Chapter 91

The alarm is still going off in the dwarven camp to call them to arms.

“Head hurts…need more,” Asakura said, I noticed she was looking at me longingly. Unconsciously she’s now leaning against me.

Rina gives me a dirty look. “I think you’ve had enough.” Rina pulls her away.

“Ah jeez, doesn’t she ever stop?” Rina exclaimed right after that. Of course they are both referring to that particular activity.

“Hey you two, cut it out, we have to stay moving,” I said. It’s not my fault, I tried to tell myself. This magic or whatever it was, was affecting us in strange ways.

I hear Rina curse after her breath after hearing it. She’s also staring at Asakura’s boobs. “Those…how the farm did they get so big?!” she has big eyes.

“Focus! We need to help the dwarves,” I said to both of them sharply. I waved my hand in front of her face. She followed me instead of the hand, no matter what.

It was spooky still the way she acted. It was like she could pass for a person but everything was wrong. I wish I could figure it out.

We’re now following the dwarven heavy armors on a mission. It’s been about an hour and a half since the alarm went off. It seems we had been sent out on some kind of emergency patrol but we don’t know all the specifics and everyone was in a mad rush to get together asap to leave.

We received the distress call right away and started moving before knowing the full details. It’s a full dwarven patrol with us in it, being attached as a ‘field medic support and two assistants’ in the back.

“Keep it together. If we can’t defend ourselves or help others we’re as good as dead,” I said to Asakura.

But I was saying it to myself as well. She frowned but kept moving.

We’re all armed as best as we can. By now all of us have the famous dwarven war hammer. It seems it’s like a standard issue to new recruits and mercenaries. But is it really that great if everyone has one? Come to think about it, it’s all pride rather than the best weapon, I think as I frown at it while we walk. But because it’s a solid well built weapon that won’t break we’re good. That’s one quality we won’t have to worry about that we would have had to worry about if we were using swords, which can bend, break, or get nicked. They thought about giving us a cheap looking pike too, but it’s too heavy for the girls to use. I don’t particularly like the pikes either, since it’s a ‘pain in the but’ to carry around for a ‘field medic’ like me.

“You don’t need to be a jerk Shun,” Rina said.

“How is saying that being a jerk?” I protested.

She didn’t answer.

The dwarven patrol seems to have all experienced rugged looking dwarven soldiers with dusty and old equipment. That’s good though, because I’d be with greenhorns if they all had new equipment. They don’t look like they’ve seen a bath or a real town in quite awhile.

“Hey, what’s the mission objective?” I called out.

Almost no one here has the language enchant so we’re worried and not sure what’s going on for a few more minutes before someone gives us the details.

We’re lucky however, that there is an interpreter assigned to us, temporarily. It’s a mercenary dwarf that’s marching with us at a fast pace.

“Can you guys keep it down? You are so noisy,” his voice growled. He looks left and right into the darkness trying to see if anything is coming.

The dwarf guy next to us looks middle aged with a pot belly, and some kind of old style beard ringlets all sewn together with his current dark beard. Of course he’s also got a shaved head, and calls himself Oleg. He’s got old chainmail armor on that’s seen one too many scrapes and full of scarring, but still well repaired. Mythology is wrong about the dwarves liking axes I can see. Instead they prefer sword and shield often, or hammer and shield. Some even use like a mattock or military pick. Oleg is strong enough he can use a two handed military pick with a shield with seemingly few or no problems at all.

He’s somehow got the language enchant, but isn’t a mage and has no other magic, or so he said when assigned to us earlier out of the blue. With him there are seventeen other dwarves with us three humans, for a total of twenty. He’s also the commander of this unit. He uses a lot of hand signals for the other dwarves.

We’re following a bunch of their heavy armors into a settlement as our objective. But we don’t know yet if the settlement is under fire or just has enemies in proximity yet so there’s an uncertainty to what’s going on still and it could be anything or nothing to deal with still. The girls were also glad to see that there are female dwarven soldiers but I don’t necessarily think that makes it any better. At least that’s what they claim but I haven’t seen them. It’s helped them feel less weird about being the only girls here however.

