Chapter 508 Arrival
The small commotion caused by the monster attack quickly subsided, and everyone continued to rush towards Bullingdon Stone City.
Under the guidance of Nohir and Asdalen, the spawns have initially acquired very good combat effectiveness. While maintaining their numerical advantage, they can ignore most of the conventions in the Underdark. monster.
Because of this, the efficiency of everyone's travel can be said to be very good. In just two days, they have crossed nearly 2/3 of the distance, which is perfectly in line with Nohill's Originally expected.
But large-scale migrations always bring about various dangers. The most difficult to deal with among these dangers are not the predatory monsters that occasionally appear, but the predators living in the dark areas. Other intelligent races.
Originally, during the two-day migration, the strongest monster everyone encountered was just a shark-lizard beast. The moment this monster emerged from the ground, he was chopped off by Nohir with an axe. He took his head off and defeated it easily.
But when the time came to the third day, the situation immediately became different. At this time, the spawns were extremely close to the destination of their trip, Bullingdon Stone City, but compared with the distance from them There is still a long way to go to Blingden Stone City, but what is really close in front of you has become the drow city of Menzoberranzan.
As mentioned before, the location of Menzoberranzan is very close to Blingden Stone City, and it just blocks the way for the spawn to lead to Stone City.
Menzoberranzan is a city built in a canyon. The canyon where this city is located is the core hub connecting the northeast and southwest in the underground world. If you want to reach Blingden Stone City , you have to go through this canyon.
The city of Menzoberranzan is currently the largest gathering place of drow elves. There are nearly 20,000 drow who are all soldiers. They are extremely dangerous, insidious and cunning drow.
Although these drow only number 20,000, they are definitely much more dangerous than these spawns who are young and have little combat experience.
The long life span allows them to have enough time to practice martial arts, magic, or more dangerous fighting methods. The long-term dominance of the Dark Region has allowed these guys to accumulate an unparalleled wealth. According to rumors, In the Underdark, even an ordinary drow soldier has magical powers in his weapons and armor (this is not a rumor).
And an ordinary drow warrior like this can easily deal with more than a dozen vampire spawns with no combat experience. If you add in the fact that there are a larger number of drow in this city than these drow, times as many slaves...
Nohir can assert that even on paper, the power of Menzoberranzan is many times greater than theirs, and the actual gap in combat power is far greater than Their thoughts are even more exaggerated. If there is a real conflict with these drow, the result waiting for these spawns will be defeat.
The huge team stopped a few miles away from Menzoberranzan. In fact, this distance can be said to be quite close, but the special environment of the Underdark and the twists and turns of rock passages Blocking the sight of those drow.
However, although they have not directly exposed all of themselves to the sight of those drow, Nohill knows that their team has actually been discovered by the opponent a long time ago.
There is no way around this. Again, it is because their team is too large and bloated. After all, there are nearly 7,000 vampire spawns. So many people acting together can cause It is absolutely impossible to cover up the movements casually.
Menzoberranzan has long been secretly paying attention to their team. In fact, Nohir can now feel that someone is using magic to spy on them.
At least in this realm, apart from the mages from the drow clan, there is probably no one else who can do this kind of thing, and this is exactly the situation everyone is facing now.
The problem they face now is that not only is the road in front of the team blocked, but their whereabouts have also been completely discovered. The party who has discovered them seems to have overwhelming power and can completely eliminate them.
The combination of these conditions made the team's situation suddenly become very bad, and even some uneasy voices appeared in the team.
But something interesting happened. After their team had been stationed in place for half an hour, there was still no big movement from the drow side.
Up to this time, Nohir had fully understood that there was no need to continue panicking. If he was right, the most dangerous drow events should have been going on in Menzoberranzan now. His specialty is fighting among himself.
Fighting among yourself when there is a foreign enemy? This kind of thing may sound outrageous, but for drow elves, fighting for power, suppressing other families, and consolidating their own rule are the creeds they believe in from the Spider Goddess, Rose herself, since the birth of the drow elves. Since then, there has never been a day when they did not follow this rule.
The social rule of the drow elves is based on the family as the basic framework, plus the parliamentary system formed by the leader of the family, the female drow known to the world as the matron. At the same time, the matron is in the parliament The right to speak in the family comes from the power of one's own family.
The matron of the most powerful family will also have the most say, but this position can be rotated. The lower-ranking family can initiate attacks on the higher-ranking family. Although everyone knows it, it must not be mentioned openly. , a secret bloody challenge.
As long as a family is prepared, it can use a series of related methods including poisoning, ambushes, traps, etc. against another family at any time. As long as it can be completely wiped out, no one will be left. Then they can successfully ascend to the top.
The city of the drow will always have only a superficial order. No matter what kind of serious crime is committed, even if an entire family is destroyed, as long as no one comes out to identify him and provides enough evidence, then people will They will turn a blind eye to his crime, even if everyone knows that they did it.
They do this not only for power and strength, for the prosperity of their family, but more importantly, to please their goddess.
As Nohir said before, Lolth is a cruel, fickle goddess who likes to have her worshipers at each other's throats in order to make the strongest, the most cunning, and the most cunning. The cruel survivors stayed to serve her.
