Above the ruins of the City of Alchemy, a brand-new palace was rising at an incredible speed.
The desert dwarves were exceptionally skilled builders. To the eye, the palace appeared entirely hewn and polished from stone, but in truth, it was brought forth through magic. The desert dwarf mages commanded sandstone and earth with mastery that ranked indisputably among the continent's finest. In just two or three days, they had erected the palace's entire structure, striking a flawless balance between solid durability and artistic grace.
Hoffman Ironfist stood not far away, watching the palace transform day by day. He remarked to Heji Stone beside him, "A pity time was so short. Given another six months, this place would be well suited to serve as our new royal palace."
Heji Stone replied, "That might not be out of the question. The elves' war looks abnormal this time; it isn't as though they lack land. Perhaps once these peace talks conclude, the territory of the City of Alchemy will belong to the dwarves."
Hoffman Ironfist grumbled, "You mentioned before that there was something wrong with the elves mobilizing their troops—likely picked up from that friend of yours. Yet when it comes to the actual reason, you stubbornly refuse to say."
Heji Stone hurriedly protested, "It really isn't that I'm deliberately hiding it from you—he never told me! Old friend, that kid knows full well you and I are on the same side, so he keeps everything tightly guarded from me. But he did promise he would do his utmost to ensure the dwarves get what they want, so this war can end as soon as possible."
"He said so, and you just believed him?" Hoffman Ironfist countered.
Heji Stone hesitated for a moment before answering, "I believe he is trustworthy."
Hoffman Ironfist fell silent for a beat, then smiled with an air of relief. "Since you trust him, I won't doubt it either. But, old friend, you still need to remind him: if he wants to play the middleman well, he must first eliminate any unstable elements. The matter of the hell cultists must be resolved quickly. Otherwise, if a second ambush takes place, whether the elves suffer losses or we dwarves take the hit, who will bear the blame?"
Hoffman's words brought a twinge of shame to Heji Stone. He had indeed been careless before and forgotten to remind Anbaixiu, or else the elves might never have walked into that ambush.
"Don't worry, I've already spoken to him. Besides, he has seen firsthand what trouble those hell cultists bring. He will surely handle it."
Hoffman Ironfist patted Heji Stone on the shoulder. "Good. Then I'll head back first. I must deliver a report to His Majesty."
"Go on. Once the new royal city is finished, we'll share another drink."
After bidding farewell to his old friend, Hoffman Ironfist stepped into the newly constructed palace.
A secret chamber had long been prepared within for long-distance communication.
Hoffman Ironfist entered, first activating the barrier to screen out all outside interference, and then powered up the communication magic circle inside.
Before long, an aged visage appeared above the magic circle.
Hoffman Ironfist knelt respectfully before the dwarf king and reported, "Your Majesty, the date for the negotiations has been rescheduled. It will take place in two days."
The dwarf king seemed to find it difficult even to keep his eyes open. He spoke weakly, "The elves were completely unscathed? They resumed negotiations so quickly?"
Hoffman Ironfist replied, "Yes. Although the elves did fall into the ambush, they were saved by that lich. We underestimated that lich's power. He is not at all the weakest legend, as the rumors outside claim."
"Useless trash!" the dwarf king spat viciously. In his agitation, he broke into a violent coughing fit, only catching his breath after a prolonged struggle.
"Hoffman, you can't even handle a trifling matter like this! After losing an arm, have you become a useless cripple as well? You expect to negotiate with those elves like this? What leverage do we have left?! Once the Death Line fails to hold back Ryan, if we cannot seize everything in the City of Alchemy, our kingdom will fall! You trash, you are the one destroying this kingdom!"
The dwarf king grew increasingly worked up, his hacking cough turning violent until he finally coughed up blood.
Hoffman Ironfist dared not speak, keeping his head bowed in a respectful kneel.
After a long while, the dwarf king seemed to have expended all his strength. No longer able to rage, he merely waved a hand dismissively. "The future of the dwarves... is in your hands... Think it through... yourself..."
The communication severed. Hoffman Ironfist did not rise, remaining quietly in his posture, kneeling with head lowered.
Kept this way, no one could see the expression contorted by fury on his face.
Even within this completely sealed room, he maintained the utmost caution. Only when his emotions had settled back to calm did Hoffman Ironfist rise to his feet.
Before outsiders, Hoffman Ironfist was a dwarf hero and the king's most trusted minister.
