An eerie and dark castle rises over the edge of a lake with a spire like a javelin in the style of an ancient magical empire.
Harold Steel Hammer carried a bag of ore on his back and walked towards the castle's warehouse, his steps heavy and slow.
As a minor dwarf, he was not like the muscular elders who wielded a giant hammer like a toy, and such a bag of ore was indeed a little too heavy for him.
However, Harold has no complaints about the heavy physical labor, and at least he can survive, at least not to be food for vampire masters like the delicate dwarves that have been selected.
This is the castle of Vlad Cecil, the "Great Count of the Blood", who controls hundreds of dwarven villages around him, selects "pure blood and flesh" from them for food, and drives the remaining slaves to labor in the mines and castles, mining and smelting for him the Nedam gold, which is unique to the Plateau of the Night, as well as the rare Caramo Iron and Mithril.
Dwarves seem to have been destined from birth, either to become food or to die early after squeezing the strength out of their bodies, and the landscape of their lives is only the part of their lives that are united for the sake of reproduction.
Although he never left the village where he was born and the castle of Count Vlad, Harold "heard" that whether it was the desolate south where he was now located, or the north where the horror reputation spread, the dwarves of other parts of the plateau lived in this way, and the pain and numbness continued.
Thinking of this, Harold raised his head, looked up at the darkness that would always shroud the plateau, looked up at the bright and bright constellations, and felt a little dazed and sad in his heart: "Could it be that my life is moving miserably along such a fixed track, and I don't see the slightest hope, and we dwarves will never be able to restore the glory of antiquity?"
Sharp pain came from Harold's face, and a blood-oozing whip mark suddenly appeared on the left side of his face and stretched across the dwarf's distinctive large nose to the right.
"Hurry up, what's the fuss" A vicious and ferocious voice came, and the shadow of the whip still echoed in front of him.
Yes, the dwarves have more than two destinies, they can turn their backs on their ancestors, curry favor with vampires like dogs, become their blood servants, and in turn watch over their companions.
How can a vampire who pretends to be elegant and noble manage dirty miners and coolies by himself, and naturally needs servants to do tedious things, but every vampire will consume his own blood source when he first embraces, and if a weak vampire develops more descendants, he will decay in advance, so even high-level vampires are not willing to produce offspring at will.
Moreover, vampires think very highly of themselves, and regard most of the lives of other races as dirty and lowly creatures, which they do not value or like very much, and it is impossible to waste the origin of blood to transform them into blood clans, therefore, the number of orthodox vampires has always remained in a small range, and a large number of blood servants who have been sucked by their blood and have not died, like puppets obeying orders.
As a blood servant, his strength is almost a formal knight, but he will never improve, and his lifespan is only one-tenth of that of his master, and he will never be able to resist his master, or even the idea of resisting.
Harold glanced at the dwarf next to him with a leather whip and dressed in gorgeous clothes, and lowered his eyes to prevent the hatred and anger in his eyes from being detected by him: "Yes, Steward Wells." ” This hateful traitor, who has reported and killed many of his kind, and who is only an overseer, likes to be called a butler, and when Galata, the real vampire butler, appears, he wants to kneel on the ground and kiss the tip of his shoe.
The red-haired dwarf Wells, because his master Vlad hated beards, shaved his proud beard clean, revealing his pitted face, and at this time he saw Harold's "handsome" brown beard, and couldn't help but get bored in his heart, and with a wave of his right hand, he gave him a whip again: "What were you thinking about just now, dwarves don't need to think about it, understand, I ask you understand, slut, dirty bastard, dwarf" He seems to have forgotten that he is also a dwarf, and completely regards himself as a noble blood servant who is only slightly worse than the orthodox blood.
"Understood, Steward Wells."
Harold's hands clutching the ore bag burst out.
"Get out" Wells did not dare to delay the progress, lest he be scolded by Mr.
Galata, the butler.
As soon as Harold took a few steps, Wells' fierce and vicious voice became unusually flattering: "Good afternoon, Lady Tess, Mr.
Galata, please go this way, it is full of ore powder, it is very dirty, and the foul-smelling dwarves will run into you." ” Even without looking back, Harold could imagine Wells' flattering appearance as he bent over and bowed his head, and the meticulous style of the tall vampire butler Galata, who was forever dressed in a black suit and always wore a neat bow tie.
And Lady Tess must still be that beautiful and bewitching, with long blond hair, a slender and well-proportioned figure, and green eyes like a lake, which have not changed since she was first embraced as a vampire by Count Vlad.
The thought of Lady Tess makes Harold feel unusually heartache and sorrow, she is the most beautiful dwarf with the surname of the hundreds of nearby villages, the lover of his dreams, but unfortunately she is favored by Count Vlad and becomes his vampire bride.
The cool breeze on the plateau blew, Harold buried his head, carried the ore bag on his back and moved slowly, and a voice as crisp as a birdsong came from behind him: "Hurry up smelting ore, don't let them be lazy." ” "Pay attention to the investigation, some of the dwarves who have escaped have formed a resistance army, and they must not be allowed to destroy the mines."
It was not until the evening came, when the constellation had changed, that Harold had finished his heavy labor, had a chance to breathe, and then left the castle with the ration and two black loaves of bread handed out, and returned to his home in a nearby village.
As he walked, Harold suddenly looked around vigilantly, and when he saw that there was no one nearby, his expression immediately became excited, and he turned into a remote road, carrying the darkness on his back and the starlight, and walked forward quickly.
