Chapter 2161: Recruiting Eastern Dwarves

Althea was tempted to just invite the dwarves outright, as her recruitment of various races was generally smooth, but she did not dare do so this time.

There were plenty of social landmines that might just get them shot by the dwarves’ ’laser’ gun dotted with various penetrating arrays.

While this machine wouldn’t kill them, considering they were already at their level 30s, it would certainly hurt. It would also greatly reduce the durability of the equipment it hit, which was not very good. In the worst case scenario, they could be hit at the right spot that might even be lethal.

The dwarves had a very, very bad impression of humans, and many were hostile to them. Basically, if they asked if they wanted to come, Althea had no doubt they would immediately be treated as traffickers or something.

From what they saw, the anti-human sentiment of the eastern dwarves was much more intense than the other tribe.

Their horror stories and bedtime stories consisted of anti-human sentiments. Parents would scare their kids with ’behave, or the humans will get you!’ ’I will call the human, and he will make you work until your beard balds out!’ and so on.

Fortunately, her knowledge of arrays gave them a common topic of conversation. Once two different people or races had something to talk about, it was already a major step towards reconciliation.

Better yet, she also took out one of her phones. Experience with the other dwarves showed them that they loved this thing. It was, after all, so magical yet without the use of arrays at all.

Unsurprisingly, the phone’s charm was high, and many of them looked at the small screen with moving images with curious eyes filled with fascination.

It was just that their bias growing up forbade them from showing too much excitement, perhaps thinking of the phone as their equivalent of a ’demon’s temptation’.

Only the elders were allowed to look at it and touch the screen, do the various commands, and Althea could see them struggling to keep a straight face.

She opened up some offline games like Flowers vs Zombies, and she had the illusion that she wouldn’t be able to get the phone back.

Fortunately, unlike the orcs, who could destroy it with a touch, the dwarves were much more careful in their handling. Anyway, the phone wasn’t her main phone and was just something she had bought off before electricity became a normal thing in Alterra.

Althea found their forced frowns, trying desperately to look critical, to be a little endearing. She definitely wouldn’t make fun of them out loud, of course.

To them, her existence was that of a blood enemy, and prematurely showing anything other than harmlessness and passivity could be met with violence.

While they studied the phone, she studied the tunnels as well as the items, like weaponry, she could see from where she was.

The tunnel itself was massive. If one could compare the tunnels the Feyun Tribe hid in back then to a pencil with the occasional pimple, this was an outright container.

It had obviously been developed for a long, long time, perhaps hundreds of years. The way the stones’ surface appeared was different. She had heard about the room requirements of dwarves from Sotto’s team.

Each dwarf should have their own workshops. After all, they take forever to finish something, so they ought to have their own space to handle it.

Here, it was a massive cavern first, like a combined several hangars, and there were doors on the walls with stairs and ramps leading to them. There were carts and rails that reminded her of those mining carts.

It seemed like, unlike the individual workshops that the other tribe of dwarves was used to, this place looked more like an assembly line.

There were also work spaces for repairs and maintenance, and each item had their own. She saw two large magic tools being made or repaired. One was a trebuchet of sorts.

The other was a series of black circular things with patterns. From what she got a glimpse of, it had similar patterns to the bombs they found in Alterra.

However, from what they witnessed, considering it damaged such sturdy granite mountains, these bombs were definitely far stronger than the ones that once terrorized Alterra.

She wondered if she could get a copy...

Sadly, one had to be in close contact with an item they wanted to put in her space. It was still too far away to steal.

As for the weapons in their hands, it wasn’t something new to her. She had heard of this gun from the teenage dwarves Sotto and his friends.

Although they called it a laser gun, it wasn’t really the same. Its working principle wasn’t concentrated light energy like Virion’s power; it was more like concentrated aether directed by a plethora of arrays.

The one Sotto’s side brought with them (and allowed to be studied for contribution points) had far fewer arrays. In this place, there were a total of four such weapons; the rest were using metallic or stone weaponry, some of which were definitely tools for magic toolmaking, lifted up to become weapons of self-defense.

"Just as there are annoying dwarves and smart dwarves, there are good and bad humans," she said. "Please open your mind and not assume we mean harm."

Granted, if it were most people other than Alterrans, they absolutely had to be guarded. Of course, she couldn’t say that with their current situation. That was just counterproductive.

"I...we were looking for places to rest and hide in while we were being mobbed."

The old dwarf looked at the ones in uniform. "No one checked the situation?"

To be fair, unless there was an alarm or a commotion, few dwarves monitor the crystal the whole 28 hours of the day. They all have their tasks to do.

"You have seen our home; you cannot leave."

Althea was certainly reluctant to fight with them. They could, and it was definitely a Plan C, but she hoped to fix this amicably first.

She looked at the phone and then at the nearest dwarf. "Can you check the photos on the phone?"

"What?"

"Photos are..." she explained. "Are very realistic and instantly made drawings, except that it captures reality rather than fantasy. Think of it as something we see, and was then imprinted."

She gently guided the young dwarf about how to take photos of her and Garan. She made sure it was them making moves, lest they think she was activating a weapon.

Click!

"Now, take a look at the screen."

The dwarves looked over, and they gasped. When they saw it was the exact image of what they saw, they looked bewildered.

"I took many of these pictures of my home," she said. "You can look at them, just swipe the screen in a direction."

Althea had already designated this phone as her ’to share’ or ’use for seducing curious ones’ so she had already transferred a number of images.

It captured the beautiful streetscapes, parks, and shops of Alterra. It also captured people’s daily lives, such as teams of fighters coming back from a hunt, people queuing up, people shopping, and so on.

In some of these photos, there were dwarves.

"This..."

"They’re citizens of Alterra, too," she said. "We are friends with another dwarven tribe."

"Impossible!"

"Possible," she corrected. "While I admit that many humans are bad, there are also many who are good. Our region mostly has this."

"I can swear an oath not to disclose this place," she said, though oaths didn’t really work the same way here, far away from a system territory.

It was here that an old dwarf appeared. His movements were far slower than the others, which meant he was barely moving. He wore a robe that touched the ground, too, so one would be unsure whether he was moving at all, even if one stared at him.

The other dwarves flinched and looked at the old dwarf with respect. "Grand Elder!"

"Ancestor!"

"Grand Elder Vasto!"

They patiently waited for him to arrive near Althea and Garan. His almost squinting eyes due to age opened up a bit, and he studied the two humans.

"You... you are not entirely human," he said. A statement.

Althea and Garan looked at each other. They were humans, but they were also quasi-elves. Not all humans with elven blood would show the qualities of a quasi-elf, particularly if it was already so diluted. In those cases, they would be no different from normal humans except, perhaps, being a little bit more talented.

On the other hand, those who exhibit even the slightest signs of being one would no longer be considered fully human.

The quasi-elves who brought their tribe here were the latter.

Vasto was the oldest dwarf here and was at the end of his lifespan. Dwarves had a lifespan of hundreds of years, and he was the only one alive during that period. He was still very young at the time, but their appearance was impactful.

"The elven aura is rich. Much richer than the others."

He looked especially at Althea. She realized it had to do with her consumption of the Urfrukt, which seemed to have purified her elven blood a little, granting her new abilities, some of which she didn’t know yet.

Her husband had not consumed his, but he was also a quasi-elf, and he was certainly ’glowing’ in the old dwarf’s eyes.

They did not expect the old dwarf to brust to tears, and then practically falling down to kneel.

"Masters!"