The Territory War Dawns
The day of the territory war between Bellone and Mordin dawned. It was a flawless morning. Clear air and a faintly hot sun. Yet no chirping of insects or birdsong could be heard. The damp morning air embraced the soldiers on both sides, but those facing battle were already soaked in cold sweat, their discomfort palpable.
“With Mordin’s declaration of war, the territory conflict begins… In five minutes, the moment my coin touches the ground, commence the fight.”
It was the cry of the priest brought from Mordin. The dwarf priest, proud of his white hair and beard, coordinated both sides with an uneasy expression.
At the forefront stood Dorne, the Ironclad Giant, gripping a sword he had forged. He recalled the strategy meeting from the previous day.
- Lord Dorne, please handle Mordin’s superhuman forces. Bellone has few individuals at the level of deep labyrinth explorers, and even those are away on the frontier. Mordin must have noticed this and issued a surprise declaration of war.
I, Cairo Bellone, offer my deepest gratitude to Lord Dorne for rectifying my oversight. In territory wars, it is said that superhumans clash separately from ordinary soldiers. Though the battlefield is not strictly divided, superhumans fight among themselves.
Facing Dorne was a dwarf warrior. Though a dwarf, he stood a full head taller than an adult human. He clearly possessed the Giant ability. His height, even for a human, was immense; his chest, neck, and limbs were extraordinarily thick, far removed from the world’s standards. Yet he was clad in beautifully fitted armor, a sight that made one instinctively think “dwarf.”
The cube-like dwarf addressed Dorne.
“Hey, what’s your name? Never heard of a giant like you being with Bellone.”
‘He doesn’t know me? Must be a dwarf sidelined from the family’s politics.’
Dorne replied, “You don’t need to know. All you need to understand is that my true identity is the calamity Mordin brought upon itself.”
- Crack -
Dorne readjusted his grip on the sword hilt.
“I will toss the coin! Mordin and Bellone, I pray both sides show mercy even amid the fighting!”
- Ting -…… Clatter
The priest threw the coin at that moment, and the Giant dwarf’s mouth, which had been about to protest, snapped shut. His face twisted in disgust, as if interrupted mid-bowel movement, and he let out a roar, charging forward with his shield raised.
- Uwoooooooar -!
The largest human and the largest dwarf collided. Dorne’s long sword, aimed at the legs, thwarted the dwarf’s plan to close the distance with his shield and exploit Dorne’s reach.
- Thud! Clang -!
The dwarf slammed his massive shield into the ground, blocking Dorne’s strike at his legs. With a moment to spare, Dorne glanced around the battlefield. The few ordinary soldiers were trading blows among themselves, while the superhumans had each found their own opponents.
However, Bellone had slightly fewer superhumans than Mordin. Some were likely facing two or more at once. That imbalance would eventually overwhelm Bellone’s superhuman forces entirely, spilling over to slaughter the ordinary soldiers in their ranks. Dorne knew he had to finish off this cube-like dwarf quickly.
- Ting - Thud! Clang -!
Yet it was not easy. Dorne swung his long sword, probing the dwarf’s defenses from every angle, but the dwarf, wielding Fighting Spirit, deployed his ability precisely where needed and held firm. It was the sole weakness of the Ironclad Giant. Against foes without Fighting Spirit, Dorne was an unstoppable war machine. But against a skilled Fighting Spirit user, the Ironclad Giant’s lack of offensive power came to the surface.
Fighting Spirit was not a force that could be calculated purely by mass or impact. Dorne thought of the orc chieftain he had slain in the northern labyrinth. This cube-like dwarf would not be easy to strangle like that chieftain. It would require at least seven seconds of choking his neck, and right beside him stood another dwarf superhuman ready to assist.
Moreover, thick armor protected the dwarf’s neck. No matter how strong Dorne was, he could not crush iron armor to strangle him.
The cube-like dwarf, exchanging blows with Dorne, tried to rattle him with insults.
“Heh. You look like a mighty warrior, but you’ve got no substance? Is that all you’ve got?”
Dorne’s attacks weren’t landing cleanly, but he didn’t deserve such words. The cube-like dwarf wasn’t attacking at all—he was only defending. Dorne’s long reach and lethal strikes kept him from daring to close in. Feeling no need to stay silent, Dorne trash-talked back.
“I can see you’ve got solid defense. But why can’t you attack? If you keep blocking, I’ll just leave you here and go slaughter the other superhumans. What will you do then?”
The dwarf, nerves frayed from blocking Dorne’s strikes, snapped back.
“You can’t handle even one of us, so you take my comrades hostage? Are you even a warrior? How dare you speak of such despicable acts!”
Dorne sneered at the cube-like dwarf’s shameless hypocrisy.
“Haha, is that something Mordin should be saying? Didn’t you take my comrades hostage to stop me from joining the fight? I never even wanted to participate. That’s why I’m the calamity you brought upon yourselves.”
“Mordin would never—”
Leaving the cube-like dwarf mid-protest behind his shield, Dorne charged toward another superhuman. It meant freeing the feet of a stronger dwarf, but it also freed Dorne’s own feet to face an even stronger foe—so the gains outweighed the losses. There would be sacrifices, of course.
‘A happy ending without sacrifice? That doesn’t exist in this world.’