Suddenly I notice two of them are female. Ah that must be what Rina saw. Of course they don’t look like they are that good looking. Dwarven females don’t look freakish with awful body proportions portrayed in some mythologies like you might think but these two just have awful faces that have seen better days and would even turn their mothers against them.

I turn away and decide not to meet them ever again. I was quite surprised that not all dwarves are ugly too. The males are clearly…ill favored in the looks department, and often with hawkish noses but their females are nice looking. The women seem to have really young looking almost teenage like looks to them, which seems strange to me.

Oleg guessed our thoughts maybe because he suddenly slipped in a side comment of something along the lines of, “you know you have yet to have experienced true dwarven culture. Maybe when we get to the capital you will see the real thing?” He’s leering at one of the female dwarves.

“What’s that mean?” one of them asked. It was one of the females.

Actually I’m not sure what he meant either. Did he mean the dwarven women?

How come they didn’t tell us she had a language enchant? We were told only the platoon leader Oleg had it. Is this a male dominated culture too?

“Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?” the other of the homely looking dwarf females asked.

It seems they also both have the language enchant and not just one of the girls. So that means there are actually three of them that have it?

“Oh uh, you know just trying to win over more support. They need…things to look forward too and see we’re a great people too,” he said vaguely.

It seems the dwarven culture encourages tools that can be reversed as weapons and vice versa with a lot of armor, shin guards, and all kinds of protective bits I see as I study the way the unit is outfitted. They don’t like a weapon that can’t be used as a tool, so some of the traditional heavy weapons aren’t absent here if they don’t have another use.

“This road is so dusty. There aren’t many plants here are there?” Rina asked coughing into a handkerchief.

“Guess not,” I replied.

In spite of having golem technology and golem armor technology the dwarves still don’t have modern guns. I’m very thankful of that for some reason. The golem armors are very intimidating, effective, and very powerful in the battle field.

They appear to be some form of mixing of technology between simple steampunk like engines and mana battery technology, among other things. But I’ll never get a chance to find out more. There’s no way they’d let me find their secrets out.

We still don’t have a completely safe environment, even marching behind the heavy armors.

“So tell me again, why are they marching so few of us compared to the main force that’s still back there?” I asked him politely.

“That’s a good question,” the older of the two female dwarves answered.

“I’m interested in that too,” Rina said.

That Oleg guy...

Of course he’s staring at Asakura’s chest. But even Rina is staring at her too, and everyone else does. It’s just not possible to have natural boobs that big the size of cannonballs. I sighed because of it, shaking my head. No one has noticed my stress even.

“Come again?” he asked.

I stepped in front of his view so that he can only see me. He subtle like takes the hint and quits staring.

“You guys have a force of several hundred dwarves all within a few hours of us. But we got sent out in a small group of a light platoon of twenty armored infantry soldiers and ten heavy armors. Why not send more?” I asked.

“Good question Shun,” Rina added. She sounds repetitive, but she’s kind of glaring at Oleg and trying to put pressure on him.

Oleg wrinkles his nose up. “I still don’t think we need any humans.” He’s kind of put his nose in the air with pride.

“Well, we are here to help either way,” I told him.

“Oh great, this is wonderful,” Rina muttered.

“You know it’s OK to talk to them and work things out. What could it hurt? If it reduces our losses and injuries by having a couple two or three humans help out, what’s the harm? They don’t bite,” the older of the dwarf females says to Oleg.

Of course he ignores her for a few minutes. But then he notices the other dwarves are glaring at him and caves in.

He sighed. “We received three distress calls at the same time from three different dwarf settlements. We have to respond to each with lighter platoons first, because there’s more than one settlement being attacked. But there’s the possibility one could be faked or an attempt to draw us away from the real targets. We’re also sure that one of the forces out of the three has their main force and the other two don’t but don’t know which is the main body yet and that’s got the commander worried. He has to be ready and have the lighter platoons scout first and then the rest of them will hustle in to add more support.”

“Damn. That sounds bad,” Rina said.

The dwarven girls glare at her to shut up. “Be quiet,” they warned her.

“And do you think that’s the case? I mean is that accurate?” I asked.

