South of Dragon Roar Valley, an outpost used to monitor the changes in the valley had now been reduced to ruins.
Charred wooden beams lay across the rubble, and the ground was a mix of human and various non-human footprints.
Several dragon-beasts crouched by the collapsed tower, burying their heads as they tore and bit into the corpses of soldiers.
Kobolds shuttled through the ruins, digging out dried mushrooms that had been stored as rations in the outpost.
In the Dragon Cliff underground city, not every giant dragon liked to fly out and hunt personally.
Therefore, the giant dragons' servants, the kobolds, would tame some dragon-beasts in the area below Dragon Cliff to satisfy their masters' appetites. And now, these dragon-beasts had become their combat power for raiding this human outpost.
Mixed in with the footsteps of the dragon-beasts was the not-so-pure Draconic spoken by the kobolds:
"Master... must find master..."
Earlier, up on Dragon Cliff, the kobold servants who once belonged to different giant dragons crowded into the same shadow.
They no longer distinguished between one another; there were no longer titles like "Servant of the Red Dragon" or "Servant of the White Dragon."
All the masters were gone, and all identities had lost their meaning.
They huddled despondently on both sides of the empty stone paths of Dragon Cliff, staring blankly at the sky, hoping to see the soaring figures of giant dragons. However, there were only a few flying dragon-beasts in the sky.
When the giant dragons left, they did not bring them along.
This was not surprising. The Dragon Strife did not allow the use of external forces. Those arrogantly insufferable giant dragons would never feel that these kobolds, who couldn't even speak Draconic fluently, would be of any use in the Dragon Strife.
In fact, giant dragons who were willing to talk about the "Dragon Strife" to their servants were already exceedingly rare.
In the eyes of giant dragons, kobolds were nothing more than talking tools, tools for flattery, tools to clean their scales and sweep their lairs, or even tools to be casually grabbed and stuffed between their teeth when they were hungry.
As for what these tools were thinking, they didn't care. The kobolds themselves felt the same way; this was something carved into their bones from birth.
But this time, the masters were gone!
After the major dragons left as well, Dragon Cliff was completely empty.
Suddenly losing their masters, the kobolds began to panic, began to feel lost, began to fear...
Even though the kobold shamans tried their best to soothe them, it was to no avail.
Right at this moment, a special kobold stepped forward.
He was half a head taller than his kind, and his physique was sturdier.
The other kobolds had bare, pinkish-gray skin, like freshly skinned rabbits, but he had an extra layer of fine scales covering his body, extending from his spine all the way to the tip of his tail, gleaming with a dull iron-gray luster under the sunlight—that was the result of being bestowed with fresh blood by a giant dragon; it was a glory, and also a proof of power.
His name was Svirgis.
This wasn't his original name. This name was an honorary title bestowed upon him by the masters after his strength and dedication were recognized.
Svirgis stood on a rock on Dragon Cliff that had been scratched full of potholes by dragon claws, looking down at his kin below.
"If the masters don't come back, we will go find them!" His voice was incomparably fanatical, drawing the gazes of countless kobolds. "Find the masters, find the meaning of our lives."
Under his call, tens of thousands of kobolds left Dragon Cliff, left the familiar azure sky, crossed through multiple spaces, and arrived outside Dragon Roar Valley. The kobolds' expedition had begun.
The new defensive line, a certain node city.
The city defense commander looked at the mixed army of kobolds and dragon-beasts outside the city, feeling a bit of trepidation in his heart.
At this time, a mage rode back on horseback from the kobold camp.
After the mage returned, the commander grabbed this mage who knew telepathic magic and asked: "How is it? What do those things want to do?"
"These kobolds are here to find their dragon masters!" the mage said. "They said they are tracking the traces of the giant dragons, and they must pass through here to go to the rear and search."
"How could we possibly let them pass? Sure enough, there's no room for negotiation..." The commander nodded with difficulty, starting to consider how much aid he should seek from the surrounding cities to block this army in front of him.
"Wait!" Suddenly, the commander thought of something. "They said they came tracking the traces of a giant dragon, and the direction they came from is..."
The mage beside him smiled bitterly and nodded: "It's probably that white dragon."
