The Crashed Dragon

If one looked down from Salong's perspective at the vast plain beneath the dome, they would see the once-peaceful riverbank seeming to receive a silent command from some presence. The Slimes and Koutao Fishmen still working on the plain's Mycelial Mat began retreating toward the riverbank in synchronized order.

Though an army was bearing down on them, there was not the slightest sign of panic. This immediately raised the estimation of this force—which had suddenly emerged in recent years, quietly farming and developing along the riverbank—in the eyes of the factions observing in secret, including Salong and his companions.

After all, brainless creatures like Slimes would not display any excessively human-like reactions unless they were harmed. But Koutao Fishmen were typical cowardly creatures that bullied the weak and feared the strong. The fact that these timid, worthless fighters had been trained into such disciplined troops was enough to warrant attention.

If Li Wei had known what these good neighbors were thinking, he would probably have laughed his newly replaced teeth right out. What Koutao Fishmen? What disciplined troops? Slimes were simply bizarre creatures born with a screw loose.

At the same time, countless Slimes, mixed with scattered Koutao Fishmen, emerged from the riverbank. The Slimes were so densely packed that they resembled a rising tide, flooding toward the broad stretches of Mycelial Mat along the shore.

If this army composed of the Underdark's lowest-tier monsters possessed even a somewhat intimidating aura, then at the far end of the wasteland, it was as though black clouds were pressing down upon the land.

That "army" led by Gnolls was continuously pouring out from the honeycomb-like maze of caves west of the dome.

The most numerous among them were underground Goblins, numbering at least five or six thousand at a glance. Unlike their surface cousins, these creatures had lived in the Underdark for generations and suffered constant oppression from various intelligent races. Most were short and scrawny, without even a scrap of cloth to cover themselves, utterly defenseless. Naturally, they had no decent weapons either. Most carried crude stone tools and bone knives they had polished themselves, while a few possessed slings and arrows made from animal sinews. But due to their poor, rough materials, they might retain a little killing power only within five paces.

There was no formation to speak of, but when this chaotic and ravenous Goblin horde surged over slopes and stone pillars like a black tide, it was still rather shocking.

The moment they saw the endless edible Mycelial Mat before them, they suddenly accelerated as though they had transformed into an army of ghouls.

Several hundred Gnolls riding giant lizards raced around the Goblin army. They were likely one of the main forces of this monster army, as well as its scouts.

Though they had no standardized leather armor or weapons, nearly all were equipped with longswords, stone hammers, or iron flails. Whenever they spotted a lone Goblin trying to flee or stopping to frantically gnaw on mushrooms, they would slash it to death without hesitation. Some even lifted the corpses and devoured them in full view of everyone.

On one hand, they were indeed hungry. On the other, it intimidated these disobedient green-skinned brats. They seemed completely unconcerned about their casualty rate.

Yes, they truly did not care. In the surface world, a Goblin army gathered in such numbers could indeed inflict severe losses upon, or even slaughter, some remote town without High-Tier Professionals stationed there.

But this was the food-starved Underdark, where there were simply too many races skilled in spellcasting and psionic control. A casual mass charm or Mind Blast could send them into total collapse.

Thus, in a sense, the Goblins driven at the very front were not their army at all. They were Cannon Fodder and military rations. Even if they did not all die after the battle, they would be penned up and slaughtered for food.

After all, Goblins could be found in every corner of the Material Plane. They were practically a plague, as widespread as cockroaches. They ate almost anything, and like dragons, they had no reproductive barriers. Thus, they always liked to capture every humanoid female they saw for breeding, and their breeding cycle was extremely short. This was one reason they were infamous throughout Coriel.

It was even said that a surface adventurer renowned for hunting Goblins had been written into a biography, becoming a subject of endless debate and mixed praise.

In the underground world, Goblins, like ratmen and Myconids, could be caught by the herd at any time. Naturally, they were not worth cherishing. Multiple races treated them as mobile livestock, unworthy even of being slaves!

Since they were destined to be consumed sooner or later, how could they tolerate these damned starving ghosts wasting their precious food?

Behind this Cannon Fodder army came the true main force invading this dome:

A tribe of around twenty Ogres, and a small combat legion of two to three hundred Dilo Dwarves.

Ogres were a common species. Adult Ogres stood a full ten feet tall, and because wood was scarce underground, most wielded cylindrical stalagmites as weapons. Their thick, dark-brown skin was covered in black warts, their hair long, tangled, and greasy. They wore crudely processed furs and leather, which did nothing to conceal their naturally revolting stench.

