Chapter 126. Wasteland and Mountain (5)

[Deploying [Warrior’s Insight].]

[Skill Acquired.]

[Siollu Pouring Heavenly Fire (Level 7)]

A faint horizontal crack appeared in the sky, and then it opened.

It looked as if a giant were opening its mouth wide to swallow a person in one bite.

In other words, the sky had opened its mouth.

Uwooooooo---

The giant's face etched into the sky roared.

Seeing that smaller cracks were also made to resemble eyes and nostrils, it seemed the caster had a similar impression when creating this unique spell.

That was Ella Siollus for you.

She wasn't called the witch of mad fire for nothing.

Before long, a torrent of red lava poured out of its mouth.

A waterfall of lava pouring into the heart of the orc horde.

Of course, the enemy didn't just stand by and watch.

As expected, dozens of stones were shot from the enemy lines.

Shwaaaaa-!!

It was the Great Chieftain's anti-air net that had already intercepted countless cannonballs.

But there was one thing they overlooked.

Stones might be able to destroy cannonballs, but they couldn't destroy spells.

Especially, it was impossible to intercept a liquid projectile like lava.

The stones futilely passed through the lava waterfall and flew on.

[Deploying [Warrior’s Insight].]

[Skill Acquired.]

[Wasteland Giant's Shield (Level 4)]

An orc shaman somewhere in the enemy lines belatedly cast a defensive spell, but it was not enough.

The lava, which instantly melted the translucent force field, poured down on the orcs as it was.

Their tough hide couldn't even be fully pierced by a crossbowman's arrow, but it couldn't withstand the heat that melted rock.

The orcs, whose skin, muscles, and organs were melting in the lava, began to writhe.

"Sorcerer! Kill the sorcerer!"

As if mocking that cry, more lava and fireballs poured down.

Each one was a high-level spell comparable to the Vampire School's [Infernal Meteor].

Of course, the comparison was flawed.

Most vampire mages had the [Blood Sacrifice] trait, allowing them to easily cast spells by gathering the mana of several mages and sacrifices.

That was the result of a single person.

By the power of Ella Siollus alone.

It was as if she was personally proving why magic, along with gunpowder, was included in the Empire's three, no, four great powers.

I thought she would be around level 7 at this point, but I'll correct that.

She was probably level 8.

Even if not yet, she would be knocking on its door.

As I learned numerous spells and acquired related traits, I had developed a bit of a feel for mana.

A feeling, so to speak, not a skill, trait, or knowledge.

"...Hoo."

I raised my staff.

[Deploying [Devouring Pit of Fire].]

[Exploring the origin of [Devouring Pit of Fire].]

I accepted the scenes that seeped in.

I assimilated my emotions into the now-familiar tide of memories.

Personal desire.

Loyalty to the nation.

Ambition and patriotism.

And exhilaration.

The place where all sorts of emotions were mixed was a battlefield from hundreds of years ago.

A time when the ruler of the north was a king, not an archduke, and the Empire was at war with him.

The mages of the Red Magic Tower were ordered to create a spell that could melt and burn the frozen earth, and after years of development, they succeeded in turning the tide of the war.

After that war, magic was added to the two pillars of the Empire, steel and faith, becoming the three great powers.

[Deploying [Devouring Pit of Fire].]

[Deploying [Warrior’s Insight].]

Mana flowed out like an ebbing tide.

The result appeared on the map in my head.

A sunken ground.

Burning boulders.

Bubbling, boiling lava.

Over a thousand orcs had fallen into it.

Like the trap of an antlion, the more they tried to get out, the deeper they fell.

The orcs, buried in the heated earth, the corpses of their kin, lava, and boulders, screamed and died.

It was not a pleasant sight.

But on the other side of the battlefield, my soldiers were dying.

With their heads crushed, chests pierced, waists severed, and limbs cut off and trampled.

"Sorcerer!"

The monstrous cry was close.

A shadow fell over me.

