The Heartbeat of the Cruel Elves

"Tick!" Another crisp sound was heard, and a drop of water fell from above, hitting the protruding rock, shattering into small splashes of water, adding to the wet marks on the rock wall.

He looked up and saw a tiny crack on the upper part of the rock wall. Drops of water gradually condensed on the crack, waiting to fall...

This result disappointed him greatly, but also made him feel relieved from the bottom of his heart.

As long as he is not an enemy... He comforted himself silently.

He gathered his thoughts, followed the pace of the main force, and took another step forward.

Just then, his ears suddenly caught another sound.

That was definitely not the clear sound of dripping water, but more like the dry sound of two hard objects locking together, and it was much clearer.

"Click!" A clear strange sound came from right in front of him.

This time it was not just him, all the slaves and dark elves stopped in an instant.

Chapter 2 Exploration ()

Li Yin looked over the shoulder of the dark elf female warrior in front of him and looked towards the source of the sound.

He saw the slave troops in front of him raised their heads at the same time.

This action puzzled him.

Because the noise just now was at a very low altitude, obviously coming from the ground.

But then he understood why they did that—a whistling sound of wind came from high above their heads.

The next moment, before he had time to look up like them, a huge black shadow suddenly fell from the sky, drew an arc in the air, and smashed towards the position of the first slave vanguard at an unexpected speed.

There was a dull sound, like the sound of a sharp object piercing flesh, and Li Yin saw the slave army disappear from the ground in an instant. Then there was a loud bang - the huge black shadow hit the rock wall on one side and fixed it. Li Yin looked closely and found that it was a fence, a huge fence made of countless logs nailed together horizontally and vertically. However, unlike ordinary wooden fences, the two sides of the fence were covered with spikes made of sharpened wooden stakes.

At this moment, the spikes on its right were densely covered with pierced human bodies - they were the first team that was in the middle of the tunnel just now.

"Trap!" a thin voice shouted.

It was the dark elf instructor who had just commanded the first team. When the huge shadow fell, she was the only one who reacted. She was also the only one at the end of the team who had the chance to turn around and retreat, dodging this round of attack in time.

The screams of agony rang out one after another. They were from the slaves nailed to the wooden stakes. They did not die immediately. Their bodies were still convulsing and twisting, and screams burst out of their mouths one after another.

At the same time, Li Yin's keen ears caught one crisp dripping sound after another - but this time it was no longer water droplets, the water droplets did not have such a fast frequency and density, they were blood droplets dripping from one slave after another, falling like a rainstorm into the pool of blood that had already gathered on the ground.

"Ah-ah, ah-ah!" Just when everyone was terrified, a strange voice suddenly came into their ears. The voice was full of energy, yet hysterical and extremely panic-stricken.

Everyone looked in surprise at the source of the sound. It was a gray dwarf. He was crouching in the gap between the huge wooden fence and a protruding rock. The protruding rock was exactly the rock with water dripping that Rein had observed before. Because of the gray dwarf's short stature, and perhaps a little luck, he hid in the shelter under the protruding rock that was just big enough to accommodate his short stature before the wooden spikes pierced him.

At this moment, his gray skin was bulging with veins, his shiny forehead was covered with sweat, and he was howling heartbreakingly. But it was obvious that unlike his other unfortunate companions, he did not have any visible scars on his body.

He was the only survivor of this sudden incident besides the dark elf instructor, and also the only slave survivor.

But he himself did not seem to realize this at the first time. He just closed his eyes and wailed, as if death was approaching step by step and had already strangled his neck.

"Quiet!" The surviving dark elf instructor from the first squadron was the first to react. "Number 753? Or number 754? What the hell - you dirty gray dwarf, if you dare to scream again, I will stick you on these stakes with my own hands, let those stakes go in through your assholes, and then come out of your stinky mouth that keeps screaming!"

But her vicious abuse had no effect, because, obviously, the gray dwarf, who was already scared of death, did not realize that the vicious abuse was directed at him. It was even a question whether his already confused mind effectively received the clear and fluent abuse.

He still kept his eyes closed and wailed loudly. His miserable screams drowned out the weak moans of the real victims and echoed far away in the dark tunnel.

After a long while, he finally moved his stiff body, and then a look of incredible surprise appeared on his broad, gray face.

"I... I'm not hurt?"