The Dilo Dwarves, who kept far away from them, made that quite obvious. Few creatures wished to fight beside monsters that wanted to taste everything, were especially vulnerable to mind-control spells, and casually struck down their own allies.

By comparison, Dilo Dwarves were a distinctive species of the Underdark. Most had waxy yellow hair hanging loose over their shoulders, messy and caked with filth, along with handlebar mustaches and short beards. Their eyes were grayish white and utterly lifeless, their pupils nearly indistinguishable. Their colorless skin covered them from head to toe, revealing blue veins and bronze arteries beneath.

This translucent skin lacked protection against sunlight. If cast onto the surface, the average Dilo Dwarf would die in less than a day of exposure. Yet it gave them a degree of spell resistance. No known cause existed for this natural resistance; it could only be related to the Dilo Dwarves' epidermis. There was something deeply ironic about it: the ugly, curse-like resistant skin that forever hindered their integration into other civilizations was also one of their few advantages when warring against other races.

No one knew when such freaks had emerged among Dwarves. The earliest hypothesis held that Dilo Dwarves were the direct descendants of Dwarves mating with hags. Another theory claimed they descended from a cursed Dwarf family. But the theory accepted by the most scholars was that they were the product of mixed Dwarf and human bloodlines. One myth passed down among the Dilo Dwarves themselves told of a mysterious human tribe that enslaved a Dwarf clan long ago and, with the power of abyssal demons, bred with the captive clan's women.

Because of this, Dilo Dwarves were neither acknowledged nor accepted by Dwarves, nor could they integrate easily among humans. For the same reason, when facing Dwarves and humans, they felt both inferiority born of envy and hatred born of jealousy.

They were a pitiable race, yet no one offered them pity for it.

Only now had this suddenly arrived monster alliance fully emerged from the darkness before all the watching factions. It made the vast majority of them secretly tremble and abandon any thoughts of competing for this territory.

Yet what puzzled everyone was that the mastermind behind this invasion of the riverbank territory had yet to appear. Anyone with half a brain could see that those Gnolls, who already seemed to struggle merely to drive the Goblins, had no ability to unite the Ogres and Dilo Dwarves. Or rather, none of the three had the ability to unite the other two.

However, the Gnoll Leader seemed to have already received instructions from the mastermind. Seeing that the Slimes and Koutao Fishmen from the riverbank would take some time to arrive, he used his whip to drive the giant lizard beneath him around to the front of the army, preparing to seize the chance to deliver an impassioned pre-battle speech and deepen his master's impression of him.

He drew the longsword at his waist and pointed it at the disorderly Goblins. "Bastards, listen up! Today, I, Huo—"

Before he could shout out his own name, a shrill tearing sound rang out from the sky, as though something was rapidly closing in.

"D-d-d-dragon! Run!" A Gnoll beside him turned around, his eyes nearly popping from their sockets as though he had seen something unimaginably terrifying. In the face of life and death, he could no longer care about anything else. He stabbed his giant lizard in the rear, and the beast howled in pain before charging away at full speed.

That action saved his life.

Just as he left his original position, a rapidly expanding shadow swallowed the area.

All the creatures saw was an incomparably massive crimson figure falling like a meteor from the heavens, smashing directly onto the Gnoll Leader who had not managed to shout out his name.

A dull, teeth-grinding impact sounded alongside a terrifying tremor. After crushing the unfortunate Gnoll Leader into a puddle of meat, the massive red figure continued its dive into the Goblin army less than ten feet away, like a red-hot millstone grinding into a courtyard covered in red berries.

In an instant, who knew how many Goblins and Gnoll Warlords mingled among them were swept into this descending millstone of flesh before they could react. Amid overlapping wails, they became a bloody path more than twenty feet long, wide enough for seven or eight Gnoll riders to ride abreast.

The once-lush Mycelial Mat had been replaced by shattered bones, internal organs, and rivers of blood, like an overturned palette.

This horrifying scene, like an abyssal hell, plunged the entire dome plain into eerie silence.

"D-d-d-dragon!" Doug the Dragon Cooker the Sausage, who had also been spying on everything from the hillside, swallowed hard and spoke the truth the Gnoll had wanted to say but never managed to utter.

A Red Dragon.

A Red Dragon that seemed to have wanted a stylish entrance, only to somehow slip and fall.

Yet its accidental, terrifying massacre created an even more shocking entrance.

Thanks to [Yi Tai] for the Thousand Rewards, and thanks to [Poor Monk Loves Silky] for the five hundred rewards. Also, there basically won't be any recommendations before one hundred thousand words, so if any big shots with book lists like this book, please help add it to one. My thanks to all of you! |ω｀)