Prayer

More than a hundred li north of Kallen City, countless fires flickered in a hidden valley, and waves of clamor kept drifting through the night wind. From a few hundred meters outside the valley, one could easily see the hundreds upon thousands of marching tents within.

Most of these tents were extremely tattered. A few thick branches, crudely dried, made up their main frames, with a layer of filthy, bloodstained sackcloth wrapped around the outside. From a distance, they looked like a field of sores festering on the surface of the earth. Countless Demi-Humans and Misbegotten lived mixed together among them, and now and then one could even see one or two enormous Trolls. They wore ragged leather armor and wooden shields, and carried rusty cleavers and crooked wooden spears—if most of the soldiers had not looked rather strong, their bodies giving off waves of savage ferocity, probably no one would have associated them with the word "elite."

Strangely, however, while the military tents across the entire camp were mostly equally shabby, the way they were arranged differed like heaven and earth from one area to another. Near the central army, the distances between the tents and the methods of their construction seemed to have been calculated with precision. Fire-prevention measures and large numbers of sentries, both hidden and in plain sight, had even been placed around them, making the area appear extremely orderly.

In contrast were the front and rear sections. The Demi-Humans and Misbegotten occupying seventy percent of the camp displayed all kinds of chaos utterly at odds with a military encampment. Some gathered around bonfires roasting the beast meat they had hunted during the day, some gripped patched leather wineskins and poured cheap liquor down their throats, and after they had eaten and drunk their fill, cursing matches and brawls caused by excess energy were all too common...

The central command camp had been built on a slightly higher plateau in the middle of the valley. At this moment, an elderly Misbegotten with gray hair and beard and a face covered in wrinkles was standing there with his body slightly hunched, stroking his beard as he looked at the chaotic scene in the distance, his cloudy eyes filled with worry.

"High Priest, the night is cold. You should not stand here in the wind any longer..." a guard behind him reminded him softly.

The old man did not answer. He continued to stare ahead in silence, and after a long while, he sighed deeply.

"Enough, Kruger. Stop worrying about useless things—" The sound of something cutting through the air rang out. The elderly Misbegotten neither dodged nor moved aside, and a bundle of clothing was flung through the air, landing perfectly on his thin shoulders.

"Didn't we already expect this sort of scene when we summoned the tribal coalition?" the person behind him said casually, striding forward at the same time to stand beside the old man and casually helping him straighten the cotton robe he had just draped over himself.

It was a Demi-Human around forty years old, tall, broad, and powerfully built. Let alone compared with his short kinsmen, even standing beside Kruger, this half-beast, half-human Misbegotten, he seemed several sizes larger.

The man turned to look at the guards on both sides and waved his hand. "I need to discuss military matters with the High Priest. All of you go eat and rest first. We still have a battle to fight tomorrow, so save up your strength for me!"

"Yes, General!" The guards' faces brightened at his words, and they saluted one after another before withdrawing.

When the sound of the crowd's footsteps had faded, only two figures, one large and one small, remained on the plateau where the main tent stood. Kruger looked at the man and said, "Soleto, shouldn't you be holding the front army at this hour? Why did you come back?"

"Holding it? What's there to hold? It's not as if you can't see what things are like over there!" Soleto rolled his eyes and simply sat down on the ground. "Kallen City is like a piece of fat meat dripping with fragrant oil, hanging right in front of us poor ghosts. Forget those insignificant little tribes—even our own Shuofeng warriors are about to go mad, aren't they?"

He pointed in the direction the guards had just left. "Those boys are from Rono's family, right? I heard their family only suffered a hail disaster this spring, and they're counting on snatching more things this time so they can go back and add a few new tents. Otherwise, even getting through this winter will be hard..."

"Enough!" Kruger barked, cutting off his rambling. "Even if the prey is right before our eyes, that is no reason for us to abandon military discipline—and stop sounding me out here. This time, we only move against Hectorv's troops. I don't care what you and the chiefs below discussed. This time, we cannot set so much as half a foot into Kallen!"

Soleto's expression turned somewhat ugly. "All for that worthless agreement with Clareville? As long as we kill Hectorv, the whole of Kallen will be within easy reach. What could he do to us then? He is merely a perfumer, not a Crucible Knight!"

"Shallow!" Kruger glared at him in bitter disappointment. "Why do you think I agreed to his condition that we would never violate Kallen or the surrounding farms? Because I feared his force of arms?"

"Have you ever thought about what would happen even if we took Kallen? How many days would the Golden Dynasty tolerate us? Dectus is only two hundred li from here. They would only need to send fifty Leyndell knights, together with two hundred fully armed soldiers, and they could hang every last one of us on confession racks—or worse. They could feed the Demi-Humans slow poison and drag them off as coolies to split mountains and fill rivers, send the Misbegotten into arenas to delight their nobles with blood and life, and finally pierce the Trolls' abdominal cavities with anchor chains, then dress them in gorgeous golden armor and use them as draft beasts!"

"But what can we do if we don't take it?" Soleto's face flushed purple as he craned his neck and argued, "Can you guarantee that after we leave, Clareville will become Kallen's governor? Can you guarantee that after he sits in that position, he will still keep his promise and send the agreed grain and medicine? Can you guarantee that everyone will still have room to survive in the future?"

"I can't—of course I can't!" Kruger widened his eyes. "But do we have a better choice?"

"Then why not just loot Kallen once, take the goods, and leave straight away? The Gelmir Mountains are so vast that even if Dectus really sends people, they won't be able to find us..."

"Bullshit!" Kruger was so furious his hair and beard bristled, and he jumped up and kicked Soleto. "No matter how big Gelmir is, is it bigger than Altus? And you want to loot Kallen? How many people do you plan to kill? That demigod of the ancient dragons only just passed through here, and we turn around and do something like this—how is that any different from trampling the faces of those two majesties in Leyndell into the dirt? How many days would we have left to live then?"

Soleto was left speechless by the rebuke. In the end, he could only rise angrily and say, "I'm going back to patrol the front army. If that fellow Turak comes back later, I'll bring him to see you." With that, he turned and left without looking back.

Watching that retreating figure, Kruger drew in a deep breath, a deep weariness showing in his bloodshot eyes.

Soleto was more than ten years younger than him. The two of them had been close for decades, and it was precisely through their shared wisdom and effort that the Shuofeng tribe had grown more and more prosperous, gradually uniting the many Demi-Human and Misbegotten tribes of southern Gelmir. Yet as their strength expanded, the ambitions and desires of many within the tribe had swollen as well, and Soleto, who stood only below him, was even more so.

Kruger knew that he did not have many days left to live. The life of hunger, cold, and constant warfare in his early years had ravaged his body greatly. It was precisely because of this that he placed so much importance on the battle for Kallen City, and why he criticized Soleto so mercilessly—only by allowing Kallen City to pass steadily into Clareville's hands, and by making Soleto learn to view the situation from his height, could he let go with peace of mind.

A cold night wind blew over, and the old man could not help tightening the cotton robe around him. Several painful coughs rolled from his throat.

May heaven bless my people— Looking at the cold full moon and the dim black moon in the firmament, Kruger prayed silently in his heart.

He did not look at the Erdtree, because the Golden Order had no room for other races like them.