Yet only he knew that the reigning dwarf king was an irascible, short-tempered, and irresponsible tyrant.
At least half the blame for the Ryan Empire's invasion lay squarely on this king.
Originally, the Ryan Empire had held no interest in the desert kingdom. Everyone knew this desolate land was sustained solely by grave-robbing; the vast desert was a forbidden zone of death, and contesting such territory offered not the slightest benefit to the Ryan Empire.
Many years ago, the two nations had engaged merely in minor border frictions.
After all, the Ryan Empire practiced a policy of human supremacy, and dwarves certainly did not count as humans. Meanwhile, the desert dwarves were notoriously ill-tempered—otherwise people would never say dwarves sprang from stone, foul-smelling and hard-headed.
Encounters between the two sides were naturally unpleasant, but back then, they were confined to petty mutual swindles in border trade, hardly anything consequential.
That was until a desert dwarf approached the dwarf king, alleging his goods had been seized by the Ryan Empire. The merchant happened to be a relative of the dwarf king. Without conducting any investigation whatsoever, the king flew into a rage and ordered the army to attack.
Caught in a surprise raid, the Ryan Empire's border outpost fell. Many humans were taken captive, and lives were lost.
Once a military invasion took place, the nature of the situation changed entirely.
From that day onward, the Ryan Empire officially declared war on the desert dwarves.
Hoffman Ironfist had suspected foul play from the very beginning. While the humans of the Ryan Empire were exceedingly arrogant and looked down on other races, they worshipped the Lord of the Dawn. They might discriminate against outlanders, but they would never violate their own established rules simply out of prejudice.
Goods seized without cause?
Such an occurrence might seem unremarkable elsewhere, but within Ryan's borders, it made no sense.
The overwhelming majority of Ryan people held dogma dearer than life itself. A mere shipment of goods was hardly worth violating the teachings of the Lord of the Dawn.
Yet back then, Hoffman Ironfist was merely a foot soldier without the means to investigate.
Then followed full-scale war between the two nations. At first, the dwarves leveraged the terrain to teach the Ryan forces several harsh lessons, repeatedly repelling their offensives. The dwarf king gloated, convinced his decision had been right all along; after all, the Ryan humans couldn't beat the dwarves. Those so-called paladin legions were nothing more than useless tin cans once they entered the desert. During that period, the entire dwarf kingdom was elated. If even the Ryan Empire could be defeated, the desert dwarves were truly invincible under heaven.
But the good times did not last. The Ryan Empire abandoned their previous raid-and-rush tactics in favor of a steady, grounded advance.
Once those paladins resolved that their cause was righteous, they became all but unstoppable.
One after another, the desert dwarves' cities began to fall. The dwarf iron guards could not withstand the paladin legions, and even the desert could no longer shield its children of the yellow sands.
It was also around that time that the dwarf kingdom shifted its policy, beginning to absorb alien immigrants on a massive scale. Hearing that they would be fighting Ryan, these non-human races were delighted and eagerly joined up, substantially boosting the kingdom's military might—or at least ensuring there was no shortage of cannon fodder.
However, doing so was merely drinking poison to quench a thirst.
The open policy continued for over a century, yet the desert dwarves merely slowed their losses from a city every three years to a city every decade. Moreover, the troubles brought by mixed coexistence went far beyond that. While they brought cannon fodder to the desert dwarves, they also brought extreme instability.
Different races, disparate cultures, dietary habits, customs, and taboos—the arrival of these immigrants infringed upon the dwarves' living space.
Had it not been for the external pressure relentlessly applied by Ryan, the kingdom would have collapsed into civil strife long ago.
Hoffman Ironfist had rendered distinguished service on the battlefield during this chaotic era, gradually rising from a common soldier to a general, and ultimately becoming the Hand of the King—the equivalent of the realm's prime minister.
Unfortunately, by the time Hoffman Ironfist possessed the power to investigate the original truth, everything was already too late.
The dwarf kingdom was teetering on the brink of ruin.
The Ryan Empire's borders continued to expand until they could establish a brand-new province within the desert region. New paladin legions were trained directly in the sands; give them another twenty or thirty years, and these paladins would be better adapted to the desert environment than the dwarves themselves.
Only then did the dwarf king finally acknowledge his mistake.
He sent Hoffman Ironfist to sue for peace with the Ryan Empire, willing to pay reparations and cede all currently lost territory outright. Yet the Ryan Empire produced only a single list of names—the casualties suffered during the dwarves' initial invasion.
