At first, Turanze's prominent figures did not consider the "Black Dwarves" to be much of a problem.
After all, everyone knew just how cramped and harsh the living space deep within the Tusks Mountain Range was.
Whether by Turanze's way of life or that of the Holy Light Land, there was not enough vast territory to develop and sustain a powerful race.
The well-traveled Great Chieftains and profoundly wise High Priests did not even believe that the "Black Dwarves" were an entirely new race.
Instead, they saw them as a small harassment force secretly transported into Turanze's rear by the Holy Light Temple, or perhaps ratfolk who had fled Turanze and, after several thousand years of transformation, become deformed, ugly, and unrecognizable.
As for the Black Dwarves capturing a few towns?
That was perfectly normal!
The southern border had always been Turanze's most barren, impoverished, and overlooked region.
The Five Great Clans all regarded it as a wasteland, with no interest in exploring or expanding into it.
Only ratfolk unable to endure the Five Great Clans' exploitation fled to the southern border to build villages and towns of their own.
After the mandala flowers bloomed, the Five Great Clans all dispatched recruitment teams to the southern border to conscript "ratfolk warriors."
Like combs, they raked through the ratfolk villages and towns again and again.
Every ratfolk even slightly stronger was seized and thrown into their Cannon Fodder Troops.
The ratfolk who did not even interest the recruitment teams were either old, weak, sick, disabled, or missing limbs, or they had sensed trouble and fled in advance into the rolling mountains of the Tusks Mountain Range's foothills.
After that, the Five Great Clans' elite forces all marched north to take part in the Five Clans Competition.
Now, they were all deployed