Standing in front of the Crucible, Richard couldn't help but be deeply shocked by the dwarven royal capital. In front of Richard was a thousand-meter-high mountain, and from the ground upwards for hundreds of meters, it was as if it had been cut by a giant with a sharp axe, and patches of cutting surfaces appeared. Each cutting surface is ten meters square, covered with various windows, entrances and ventilation ducts, and is decorated with boulders and carvings. In the upper part of the mountain, a dwarf head is carved in relief, which is dozens of meters high. It is said that this is the statue of the great man who founded the Crucible Kingdom, a statue of the legendary Doro Anvil in battle.

From a distance, the whole mountain looks like a huge peak nest, and from time to time you can see dwarves coming in and out of the various cave entrances.

Seeing this scene, Richard was quite emotional. Dwarves, like worker bees or ants, are naturally interested in digging, building, and forging. Although their number is not particularly large, hundreds of years of tireless excavation have also created a miraculous scene in front of them.

When perseverance and the power of time come together, miracles come to fruition.

After two rounds of interrogation, Richard and his party entered Forge. Entering the gate of the Crucible, a magnificent hall with a height of nearly 100 meters immediately appeared, and standing in this hall with a radius of 500 meters, Richard immediately felt extremely small. At the end of the hall is an iron gate ten meters high. The iron gate was tightly closed at the moment, and only four passages on both sides could enter and exit. These passages are the same as the ones Richard had ever seen, wide enough, but high enough to make humans feel very embarrassed. Fighting in this terrain type will bring out half of the combat effectiveness at most.

Richard looked up and saw that the vertical wall on the opposite side was covered with large and small windows. Near the top of the hall, there is a large natural opening. If there is an invasion of foreign enemies, after rushing into the hall, as soon as the dwarves close the iron door on the opposite side, the intruder will immediately face a saturation blow from the top, bottom, left and right. If the dwarves threw their war hammers with all their might in the air tens of meters in the air, even the heavy shield warriors of humans would not be able to resist it.

Seeing this, Richard frowned slightly, he didn't expect that the dwarves would actually build such an almost insurmountable fortress. At least with the troops he brought, he didn't even want to take the Crucible.

In the Pharo plane, it is known that the dwarves are very staunch ancestor-worshipping races. Moreover, there are many precedents of godhood among the ancestors of the dwarves. The Crucible Kingdom, a race that has lasted for hundreds of years, worships almost all of the ancestral gods that merge with the ancestral spirits, and have the potential to become demigods or holy spirits. This is not a statue of the beast god that the Crackstone camp has stolen. Richard estimated that the value of the thing might be comparable to that of a great devil's head.

But now, Richard had to put aside his desire to capture Fort for the time being. Moreover, if you don't have the certainty of taking the Crucible, or even the dwarves hard, then this trade negotiation will probably not take much advantage. Fortunately, Richard was well prepared and immediately adjusted his mentality and took the second plan as the bottom line. The main element of the second programme is normal trade between the two ethnic groups. And the first plan, naturally, is similar to plunder.

After entering the Crucible, Firebeard may have taken Richard and his party around the melting pot in the depths of the castle, perhaps out of a show-off mentality. It can be seen that the magma continues to gush out of the ground fissure hundreds of meters deep, and is raised to the ground through a special channel, divided into several channels, and after flowing at the feet of several dwarf statues, the violent and blazing fire immediately becomes much more stable, and the flow of magma becomes smoother and faster. These streams of fire flow from beneath the furnace, releasing fire power onto the furnace to melt the metal.

When Richard saw the obviously special dwarf statues, his heart moved, and he asked the fire whiskers beside him: "The statues of those dwarves are very special, and I smell power and metal on them." ”

Huosu was very proud and said, "Those are the statues of some of the most outstanding smelting masters among the descendants of the anvil, and there are souls of those masters inside." They used the power of the Heroic Spirit to control the power of magma, so that the source of the disaster became the source of fire in the melting pot!"

"Heroic Spirit?!" Richard looked taken aback.

"Of course! Several of the Masters had the power of the Sanctuary during their lifetimes, and before they died, out of their love for ores and metals, they volunteered to seal their souls in statues and become the Heroic Spirits who guarded the Crucible Kingdom. ”

Richard glanced sideways at Quicksand, and saw the same heat and regret in her eyes. It's not very comfortable to see a precious sacrifice right in front of you, but you can't take it away. These statues that sealed the Heroic Spirit were enough for a low-level sacrifice.

Richard continued to ask Firebeard, "And how did the molten slurry get here from a fissure hundreds of meters deep?"

