Chapter 164
Chapter 164
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 164
Chapter 50 — A Changing Gauri
Years after the revelation of the dragons' presence, uninvited guests began entering the Reganza Mountains, which had previously barred all access to outsiders.
The group of men numbered roughly two hundred.
The one at the very front studied the tracks on the ground, guiding the comrades behind him. A large, hulking man approached silently from the rear and spoke in a quiet voice.
"Captain... what if we run into a dragon?"
When the big man spoke in a voice heavy with worry that didn't match his size, the narrow-eyed captain shot him a cutting glare.
"You idiot. Even if a dragon were here, do you think it'd bother paying attention to us!"
"Still..."
The narrow-eyed captain looked at the big man as if he were hopeless and went on.
"If a dragon were going to rage over an incursion by a force our size, how do you explain all these tracks?"
"Well, that's... true."
Just as Go Jin-cheon and the Gauri people had guessed, dwarf tracks remained. No matter how careful they were, this might have been inevitable.
"At this scale, it's a jackpot. We might not even be able to round them all up with our numbers. We're talking at least over a thousand!"
Gulp!
The sound of the big man swallowing was loud and clear. A typical dwarf tribe numbered about fifty at most. If over a thousand dwarves had massed together and come in here, that was an enormous concentration.
"Have you heard any news of a dragon showing up while that many went in?"
"Right? It'll be fine, won't it?"
"Heh heh heh."
Greed sometimes makes men reckless with danger.
Reassured by that, the big man cautiously asked again.
"But if that many are bunched together, even a hundred men would struggle. If you exclude the brats and the women, the warriors alone would be over five hundred, wouldn't they?"
The martial prowess of dwarves was considerable. Well aware that a hundred men would have trouble defeating fifty dwarf warriors, the big man was pointing out that their own force of two hundred felt inadequate.
In response, the captain clapped him on the shoulder to tell him not to worry and spoke up.
"I've already sent word to Keron's gang and Bailer's gang. That's our two hundred plus their roughly five hundred, so it won't be hard. And all we have to do first is locate the dwarf village. They'll scatter all over anyway to do their digging, so we just take our time finding their den and then wait. If there's any suitable game along the way, we just hit it to cover the travel expenses for this trip."
"Heh heh heh. Got it, Captain Anderson."
Anderson replied prudently, like a hunter who knew dwarf nature inside and out.
The big man flashed a silly grin and turned back toward the rear.
"Then we move out again."
"Got it, Captain."
"Heh."
The two hundred or so dwarf hunters, delighting in their pleasant fantasies, hurried on from the brief delay.
Anderson, advancing at the front, quietly raised his hand into the air. At the same moment, the hunters who had been following in several clusters halted in their tracks. They suppressed their presence as if they weren't even there.
The way they held themselves still, killing all sign of their presence for a considerable time, embodied the patience of hunters who knew how to wait for the right moment — even though they were nothing more than slave hunters.
The first to move was, naturally, Anderson, who had given the original signal.
Small, but definitely movement ahead. And faint, but the stench of rot riding the wind.
With a more guarded manner, Anderson crept forward slowly, suppressing his presence. And behind him, as if on cue, some twenty men followed like shadows.
There might be no threat of dragons, but this was still the Reganza Mountains, called a heaven of monsters. They knew all too well that there was no harm in being careful.
Swoosh.
Anderson slowly pushed aside a branch blocking his view with his longsword.
"Kik-kik?"
"G-goblins!"
The presence Anderson had sensed was a goblin. A single stray individual was no real threat, if that were all.
The goblin that had met the man's eyes had already fled. But the appalling scene that greeted them next made the hunters frown.
"What in the world..."
Putrefying chunks of flesh were scattered everywhere. And what looked like the household goods of refugees, along with shattered weapons strewn all over, came into view.
Fweee!
As Anderson scowled and blew a small whistle, his subordinates, who had been lagging behind, came running in an instant. And just like Anderson, they frowned.
"Dammit! I knew that stench that's been bothering us was something."
The hunters, unable to stand the rotting smell, pinched their noses and began rifling through the corpses scattered about.
Not long after starting the search, they easily determined who the victims had been.
"Captain, this!"
What one man brought over was a set of tools — displaying exquisite craftsmanship and a sturdy appearance.
"Dwarf-made."
Goods that could only come from dwarven hands.