I looked up and saw an orc flying through the sky.

No, it had jumped.

The bastard was falling towards me.

Seeing the blue tattoo emitting a strong light, his anger seemed to have reached its peak.

[Deploying [Sprinter].]

[Deploying [Wind Spirit's Aid].]

[Deploying [Miracle: Steps of Faith].]

I threw my body out of the way with all my might.

Kwaaaaaang!!

A huge crater was formed where I had been standing just a moment ago.

Before the dust could even settle, something shot out.

It was him.

The Orc Great Chieftain.

The moment I recognized him, he was already swinging his iron club at my head.

My reaction was a little late.

Even though I was used to it, controlling two bodies at once often came with a price.

It was a moment when death felt closer than ever before.

Parak- Kaaang!

The club that was aiming for me changed its trajectory to block a hand axe that flew from somewhere.

Kiik- Kiik-

A dwarf in a steel exoskeleton stood in front of me.

"Are you the sorcerer's warriors!"

"I'll correct you and say we are allies. You foolish orc."

"Viscount, fall back."

The dwarf royal, Balkan.

The undefeated warrior, Randal.

The Orc Great Chieftain, Ulruk.

The weapons of the three men clashed.

* * *

I was running.

Through the silent tunnels of the Hold's underground.

The underground of a dwarf hold was comparable to a labyrinth, but fortunately, there was no fear of getting lost.

Our friend, the Dwarf King Ungol, had given me a gift.

‘It's a Guide Stone. It will show you the way to a designated location with light. You should be able to find your way even in the dark tunnels.’

The place the Guide Stone was pointing to was none other than the Steamforge.

The very heart of the Hold, also called the Heart of the Mountain.

I wondered if it was okay to so easily show an outsider like me the way to such an important place, but....

Well, it seemed the identity of Meister's disciple on William's face worked quite well.

The [Lord's Unyielding Mind] and [Gained the World with a Silver Tongue] traits were also activated.

‘You've added another stroke to your master's vast achievements. You could write a book later. How about 'The History of Scams'?’

‘Tick-tock!’

‘Kkiiing?’

So let's turn a blind eye to the complaints of our sugar-addicted Outer Gods.

They were like that because they hadn't been able to eat as many snacks and sugar as they did when they were in the city since the expedition started.

When you think about it, 'Kkumteuli' and 'Starfish' were the key roles in this scam.

They had done their part.

[Deploying [Wind Spirit's Aid].]

I ran while cooling my sweat with the spirit's wind.

The deeper I went, the hotter the cool air became.

The length of the light beam extending from the Guide Stone was also getting shorter and shorter.

It meant I was almost at the Steamforge.

At this point, let's go over how the second stage of the operation, persuasion and negotiation, was resolved once more.

The core of this operation was the Hold's defense facilities.

The gist of the plan was to retake the huge siege weapons that protected the dwarf hold and feed a baptism of cannonballs to the backs of the orcs fighting the expeditionary force in the wasteland.

However, according to the dwarves, the defense facilities were currently inoperable.

The cause was that the Steamforge, the main power source of the dwarf hold, including the defense facilities, had been captured.

This was an expected problem.

And that was why the last stage of the operation was 'problem solving'.

For reference, the main culprits of the problem were the Ratmen, and they were one of the three final boss-level factions in this game.

Those three factions were, simply put, the factions that acted as the masterminds every time a world scenario was updated.

‘The Ratmen reigned as the villains of World Scenario 2.0.’

As we moved on to 3.0, the role of the mastermind was passed to the church, but even a rotten fish is still a fish, and they were still one of the top handful of nuisances in the game.

Because the specialty of this cunning rat-men race was to build an underground city beneath another's city.

Most cities didn't build walls all the way down to the underground, and were therefore defenseless against enemies coming up through the sewers.

Didn't an entire fortress get eaten whole during the Imperial civil war?

In that sense, the dwarves were actually one of the races that held out best against the Ratmen.

