Ch.573Two Nations’ Political Situation

The frontline between Alvheim and Himmel, which had been locked in a back-and-forth struggle, entered a temporary lull.

Had the elves and dwarves broken their pride and stubbornness to achieve a miraculous peace negotiation? Of course not. If they had possessed that much flexibility, they would have conquered the world long ago.

They had ceased combat simply because both sides needed time to respond to the sudden anomalies that had occurred.

======[ Himmel ]======

“Maintain the firing line! Don’t let a single rat escape—exterminate them all! By Regin’s golden beard!”

A deafening roar mercilessly pounded the tunnel walls of the mine shaft.

The sound of gunfire, overlapping and amplifying until it transformed into a monstrous howl. A group of dwarves who had established defensive positions were pouring suppressive fire at the monsters flooding from beyond the tunnel.

The small monsters had faces resembling hungry rats with sharp goat-like horns. Their front limbs were abnormally long, while their hind legs numbered six in total.

They squealed “keek-keek” as green pus dripped from sores covering their bodies, emitting such a terrible stench that merely being near them evoked a revulsion that made one feel they might die from disease.

“Fire! Keep firing! Turn them into meat chunks!”

With each muzzle flash, blood and screams erupted like fountains amid thick gunpowder smoke.

Though the corpses of the shredded monsters filled the passage, the creatures continued their relentless advance, devouring the bodies of their fallen kin as they charged forward like an endless tidal wave.

“Come as much as you want! You think you can break through?”

Even the commander of the defensive line, who had been boasting confidently, could only tremble his beard with a sickened expression as the enemy numbers surpassed thousands and began reaching tens of thousands.

“What the hell? These monsters just keep coming! Did a gate to hell open up inside the mine?”

“…We did dig pretty deep.”

The machine gunner cracked a joke with a hollow laugh, but everyone was too appalled by the scale of the monster horde to appreciate their comrade’s sense of humor. They simply continued pulling triggers and changing magazines with grim expressions.

—-

“Close Tunnel 7 too! Bring all the explosives we have!”

“Then where are we supposed to mine iron from?”

“How should I know? Find a new vein somewhere!”

The dwarven nation of Himmel had taken a direct hit from the upheaval caused by the destruction of the third Holy Grail. Mines were closed, underground passages occupied by monsters, and cities collapsed. Their civilization was extremely vulnerable to tectonic shifts.

After Carlos the Great’s burial tactics that had nearly driven dwarves to extinction, their underground cities had been designed with thorough earthquake-resistant architecture to prevent collapse from similar terrorist acts or natural seismic activity.

However, even those designers had never anticipated that stable bedrock would rise, sink, and twist like elven temperaments without any external cause.

The result was the current disaster.

The underground cities, crushed by the earth’s upheaval and subsidence, had been reduced to miserable ruins as if dragons and giants had engaged in frenzied intercourse.

“Good heavens. Our city, Steelforge…!”

Some dwarves tore at their beards in lamentation. Their city, Steelforge, had been torn into five pieces, collapsed and mixed until artificial structures were indistinguishable from natural formations.

“We told you to build surface cities like us. Even after what happened eight hundred years ago, you still insisted on staying underground…”

“Are you telling the Steel Hammer clan to abandon our ancestors’ traditions? Like you Red Copper folk?”

“What has clinging to outdated traditions left you with? That stone tomb?”

The dwarves of the Red Copper clan clicked their tongues while pointing at the ruins of Steelforge.

The Red Copper clan, who rejected tradition and pursued innovation, were considered heretics by other clans for advocating expanded technological exchange and interdependence with the Empire. Yet once again, they had been proven right.

Their cities, built on solid foundations above ground rather than in dark tunnels, had withstood the upheaval that swept through Himmel with minimal damage.

Although the southern and northern districts had physically separated, that could be remedied by installing appropriate transportation between them.

In any case, faced with this sudden catastrophe, Himmel maintained an implicit ceasefire with Alvheim instead of continuing hostilities, focusing all efforts on damage control.

Since no one had anticipated this disaster, the losses were far greater than expected, and their ancestral weapons, while effective against elves, were of little help in this situation.

This was a matter requiring construction machinery to prevent natural disasters and repair damage, not military weapons for combat.

