Korgan's Story, Continued

That was the first time Korgan had seen blood, the first time he had killed someone, and the first time he had watched one of his own relatives die before his eyes.

When he spoke of his mother, warmth appeared on his face for the first time. Perhaps the only warmth he had ever known in his life had been left to him by his mother. But when he spoke of her dying at his side, Korgan's expression became ferocious once more!

"My ma was murdered. Not by trolls, not by Drow, and not by giants—it was my own people, my own brother. For some godforsaken inheritance, he actually killed my ma! Heh heh, family ties are all bullshit!"

(Drow were what dwarves called "blackskins." Since dwarves lived in mountainous regions and underground, their primary enemies were trolls, giants, and Drow.)

After that, Korgan's life changed completely. Killing never stopped happening around him. The people around him were either being killed or killing others! More and more people became entangled in it. What had begun as a family dispute gradually turned into slaughter between two families, then two clans, then two tribes. In the end, blood flowed into rivers and bones piled into mountains—all over a tiny vein of gold and silver ore.

Greed had robbed people of their judgment. They refused to believe it was merely a small mineral vein. Greed magnified it in their minds, and everyone believed Korgan's father had concealed the true scale of the vein. Some even believed his father possessed other mineral veins.

In the end, Korgan's father died as well, and his death was unimaginably gruesome. His corpse bore traces of brutal torture everywhere. Korgan knew those wounds had not been inflicted by enemies, because his father had always hidden in the safest