Chapter 178
Chapter 178
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 178
"Ah, damn it. They always make me do this crap alone."
The young man who'd been smiling at the dwarves in the workshop and secretly handing out liquor trudged down grumbling, empty wine pouch in hand. The smile he'd shown the dwarves had long since vanished. Just then, a huge figure approached him.
"Heh heh, you've worked hard."
"Yeah, yeah. Dammit, is this really what I'm reduced to?"
As he tossed aside the wine pouch he was holding and grumbled, a voice from ahead twisted the knife.
"Heh heh heh, but aren't you the best in all of Gauri at it? You lying sack of—"
Samdopyo, approaching from the front, had opened his mouth with a wisecrack but let the end trail off. The surge of killing intent.
"Heh heh, you've worked hard."
Had he sensed the killing intent? Risel approached and offered words of consolation.
What in the world was going on? For a young man who wasn't even from Gauri, Dupyo was tiptoeing around him and Risel was greeting him warmly.
"Cancel!"
Whoosh!
The moment Risel's brief word reached the young man, his appearance began to change amidst a bright light.
Black hair and black eyes. A man of hardened bronze-hued muscle. He was Gye Ung-sam.
"Dammit. This is why they say first impressions matter."
Ung-sam's voice, reproaching the heavens, carried a note of misery.
* * *
After the evening meal ended, several thousand young dwarves gathered. This was likely the first time so many dwarves had assembled in one place since coming to Gauri. At the sudden summons, the dwarves exchanged words among themselves and looked toward their Lord, Viol Hakun Stone.
"Are we gathered?"
"Yes, my Lord."
The Great Chieftain approached and bowed his head.
"These are all the dwarves currently at the workshop."
"The rest will hear about it gradually."
Hakun Stone nodded at the Great Chieftain's words and slowly climbed onto the hastily erected platform. Then, clutching a magic stone enchanted with amplification magic — borrowed from somewhere — he slowly began to speak.
"We dwarves are the people of Gauri."
At the Lord's words, the dwarves sent back looks that said, What's this all of a sudden? and others still clearly displeased.
"However, I am aware that some of the younger dwarves harbor discontent with this."
At the Lord's words, the dwarves began to focus. In their own society, living mingled with humans as they did now — there was bound to be some dissatisfaction. Some dwarves even viewed humans with outright hostility.
"Those dwarves who know will know. When we first arrived here, we were beings who were not welcomed."
At Hakun Stone's lonely words, the dwarves began to grow slightly flustered. This was a fact known only to some of the elder dwarves and those of chieftain rank and above.
"He told us to leave, every last one. Said he had no need for our skills."
He was recalling those events for the young dwarves who had begun to murmur.
"At that time, the Great Chieftains and the chieftains, claiming they would have a final reckoning, went en masse to His Majesty the Yeolje..."
The past events began to flow vividly.
At the time, the Dwarf Lord Viol Hakun Stone, bringing two Great Chieftains and more than twenty chieftains, entered the great hall and waited with anxious hearts for Go Jin-cheon. Their own objective had gone awry, and they had come to recognize the situation they themselves had created. As they gathered quietly, an attendant raised his voice and announced Jin-cheon's entrance.
"His Majesty the Yeolje enters."
Jin-cheon appeared as the attendant's voice rang out, and without giving so much as a glance to the massed dwarves, he walked to the Throne of Yeolje and sat down heavily. His manner was no different from the day before. Seeing this, Hakun Stone swallowed and, unlike the day before, bowed his back respectfully and offered a formal greeting.
"Dwarf Lord Viol Hakun Stone offers his respects to Your Majesty, the Yeolje of Gauri."
"Leaving?"
Jin-cheon's words meant: Have you come to say goodbye? But the dwarves could not suddenly leave this place. Their very safety hung in the balance.
"Yesterday, we committed a great blunder. We will offer a fixed amount of tribute each year. Please help us secure a fixed territory."
Though the words were respectful, they were not so different from what he had said the day before. But for the dwarves, even this was tremendous progress. Jin-cheon's expression, however, did not change in the least. His curt voice reached Hakun Stone.
"The words have grown more respectful, but in the end you're still proposing a transaction."
"The safety of our tribe is at stake. In return, we will raise the tribute to the absolute maximum we can provide."
In the end, for these dwarves, their master craftsmanship was their best bargaining chip. But in Gauri, that didn't carry the slightest weight.
"Hwi, what should we do with these ones?"
Hakun Stone sensed that the situation was somehow worsening. Unlike the day before, he had lowered his head as far as he could, yet Jin-cheon's anger had only grown.
"The simplest method would be to have monsters dispose of them and scatter their remains at the foothills of the Reganza Mountains. That would yield two benefits."
"Go on."
"First, the dwarf hunters will see traces of their corpses strewn in large numbers and abandon any further pursuit. For them, knowing that the dwarven race's martial strength is not insignificant, it will serve to emphasize the dangers of the Reganza Mountains once more. And second, through their mouths, the neighboring countries and people will be instilled with a renewed wariness of this place, thereby ensuring the safety of our citizens."
"Huk!"
At the exchange between Jin-cheon and Hwi-garam, the dwarves' faces turned deathly pale. They were talking about feeding their entire tribe to monsters. It was utterly unlike any human response they had ever encountered. Capturing them and making them slaves — that they had seen. But disposing of them like this was unprecedented. Hakun Stone despaired. Their proud craftsmanship held no power here. Then Hwi-garam's words continued.