Firebeard looked fanatical: "That's the power of the great Dora Anvil! If he hadn't restrained the power of the molten slurry, there would be no Forge. ”

Richard asked a few more questions, but he couldn't ask anything other than knowing that in the depths of the underground lava was Doro's temple. Firebeard himself didn't go to Doro's True Temple, where the heat was too much for ordinary dwarves to resist, and only dwarves in the Sanctuary could enter with special protective equipment.

After a tour of the Forge, Richard finally met the twenty-second generation of the Dwarven King, Barmor Hammer, and Doro Anvil in the King's Hall.

The King's Hall is equally magnificent, with a 20-metre-high dome that evokes awe. At the end of the King's Hall, there is a high staircase, and Barmor Hammer sits on a throne at the top of the staircase, overlooking Richard and his party below. On the wall behind him is a mural of rock carvings depicting the scene of Doro Anvil building the melting pot. On either side of the King's Terrace, a curved platform extends from each side, and four high-backed iron chairs are placed on each side. The eight dwarves sitting on the high-backed iron chairs are the eight elders of the Forge Kingdom. After Firebeard's introduction, Richard learned that half of the Presbyterian Church had the blood of Anvil, and the other half were dwarves who excelled in other fields.

The backs of each of the eight elders' chairs are carved with totems, symbolizing the eight realms of exploration, excavation, mining, smelting, forging, brewing, sacrifice and battle. Just from the field of division of labor among the eight elders, it can be seen that the dwarves love and attach importance to ore and smelting. And the brewing will also set up an elder, but it is a big surprise to Richard.

After Richard had performed the courtesy of the Jin Meeting, the high dwarven king Bamor said, "Human, your manners are very thoughtful, and we see your respect for the dwarves. Otherwise, you won't be here. In front of Forge. Your 10,000-odd warriors are nothing!"

Richard agreed: "Indeed, Forgeon is a fortress that cannot be captured. ”

In a thunderous voice, Barmore proudly said, "Since the day Forgeuche was built, it has never fallen. ”

"The Forge's defenses are shocking, but it doesn't mean anything to me. Richard's words made the dwarves' faces change, but then Richard said, "Because I have traveled through the bloodstained lands to come here, not for war!, but to become friends with the Crucible Kingdom and help each other in the years to come." ”

Bamore nodded slowly and said, "There are still many dwarves living in your human slave camps, but you don't look like the rest of the humans. Well, let's see, what exactly you've brought. ”

With a wave of Richard's hand, the four Free Akmund warriors carried the casks they carried to the King's Ladder. The guards stepped forward to take the barrel and deliver it to Barmore. Bamore directly took the small wine barrel decorated with black and gold, and directly pulled out the cork, and the rich aroma of the wine immediately moved him. He sniffed the wine deeply and shouted, "Bring me my golden cup!"

The guards galloped away, and in less than three minutes, they brought in nine glasses of various shapes. Not only the king, but each elder has a beloved wine cup. The nine glasses are different in material and style, but the only common feature is their enormity. After only three minutes of fetching the glass, Bamor and the elders were a little restless, and if it weren't for the fact that there were humans in the hall, they would have started drinking directly into the barrel.

As soon as the glasses arrived, Barmore poured wine into each one. A whole barrel of wine was completely empty after filling nine wine glasses, which shows the size of the dwarves' wine glasses. The rich smell of wine filled the King's Hall, and the guards were swallowing their saliva incessantly. Bamor held up the golden cup and said to the elders, "For the furnace!"

"For the furnace!" the elders drank down, and the guards' throats rolled.

Richard's heart suddenly moved, if he wanted to poison the wine, would he be able to wipe out the high-level forces of the Crucible Castle? However, he immediately gave up this unrealistic idea, the dwarves are all known for their physique, and their ability to resist poison is strong, and the eight elders all have the strength of the Sanctuary level or above, and Bamore's own is as high as level eighteen, which is also the level of the Sanctuary in Norland. Drinking the poison that you usually order may not even be able to make these dwarves have diarrhea. Moreover, the Crucible is a kingdom with a population of hundreds of thousands, and nine dwarven leaders have died, and nine more will soon be elected.

Barmore, still unsatisfied, glanced over the remaining three barrels of wine, and looked at Richard,

The four casks presented by Richard were all decorated, and it was clear that the casks would be good or bad. Barmore opened the best casks directly, leaving the other three untouched.

Bamore suddenly turned his head sideways and whispered to an elder next to him, "What's this human name?"

The elder was very attentive and said, "Richard." ”