After walking for about ten minutes, passing through a few sparse black "poplar" forests, Harold saw an ordinary boulder.
He looked around again, then cautiously tiptoed behind the boulder and tapped lightly against the face.
"Steam supreme."
Strange dwarven words came out of his mouth, like incantations without any mental support.
As soon as the voice disappeared, a crack suddenly cracked in the boulder, as if a door had opened, and a gray-faced dwarf stuck his head out and looked around, then waved his hand: "Come in, Harold." ” Harold quickly slipped inside, watched the dwarf close the stone door and lock it, and threw a loaf of brown bread to him: "Uncle Warren, I'll go down first." ” "Go, the Great Elder is waiting for you, my child."
Warren caught the black bread and drank the water, and his teeth were very good, as if he had been hungry for a long time.
Harold understood that Uncle Warren, the dwarven rebels hiding underground, had been short of food for a long time, so he shook his head sadly and inexplicably, and walked down the passage into the depths of the earth.
While drinking the water he carried with him and eating black bread, he sighed that the underground palace built by his ancestors was grand and magnificent, which made people deeply shocked: "Why was such a great ancestor defeated by a vampire" "Is it rejected by the gods?"
On the stone bricks on both sides, there are many murals carved, there are overwhelming airships, steam engine ships sailing on the ocean, there are terrifying cannons bombarded by dragons, and the steam train Harold galloping on the plain Although he has seen these murals many times, he can't help but be excited every time he sees them, so he loves to listen to the great elder Augustus tell about the things of the steam age, thinking about the glorious civilization of his ancestors, it seems that just thinking about it, life is full of hope and inherits glory.
At the end of the passage, there is a large hall that seems to be used for sacrifice, and on either side is a row of small rooms, from which the roar of steam comes from the incessant sound, and a sturdy dwarf is driving a steam sledgehammer to forge weapons.
"Harold, you're here" A dwarf with a long white beard bowed slightly to Harold, then followed his gaze and sighed softly: "It's a pity that our civilization has been lost, and we can't make complex steam engines, cannons, and rifles at all, so we can only make sharper swords and axes."
But this can only deal with the blood servants, and there is no way to deal with the vampires, let alone the north where the horror vampires are. ” His tone was vicissitudes and bleakness.
The "Great Elders" and a few "high-ranking people" who were dressed simply, but whose status was faintly higher than that of other dwarves, spoke out to stop them, how could they create an atmosphere of despair within the rebels.
Grand Elder Augustus smiled calmly and calmly: "Millna, Quirkins, we must let the people who follow us understand our situation, this is a path without any hope, whether to live numbly on our knees, or to defend the glory of our ancestors with blood, and die like a true dwarf, we must make our own choice." ” Suddenly there was a roar in the small houses on both sides of "Steam Supremacy", "Anyway, they are destined to die a painful death" Sharing food, Augustus asked Harold about the castle's recent movements, and they chose Count Vlad's territory to hide because they heard that he had been traumatized by "magical magic" in a war in his early years, and had never fully recovered, and needed to sleep often to keep himself intact.
"Lady Tess is instructing the Blood Servants to find you" Harold looked at Augustus wistfully after informing him of the only information he knew, "Grand Elder, can you tell me more about the ancient steam civilization?"
The beautiful female dwarf Mirna, who is still relatively young, is also full of anticipation, listening to the stories of the past told by the Great Elder is a rare "light" in the difficult life of the rebels.
"We dwarves once ruled over vast lands, and at the mouth of the endless ocean, on the banks of the Negnin River, in countless prosperous places, there were huge cities we built, and the chimneys made of steel rose like forests, spewing billowing black smoke, sometimes even blocking the sun and darkening the day."
"Between the cities, there are huge steam trains, and it only takes a few hours to get from here to the north, and every dwarf can get enough food, using all kinds of mechanical products, such as steam elevators that can lift people to the roofs of buildings, such as steam boilers that always have hot water for you to bathe."
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"The great dwarven warriors carried high-pressure steam packets, mechanical arms, and steam rifles, and pioneered dangerous field steam engine ships to sail across the oceans, and their huge cannon barrels made the enemy submit" Although they didn't know much about what day and sunlight were, it didn't stop Harold, Minna, and the other dwarves from listening to it with relish, it was the kingdom of heaven of their dreams.
Combined with the mural paintings, the city of steam machinery comes to their minds so vividly.
Harold clenched his fists and vowed to rebuild such a dwarven city one day.
When he told this, Augustus's expression was full of pride and yearning, and the folded petals on his face seemed to bloom.
"Alright, that's all for today, it's time to worship the god of steam, the great master of life and death."
Augustus got up and walked to the center of the main hall, where there was an altar painted with strange patterns.
"Great Elder, is it really useful?"
asked the flax-haired girl Mirina suspiciously.
Augustus glared at her and said sternly: "When we excavated this ruin, didn't we find the ritual of sacrificing to the gods of our ancestors, they are so powerful, so smart, how can they do useless things, I think our civilization was destroyed, it must be because we neglected the god of steam and were abandoned by him, so we need to be more pious in order to regain his favor." ” "Yes, Grand Elder."
In this desperate situation, the slightest opportunity can make the dwarves light the torch of hope.
Therefore, all the dwarves, including Harold, gathered in front of the altar and followed the Great Elder with strange gestures and movements, and danced inexplicably.
"O great god of steam, your pious servant prays to you."
To be continued: