The Hunting Lord's Chosen: You little brat! I've been so good to you, and you're fucking playing me!

The arrival of the Hunting Lord's Chosen brought honor and splendor to Smugglers' Wood. The Bloodclaw Clan's war chiefs had even made preparations in advance to welcome their powerful kin from the Dark Mountains for an "inspection."

The band of brutes they had rescued also waited at the forest's entrance, their faces full of shame, to welcome their grand warlord. Huggson didn't reprimand them too harshly. He merely offered a few words of encouragement before turning his attention to the clan's territory before him.

According to Nash, Smugglers' Wood had become the local gnolls' stronghold in Transia. In particular, after the great gnoll hunt a few months ago, there were no longer any large gnoll bandit gangs in Transia.

As the regime gradually stabilized and Crimsonhold's power spread throughout the territory, the scattered gnolls who had escaped the purge seemed to sense the danger. They either fled to Kafhoka or accepted the Bloodclaw Clan's invitation and came to the Filthy Swamp.

The clan now had more than ten thousand members. Smugglers' Wood alone obviously couldn't hold that many gnolls, so under Nash's direction, three more gnoll settlements had been established deeper in the swamp. The Bloodclaw Clan also had two settlements along the border toward Kato.

By the standards of gnoll society in the Dark Mountains, that made them only a small clan, insignificant in both numbers and strength. What's more, Transian gnolls were short. Even a brute chieftain like Maltai the Weak-Witted, the "Bloodclaw's Greatest Warrior," was a pitiful little runt beside a gnoll from the Dark Mountains. It was like how the northern cockroaches could scurry around all they liked, but still looked unimpressive beside their hulking southern cousins.

Still, the Bloodclaw Clan seemed very different from the other clans Huggson had seen throughout his life.

For the