It was unthinkable that a dwarf hunter wouldn't recognize masterworks made by dwarves. The objects they pulled from the debris one after another were all tools used for mining development and metalworking, every one made by dwarves.
"Dammit! They've become monster chow."
Anderson muttered in a bitter voice.
Judging by the scale of the carnage before them, these weren't just one or two hundred bodies. Also, dwarves had a strong communal bond and never left the bodies of their kin behind.
If they did go, they'd obviously return. But the corpses around them showed signs of having been there for a considerable time...
"Seeing how few bodies are left, looks like they were dragged off as food, Captain Anderson."
"Dammit."
The hunters cast despondent gazes around them. The tracks everywhere suggested numbers reaching well into the thousands.
"...Hold on. Well into the thousands of dwarves?"
"Captain, what is it?"
Seeing the captain freeze up, his face hardening, the big man from earlier asked as if he sensed something wrong.
It was impossible to guess the exact number, but the tracks looked to be at least four or five thousand. To handle numbers like that, you'd need a regular army of at least five thousand. If the proportion of warriors was high, it meant you'd need even more troops than that.
And such a mass of dwarves had been wiped out.
By monsters...
"Dammit! Everyone, get out of this place firs—"
OOOOOOOOOOH!
Before Anderson could even finish speaking, a roar echoed out that made their blood run cold. It was the ogre, the king of land monsters.
"Dammit, get into formation, now! Ready the quarrels!"
Knowing full well that the arrows they carried would barely scratch an ogre's hide, Anderson spurred his men on and got the crossbows ready.
A moment later, the roar drew closer and the ogre's form appeared, draining the color from Anderson's face.
"Twinhead Ogre!"
It was easy to identify.
Larger than an ordinary ogre and with literally two heads, anyone could recognize it.
Just like Anderson, the mercenaries' faces went pale. Running away outright was impossible as well: in the forest, these things could outpace a galloping horse.
"Fire!"
At Anderson's command, the quarrels flew toward the Twinhead Ogre. The distance wasn't far, and the bolts embedded themselves in the ogre's torso, barely any missing.
Thud-thud-thud-thwack!
The quarrels struck the body, sounding like drumbeats.
Quarrels were difficult to reload, yet the hunters exerted almost superhuman effort, shooting them off without pause.
"GWOOO-OOOH!"
"Nice!"
Anderson's face brightened.
Out of the mass of bolts, one had struck the Twinhead Ogre in one of its heads. The bolts burying into its body weren't inflicting deep wounds, but they were doing enough to keep it from charging forward.
"Captain, it's ready!"
A shout came from one side.
When Anderson, who was directing the fight, looked over, there stood a heavy ballista for large monsters, mounted on a small box.
"Fire!"
THWAAK!
They severed the restraining rope with an axe to launch it, and a bolt as thick as a grown man's wrist flew with a savage noise. It hit with the sound of a drumhead tearing and embedded itself squarely in the Twinhead Ogre's chest.
The force was enough to make the Twinhead Ogre's body recoil backward.
BOOOOM!
"Yes! At least we've covered our pay."
The colossal body crashed to the ground with a thunderous sound.
After loosing a few more quarrels to check whether it was still alive, the mercenaries ran toward the Twinhead Ogre's corpse in high spirits.
"Hell yeah! Let's start butchering this thing!"
"Whoa! Twinhead Ogres are nothing special, huh?"
CRACK!
In an instant, the head of a hunter who had been casually booting the Twinhead Ogre's corpse went flying into the air, the grin still on his face.
"GWOOO-OOOH!"
"Fall back! Fall back now!"
Screams and shouts rang out from every direction. But the hunters who had approached the Twinhead Ogre were already dead, slaughtered wholesale by four ogres that had appeared out of nowhere.
Kiiii-kiiii!
Skreee!
"HII-YEEK!"
The cries of monsters echoed from all sides.
Panicked, the hunters started clustering toward the center, dodging the threat.
Amid the chaos, those struck in the gaps of their armor by goblin poison darts crumpled to the ground, and those whose skulls were shattered by stone axes hurled by orcs turned the scene into utter devastation.
"What the—! How is this happening?!"
"CAPTAAAAIN!"
Listening to the shouts of his subordinates swarming around him, Anderson readjusted his grip on his sword. A food chain existed even among monsters. So even if monsters did appear, more than one type wouldn't normally show up.
But right now, every kind of monster had appeared at once.
And nothing lingered in the Reganza Mountains but despair and screams.