"Another method would be to disguise our soldiers as dwarf hunters, capture them all, and export them. It would be somewhat troublesome, but if we hand them over cheaply to South Roselin, which is in the thick of war, we could both earn their goodwill and have less to worry about even if these ones reveal our location."
"Oho!"
When Jin-cheon chimed in approvingly, the dwarves began to murmur. They had come to survive, and now felt they had walked into their own deaths. If it came to this, their only option was to fight, resolved to die. But even that thought slowly crumbled. An overwhelming pressure closed in from all sides.
"When...?"
They had been surrounded before they even noticed. Soldiers emerged from behind pillars and dropped from the ceiling.
"I'd rather you didn't do anything useless."
Gye Ung-sam spoke as he blocked the escape route. Gauri swordsmen were forming an encirclement around them. The dwarves felt that even escape would be difficult. They feared for the safety of their tribesmen outside. At that moment, Risel approached Jin-cheon's side with a smile and spoke.
"There is another method."
"What method?"
As Jin-cheon asked with a curious expression, Risel glanced once at the dwarves and began to furnish an answer to Jin-cheon's inquiry.
"In the first place, Taedaehyeong Yeon Hwi-garam's two stratagems are both sound, but there is no need for such trouble. You could simply teleport them all away."
"Where to?"
When Jin-cheon asked with curiosity, Risel slowly answered.
"You teleport them directly above the royal palace of the Haian Kingdom."
"Wouldn't that tear their bodies to shreds?"
Jin-cheon, who had accumulated knowledge about teleportation during the past battle in South Roselin, knew full well that a body teleported into the airspace above a royal palace with a teleport counter-formation would be ripped apart. Knowing this, Jin-cheon asked again, and Risel nodded as if it were obvious and added a few more words.
"That is precisely the aim. I am the sole wizard on the continent capable of teleporting a large number of people over such a distance. No — humans will not even imagine such a thing is possible. It will serve as another warning to humans who are beginning to forget that dragons once appeared."
"Oh-ho. Dwarves struck by a dragon's wrath, is it? I like it — simple."
As Jin-cheon's face brightened and he endorsed Risel's stratagem, the dwarves found themselves on the verge of simple annihilation. Hakun Stone knelt before Jin-cheon.
"Lord!"
"Lord!"
The dwarves tried to raise Hakun Stone up, but he did not budge. He lifted his head and looked at Jin-cheon as he spoke.
"Will you truly dispose of us in such a manner! Have we not said we will do everything we can for you!"
Hakun Stone's desperate cry was directed at Jin-cheon. At that moment, Jin-cheon's eyes flared as if kindling a blaze, and his fury spilled straight from his mouth.
"Then are you telling me to trade the safety of my people and soldiers for your wretched talents! Are you telling me to sell my people!"
At the wrath that resounded through the great hall, the dwarves froze in an instant. Jin-cheon's fury did not stop.
"Just as you bear responsibility for your tribe, I too bear a duty to safeguard my people! Arrogant wretches who think only of your own safety are worth not a single whit to me! You are worse than the orcs we raise! For the likes of you, wandering the world and fading away is only natural!"
The soldiers in the great hall and several of the senior officials, including Risel, were startled by Jin-cheon's raised voice. Never before had he shown such anger. Such was the magnitude of Jin-cheon's rage in this moment.
Was it because of the vivid memory?
Hakun Stone shuddered, as if the fury of that day were still palpable. Having related the story this far and kept a moment of silence, he slowly looked around at the dwarves' faces — each transformed in its own way — and slowly began to speak.
"On this continent..."
His voice turned reproachful.
"Where is there anyone who disparages the worth of dwarves below that of orcs?"
The young dwarves could say nothing. In human terms, it was as though they had been compared to dog droppings on the roadside.
"Yet we had become beings worth less than orcs."
The dwarves' heads were lowering. The feelings of the young dwarves now were the same as those Hakun Stone and the Great Chieftains had felt then.
If they thought back calmly: they were given work, but not treated any differently from humans. Nor were they given any special tasks. One by one, the young dwarves' heads bowed toward the ground.
"Do you remember the expressions on the humans' faces as you built the walls?"
They could not fail to know.
The liquor shared when the work was done, the humans who mingled with them. There were some they disliked, but these were not dwarves incapable of reading human expressions. And now they could also guess what Hakun Stone was trying to say.
"Though the work was hard, you would have seen them doing it of their own accord rather than under compulsion. That is because they... know how to earn freedom. That is what we must learn."
The reason the dwarves had come to this place. It was freedom. What the people of Gauri desired most was also freedom. The point where dwarves surpassed humans was their honesty — a trait of their race.
Was that why? There were no longer any dwarves standing with their heads raised. Into their ears came Hakun Stone's final words.
"Let us find our freedom and our worth with our own strength. Children of the Earth."
At those words, the young dwarves each looked down at their own fists. As if to carve the words into their minds so they would never forget, they gazed at their clenched fists and slowly lifted their heads.
Clap clap clap!
The sound of someone applauding.
"That's right, that's the spirit! You can do it!"
From the rear — when had they arrived? — Eulji Uru and Buru were nodding and looking at them with eyes full of pride, applauding.
"I'll give it everything I've got and help you. Just trust me!"
Buru's hearty voice instilled confidence in them. It was the moment the dwarves were truly reborn as the people of Gauri.