From a normal person's perspective, such behavior seems no different from that of a madman, but it is this kind of chaos that Rose pursues. She is the goddess of the drow race and drow society, and is the nature and nature of most drow communities. The origins of customs, laws, and the survival of these communities. Through her clergy who relentlessly practice the ways of Lolth by sifting out and destroying all traces of dissent, disobedience, hostile faith, or blasphemy, the Spider Queen maintains control over the drow cities. Absolute domination.
The Spider Queen instigates endless chaos in drow society. Some scholars believe that the reason why she does this is to please herself and to prevent the drow from doing so. to prevent complacency and pride in our society, or to avoid the rise of hostile beliefs.
She plunged the drow into an eternal war between the same race, just to maintain her absolute dominance over the drow race. This speculation is also recognized by most scholars who study the gods.
But Nohir doesn't care about the truth behind this. He only knows that now is an excellent opportunity, and even good ones are rare. After all, even if the drow elves have such shortcomings, they are also very good. There will be less discord when one's own homeland faces threats.
Nohir estimated that there must be some other twists and turns, perhaps there were some changes within the eight major families in Menzoberranzan, but no matter what the truth was, he would not give up this good opportunity.
Originally, Nohir was still planning that if Menzoberranzan really sent out troops against them, he would go all out and let these guys see what a true unparalleled war god is.
Anyway, for Nohill, who can change his body size into a super giant, and can automatically frighten the enemy with the tomahawk in his hand after killing the enemy, pure quantity has no meaning in front of him. If They were really looking for death, so Nohir could show off his strength for the last time in front of these spawns.
But unfortunately, those drow did not give them a chance, so Nohill had to seize the time and take the spawns on a long detour, around the outside of the valley, and through his nose, Nohill successfully found The other races who have wanted to bypass the city of Menzoberranzan in the past millennium have quietly discovered the hidden roads in the dark.
Using these tiny shortcuts, it took the spawn another half a day to finally bypass Menzoberranzan.
Nohir, who stayed at the end of the team until he saw the last spawn entering the cave, looked up at the bottom of the rock wall. It was covered with glowing purple moss, with hollow patterns everywhere, and a cave city full of unique beauty. .
He still doesn’t understand what those drow are doing. They have done nothing for half a day. This low efficiency really shocked him, but...
Nohir raised his hand and touched his chin, then simply shook his head, gave up thinking about this, turned around and followed the team at the end. No matter what the group of drow were doing, there were no half of them now. It doesn't matter what the dime is.
Just before Nohir led the other spawns towards Bullingdon Stone, a good show was also going on in the council hall in Menzoberranzan.
In the parliament hall, the matrons of the eight major families were divided into three factions, quarreling among themselves, and the subject of the quarrel was naturally because of Nohir and his party.
Menzoberranzan had indeed learned about the existence and movements of their team a day ago. Nohir's guess was absolutely correct. However, the eight major families had different opinions on how to treat their uninvited guests. There are huge differences, but there are three different views in total.
The most powerful Banre family in the city, the matron of this family originally advocated ignoring the visitors, but after other families proposed to recruit this group of vampire spawn and use them as slaves, Banre The Rui family began to change their views to annihilating them all.
Because from the perspective of the Baenre family, if Menzoberranzan really incorporates this group of vampires, the family that gains the most will also gain the powerful combat power of the vampires, which means that in the future, these vampires will These guys may pose a threat to the sovereignty of the Banre family, so annihilating them all is the move that best serves the interests of the Banre family.
In addition to the extermination faction of the Baenre family, the other side is the incorporation faction represented by the Obloza family. Their group is also the faction that has contributed the most to the incorporation of Nohir's group of vampire spawns. Because their family is rich in blood mages, as well as a series of special props and potions that use blood as raw materials and have different functions.
For the Obloza family, these nearly 7,000 vampires represent an unparalleled gold mine. Because of this, the family does not want to waste these vampires under any circumstances. That's why they tried their best to reject the Banre family's secret order.
In addition to these two factions, there is another faction dominated by the Solarin family, which advocates ignoring it and believes that there is no point in conflict with these vampire spawns. As long as they do not come to threaten the safety of the nobles, then It would be better to just let them go. Anyway, looking at the direction they are heading, these vampires have already locked onto Bullingdon Stone City.
If the targets of these vampire spawns are really those dwarfs, it would be better to just let them go with all their beards and tails, and then let them kill the group of underground dwarfs.
In short, under such conditions, the drow elves did not make the slightest change in their relationship, so successfully allowed Nohir to lead everyone to evacuate this dangerous area, and successfully evacuated the drow. The elf's worries were put aside, and he finally succeeded in bringing the spawn to Bullingdon Stone City.
Nohir took Asdalen and seven of them to meet the king of the underground dwarfs. King Unitik also entertained them warmly. Finally, after some pleasantries, Bu Lingdeng Stone City finally succeeded in signing that relatively friendly, fair and unique contract.
The two parties quickly handed over a series of necessities, including food, clothing prepared in advance, and authorization to garrison the abandoned mine.
When Nohill got this, he immediately took people to explore the situation of the abandoned mines on the spot. In the dark areas, the holes dug by miners often deliberately opened them much larger than the normal mines. And not only the entrance, but also the internal volume is very large, and the environment inside can be said to be intricate.
The advantage of this design is that when mining and transporting minerals, you don’t need to carefully lower your head to push the cart. Instead, more people can be dispatched at one time, and more materials can be involved in the excavation of minerals. Exploit all the minerals inside as quickly as possible.
As for the disadvantages...
(End of this chapter)