Hoffman Ironfist remembered it vividly. After reading off the names, the Ryan envoy introduced himself: "My grandfather was one of the survivors back then. His family, and one of his arms, were left behind in that outpost."
The moment Hoffman Ironfist heard those words, he understood that the Ryan Empire would never accept peace talks. Otherwise, they would not have dispatched a young man bearing bone-deep hatred as their envoy.
Hoffman Ironfist felt the Ryan Empire was too extreme. Throughout all these years of war, the dwarf kingdom had paid with ten, a hundred times more lives. Yet in Ryan's eyes, even that was not enough to make amends for the original grievance.
Whoever dared invade Ryan and kill Ryan citizens would face nothing short of annihilation. Such was the extreme human supremacism of the Ryan Empire.
Yet precisely because of this extremism, the Ryan Empire was exceptionally unified internally. Though the war was immensely costly, the Ryan populace only cheered for this national conflict, eager to donate everything they owned to the war effort.
After visiting the Ryan Empire, Hoffman Ironfist realized this war was unwinnable. How could one contend against hundreds of millions of Ryan citizens? Their united will was a force that even the gods had to yield before.
Yet upon returning with this news, Hoffman Ironfist received nothing from the dwarf king except a torrent of humiliation.
"Useless trash!"
That was the phrase the dwarf king loved to keep on his lips. At the slightest displeasure, he would roar at the top of his lungs, furiously pointing fingers at everything around him.
Fortunately, years of defeat had left the dwarf king physically and mentally exhausted, to the point where he barely had the strength to curse at anyone lately.
Yet the old man showed no signs of restraint. The ambush on the elves was, in fact, the dwarf king's idea.
The City of Alchemy was the desert dwarves' last chance. The dwarf king's eyes were red with greed, wanting the entire territory of the City of Alchemy. From various clues, Hoffman Ironfist had deduced that the elves must have suffered internal turmoil to wage such an abnormal war.
The dwarf king began fantasizing about the elves' total defeat. He not only wanted to swallow the City of Alchemy whole, but also intended to make the Silvermoon High Court pay the price to compensate for the dwarves' losses during the Great Retreat.
Hoffman Ironfist thought the dwarf king had lost his mind. Dividing the City of Alchemy evenly would already be a good outcome; although not entirely enough for the dwarf kingdom, it would at least grant them breathing room. Why must he alienate the elves as well? Wouldn't that cut off their own retreat?
Yet he was merely the Hand of the King, not the actual king. Among the dwarf iron guards by Hoffman Ironfist's side, only a third were completely loyal to him; the rest answered only to the king's command.
Hoffman Ironfist had no choice but to carry out the king's orders.
Because Anbaixiu viewed the dwarves as partners and the elves as hypothetical adversaries, he naturally leaked more information to his allies. Thus, Hoffman Ironfist had easily obtained the elves' marching route.
Hoffman Ironfist then handed that intelligence over to the hell cultists.
The Cerberus family had no desire to see the peace talks proceed smoothly; chaos and melee were their stage. Thus, they hit it off with Hoffman Ironfist immediately, leading to that precise ambush. They simply had not anticipated that Anbaixiu would intervene, nor that he would display such terrifying power. Before the measures prepared against Catherine could even be deployed, the hellish army had already been routed.
As for Hoffman Ironfist trying, through Heji Stone, to egg Anbaixiu into dealing with the hell cultists, it was actually done to clear his own name in advance. When the time came, he could claim that Anbaixiu's strike against the hell cultists had provoked their retaliation, leading them to ambush the elves.
Who could have guessed that Heji Stone would forget the matter entirely, nearly causing Hoffman Ironfist to expose himself?
Now the dwarf king was pressing Hoffman Ironfist to continue targeting the elves. Reluctant as he was, Hoffman had no choice but to contact the Cerberus family once again.
The light of the magic circle flared anew—this was the communication beacon previously shared with the Cerberus family.
Yet this time, the figure appearing on the magic circle was not a member of the Cerberus family, but a ferocious-looking half-dragon.
What sort of monster was this? Could it be a hellish creature conjured by the Cerberus family?
Before Hoffman Ironfist could speak, the half-dragon took the initiative and said,
"You're the desert dwarf? Back again looking for someone to deal with the elves, are you?"
Chapter 131