This time he was so frightened that he spoke his native language, the Dwarven language. Li Yin did not recognize it at the time, and just thought it was a bunch of gibberish. It was only many years later, when he learned more and recalled his past experiences, that he understood the specific situation at that time.

He trembled and opened his eyes.

However, immediately afterwards, his face, which had just revealed a hint of surprise, instantly froze, and at the same time, his wide mouth with two thick lips opened sharply, and the gray beard that almost covered half of his face trembled violently, and he let out a series of inhumane howls again.

Directly opposite him, on a huge wooden fence, hanging against his cheek, was a corpse.

But it was not a fresh corpse - most of the body tissues had been dried and corroded, dry and tight, and in many places the gray-white bones were directly exposed.

It was a dried corpse hanging upside down, its skinny face facing the face of the gray dwarf, who was not sure whether it was No. 753 or No. 754. There were no eyeballs in the deep eye sockets, only two large black holes, surrounded by gray cheekbones and brow bones.

"Be quiet, you bastard!" The dark elf instructor's cheeks flushed red as he shouted again, unable to bear it any longer. "That's just a dried corpse. The dead spirits can't do anything to you. Stay still and don't move. We will get you out of that damn place!"

The gray dwarf was stunned, but this time he seemed to have listened to his leader's order.

He slowly opened his eyes, making sure that he was looking at a motionless corpse, and a smile of relief emerged on his face. Then, he slowly turned his neck to avoid any contact with the bony face, and looked towards the main force with hope.

However, at this moment, the smile of relief on his face gradually became a little unnatural, because he was confused to find that the faces of the slaves of all kinds and the dark elves opposite him became a little strange, as if they had seen something incredible.

Li Yin watched with his own eyes, and just as the gray dwarf turned his head, a pair of bony arms suddenly stretched down from above him. A pair of bone claws pressed down on the gray dwarf's shoulders, and the trembling smile on the gray dwarf's face froze in an instant. The next moment, before he could turn his head, the dead head that the dark elf instructor said "I won't do anything to you" suddenly made a click, and the upper and lower jaws opened together, and the white teeth were aimed at his head to bite.

Chapter 3 Exploration ()

Ah!

The duergar's mighty scream lasted only a moment, and then he became as weak as his unfortunate companions.

“Sizzle~Sizzle~”

The skinny corpse held down the gray dwarf's body and pulled itself off the picket of the wooden fence bit by bit. Its hanging body turned over and fell to the ground with a thud. Then it stood up shakily with a sound of bones colliding, and then staggered towards the crowd. At the same time, the body of the gray dwarf, whose head was half eaten by it, fell to the ground.

The slaves of the entire army howled in fear at the same time. The second and third teams that were exploring the route ahead hurriedly retreated. The three dark elf instructors tried to stop them from deserting by whipping them, but to little avail. The panicked slaves retreated all the way to the front of the regular army, and then the dark elves' unsheathed swords slightly stopped their frantic pace.

But this was only temporary. As the mummies approached step by step, they roared, and the slaves kept rushing towards the regular troops, but were forced back again and again, like waves hitting the dam again and again. If this continued, either the dam would be washed away or the "waves" would be smashed to pieces.

At this moment, suddenly, two dark elf instructors jumped out from the slave army, and attacked the staggering mummy from the left and right.

With two swishing sounds, two blades flashed past. The clumsy mummy didn't have time to react before it was cut into three pieces by the dark elf's deft sword. The sword on the left slashed across the chest of the mummy, cutting off its arms and chest in one fell swoop. After the undead creature's uppermost body fell to the ground, it had not lost its "activity". It stretched out its arm, which was only a piece of bone, and "grabbed" the ankle of the dark elf on the left. The slaves watching were all horrified, but the dark elf remained calm, raised his right foot, and stepped on the mummy's rotten head. With a snap, its fragile skull immediately shattered into a pile of bone fragments, and the broken arm that had just been raised also lost power in an instant, and fell back to the ground with a snap.

"Waste!" The dark elf instructor turned around and looked at the slaves who were still gasping for air and whispering in surprise.

"It's just a dead body, what's the big deal?"

"Get back and line up again!"

At the same time, her other companion still had his back to the troops and faced forward, continuing to stare at the swaying huge wooden fence, guarding against new undead creatures coming down from it.

Fortunately, similar situations did not happen again. So the slaves reorganized their formation under the whipping and cursing of the dark elf instructor and walked forward again. When they passed by the remains of the mummies, they still couldn't help trembling and making bursts of gasping sounds.

