As a dominant force in the Wildlands, the Bearfolk were by no means weak. They lacked neither strength nor ferocity, and were born with the means to make a living through violence.
Even the most ordinary Bearfolk warrior could easily knock down three or five fully armed Pompeii soldiers with his bare hands. Gathered together, they could even withstand a cavalry charge without much trouble.
Unfortunately, their opponents were even stronger—strength, equipment, Martial Arts, reinforcements, fighting spirit. Each advantage was only slight, but together they formed an insurmountable gulf.
What was more, the opponents they faced now were not only High Mountain Keep, but also the dwarves in front of them.
Fighting on two fronts was a cardinal military taboo at any time. It severely damaged the warriors' determination and courage. Perhaps there were military masters in this world who could disregard convention and forge their own path, but these Bearfolk before them clearly were not such people.
Gunther and several high-ranking Barbarian Great Axe Warriors wielding two axes followed Richard, forming the sharpest edge of the assault.
So long as they had sufficient strength, being relatively small and thin was actually an advantage. Those door-sized Bear Warriors found it difficult to move nimbly enough to keep up with them.
Richard bent down, picked up a battle-axe, swung his arm in a full circle, and hurled it at the crowd ahead.
At such close range, there was no chance of missing. The throwing axe, carrying power comparable to a ballista, plunged into the mass of bodies and vanished in an instant.
The blade tumbled, blood splashed, and dying screams rang out one after another.
"Follow me!" Gunther immediately led the charge toward the axe, while the enemy launched a countercharge without showing the slightest weakness.
Both sides fought desperately to push their lines toward the enemy, doing everything they could to destroy their foes physically. Yet the result was that High Mountain Keep continued advancing while the Bearfolk retreated in defeat.
Many Bearfolk warriors had already realized that the barbarians clad in iron armor and reinforced by Stone Skin were absurdly tough. When they traded blows with them, it was actually the Bearfolk who suffered.
If the chieftains still possessed some ability to resist, the Rabbit-headed Humanoids trailing behind them were truly out of luck. These vassal warriors were even more helpless than fat pigs thrown before a meat grinder.
The barbarians did not even deliberately attack them. A casual swing alone was enough to crush the Rabbit-headed Humanoids' slender bones.
Richard advanced step by step, leaving countless fresh scraps of flesh and severed limbs behind him. The scalding blood even turned the ground beneath his feet into mud.
Against the Barbarian Bear Warriors, the Bearfolk merely suffered a disadvantage. Against the lord of High Mountain Keep, they were practically being butchered. Their simple minds could not understand where the little dwarf had found such tremendous strength!
Rough, resonant shouts began to rise among the Bear Warriors. Accompanied by those shouts, they slowly tightened their formation and began retreating.
They were, after all, a dominant force in their region. They would not collapse over such a setback.
However, the arrival of fresh troops made them realize that their objective could no longer be achieved. They were unwilling to squander their precious tribal warriors in a meaningless battle.
Before leaving, the Bearfolk left behind many Rabbit-headed Humanoids to cover their retreat. No one knew what sort of drug they had been fed, but these rabbit-eared fools actually charged forward with unwavering loyalty, using their lives to delay the enemy's pursuit.
Richard swung his greatsword and knocked down an entire half-arc of Rabbit-headed Humanoids, watching as the Bearfolk, towering like iron pagodas, gradually vanished into the night.
Although they had suffered a heavy loss, they remained fairly calm and maintained their morale. During their retreat, they even had the leisure to carry away the corpses of several of their kin. They were not a routed army that could be slaughtered with ease.
"Don't pursue them." The Lord stopped the eager barbarians.
The temptation of the system's advancement allowed the High Mountain Keep warriors to maintain high morale for a long time, and they were exceptionally proactive. The side effect was that they were sometimes overly eager for battle.
If an army were compared to a warhorse, they were clearly the most violent kind. The difficulty in handling them was not getting them started, but figuring out how to stop them.
"Richard." Annie hurried over with the centaurs and shamans, but before she could say a word,
a tremendous chorus of ghostly cries suddenly rang out in the darkness ahead. It was immediately followed by the Bearfolk's distinctive deep roars, and then by a chain of clanging metal impacts.
The people of High Mountain Keep looked at one another. Although the distance was too great to see what had happened, even an idiot could tell from the sounds that the Bearfolk had been ambushed along their retreat route.
Richard raised his hand and planted the greatsword in the ground. The blood-soaked soil beneath his feet had grown soft, and the blade sank halfway in at once.
He was finally experiencing how chaotic a melee could become. While the Bearfolk were preparing to attack the dwarf tribe, someone else had apparently been waiting to prey on the victor, setting their sights on them instead.
"Annie." Richard waved at the bewildered Half-Elf. "I'll go see if I can talk to those squat little dwarves."
The dwarves stood at the center of the storm of this brawl, and their wariness was intense. Even though High Mountain Keep had effectively helped them defeat a powerful enemy, the dwarf guards and warriors showed not the slightest sign of relaxing their vigilance.
Looking through the gap in the wall, he could see sheets of silver flashing. That was the reflected light from the dwarf infantry's armor. They stood guard with shields in hand, silent as slabs of stone.
The dwarves understood very well that the enemy of their enemy was not necessarily a friend. It could just as easily be another flock of vultures.
"You all stay here and don't move." Richard pointed at the barbarians, the centaurs, and the several shamans.
"Boss, it's too dangerous for you to go alone." Gunther hefted his axe and wanted to follow.
"There's no need."
The Lord picked up an oak-and-iron Mountain Shield left behind by the Bearfolk and covered his body with it. Under the watchful eyes of the dwarves and the High Mountain Keep guards, he walked unhurriedly, step by step, toward the gap in the wall.
As he drew closer, he could see two wooden watchtowers behind the wall. Judging from their faint outlines, they appeared to hold ballistae.
Richard truly had not expected the dwarves to possess such things. He raised the Mountain Shield and concealed himself even more thoroughly.
Earlier, on the road, Annie and he had shared all kinds of information to pass the time, from estimates of the Wildlanders tribes' strength to the secret of making perfectly soft-centered boiled eggs. Yet that the dwarf tribe possessed ballistae had not been among them.
Annie had no reason to conceal such a thing from him. In all likelihood, she genuinely did not know.
Moreover, such large-scale war machines could not possibly be built in a short time. Let alone a small tribe, even Pompeii could not manage it.
Richard clicked his tongue. Although dwarves were regarded among the common folk as a race that was honest with friends, often portrayed as simpletons who could not keep anything inside, in reality, anyone who thought dwarves were simpletons was the real simpleton.
The ballistae before him were ironclad proof. When a secret needed to be kept, not even their closest allies could pry out the slightest hint of it.
Perhaps his act of venturing alone through the dragon's gate had earned him the tiniest foundation of trust. The dwarf warriors did not immediately fire the ballistae at him. Instead, they quietly waited for him to measure out the distance of several hundred yards with his own legs.
"Stop! State your purpose, human!" When he was only a little over twenty yards away, they finally could not tolerate an outsider coming any closer.
Perhaps the dwarves had once possessed a tradition of warm hospitality, but their recent experiences had forced them to learn harshness and caution.
Perhaps it was just his imagination, but Richard inexplicably felt that the voice sounded deliberately gruff, somewhat like a child imitating an adult.
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