With a sharp whistle, the engineers immediately lit the fuses.
A short while later, the earth seemed to have been torn in half.
The explosives buried in the mountainsides on both sides of Collapsing Valley detonated simultaneously. The scene had already exceeded everyone's previous definition of an "explosion"; it was instead a furious roar erupting from the heart of the earth.
BOOM!!!
A blinding white fireball shot into the sky from the bottom of the valley, instantly swallowing the pursuing giant insect.
The shock wave swept outward in a ring. Wherever it passed, layers of rock curled and shattered like scraps of paper. Boulders were hurled a hundred meters into the air, then slammed into the surrounding mountain walls as though thrown by a god's hand. The ground heaved violently like a boiling mire, while cracks spread outward like a spiderweb, swallowing trees and rubble.
Smoke wrapped in flames surged into the heavens, forming a towering pillar of black and crimson that rose a thousand feet, blotting out the sky and sun.
An indescribable, rotten stench filled the air. Snow tumbled from the distant peaks, and roaring avalanches echoed in response to the explosion's aftershocks, as if the entire Rocky Mountains were groaning in agony.
Behind a concealed rocky ridge along the giant insect's pursuit route, the dwarf commander Mogdin and his twenty men had been lying in wait and observing. The instant the explosion went off, they were struck as if by lightning and all sent tumbling to the ground by the shock wave. Blood flowed from one soldier's ears as he curled up, clutching his head and trembling; another clung desperately to the rock wall, oblivious even as his fingernails split.
Mogdin struggled to raise his head. Through the billowing smoke, he saw the most terrifying sight of