Chapter 344

The dwarf Valentine lowered his head and looked at their city.

Everything he saw was red, and the dwarves had carved a city of their own in the mountains. At the western end of the Dragonvein Ridge, the cavern is thousands of feet tall enough to hold more than a dozen dragons—hundreds of dwarves have been living and working here for thousands of years, except for the catastrophe more than a thousand years ago, in order to escape a group of red dragons in madness and rage, the dwarves wielded hammers, The clanging of axes and chisels and the creaking of the wheels of the carts carrying ore, the strange rhythmic sound of trumpets and the sound of boots and spears as the dwarven soldiers walked neatly over the wire drawbridge disappeared for about ten years, the rest of the time, the scenery was always the same, and if it was an outsider standing here, he would even be confused if he had fallen under some kind of curse, but for a dwarf to see, it was always fresh and interesting.

Iron Bone City isn't the largest of the dwarven cities, it's a little small, but it's still great, a miracle that no race can replicate. When the dwarves created it, they were faced with a whole solid mountain range, they carefully selected three places, like a rabbit building its own nest and began to dig the tunnels, each of which was twenty feet high from the time it was dug, both on the ground and on the top of the paved with large rock bricks, on both sides of the corridor there were rough lines but beautiful columns, each pillar was carved with their own gods and heroes, torches were set on both sides of the pillars, when the torches were lit, the dancing fire cast on the faces of the statues, gilding them with a layer of brilliant golden light, and the uncertain shadows seemed to make them come alive。

After the catastrophe, the corridor was equipped with black iron frames every other mile, sliding doors filled with granite slabs, nails inlaid on the doors, door latches and hinges were made of stainless steel, and the dwarves designed a spring device that could close the two heavy gates tightly in the blink of an eye, and even a dragon would be pinched off if it stretched its neck into it— In the depths of the tunnels there are many small rooms like potatoes on the branches, which are the rooms of the dwarves, and if you continue to walk, you will find more corridors, where the dwarves get pyroxene and iron ore, and maybe all kinds of precious metals, but no matter how twists and turns, no matter how they change, they will eventually break in the hole we mentioned before.

The hollow, which resembled an ale barrel, was neither dark nor cold, for the dwarves dug up and down until a depression as large as a lake was found, and a dwarven priest invoked their gods the most powerful of magic to channel the lava hidden beneath the mountains, and the scorching red magma gushed out of an invisible outlet and poured into another invisible outlet like flowing water, leaving the dwarves with an endless source of heat and flames to beat their anvils and stir their furnaces to their heart's content, and every day, with the armor they madeWeapons and jewels flow out like lava.

The dwarves' city squares and halls were erected on high places, and it hung upside down from the rugged dome like a most precious pendant, connected by eight narrow stone suspension bridges without parapets, that is, only eight passages led directly to the rare building— The other corridors can only be navigated by the other iron suspension bridges that crisscross the building, or they are built up and down the iron escalators on the wall where the corridors are located, and in addition, there is a device that must be very intimate with the other plane, because it is an ancient elevator, and it is also a rickety iron cage that needs someone to pull down the gates, but it is not the electric current that can make it rumble but the rune board, and it is not the dwarf, but the rock or the ale that the dwarf has hewn, Food.

To take advantage of the lava's temperature, it is impossible to get too far from the lava, and around the lava lake there is a ring of platform-like rocks, and more than a hundred dwarves are sweating on it all the time, and only the strongest and most tenacious dwarves can be there- The weaker ones fainted or became delirious from the heat of the lava, and they were almost all fruitful, their rocky muscles vibrating and stretching with every movement, and when they were engrossed in pounding on the half-finished product on the anvil, or shouting to stir the residue of the furnace, there would always be female dwarves with beautiful beards peeping around, and when they came to fetch the ale and food, they would hit his toes with their little hammers— This is a courtship that may seem strange to others, but it is very sincere for a dwarf.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Valentine was among them, and although he had a wife early, his wife would have been willing to come and beat his toes, but since his wife was attacked and killed by a stone monster, he seemed to have aged suddenly, his braids and beard had become as white as snowflakes in a few months, his skin was loose, his eyes were dull, and he was glad that there were a few good guys among his people, and after his death, they could take over his hammer and continue to protect and govern the city.

Still, he would often come to the edge of the square, caressing the smooth low walls, looking down on the fiery scene of his former greatest love, remembering his wife, breathing in the scorching air containing brimstone, and listening to the sound of hammers, which the dwarves' lungs and ears needed—he walked up and down the edge of the square, pondering, and from time to time writing words which were to be sorted out and handed over to their kings and successors, and he was always afraid that he had missed something— Valentine glanced down at the parchment curled in the omnipresent heat, the biggest problem was the stone monsters, and it was only one of them that attacked his wife— These monsters came from nowhere, but now it is not the most important thing to find their origins, as far as the dwarves have returned, or those who have never returned, there are at least ten of them, and the dwarves have tried to ambush them in an empty corridor, but with little success other than the loss of a few precious lives once more, the Thor Monsters are not only able to escape into any rock, but also have enough intelligence, or cunning, to control their desires, and most of them have melted into the rock by the time the dwarves thought that all they had was on the Adamantite Mithril, circled behind them, but when they suddenly wrapped around the hands and feet of the dwarves from the top of their heads, from their sides, and from the ground, the stone monsters that the dwarves had previously targeted also pounced on at any moment.

