I wasn't igniting the wood or the mattress underneath me, it was safe to assume that I wasn't radiating the same amount of heat that I was before.

"I wonder what happened to me to get so big…" I murmured, not expecting anything to answer, but my skill didn't care for my expectations and answered.

[Dragons are creatures that have bodies made of both matter and quasi-matter that can grow the more food they eat. In a hypothetical scenario, a dragon could become so big that they would need to know how to dispel the effects of gravity for they not collapse on themselves and become a black hole]

"Oh… so it was the copious amount of food I ate with Kora, Staash, Amity and the others. If the same thing was the reason I wasn't burning this house down with my mere presence,  then the clothes I bought probably ripped when I shifted back to my dragon body" I said to myself.

As I didn’t fit through the door, I shifted to my beastmen body and walked to the front door, but before I could open it someone knocked.

"Mr traveler, are you awa-..." The kobold leader began, but I opened the door, interrupting him. "Oh, hello. I hope I haven't awaken you"

"You didn't. By the way, you can call me Denaru" I said as I left the house and shifted back to my dragon body.

I don't know why, but whenever I transform into another species I feel a certain strain on me, like if I was flexing a muscle, that vanishes the moment I return to my own body. It probably has to do with me changing my physiology to that of other species, but I couldn't be certain of it.

"Of course, Denaru" the kobold leader said while nodding. "I've come to inform you that we prepared our soldiers. Five units of swordsmen with ten swordsmans each, three units of archers with ten archers each, two units of mages with ten elemental mages each and a single unit of healers with ten healers each plus a general that is me"

"So…111 people in total?" I asked and received a nod confirming that I was correct.

"We will be ready to send them post lunch and we kindly invite you to lunch with us" He said.

I agreed and we moved to a long wooden table set up in the middle of the village with various sets of chairs alongside it, all with a kobold sitting on them. The kobold leader brought me to one end of the table that didn't have any chairs but a pair of wooden boxes lined up for me to lay on top of and sat on the free chair right by the side.

After a few moments of us having sat down, a small group of kobolds began delivering food in stone plates, setting them up on the table, and turning the empty table into a banquet filled with all kinds of food that didn't really look that fancy. If you overlooked the sheer quantity of food, it all amounted to grilled meat, baked potatoes with meat, only the baked potatoes, vegetable soup and fruits that I never saw before.

And, with a bell that the kobold leader rang, the kobolds began picking up the food on their places and started eating it by almost just stuffing their mouths with it and then chewing and swallowing. I took some of the food prepared and ate as well, but I wasn’t as hungry as I was last time there was a mountain of food in front of me, so I managed to keep myself from devouring everything in front of me.

After three minutes the food was gone from the table, having been eaten by everybody present at the table, including me. The kobold leader then got up and began addressing every kobold present with hissing sounds, and the kobolds answered by hissing themselves while getting up from the table and hitting the left side of their chest with their right hands before leaving immediately.

The kobold leader then turned to me and spoke.

“Our army is now putting on their armor. This was a traditional last feast that our warriors receive before battle, so if they are killed, they go satisfied” He explained to me. “Now come, we’ll be marching for the goblin encampment in fifteen minutes”

As the leader said, fifteen minutes later fifty or so kobolds with leather armor and stone weapons were in formation, behind them there were around thirty archers and thirty mages. The leader and I stayed on the back of the formation as it marched forward.

“Say, have you tried diplomacy with the goblins?” I asked casually as we marched.

“We, in fact, did try diplomacy with them way back when we were just cavelizards, it didn’t end well” The leader explained to me, which I nodded as I understood.

I don’t know if they are actually here since their very beginning, as everything here looks just… I wouldn’t say fake, but staged. It probably is the case, as the warnings on the entrance said the inhabitants would remember our actions, then this whole floor is just a giant scene where the “travelers”, in this case me, are the protagonists. 

As we walked over an open path in the forest, I spotted another village further back, almost at the edge of the forest, just like the kobold village. The kobold leader informed me that village was the goblin village and that we would have to prepare for battle.

The kobold army advanced without a single semblance of mercy as they prepared their weapons, bows and staffs to engage the goblins in armed conflict; But to the kobolds surprise, as we approached the village, an goblins army around the same size as the kobold army exited the village and stopped around twenty meters from their walls. The kobold army stopped around fifty meters from them, and the kobold leader began walking forwards. I tried to go too, but he told me to wait.

The kobold leader arrived at the front of the army and began walking to the goblin army. At the same time, a single goblin, with clothes just as the kobold leader, departed from their army and began walking towards the kobold leader, both stopping around ten meters from one another.

“I see you were expecting us” The kobold leader said out loud towards the goblin leader, who chuckled before answering.

“You think that we don’t have spies among your population? It was easy to discover that a traveler joined your side and you took advantage of that to try to exterminate us. But we are no fools, we knew you would be arriving here to try to take over our city, but we prepared for your arrival. You’ll find that there are no more people inside the walls and our population has been scattered through the forest, so even if you kill us all here, you won’t finish us as we’ll survive and keep growing in numbers” The goblin leader said.

“We don’t need to kill all of you, we just need to take your part of the key” The kobold leader said, but the goblin leader just laughed in his face.

“You would think that we left it on our town hall for it to be easily stolen? We hid it long ago in preparation for this day. Let us end this in this day fated by the Gods” The goblin said.

“Indeed, we’ll end this once and for all” The kobold leader answered.

Both of them returned to their respective armies and each were presented with a horn from some animal. As they both picked up the horn and opened their mouths and prepared to blow the horn, I knew what was about to happen.

As if confirming my thoughts, both of the leaders blew their respective horns and a deep sound echoed through the open field and the kobold and goblin armies began running to one another with weapons drawn. The archers began shooting the enemy army, and the mages were healing anyone that was hit with an arrow.

“I guess it started, then” I said as I prepared to participate in this small war