As for Li Yin, he was fine. The undead creature did not cause any special reaction in him, except that the first time it gnawed the gray dwarf's head, the scene was too shocking and made him feel physically uncomfortable. Because he soon realized that it was just a low-level undead creature. When he was studying at the magic academy, whether it was the undead creature-related projects in the laboratory or the security maintenance in the municipal cemetery during his internship, he had a lot of "dealing" with them.

A dark elf walked in front and came to the approximate location of the trigger mechanism of the first team. After searching for a while, she found the trigger device on the ground. Li Yin saw her squatting on the ground, fiddling with it for a few times, and then making a few hand gestures to the back. Dark elves are a race that excels at stealth and sneak attacks, so sign language occupies a very important position in their culture, and it is almost a second language that every dark elf must learn. In this way, during a surprise attack, they can communicate without making any noise and achieve unimpeded communication. However, at the moment, due to the noisy slave cannon fodder in fear, the stealth of this expedition team can be said to be greatly reduced.

After absorbing Turner's memory, Rein also mastered this "language". Through the dark elf's gestures, he knew that the trap had been dismantled.

Next, the dark elf wandered around again, observing carefully. After a while, she made another set of sign language to indicate that there were no other traps around.

Therefore, as the last precaution, the previous second and third slave detachments, as well as the first detachment which was replenished by recruiting new members from the large group of slaves behind, went forward first.

The three slave teams all stood in fixed positions, and then the regular troops of the dark elves made way for a path. The leader of the expedition team, Princess Cassia, came to the head of the team and walked forward first, followed closely by Li Yin.

Cassia came to the huge wooden fence that was pierced with many living corpses and a number of mummies, chanting spells in a low voice and constantly making gestures with her hands.

Li Yin recognized at a glance that it was a 0-level spell, detection magic.

Her scarlet eyes sparkled with silver light as she looked around intently, first at the wooden fence full of corpses, then at the surrounding rock walls, and above her head...

"There are no traces of spells or magic circles," she said slowly after a while, "It seems that it is just the natural accumulation of negative energy that caused the corpse to turn into a corpse. We can rule out the possibility of a necromancer."

After hearing what she said, not only the slaves but even the dark elves breathed a sigh of relief.

The same goes for Li Yin. In this deep and dark underground world, one less enemy is always better than one more.

However, deep down in his heart, he always felt something was strange.

He lowered his head and pondered for a moment, unable to figure it out, so he raised his head and looked around. When his eyes swept across the huge wooden fence covered in blood, his eyes moved slightly and his expression froze.

"What's wrong?" Cassia, who was standing by, noticed his abnormality and asked.

"Your Highness," he hesitated for a moment, "Don't you think this trap is... too big?"

This wooden fence with picket posts is not uncommon as a trapping tool, both on the surface and in the underground world.

In the dark elves, or more precisely in Turner's memory, the dark elves, who were originally inclined to ambush and trap, used them more frequently.

The problem is that traps like this are usually only about five to seven feet in size, which is enough to deal with two or three intruders at a time. But this thing... it is more than ten feet long and wide, pinning the entire first team on it, and there is even a lot of space left!

Chapter 125 Giant Creatures

Li Yin expressed his doubts truthfully.

"It seems that the wars of these ancient dark elves are much more cruel." Beside Cassia, a dark elf female warrior grinned and laughed.

"Is there another possibility?" another dark elf female warrior added cautiously. She looked up at the wide sides of the tunnel and the high dome. "Generally, traps can only be that big because of the narrow terrain, but there is no such limitation here?"

Li Yin had to admit that what she said made sense, so he temporarily suppressed another speculation in his mind.

The troops continued to move forward. The further they went, the more traps they encountered, and the types were also varied, including falling rocks, rolling logs, pits... Some of them were discovered by the slaves at the cost of their lives, and many more were discovered and dismantled by the sharp-eyed dark elf soldiers before that. After all, they were experts in setting traps. However, the few traps that were not discovered also caused considerable damage to the slave troops, and even one dark elf soldier was killed and two were injured.

Standing in front of a huge pit, everyone looked at each other in bewilderment.

"Don't you think so?" Li Yin whispered. Normally, in the dark elf army, he, a human slave, had no right to speak, but because Princess Cassia often asked for his opinion, the other dark elves did not object. But every time he spoke, Li Yin could still feel the strange looks from the people around him, so he tried to lower his voice, "Is this... a little too loud?"