At least the Colossus and piloted mechanical armor were somewhat useful in dealing with the swarming monsters.

======[ Alvheim ]======

Unlike the dwarves facing catastrophe, the elves’ situation was somewhat better.

The roots of the World Tree, a living deity, firmly gripped the forest floor, minimizing damage from tectonic activity. Additionally, the dungeon monsters that had fallen through dimensional rifts before returning to the material world found it impossible to contend with the forest elves.

In other words, the elves hadn’t halted their advance because of damage from the anomaly.

【 Break the chains of heaven and the wedges of order, and release the devouring wolf upon the world. 】

As the elves were bewildered by the forest’s stirring and the earth’s screams, the leaves of the World Tree delivered an oracle. Like most oracles, it was a message full of difficult-to-interpret metaphors.

Since it had been eight hundred years since the World Tree’s will had been conveyed in such a clear form, the elders convened a council in excitement and shock to discuss the oracle’s meaning.

All elders attended the meeting, from the youngest at around eight hundred years to the oldest who had lived about fifteen hundred years through cycles of long slumber.

Even the five elders who had been receiving Feilandria’s “apology” after she returned alone, having lost Guardian Karvios, handed the sprawled, panting Feilandria over to her handmaidens before heading to the council chamber.

With all strength drained from her body, Feilandria couldn’t even utter a word of protest as a couple of handmaidens carried her like baggage from her bedroom to the bathroom, her legs trembling uncontrollably.

“Look at that. The Guardian must have exhausted herself ‘protecting’ the elders.”

“Heheh. No wonder she’s tired. Just yesterday, she was engaged in battle all night long with all her ‘gates’ wide open.”

Servants wandering the mansion corridors leered at her naked body and sneered, but Feilandria could neither express anger toward them nor cover herself.

There was no point anyway, since these servants were in league with the elders and already knew everything there was to know.

She could only express sardonic gratitude for the World Tree’s sudden oracle. Originally, she would have had to endure at least ten more days of torment, but thanks to the elder council meeting, she was freed from being the elders’ plaything after only four days.

—-

In the council chamber where all the elders had gathered, debates continued for days.

Though the oracle consisted of just one sentence, every word was metaphorical, requiring careful interpretation.

There were some educated guesses about what “heaven” and “order” might refer to. If only one of these terms had been mentioned, numerous theories would have emerged, but with both heaven and order referenced together, there seemed to be only one plausible answer.

“Doesn’t it refer to the human gods, Elpinel of Heaven and Astraea of Order?”

Most elders agreed with this interpretation, except for a few eccentrics.

“No, the World Tree spoke of the ‘chains’ of heaven and the ‘wedges’ of order. Chains are meant to bind something, and wedges to fix something in place. Considering this, heaven surely refers to the World Tree itself, and order to the current flow of the world!”

“Hmm…”

As the elderly elder over twelve hundred years old passionately argued, the others neither affirmed nor denied his interpretation, simply waiting for him to finish.

“In other words, I believe this oracle commands us to liberate the World Tree, whose ancient powers have been sealed since the accursed time of Carlos the Great, destroy the human-centered international order, and unleash the ‘devouring wolf’—that is, a great war.”

“…A great war, you say?”

“Yes. In the past, war was often called the season of wolves. Do you understand? This oracle declares that the time has come for Alvheim to reclaim its former glory through a great war!”

The elder who offered this strange interpretation argued with fervent tone that they should wage war against the entire world.

Of course, the other elders responded with skeptical glances rather than agreement.

‘This is why elders over a thousand years old…’

‘A great war? We couldn’t even defeat Himmel, yet he thinks we can win?’

Though they were among the oldest elves, generational gaps existed even among the elders.

Those who predated Carlos the Great’s era were mostly war hawks who constantly spoke of Alvheim’s glory and might, insisting that humans—who were originally mere slaves—should be returned to slavery.

In contrast, younger elders who had been children during Carlos’s time or were born afterward, while agreeing about elven greatness, believed it was realistically impossible for Alvheim to dominate the entire world.

Of course, as the young elves’ saying went, “age is a bully,” and the older elders always had stronger voices, so the younger ones couldn’t openly contradict them.

They could only hope that other elderly elders would restrain this particular one on their behalf.