“There’s no way of knowing without getting to the sites individually. But it very well could have real serious trouble going on,” he answered back.

He was polishing a metal knuckle with three inch spikes coming out of it. I hadn’t seen it before on him, but a lot of the dwarves had similar fighting equipment that they could install on over their metal knee caps, or fists. They marched energetically and happily with us.

I’d given Rina and Asakura the shielding and movement speed buffs so that we could keep up with their pace and save stamina. It goes without mentioning that I’d been giving Rina her treatment often as well. Lately I’d practiced the movement speed buff a lot too. It’s quite useful and doesn’t use much mana, though I’m still not happy with its duration time still.

“You think our commander is wrong?” one of the dwarven females asked me testily.

“No, not that. I’m just wondering what our chances for surprises are. I want to know everything we can to have the best chance to come back alive and have a successful mission,” I added quickly.

“We like your people and your commander so far. We don’t want to stir up trouble,” Rina said diplomatically. Somehow it quiets down the dwarves that have been looking at us like we’re vagrants, except for Oleg.

“But couldn’t that also be like baiting something or someone to a trap?” I asked.

He sighed, “yes and that’s happened before. Ingvarrin is good and strong. He’s already anticipated that. He’s got everyone ready to move. He’s an experienced commander with the best survival ratio of all of our other armies right now too.”

“Wow, no way. That’s quite interesting,” I said.

The dwarves grunted at that. Apparently Ingvarrin is like their modern day Lincoln or Washington. I can see they are muttering something positive among themselves while we’re traveling.

Still we move under the light well enough but cavern tunnels aren’t fun to move in as a pack.

That’s when we got hit.

There was a shower of goblin arrows and spears coming out of nowhere.

The dwarves cried out to duck and cover.

They’d waited for us to get the maximum distance possible from our heavy armors. But to do that means they had to have been watching us from the whole time that we’d been on this underground gravel road.

I’m glad we had the runic shielding up. Our runic shielding is pelted with all kinds of fast moving projectiles that fly so fast we don’t get a good look at them. There is a series of jagged rips and dings of all sizes and types on the shielding. It holds but we lost about thirty percent of our shielding on the first volley. The dwarves had ducked down earlier seeing it as it was about to happen. Perhaps its because we lack the ability to see in the dark, why we got caught so flatfooted.

The follow up volley of thrown spears on the second barrage hit the dwarves easily. They’re lucky they have their normal metal shields up, which are apparently mandatory as part of their equipment. But two of them are hit with arrows. There was one in the shoulder, another in the forearm, and then just under the buckler after that. The wounded go down in the sand, so we don’t know right away if they are OK are not, but their fellows somehow pull them under cover.

That’s in the tactic book too and we’d seen them training in camp on how to pull the person next to you under cover if they are hit with arrows. But I wasn’t sure I’d actually see it.

There’s too much stuff being thrown at us to be able to do much but dive for cover, and most of the cover still feels inadequate as projectiles are flying madly around us. I grab the girls and we hit the ditch with the other dwarves on the side of the road where there’s a natural embankment to go for.

“There’s got to be quite a few of them if they can do this much,” Oleg growled.

I see the dwarves try to return fire. But they are slow and have to evade before they can throw. Plus we’re still trying to figure out where the enemy is coming from and how many of them there are. It’s slow to get that when everyone is afraid to put their head up to look. Intermittently we’re able to try to see their location and direction but because of the cavern pitch black darkness I can’t see well beyond my light spell radius range.

The light spell radius attracts extra fire too, which is making me grind my teeth. But without it I would be completely blind.

I have to reinforce Rina’s shield within the first five minutes, and then Asakura at the seven minute mark while mine is holding better partly from Asakura covering me.

“They’ve got us separated from the heavy armors,” Oleg said in surprise.

“They did what?!” I yelled out loud.

“Eh? Really?” Rina is upset hearing it.

That is super bad.

The heavy armors are what was supposed to make this whole maneuver safe and survivable. It’s like someone saying your jeep platoon just lost its tank escorts. The heavy armor golems were literally a moving wall of protection also!

“We’re fucked aren’t we?” Rina exclaimed.