The deep pit in front of them was about thirty feet long, twenty feet wide, and deep... Li Yin carefully looked at the dark bottom covered with spikes again. It was about thirty feet deep as well.

Inside were the bodies of an orc, a bugbear, and a grimlock. They were the three slave soldiers in the first row of the first team that had just walked in the front. Their originally sturdy figures, now seen from a distance, looked like three small dots in the depths of the huge pit.

It is a bit of a stretch to call such a huge pit a “pit”. To be realistic, it should be named a “valley”.

Li Yin really couldn't imagine why it was necessary to set up such a huge pit just to target medium-sized humanoid creatures, or, as the elves said, elf-like creatures.

This simply increases the workload and difficulty of the trap setter. Even if the size of the pit is reduced by one or two times in length, width, or height, its lethality to the dark elf expeditionary force will not change; the targets it can kill are only the two or three targets in the front row. Moreover, when the size of the trap is enlarged, the chance of it being exposed is greatly increased... In short, setting such a large pit seems to be a completely unnecessary act.

This cannot be explained simply by the vast terrain. A more likely explanation is that Li Yin slowly stated his previous guess:

This kind of trap was not originally intended for targets of their size.

The dark elves who were in deep thought around all showed sympathetic expressions, as if their views coincided with Li Yin's.

"It seems," said a female dark elf warrior, "the real reason for the destruction of this city is probably not simple."

"She most likely did not die of natural causes, but fell to the attack of some terrible monster."

"Moreover," another female dark elf warrior added, "there should be more than one monster like this, but a cluster. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain why we encountered so many huge traps along the way."

At that moment, many dark elves and even Li Yin could not help but feel a chill all over their bodies. They looked at the huge pit and speculated on the true size of the "terrible monster" based on its size.

"But," the third female dark elf warrior raised her doubts in fear, "There is a problem here. If the dark elves really made these traps to deal with some particularly huge monsters, and a group of them, then their battle should have left some traces, right?"

"We have passed through so many traps along the way and have indeed seen quite a few skeletons, but they are all of average size and do not match the 'large' creatures we imagined."

"So, is it possible that we are wrong?"

As soon as she said this, thoughtful expressions appeared on the faces of many dark elves again.

"It's possible..." After a while, a dark elf murmured in a low voice, agreeing with the previous dark elf's point of view.

"If there really are such huge enemies, they cannot leave no traces at all."

"Since these dark elves have set up so many traps, it means they believe that these traps must be effective against that kind of enemy. If they really exist, they would not have done so much useless work."

"But now there is no trace at all, so, could it be that we really scared ourselves?"

Upon hearing this, many dark elves raised their heads and nodded in agreement. At the same time, a look of relaxation slowly emerged on their doubtful faces.

"There is another possibility." Suddenly, Li Yin frowned and raised his head.

Many surprised looks fell on him at the same time, some because of disdain and ridicule, but more because of the unusual severity in his voice.

"What if they are not just 'ordinary' monsters?" Li Yin asked, his pupils shrinking slightly.

"As we all know, many intelligent races have the same habit of collecting the bodies of their dead compatriots after the war and burying them together instead of leaving them exposed in the wilderness."

"So," he said, his voice slightly chilled, "if the creatures these traps target really exist, they are not only incredibly large in size and form swarms in large numbers, but they are also highly intelligent."

"This high level of intelligence," he paused, and continued to extend his imagination, "doesn't just mean that they will deal with the bodies of their companions together. They are likely to have formed their own country and civilization, can make tools, and are also familiar with conspiracies and tricks, as well as - proficient in the art of war..."

With every word he spoke, the snow-white faces of the dark elves around him became increasingly gloomy, and an unusually heavy silence filled the air around them.

"Stop..." Suddenly, a voice interrupted his increasingly heavy and seemingly endless thoughts.

"I admit that your guess makes sense." Cassia looked at him with a smile, followed by the many dark elves around him with stern expressions.

"However, have you considered another key factor?" Her tone was calm and relaxed, as if she was not affected at all by that unknown large intelligent creature.

“Large creatures like these—” She turned her head and looked at the pit, “and they gather in large numbers. Their demand for survival resources must be enormous.”

"This means that their range of activities will also be very wide."