713 Gellman Bonechewer-Think About the Worst, Then Think About the Best

The Brass Fortress's true situation was clearly far worse than the outside world imagined.

The moment that layer of communication-blocking, maze-shaping warp power appeared, the fortress had already come under attack. It had happened almost in sync with the war at Blackflame Pass reaching its worst stage.

If Dusk was behind all of this, then the cultists were trying to make both fronts bloom at once.

Almost as soon as the concealing fog descended, vast numbers of ratmen launched an "underground assault" on the Brass Fortress and its surrounding strongholds. Those bastards seemed to have known all along that the Brass Dwarves would lose the protection of the Earth Mother, and so their attack was brazen and direct.

There was no tactical cover like there had been at Blackflame Pass. They simply struck decisively while the fortress was shrouded and isolated.

That night, the impregnable, heavily fortified Brass Fortress was breached from below, throwing the interior into chaos. But the surprise attack ultimately failed.

The ratmen had underestimated both the fortress's design and the dwarves' fighting strength.

The former was especially important. For a fortress carved out of a mountain, its interior alone had more than a dozen tiers. The dwarves had also built many structures underground, so reaching the core by advancing through the fortress would mean overcoming thousands of meters of vertical elevation.

Only after digging inside did the ratmen realize they had entered a layered siege across a three-dimensional battlefield. And ratmen, whose natural individual strength was even weaker than that of humans, were badly outmatched in a siege against dwarves famed for their brute force.

What was more, the fortress garrison wasn't made up of dwarves alone.

So the ratmen's surprise attack had succeeded—and failed.

There was no doubt, however, that the ratmen had played the