These monsters were too weird and terrible for the dwarves, and although Valentine was willing to avenge his wife and his people, he still had sense, and even rebuked some of the young dwarves when they cried out for another attempt, and of course, the dwarves were able to drive away the stone monsters, but until then, every temptation would have killed his people innocently.

The invasion of the stone monsters did not stop, Valentine listened to the advice of the priest, forbidding the dwarves to wear metal, whether it was a dagger given by the elder with a blessing or a necklace that his lover hung around his neck, it was not allowed, the stone monsters were not fond of meat, they attacked the dwarves just for the metal objects on their bodies, after a few days of calm, the dwarves found that the stone monsters were devouring their ore and wealth in large quantities, and their number was still increasing, if it continued, Iron Bone City would only be reduced to a stone monster's food plate.

So when a dwarf reported to him, a team of adventurers wanted to greet the city's administrators, and possibly some other request, Valentine was even a little impatient, and his first thought was to drive them out, but then it occurred to him that not everyone could find the dwarves' paths.

"What kind of team is that?" he asked, striding toward the center of the square— The dwarven square is different from the human race, it is not flat, or on the contrary, it is a sunken public building with several flights of stairs and seats, because if something big happens in the city, all the dwarves have the right to listen and express their opinions, although they will always prefer to take the words of some of the more intelligent or qualified dwarves, but this is a dwarven tradition, a tradition to be proud of— Valentine sat down on the first staircase, folded the parchment he was holding and put it in a pocket that hugged his chest, and then Valentine fastened the collar of his leather vest and slapped it to make sure the precious paper did not fall off his body.

"An adventurous party of elves and humans. The dwarf said he had a round nose.

"Elf?" Valentine wrinkled his beard, "what kind of elf is it, young?"

"One is young, the other is not," said the dwarf, "do you remember Perrante? ”

Valentine raised his eyebrows, if you talk about an elf, although this is not common, it cannot be said to be rare, after all, every elf in the Silver Crown Forest has to travel out in adulthood, and the best way to travel is with a group—no, with an adventuring team, so that not only can you encounter all kinds of wonderful things, but also someone is responsible for soliciting sales, accommodation, entering the city, permits, and a series of complicated issues, as long as the elves show their strong combat power in a timely manner. But there seems to be some kind of unspeakable tacit understanding, there are rarely two elves in an adventuring party, and there are not only two elves in this adventurous party, but one of them is Perrante.

"And another?"

"It's Kerryben," the dwarf shook his head, "I remember when Perrant was with us, he celebrated that their King of the Jungle finally had an heir!"

"What about the others?"

"A half-elf, a human female, a human female, a human male, a human male, a dwarf. ”

"Gnomes, humans or gnomes?" asked Valentine.

"Gnomes. The round-nosed dwarf said, his nose as round and bright as a ball of wood painted red: "Why did they bring a dwarf?"

"You should say why a dwarf is here. Valentine said that the dwarves were known for their violent and stubborn tempers, so that they rarely made friends other than their clansmen, and in order to resist the greed of humans, they often behaved very cruelly and indifferently - their relationship with the elves was even worse than that of humans, which means that before the Holocaust, the relationship between the dwarves and the elves was not very good, equivalent to a little more strangers and a little less enemies, when did they become closer? Probably the elves were divided into two groups, one of which migrated to the silver-crowned forest, and the enmity between the elves and the orcs needless to say, and the orcs would often plunder the dwarves as slaves to make armor and weapons for them, and later ...... The dwarves found that the elves were not so unattainable and cold, and the elves, although they found that the dwarves were indeed as "smelly" and "unkempt" as they thought, were a race worthy of being called "friends" compared to humans and orcs...... Especially after Ingway, the king of the Silver-crowned Forest, gradually opened the Silver-Crowned Forest to the dwarves - the dwarves would also suffer from illness, injury, or exhaustion, and when the priest could not be separated or could not even protect himself, the herbs and springs of the jungle naturally became the best choice for the dwarves.

But the gnomes ......

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"You may need to be mentally prepared. Looking at the excited look on McGee's self-contained self-sufficient, in fact, anyone with eyes could see it, Perrant reminded a little reluctantly.

"What?" McGee asked.

"You know that dwarves swear by swearing," Perrante said in as gentle a tone as he could, "Do you know what their most common mantra is?"

McGee blinked.

"If I," Perrante paused, "I mean that when a dwarf swears that he didn't or must do something, he will say, 'If I did something, I'm a bearded dwarf.'" Or rather, if I can't do something, I'm a bearded dwarf. ”

The "beardless" dwarf sucked pitifully on his lips.

Yes, dwarves don't say "hey", "huh" or "hmm" when they see a gnome, they just ...... "tsk!" (to be continued.) )