“They’re still alive right?” I asked.

While we discuss it the dwarves are shouting and yelling at each other to try to get their unit together, but everyone is confused and in disarray.

“We need to work our way towards a spot that has more natural rock to put our backs against for cover,” I argued quickly.

“Probably,” he said a full ten seconds later as we worked our way behind some big boulders for cover. All the time we’re getting a bus load of projectiles thrown at us. It’s fortunate the wounded dwarves managed to stay with us and they are still alive. Right now much of the enemy fire is putting pressure on us but not doing harm anymore.

If only it wasn’t so dark right now.

“Shun, we need more light if we’re able to counter their fire,” Rina said.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Oleg said. “They can be blinded by light too. A lot of the underground goblins are a different variety than the surface dwellers. Some of them have never seen the sun and don’t like it too much.”

I can’t really cast the light spell a great distance but I can probably do a work around.

To do so I pulled an expendable orc spear in poor condition out of the item box. Then I cast the light spell on it. It’s a good workable trick. Then I had Oleg throw it into the thickest part of the goblins with the light spell formation blazing. It wavers a bit as the spell is weakened by the distance. But somehow it holds. The spell ignites the surrounding goblins on fire and we’ve hit a small group of them just from that one shot. It’s a good move and now the enemy is more wary of us. Plus our side is starting to pick up on their morale to chip in and fire back.

A bunch of goblins are trying to scurry back into the darkness. The dwarves hit them with crossbow fire. We can see a few of them hit the dirt dead as a doornail, but others are only wounded.

“Can we do that again? That was a good move,” Oleg called back.

“Can’t dwarves see in the dark already?” Rina asked him directly.

He snorted, “of course we can. But seeing and seeing enough to hit stuff with a crossbow are two different things. Every little bit helps where accuracy and range are concerned. Plus, dwarven night vision is …I hate to admit it, but goblin night vision is a very small amount longer than many types of dwarves. Some of their commanders know that and will hang at the very edge of the difference between the two.”

“No way? Really?” Rina is shocked.

“What did you mean by many types of dwarves? There’s more than one type?” I said in surprise.

“That’s news to me too,” Rina echoed right after me.

He doesn’t answer. But he’s hit my curiosity pretty heavy with that remark. He realized he’s probably said something that wasn’t supposed to be well known, but he’d slipped up because he thought we already knew that.

We prepare another light spell mixed with the paladin holy light as the other one goes out. It didn’t go out right away when hit, it seems. We have a better eye view that there are many goblins here among a whole series of natural earth formations for cover. But this time we used normal fist size rocks for my next spell volley. But we have to be careful because even getting them ready to throw puts us on their sights too.

We throw the medieval light blinder at them without the paladin holy light first, and they scatter again. The dwarves nail some of them as we’ve lit up a good target zone for them to zero in onto. They scattered some sporadic return fire at us. I end up having to renew runic shields on each of us three humans again because our shields had been depleted by the recent cross fire.

It seems that’s bad to do for very long without moving. It means even though my shields are reinforced they have recognized that the three humans have helped the dwarves provide the return fire and tip the edge in our favor. We’re now active targets and have to try to sneak under cover to a new spot several times in the next ten minutes.

After the last paladin holy burner is thrown the goblins retreat again, leaving a fresh set of burning goblin bodies.

“Not bad, looks like you got four that time,” Oleg grunted. He doesn’t look happy though. He looks like he’s actually a bit jealous that it wasn’t him.

“That’s our Shun for ya’,” Rina said giving me and Asakura high fives.

“Stay down,” I warned her.

“But they are gone!” she protested.

“Maybe…maybe not gone,” Asakura said, sniffing the air.

Some twenty minutes later, Oleg is ready to talk again. Things seem calm now. “I think they are gone.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to guess on that,” I replied sternly.

“We’ll see,” Oleg replies.

“You know we didn’t actually kill that many of them compared to how many there actually were. Why would they run off?” I said.

“They’ll be back. I’m sure of it. They love sneaky stuff like this,” he whispered harshly.

“Great,” Rina complained.

“…they’ll be …back?” I heard Asakura whisper to no one in particular.