Because they were also a race that built cities underground.

This time, well, it had to be seen as an exception where coincidence and a bit of carelessness overlapped.

‘We failed to detect the vibrations of the tunneling. Our vigilance in the underground loosened when we heard the orcs were approaching.’

Ungol, the king of the Everlasting Mountains Hold, had said so.

‘Seeing the number of orcs, I had a hunch that they were different from usual. They were a race that didn't gather more than two or three thousand at most. So I gathered all the warriors. I was about to wipe out the orcs with the Hold's siege weapons, but...’

‘They wouldn't activate.’

‘Yes, there was no power. I belatedly dispatched warriors to the underground, but the Steamforge was already in the hands of those rat bastards by then.’

A two-front war.

This was the whole story of how the surface, with only thirty to forty thousand orcs, was captured.

The dwarves' strength was their technology, but in a two-front war, numbers were more important.

But the situation had changed.

The orcs who had occupied the surface of the Hold had all gone out to the wasteland.

Once the dwarves retook the empty Hold, the powerful siege weapons would once again be in the hands of skilled artisans.

Now the problem has returned to the beginning.

The power source, whether the Steamforge would operate.

I insisted to the Dwarf King Ungol that as Meister's disciple, I would definitely fix it.

Well, judging by his disgruntled expression even as he gave me the Guide Stone, it seemed his expectations for me weren't very high.

'...Master, I think we're here.’

Kkumteuli said.

It was a dead end.

I stopped and caught my breath.

The light of the Guide Stone was shining on the huge door in front of me.

‘It's the Steamforge. It's closed, just as Ungol said.’

The door, which opened and closed vertically, was indistinguishable from the wall at a glance.

In fact, this very door was the reason the dwarves couldn't retake the Steamforge.

‘Fixing it won't be a problem. No matter if it's the Technopriest Council, they won't be able to touch the heart of the Steamforge made of mithril alloy. They would have simply cut the power lines or cut off the mana stone supply. Even a child could do it.’

‘Then what's the problem?’

‘The problem is that the door to the Steamforge can't be breached. It means if it's locked from the inside, you can't get in from the outside. Just like how the orcs couldn't come down here!’

It was like the door that blocked the surface of the Hold, which I had passed through a few hours ago.

It couldn't be broken by pickaxes, shovels, explosives, or powerful spells.

It would be the same even if the witch of mad fire or the Princess of Blood came.

To break this, you would need a spell cast by a great mage of level 10 or higher who could even bend the laws of physics.

‘How many are left inside, you ask? You mean the rat bastards? Most of them have withdrawn. Because they know we can't break through the door. Unlike the surface side, there's monitoring equipment over here.’

Before the dwarves went up to retake the surface.

I had familiarized myself with all the information about the Steamforge through Ungol.

The number and type of remaining Ratmen.

The approximate structure of the Steamforge.

Even the method to reactivate the power source, the 'Heart'.

‘May the blessing of the pickaxe and hammer be with you. Good luck.’

There were two ways to conquer an impregnable castle.

First was to destroy the castle.

It required overwhelming firepower, but it was the most certain, and my preferred method.

However, not all walls could be brought down.

At such times, I used the second method.

To go over the wall without breaking it.

The conditions could be somewhat difficult, but if it worked, it was possible to drastically reduce the cost.

In fact, this was something all commanders knew.

And it was a strategy the enemy had used several years ago.

When Count Calvenia attacked Wolfskrig, he easily neutralized the castle walls with a unique spell he had polished for decades.

He was dead, but his legacy had been passed on to me.

[Deploying [Calvenia’s Waning Moon Labyrinth].]

[Exploring the origin of [Calvenia’s Waning Moon Labyrinth].]

A wall of jet-black fog that extended from beneath my feet expanded its domain in all directions.

[Deploying [Calvenia’s Waning Moon Labyrinth].]

[Deploying [Warrior’s Insight].]

Before long, the hemispherical domain swallowed everything, including the huge door.