novelraw Chapter 179: The Cunning Dragon! Rivers of Blood
Chapter 179: The Cunning Dragon! Rivers of Blood
Time flowed steadily and silently.
Thick night fog, like viscous ink, shrouded the borderlands. The valley ahead loomed faintly in the darkness, appearing and disappearing intermittently.
The elite forces of the Bloodhoof Clan advanced in silence. The mounts of the armored rhino knights trod upon damp moss, while spider-silk muffling cloth rendered the multi-ton beasts as silent as ghosts. The shamans atop the mammoths tightly gripped their silencing totems, their movements and sounds devoured by magic.
"The target valley lies ahead."
The White Mane Shaman frowned and lowered his voice, "Something's wrong. We're already very close, yet there are no signs of any sentries."
Dragon Valley was merely a few miles away from their troops.
At this distance, the White Mane Shaman had prepared to be discovered, his spells ready to unleash.
Yet as time passed and the troops advanced step by step, the valley ahead remained like a slumbering beast crouched upon the earth, utterly unresponsive.
No patrolling flying dragons or giant eagles filled the sky, nor were any hidden sentries detected.
No howls of patrolling gnolls, no lights from kobold watchtowers.The Bloodhoof forces' approach proceeded with baffling smoothness.
"Are dragons truly so foolish and arrogant that they leave themselves completely undefended?"
A captain scratched his bull horns in puzzlement.
"No. If that were truly the case, it would surpass mere foolishness."
The White Mane Shaman flicked his tail anxiously. "I sense unease... as if something terrible is about to happen."
Upon a massive mammoth, Chieftain Balor of the Bloodhoof Clan stood expressionless, gazing at Dragon Valley.
He remained silent, merely gesturing to a minotaur captain.
The main Bloodhoof forces halted as five agile scouts, led by a lean minotaur, shot forth like arrows toward the narrow, easily-defended valley entrance.
At first, they proceeded cautiously—especially when spotting the watchtowers perched along the valley cliffs, their nerves stretched to the limit, fearing a rain of arrows at any moment.
Yet what unnerved them more was this:
The watchtowers stood completely empty.
Meeting no resistance, they charged straight into Dragon Valley.
The scouts soon returned to the main force.
Their expressions were tense, their breaths rapid as they reported to Balor, "Ch-Chieftain... the valley is full of empty tents. All campfires have gone cold. No enemy warriors in sight—only the elderly, weak, and infirm lacking combat skills."
Balor, who had been standing on the ground gently patting his mammoth's trunk, froze at the report.
They'd been tricked!
That cunning dragon!
Balor's face darkened. He stomped, shattering the ground beneath him, and amidst flying debris, leapt back onto his mammoth's towering back.
Before he could issue further commands, a minotaur sorcerer at the rear suddenly paled, pulling from his robes a rapidly cracking crystal ball. Through its dimming glow, the silhouettes of dragons soaring over their stronghold could vaguely be seen.
This served as a signal.
More sorcerers and shamans grew visibly disturbed.
The White Mane Shaman produced a miniature model-like totem, its runes flickering with light as it transmitted the desperate shouts and roars of their clansmen:
"Enemy attack! Enemy attack!"
"Dragons are here!"
"Beware the ogres and centaurs!"
"Call for reinforcements!"
"............"
By now, even the dullest minotaur understood the situation.
The young dragons hadn't waited in the valley for the Bloodhoof Clan's arrival, nor had they intended a direct confrontation. The red and white dragons' actions were merely a ruse. While the Bloodhoof believed they'd drawn away and divided Dragon Valley's forces, it was their own strength that had been diverted.
The Bloodhoof Clan, seeking to storm Dragon Valley in one sweep and slay the dragons, now paid the price for their own cleverness and prejudice against dragonkind.
"Turn back. Return to the tribe."
Balor issued the order without hesitation, his voice devoid of fluctuation yet terrifyingly deep.
The minotaurs were bound by blood and totemic faith.
They valued clan, tribe, and family above all—unable to abandon their territory or their people.
With their defenses at their weakest, their tribal lands under assault and in peril, every minotaur burned with anxiety.
The mighty Bloodhoof forces that had marched forth now turned back in equal grandeur, moving faster than before.
But unlike their earlier excitement, every minotaur's heart now pounded with tension. Sorcerers and shamans abandoned stealth, focusing solely on enhancing speed and creating tremendous commotion.
Rewind several minutes earlier—to the Bloodhoof stronghold.
Garoth circled high above, his chilling gales tearing apart the arcane surveillance eyes.
Long before the minotaurs began their march, before the red and white dragons occupied their positions, he had already acted upon realizing the minotaurs' plans. His warhosts had covertly flanked toward the Bloodhoof stronghold, while Samantha and Trixie remained behind at the outposts to mislead the minotaurs—both having received his summons and now rushing to join him.
"Arrogant, conceited, foolish."