Oleg signals and a couple of dwarven scouts scamper off into the hills where we’d been firing at.

We wait patiently, hoping they won’t be nabbed in the dark.

There’s the sound of some knife fighting and goblins shrieking as they die but after that the two scouts come back.

“Apparently not all of them were gone,” I said hearing the scouts skirmish and cursing goblins that are being hurt by knife slashes.

After a few minutes they come back. They go straight to Oleg and are talking really fast, carrying a couple of greasy goblin heads they’d just barely severed, which are still dripping gore on the ground.

“Wonder why they decapitate them?” Rina muttered.

“Because goblins are sneaky bastards that fake their death often,” one of the dwarven females said in response. It was the same talkative older one as before. She’d been hiding near us during the skirmishing.

They report something to Oleg. He fires some orders back and they scamper off again. I can’t help but notice these two are dressed in camouflage gear.

I hadn’t even known they were with us this whole time and weren’t part of the main part of the platoon. I didn’t know a medieval world could even have camouflage gear.

“Wait a minute, those two aren’t part of the normal seventeen dwarves with us,” I said.

“That’s right. That’s a good observation,” Oleg said.

“Wow, they are so good that I didn’t even see them this whole time,” Rina said.

“All dwarven units like to have a good scout or two when they are available,” he said.

So these are the scout stealthers that had been moving ahead of our small group this whole time, undetected!

“So how many dead on the score card?” I asked curiously.

“twenty seven dead gob trash,” his sneer flashed out openly. “I hate goblins with a passion. Of course it’s never enough and there’s always more that have gotten away, just like this time.”

We then proceed to move after I treat the wounded dwarves. One isn’t wounded badly but the other is quite serious. I don’t do a full heal here, since doing so will take gobs of mana. But I do close up the bleeding, treat him for pain, and poison. Then make sure the muscles are mana stitched so that they won’t re-open the wound.

It takes a good fifteen minutes longer than we wanted. But the dwarves are happy. It looks like they don’t often get a field medic with them in any form. Some of them are interested in watching; hoping they can learn something but I doubt it’s a transferable skill even if they had a good brain.

But we’re still separated from the dwarven heavy armors. It’s a bad sign. Why are they still ahead of us?

It doesn’t make sense to separate from us for very long or how that even started in the first place.

About an hour later we were hit with another surprise attack from the right side.

I realize I need to upgrade my runic shielding fast. All of us are hit with big fist sized holes in our energy shields. For a full ten minutes I have to keep up pumping out new shields one after another. I’m sweating pretty hard.

Crap.

I lost twenty percent of my mana in this hit and run skirmish.

We started to get organized enough to return fire, but this group is more numerous than the previous engagement. I’m still not sure how they gathered reinforcements so quickly but they did. We threw another couple of light spelled rock into them to blind them and illuminate the area and see a horde of them together.

There’s also an advantage of using just plain light spells to blind them, without mixing in the paladin holy burner. If I were to cast the light spell with holy burner I’d be able to do only one rock. But I’ve learned a trick to carry the mana further, on top of increasing the range, so now I can do two or three light blinder rocks at once, which the goblins hate.

“Shit. This settlement had a reason to call for help. There are tons of them. This isn’t just a goblin patrol,” Oleg said. He’s also swearing in dwarven. We can see him and the others trying to pick them off.

Our skirmish lasts for a full hour and I lose another thirty percent mana, as I throw out shields on my group, and a few other dwarves. I don’t like being out here in the open either. There is less area to use for cover fire here and range fire protection. We’re trying to also dig into the dirt floor of the cavern to make fox holes as fast as we can.

There seemed to be no end to the skirmish as we kept trying to avoid being hit by goblin arrows and spears for the next hour.

Now I’m at about a third of my mana, I think. It makes me feel pretty vulnerable.

This must be why the dwarves like digging weapons; to dig for fox holes and not only for mineral wealth?

It’s a tactically unsound area to fight from. We finally end up with a makeshift fox hole and it helps to slow mana loss since the shields are getting hit less. Three dwarves are wounded here. They aren’t life threatening wounds but its adding up to a lot of trouble quickly. I treated for poison and used mana stitching but that’s the limit to how much I can do right now.

Why did Oleg pick this area to roam through when he knew there were goblins nearby? Was he just overconfident? Why didn’t he try to maneuver us from another direction to approach the dwarven settlement? Is the dwarven settlement even still alive?

Our second light spelled set of thrown stones almost made our runic shields collapse from attracting too much enemy response. I got them back up in time but it terrified me. The second finally revealed to us an enemy leader position, which we identified by seeing him bark orders.

Then we spent the next ten minutes trying to crawl under cover of darkness to a new spot for cover.

We were able to make some progress after I hit a goblin lieutenant of some kind with my starry missiles. I had to hit him with two volleys before he died. It was worth the extra cost to take out a leader. Our hope is that doing so will demoralize them. The other dwarves have taken out as many of them as they can. But like Oleg said, it’s never enough and there are always more of them.

I hope we can get to the settlement fast.

“How much farther is it?” I asked Oleg.

“We’ve gone eight miles. We still have another twelve before we hit the settlement,” he answered back.

“That’s a long way,” Rina breathes out in awe.

“That’s too far, my mana won’t hold out that long,” I complained.

“That’s bad. I’m sorry but we have a responsibility to help these people. I can’t cancel the mission. These are real people. We aren’t allowed to quit or stop, even with your low mana. It’s the duty of the military to save its people even if we have to make sacrifices.” He frowned obviously upset. He’d already seen the efficiency my skills have brought.

He is a bit rattled himself and scared but still holding on.

Ingvarrin is clever. By keeping me with the dwarven military he was forcing us after the fact to help them win as much war as possible before we hit the capital. I just hope it’s worth it. If the capital doesn’t have a way of granting refuge we will be doing this for nothing.

“This better be worth it,” I grumbled to no one in particular. I try to mask my emotions but it’s hard.

“Yeah, just a little bit,” Rina added with a smirk near me.

“So at least let’s get off the road. We need to be roaming for cover while we travel from defensible positions,” I suggested.

“If we leave the road the heavy armors won’t know where we went. They won’t be able to find us,” he said.

“Damn.”

His face looked like it would melt from the bad news. “Crap. We need those armors back now.”

He barked some more orders. We don’t know what he told the others. We can’t also try to counter them, not just from language but because he outranks us all. His decision will determine if people die or live. I’m not happy about it.

“So how many dead?” I asked.

“Zero for us, 39 goblins down, plus however many escaped wounded. But about five or so that need medical attention on our side isn’t good. I don’t like it,” he said.

“That’s not too bad. But it’s amazing all that shooting and stuff took that long to take them down,” Rina snorted.

“I agree it’s a pretty good skirmish considering,” Oleg admits. “if no one died on our side that may give hope to the other troops.”

He’s giving me a studious look, for awhile now. But I’m not sure I like how he’s regarding me.

“But they are so tough. It’s like they take like five to ten blows before they die,” I said noting how bad and how long the fighting had gone on. I find them scary just from the fact that they can swarm so easily. I’d also seen the blood had made the ground all muddy and difficult to move in. The muddy ground must be why the dwarves liked their spiked boots? Should we get spiked boots too then, I wondered right after that. I wish I’d realized it sooner. Of course there are no shops out here to barter with while we’re between towns. Also I can’t loot the dead dwarves. In war when people do that their friends kill the ones with their friend’s belongings first when they recognize it happening.

“Yeah, goblins are tougher than they look,” Oleg raised an eyebrow. “It’s not an instant one shot kill like all those dreamers think it is. Sometimes it can take like eight or ten crossbow bolts or even sword slashes or more on some of them before they bleed out or you hit a vital spot.” He’s right; the illusion of goblins going down with just one hit really underestimates their many strengths.

“That explains why that skirmish took so long,” Rina commented.

Is she becoming jaded too? She’s taking this in stride but should be more freaked out. Or is it because she’s overestimating my shielding ability?

“We need a backup plan, so I can save more mana,” I said.

Also why are the two scouts still missing so long? They are supposed to check beck every half hour. They are way over due.