The commander was now certain that even if they let these kobolds pass, they wouldn't be able to find any traces of their master.
After all, that white dragon had already been dismantled by them. Even the handguard on the commander's own issued sword was made using cut dragon scales. If this were known... The commander silently swapped to a relatively ordinary issued sword.
The new defensive line was resisting a large army in the truest sense for the first time, yet unexpectedly, the ones who came weren't the Empire's Demon-kin, but these kobolds.
The combat power of kobolds was not weak. They similarly had shamans who could manipulate magic, powerful warriors, and various tamed magical beasts.
Although their magic wasn't abundant and their equipment was relatively primitive, facing the kobolds' completely new combat methods, the defending garrison of merely a few thousand men still resisted with extreme difficulty.
If it weren't for the formidable defensive power bestowed upon the city by the new defensive line, along with reinforcements from surrounding cities, they probably wouldn't have been able to hold out for even a week.
"Are there any more reinforcements? I don't have enough manpower on my end again," asked an officer guarding the eastern section of the city wall, a gauze bandage wrapped around his head. He had just gone through a brutal battle earlier, suffering quite a few losses under his command.
After thinking for a moment, the commander-in-chief shook his head and said: "No more. The support from the nearby cities has all arrived, and those from further away won't get here for another two or three days."
"Damn it!" The officer lowered his head. "If only one of the Dukes was nearby."
The commander-in-chief sighed: "There are dragon disasters everywhere right now, and there are massive mobilizations at the High Keep Fortress controlled by the Empire. The Dukes and the mages of the Relic Association have all rushed off to deal with those matters; they probably have no time to spare."
The commander-in-chief looked toward the distant kobold camp. Several more dragon-beasts took to the sky; this was their pre-attack maneuver.
He patted the officer's shoulder: "Hold on a bit longer. As long as we endure for another three days, more reinforcements will be able to..."
"Sir! Sir!" A soldier rushing over interrupted the commander's encouragement. However, after the soldier finished speaking, the displeasure on the commander's face immediately vanished without a trace. "Sir, a hero has arrived! War hero Inanna is here!"
"Really?"
"Absolutely true. Lady Inanna's pet, Number Four, has already gone ahead..."
Before the soldier even finished, the commander heard a little tune hummed by a certain mushroom in the mycelial network:
"Glory~ Victory~ All turn into loot! The head and horns of a giant dragon~ The treasured sword of the strong~ All go into my mushroom house!"
"Victory, here I come!"
Number Four bounced its way up the city wall, looking excitedly at the rolling army of kobolds approaching.
It immediately noticed that special Svirgis—those scales were perfect as loot!!
Saying so, it unleashed its weapon for chaotic warfare without hesitation... [Fungal Might]!
A terrifying, oppressive aura descended upon the battlefield.
The defending officers and soldiers immediately felt weak and panicked. Some soldiers even lost their footing momentarily, their weapons dropping to the ground, causing no small amount of chaos.
And those charging dragon-beasts and kobolds fared even worse.
The dragon-beasts desperately braked their sprinting bodies. Even when their kin from behind crashed into them, their claws plowing deep trenches into the ground, they refused to budge another half-step forward.
They were like chickens grabbed by the neck, muffled whimpers coming from their throats, their entire bodies lying prostrate, trembling in fear.
The kobolds weren't any better off. The instincts in their bones instantly overpowered everything else. They knelt down in unison, their knees smashing onto the gravel, getting bruised and bleeding, yet not a single one dared to stand up.
After the brief fear, a sense of ecstasy spread through the kobold ranks!
They jerked their heads up, eyes wide open, their pupils reflecting the sky, reflecting the earth, reflecting the city wall... They frantically searched for that great figure worthy of their prostration and worship.
Not in the sky, not on the earth... Their bewildered gazes finally landed blankly on that perfectly round, sub-meter-tall fungal body in front of the city wall.
Number Four was currently scratching the edge of its mushroom cap with a tentacle. It was just as dumbfounded as the kobolds right now, not entirely sure if it should still follow its original plan and charge down to slaughter its way in and out seven times...
(End of Chapter)
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