"Heap these prejudices upon me."
Initially, Garoth had found such biased disdain irritating. But as he matured, he realized it served as natural camouflage—letting enemies underestimate him actually worked to his advantage.
Rather than directly assault the well-lit, sizable minotaur settlement below, the red iron dragon simply watched silently from above, allowing his vassals to fulfill their roles while conserving his own strength for the fiercer battles to come.
Meanwhile—
A night breeze curled around a totem pole.
The minotaur sentry in the watchtower had only time for half a warning cry before a hybrid centaur's explosive magic arrow pierced his throat, blasting apart both his body and most of the tower.
ROOOOAR!
A magnificent golden dragon nearly twenty meters long, its every scale gleaming, appeared midair with a clarion roar.
Golden dragon?!
Remembering the legendary might of golden dragons from ancient texts, several sentries' hearts stopped—literally frightened to death—while most minotaurs nearly forgot to breathe, frozen in terror, minds blank.
Fortunately, the terrifying golden dragon dissipated like a mirage, apparently not truly present.
Almost simultaneously—
Thirty shadowy figures scaled the battlements along the walls' darkness.
Gnoll Warlord Hodge stood at the rear, his feet upon a crimson commander's aura. Before him, gnoll hunters swelled as if filled with tar and oil, their claws and fangs bared as guttural growls tore from their throats.
"Rip out their throats!"
"For the Clan of Molten Iron!"
Chaos descended.
The Bloodhoof Clan instantly fell into disarray.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The dragon-blooded Gluttonous Ogre Karu's scales burned crimson like raging flames.
This monstrous behemoth—only slightly shorter than the walls themselves—charged forward with earth-shaking steps, shrugging off spears and arrows alike.
Then—
He slammed into the wall like a battering ram.
CRASH!
Stone crumbled as the wall collapsed, revealing twelve poison-tipped spears awaiting Karu.
Yet when the venomous points struck his body, they sparked against his hide!
"Meat..."
Karu's drool-dripping maw split into a grin as his massive hands seized two minotaur heads and smashed them together. Brain matter splattered across his face, which he licked clean with relish, his horrific demeanor chilling to witness.
To the west, a minotaur sorcerer brandished his staff.
Earth and stone surged upward at his command—
Only to be interrupted by a hail of arrows.
Silvermane reared up, his arm muscles coiling like steel wires as he loosed an arrow that punched through the sorcerer's eye socket and out the back of his skull.
The centaur cavalry he led swept past the walls, their arrows raining down with precision upon sorcerers and shamans.
Notably, none of the cavalry that had followed the white dragon were centaurs.
The ground split open.
Bloodhoof totem poles rose across the battlefield, their runes igniting in sequence to unleash interwoven lightning chains, howling ice arrows, and exploding fireballs.
Elemental magic rampaged across the battlefield—
One moment a tsunami of destruction crashing upon enemies, the next a healing drizzle upon minotaur warriors.
WHOOSH—WHOOSH—!
Elvy hovered midair, her wings spread as arrows streaked like meteors.
The half-elf spellblade hybrid was peerless in archery.
Her arms blurred as mana-infused explosive arrows sliced through the sky like precision-guided missiles, hammering the totem poles.
The magical barriers trembled violently under the bombardment, their counterattacks visibly weakening.
Nearby, the dragon-blooded Gluttonous Ogre Karu grinned savagely as he tore a minotaur captain in half.
He casually plucked a spear from his shoulder, smeared his bloody palm across the wound, and gnawed on an arm—his injuries healing visibly as he did.
The dragon-strong monster stomped forward toward the nearest totem pole.
Heavily armored ogres arrived simultaneously, alongside a few equally massive trolls.
"Skulls for hammers!"
"Bones for songs!"
They bellowed their warhost's crude battle cries—voices rough and discordant as growls and roars, yet carrying unstoppable momentum.
Clad in diamond-reinforced steel plate, they advanced like a moving fortress under the totems' assault, swinging great axes, warhammers, and wolf tooth clubs.
As the Clan of Molten Iron's most elite Starbreaker Maul warhost,
They enjoyed the finest equipment and provisions—and bore the heaviest frontal assault duties.
Suddenly, the sky darkened.
Amidst shrieking cries and volcanic roars, red dragon Samantha's flying dragon squadron plummeted into battle like meteors, their flames reducing all vegetation to ash.
The white dragon arrived slightly later, leading swift cavalry like giant wolf knights and hyena knights through the breaches in a tidal surge.
With both dragons wreaking havoc above the Bloodhoof stronghold, the battle's outcome became inevitable.
One by one, the totem poles toppled with thunderous crashes. The minotaur defenses melted away like snow under scorching sun. The battlefield became a wasteland of corpses, blood flowing in streams between ruins.
The Clan of Molten Iron—
This 'beast' led by the red iron dragon—now bared its lethal fangs upon the borderlands for the first time.