The moment Mordin took his loved ones hostage, Dorne had faced a trial he could not overcome without sacrifice. He could not simply sit back and do nothing, so he had to accept the cost.
“Finish them—!”
The nearly three-meter-tall Ironclad Giant Dorne weaved through the shorter dwarves with ease. The cube-like dwarf tried to pursue and stop him, but his short arms and legs made it nearly impossible to keep up. He watched his fellow dwarves, who had been fighting face-to-face with other superhumans, suffer leg injuries or fall from Dorne’s surprise attacks, exposing vulnerabilities.
Swallowing his tears, he began indiscriminately attacking the humans around him. Unable to stop Dorne, he had no choice but to do the same. From now on, it was a race—who could kill more, faster.
“Damn it—! Cowardly humans! I won’t forgive you—!”
The enraged dwarf hammered at the human superhumans. The strongest forces on both sides weren’t fighting each other—they were roaming freely. Those wounded or exposed by Dorne and the cube-like dwarf fell to the superhumans they had been facing.
Dorne’s long sword severed the right leg of the dwarf on the left and the left leg of the dwarf on the right in a single stroke, bringing down the last two dwarf superhumans. Now, aside from the cube-like dwarf, every dwarf superhuman was either dead or subdued.
“This… this kind of situation…”
The last dwarf superhuman, surrounded by Bellone’s intact superhumans, muttered behind his shield, his expression nearly unhinged.
Dorne surveyed the territory war, now effectively over, and walked toward the non-superhuman battle zone.
- Step, step -
Overwhelmed by Dorne’s imposing presence, the non-superhumans halted their fighting. The battlefield, where ordinary people had been brawling, ended with Dorne’s arrival. Not many had died. The soldiers on both sides, sharing the same plight, must have held back in their strikes. Dorne, who had disrupted the superhuman battle with underhanded tactics, nodded.
“It’s decided. Stop shedding meaningless blood.”
These short dwarves hadn’t come to the battlefield because they wanted to fight or die. The ones at fault were the superiors who started the war. Someone at the pinnacle of the Mordin family had likely trapped Elysia Bellone and sent Dorne a threatening letter. Though he had swept through the superhuman battlefield with his own power, he felt no sense of accomplishment or superiority.
This strength was meant for exploring the labyrinth, fighting monsters, and expanding humanity’s domain. Dorne, realizing that the world he thought was a united medieval fantasy was no different from Earth—a filthy stage for politicians’ tap-dancing—turned away with a bitter heart.
Once he received the mines and war reparations from Mordin, he would take only his share and head to the labyrinth city. As the summoner’s mood sank, the wings of his summon, Orbholder, drooped as well.
◆ ◆ ◆
It had already been two days since returning from the clearing near the mines to the lord’s castle of Bellone Territory. Dorne was plagued by a strange unease and an unpleasant premonition.
It began when the cube-like, hypocritical dwarf was taken prisoner. Dorne had thought of him as a dwarf ostracized from Mordin’s internal politics, a mere tool of the nobles—but in fact, he was Grombal Mordin, the eldest son of the Mordin family head.
Upon first hearing this, Dorne had asked Elysia to arrange a meeting with Grombal Mordin. But to his surprise, the Bellone family, which had treated Dorne almost like a family benefactor, flatly rejected his request.
Dorne, who believed his uneasy premonitions were never wrong, had since stored all provided meals in his Inventory and subsisted on the food kept there while observing the situation.
All he could do was have Orbholder secretly search the surroundings. If he considered Bellone an enemy, Dorne was alone in the heart of enemy territory, and his massive size made it impossible to act covertly.
Orbholder’s searches revealed that Dorne had far more guards than he knew. It was hard to claim Bellone had simply increased security after Mordin’s scheme, because Dorne himself had been unaware.
Moreover, all the guards operated outside Dorne’s line of sight. This wasn’t protection—it was surveillance. Thus, Dorne waited quietly for today.
- Pour -
The maid filled the teacup with warm tea.
-… Clink
Across from him sat Elysia Bellone.
“It tastes good, Dorne. You should try some too.”
Elysia offered the tea casually. Hardel’s usually curt gaze seemed especially sharp today.
- Clatter -
Dorne lifted the teacup without suspicion and gulped down the steaming tea.
“Mm. It’s pleasantly sweet. High-quality dishes and tea are always like that. Sweet foods are just sweet enough, salty foods are just salty enough—apparently, that’s what makes them premium, because they’re not overly sweet or salty.”
The maid standing in the corner flinched, worried Dorne might notice her tension while pouring the tea. Elysia Bellone’s expression also cracked, like a broken vessel, something going awry.
Elysia Bellone spoke to Dorne with stiff lips and throat. She couldn’t even bring herself to raise her head and meet his eyes.
“Since when… did you know? If I say I didn’t want to do this… will you believe me…?”
Dorne let out a sigh.
“Ah… So it wasn’t sweet tea after all? All the tea until now was sweet, but today of all days…”
The maid held her breath, and Hardel took a step forward. It had been exposed that Dorne hadn’t drunk the tea but stored it in his Inventory instead. But who had truly been exposed? Dorne felt more devastated now than when he had been entangled in petty power struggles and caused the deaths of so many dwarves.
“What should I do with you, Elysia…?”
Inside the guest room assigned to Dorne, it felt as if a blizzard were raging.