The soldiers had to slow down and carefully find a place to stay among the piles of bones. Every step they took might step on a broken bone buried underneath, making a dull breaking sound.
The arrangement of the bones is not neat, and there is no complete skeleton structure. It is more like a pile that was naturally scattered after being dumped from a high place.
Redd identified the types of bones in the bone pile. Most of them were human bones, and a small number were bone fragments of some larger creature. Judging from the shape, they might belong to a half-orc or some kind of humanoid creature of similar size.
The passage suddenly opened up in front, forming a much larger space than the previous hall.
In the center of the space is a pile of circular structures made of rocks and broken bones. The height is about an adult's waist and the diameter is about several steps wide.
The surface of the structure was covered with a dark, hard shell that looked like it had been formed after repeated burning. There were several cracks at the edges, revealing layers of bone fragments and darker ash inside.
In the center of the round pile, there is a stone slab that has been burned by high temperature, with some complex runes carved on the surface of the stone slab.
The lines of those runes have been blurred, and the grooves are filled with black sediment. Some grooves still have traces of dark red liquid that seems to have dried up for a long time.
Redd stood in front of the round pile, observed the arrangement of the runes and the structural characteristics of the round pile, and confirmed that it was an altar.
Among the bones stacked around the altar, some had extremely decayed remains of iron shackles on their ankles. The size and shape of those iron rings were exactly the same as the shackles used to enslave miners during the Valyrian Freehold period.
When Vickers saw the shackled corpses, the color on his face faded.
He stood at the edge of the bone pile, his eyes moving back and forth between the piles of skeletons and scattered joint bones, and his mind involuntarily began to estimate the number of people represented by those bones.
There were at least several hundred bones piled around the altar, and the broken bones randomly piled on both sides of the passage probably numbered in the thousands.
He didn't dare to think any further, so he turned around and asked the soldiers behind him to stand in the open space on both sides of the passage, so as not to step on the crushed powder in the bone pile.
Redd did not stay at the altar for too long.
He asked the team to take a brief rest in a dry area on the side of the passage, let the soldiers drink some water, and inspected weapons and lighting equipment.
Those torches burn much faster in the passage than on the ground, and some have burned to the second half and need to be replaced with new ones.
Redd asked Vickers to centrally manage the remaining kerosene and torches to avoid insufficient lighting on the road behind.
Then he walked over to Ghidorah, who was crouching on one side of the passage, with three heads facing different directions in the passage. His breathing was steady and even, as if he had adapted to the high temperature and the smell of sulfur underground.
Its scales glowed with a dark metallic luster under the light of the torch, and occasionally a very faint golden light flowed between the scales and then dissipated.
Redd patted the nose of the head in the middle of King Ghidorah, then turned to face the team.
The soldiers had stood up again. Although the fatigue on their faces had not completely faded, they at least seemed to have the strength to continue walking.
The passage continues to extend forward, leading to deeper areas that have not yet been explored.
Redd didn't say much, he just waved for the team to move on, and then took the lead into the passage that led deeper.
King Ghidorah stood up slowly behind him, and the three heads turned to the depths of the passage in turn. Their golden eyes lit up in the darkness, like three pairs of tiny but stable lights.
The passage suddenly opened up in front, and the height and width of the space expanded rapidly in just a few dozen steps. From the narrow corridor that could barely accommodate two people passing side by side, it turned into an underground square that was open enough for King Ghidorah to fully unfold its wings.
The top rock formation is held up by a large number of artificial support structures. Those support columns are reinforced by dark rocks and iron hoops, and the surface is covered with a dark enamel layer formed after being burned at high temperatures.
The ground has been leveled and covered with a mixture of compacted gravel and dust. There are a large number of footprints and drag marks scattered on the surface. The width and depth of some marks indicate that very heavy things have been carried repeatedly.
Redd stood at the edge of the square, with firelight dancing on the surrounding walls, gradually illuminating the outlines of those walls.
Those walls were not naturally formed rock walls, but artificial fortifications, extending several feet high from the ground. The tops were reinforced with thick stone beams, and a large number of shooting holes and observation windows were drilled into the surface of the walls.
The interior of those shooting holes was dark, and it was not clear whether anyone was watching from behind.
The wall stretches along the boundary of the square, forming a continuous underground city wall. The thickness of the wall cannot be accurately estimated in the shadow of the edge of the fire.
But from the traces of repeated repairs - the alternating layers of old and new materials, the splicing of stones of different colors, the iron bars and wooden wedges used for reinforcement - it can be judged that this fortress has existed for a long time and has been continuously reinforced.
Those orcs are busy on the city wall.
What Redd saw was a large number of orcs being constantly repaired and reinforced. Their number far exceeded the scale observed in any previous battle on the ground.
Some orcs were using wheelbarrows to push stones and earth from the depths of the passage, some were standing on makeshift wooden frames and polishing the edges of the stones with hammers and chisels, and some were erecting thick timbers on the top of the city wall as beams.
The orcs who were responsible for repairing the city walls moved skillfully and efficiently, with a clear division of labor. They had obviously been working like this for a long time.
This is building an underground war fortress.
Redd realized at that moment that he had underestimated the scale of the orcs' activities underground Valyrian Peninsula.
Those attacks on the ground, the giant crossbows on the trolls' backs, and the domesticated warg patrols are just the peripheral tentacles of this underground system.
The real core is here - an underground military fortress that is continuously expanded and maintained to accommodate large numbers of troops and withstand long-term sieges.
When King Ghidorah followed Redd into the square, its body was briefly stuck at the exit of the passage.
Although the exit width of the passage is much wider than the previous section, it is still not enough compared to the fully expanded body of King Ghidorah.
It can only poke out its three heads and front half first, and then through slow lateral adjustments and continuous pushing of its limbs, it can pull its back half and folded wings over the edge of the exit bit by bit.