The runic shields counted again for a lot. We still have no casualties so far. But if I run out of mana it’s likely that none of us will survive.

“So how many people are in this settlement again?” I asked.

“It’s more of a walled village with a prosperous mine. Even though there aren’t many people here, it has the potential to fuel a population of up to twelve hundred,” he said.

“Which means, how many people are we risking our lives for?” I asked.

“42. They are tough folk, and the best of our dwarves of course,” he said proudly. I bet he’d say every settlement was the best of his folk though, as I study him with suspicion.

“We’re basically risking our lives for some wannabe villagers,” Rina nodded in disillusion. “Great.” She sounded like she wanted to go home and give up.

“They are craftsman, and miners with solid trades and a solid community. Their contributions help the economy in this area quite a bit. This isn’t a temporary village of fodder villagers,” Oleg reinforced.

“Whatever. Mining villagers,” I teased back. He didn’t like that so I didn’t push it. He glowered at me, but I don’t think he was too mad.

“So why does your friend not talk much?” Oleg asked.

Oh shit. He’s pointing and looking at Asakura.

“The one with the giant boobs,” he adds to make sure we know which one. Even while walking around they shake. Actually I’ve been having to come up with excuses of why we needed privacy in the medical tent the dwarves had so I can keep her milked ever since we discovered that particular problem.

“She’s just shy. She’s also faithful to me, and lots of people try to mess with our connection. We don’t like that,” I added stepping between him and her so he’s not ogling her anymore. That part was true. Over the last couple of days every time she’d gone out to get drinking water for our team well meaning dwarves had to be told she’s already got a man.

“That’s too bad,” he sighed, looking like his hopes were crushed.

The female dwarves in the unit are now pretty unhappy with Oleg. Was it against their culture to look at females of another race, I wonder. Or it could be they thought he was a good prospect for starting a family, I suppose…

“So back to before. Tell us more about this town? Why not just leave them? There’s more potential for loss than there is for the exposed risk of the military,” I said.

“Yeah, in theory your right. There are more soldiers exposed in the fighting than the whole towns worth of villagers. But you still don’t get dwarven economics. Let me explain it more clearly,” he chuckled.

“Which means what exactly?” Rina asked for me. He’d accidentally triggered her going defensive. Rina didn’t like people acting like she was stupid ever since we were young. They mixed up her naïve and childlike playfulness for it sometimes.

“The problem is that dwarven communities are very blessed by great wealth and solid infrastructure. So the problem is if its even just one sacked dwarven community, and even if all the dwarves survive becomes a problem with anything being taken in the form of land, buildings, or mines. Even if there are no dwarven deaths, there is huge potential for harm from the aftermath of the imbalance from losses,” he explained.

“Go on,” I encouraged him to talk further with my arms crossed over my chest.

“You see, just one small mine, or one small dwarven bank looted the goblins or orcs, or whoever will try to use that to convert the money into hiring more mercenaries from other tribes, be they goblins, orcs, or even sometimes a few treacherous humans or bandits. They’ll basically use all that wealtht o buy up forces to throw against us and do more harm. Add to that the natural blood lust of the goblins and orcs wanting to war with no reason means that you can get whole hordes of them signed up on the cheap anytime a whole solid mine is captured.”

I had a bad feeling where this was going.

“Holy flying farms,” Rina accidentally swore guessing where this was headed.

“So even though this looks like a community of less than fifty dwarves, it can be converted by the enemy into over a five hundred enemy troops, since goblinoid races’ lives’ are cheap. That’s not counting other communities being sacked. Now do you see the problem?” he gave us a sad smile.

It was the fake smile of someone who had seen war his whole life, I realized. He had a lot of battle scars on him.

And he wanted to win over our favor to help him save other dwarves. And he wasn’t the only one. The other dwarves are also giving us earnest looks, hoping we’ll stay in their camp but part of that might just be temporary stress from their heavy armors being separated from them.

I felt sympathetic, but…pursuing this forever meant a lot of sacrifice to help them. I hadn’t intended for the dwarves’ kingdom to be our final destination yet.

I sighed.

Do I make the Dwarven Kingdom our permanent base? Will the dwarves keep all their promises so far?