They looked toward the sound of Tang's voice and spotted the dark figures standing atop the dunes.
Their black armor looked distinctive. Dark patterns of black spiderwebs covered its surface, revealing a faint purple sheen beneath the mingled light of the twin moons.
The hard outer plates hugged their bodies like muscle, accentuating their slender frames.
Night Wind clenched his teeth.
"I should have thought of this!"
As predators that lived underground, Hook Horrors were also subject to survival of the fittest.
While they hunted cave dwellers and even tiny creatures underground, they were also prey for Drow Elves—
Not merely because the Drow wanted to clear threats from around their settlements and prevent all their food from ending up in the Hook Horrors' stomachs.
They also served as emergency food reserves.
After all, in the Underdark, filled with mushrooms, plants, and lichens, they were one of the few edible sources of meat that could provide protein.
"They actually chased a few Hook Horrors up to the surface. Looks like life underground isn't easy either."
Watching the black-armored Drow Elves approach, he roughly counted fewer than twenty. They were probably a small surface-raiding party—not because they yearned to see the light, but because their nature as a long-lived race left these elves with little innate urge to reproduce. They enjoyed the pleasures of reproduction far more than its results.
As a result, neither elves nor the Drow underground had populations large enough to support the vast underground empire they had established.
So they frequently traveled to other underground regions or ventured to the surface to raid.
They plundered food, treasure, and people.
Much like the Tyron Empire far to the west, where ninety-nine percent of the population sustained the lives of the remaining one percent—the nobility.
In the underground world,