Chapter 260: The Grand Founding Ceremony (2)

The murloc procession marched all the way to Kingdom Square, dropped to one knee in a synchronized salute, and then split into two columns to head down the exit path.

Though their display wasn't as awe-inspiring as the ogres', the murlocs' traditional weaponry and distinct professional class composition still made the crowd's eyes light up.

Laymen watched for the spectacle, drawn to the novelty, while the attending guests—the experts in the crowd—scrutinized the army's true combat strength.

Of the two hundred and eighty-eight murlocs in that formation, nearly a third were at the Master Tier. The rest were all high-tier professionals.

An elite, well-rounded force like this could advance to attack or retreat to defend. On the battlefield, their tactical value would far surpass even those sixteen Master Tier ogres.

If the battlefield happened to be in the sea, this murloc unit would be absolutely invincible.

From this small glimpse of the vanguard, one could deduce the whole picture—White Castle's murloc army was remarkably formidable. With such an elite force in place, White Castle had firmly secured its foundation as the overlord of the East Sea.

Catching the awe and gravity in the crowd's eyes, the White Dragon Lord felt a deep sense of satisfaction.

After this display of power, White Castle's future negotiations with other nations regarding maritime trade would proceed far more smoothly.

After all, a nation claimed not only territory but also territorial waters, and sailing through another country's seas required paying tariffs.

In the past, because White Castle was an anomaly ruled by monstrous factions, and the goods they transported were highly profitable, they had frequently suffered discriminatory tariff hikes from coastal nations. This had severely inflated their shipping costs.

From this day forward, the White Dragon Lord would say no to such unequal treatment. The murloc military might of the Overseas Archipelago was now fully formed. Even if other nations boasted massive fleets of Alchemical Battleships, they were no match for White Castle's murloc army.

Today, the total murloc population across the Overseas Archipelago had reached a staggering one billion—and that was after the White Dragon Lord had strictly limited their egg-hatching rates. This colossal population base birthed massive numbers of professionals, allowing the murloc race to absolutely crush any other in sheer volume of combat-capable forces.

In terms of population, the murlocs took an undisputed first place. Ranked second were the kobolds, whose numbers had reached eight million. However, since their land combat prowess couldn't match the gnolls and they lacked the murlocs' expertise in aquatic warfare, the kobolds continuously served in a logistical role, acting as the backbone of the mining workforce.

Third place went to the gnolls, represented by Hogg Riverclaw. Thanks to an abundant food supply, the gnoll population had swelled to six million. Together with the ogres, they formed the main force of White Castle's army.

Fourth were the troglodytes. Their combat strength was even weaker than the kobolds', to the point where even their village security teams were staffed by gnolls. They were a purely logistical race.

Ranked fifth were the ogres, whose reproduction had been heavily encouraged by the White Dragon Lord. After decades of development, their total population had quadrupled, now reaching over seven hundred thousand.

Compared to the murlocs, the ogres' numbers were pitiful. But it couldn't be helped; the laws of nature dictated that the more powerful a creature was, the poorer its reproductive capacity and the longer its growth cycle.

A murloc could lay hundreds or even thousands of eggs in a single clutch. Gnolls gave birth to entire litters. But for an ogre, having twins was already considered fortunate. Yet, there were races with it even worse than the ogres: the gray dwarves and the trolls.

"The next race to take the stage is—"

As the murloc procession vanished around the corner, the gnoll announcer's voice echoed out again.

"The trolls!"

Thud... thud... thud...

The heavy, thudding footsteps drew closer. It was the sound of a massive creature's feet slamming onto the stone-paved road. Just from the sound alone, the crowd realized how terrifyingly huge the approaching troll had to be. Everyone held their breath.

From the shadowy depths of the city gate, a troll standing over six meters tall emerged.

The instant the crowd saw it, they recoiled in horror. The towering troll was clad in a thick breastplate, a pair of bracers, kneepads, and a single-sided pauldron. This heavy metal armor protected its vital spots. Aside from the breastplate, every piece of armor was fitted with a sharp, black spike, giving the creature an overwhelming aura of heavy metal brutality.

In its hands, it gripped a long, thick iron chain. The end of the chain was attached to a vicious, sea-urchin-like morning star. The spiked ball was unbelievably massive, requiring two grown men linking arms just to encircle it. Such a hideous troll was simply a perfect killing machine on the battlefield.

The people standing in the front rows couldn't help but push backward. Even knowing the troll wouldn't hurt them, their instincts screamed at them to get as far away from it as possible.

Their instincts were correct.

The troll's next action scared the audience out of their wits: it began to swing its morning star.

The vicious weapon, weighing at least five hundred pounds, looked like a child's toy in the troll's grip. It hoisted the chain and swung it in a circle, pulling the iron links shorter and shorter while spinning them faster and faster. By the end, the morning star was nothing but a blur, whirring like the rotor blades of a helicopter.

Fortunately, Royal Capital Avenue was quite wide, measuring a full fifty meters across. Since the troll walking down the center of the road wielded a chain that was only twenty meters long, the crowd wasn't forced into a panicked stampede.

The howling wind roared in everyone's ears. The violent gusts whipped up by the spinning morning star stung their faces, and a single phrase spontaneously popped into every spectator's mind—meat grinder!

The first troll marched forward as it swung its weapon. Behind it, two more trolls outfitted in the exact same gear emerged, perfectly mirroring its terrifying display.

Towering, muscular trolls, hideous spiked armor, and savage sea-urchin morning stars—the aura of battlefield beasts slammed into the crowd like a physical wave. The audience's horrified gazes tracked the three trolls as they moved, completely transfixed until the gnoll announcer spoke again.

"Trolls are White Castle's primary combat forces. They are tall and robust, capable of suppressing even ogres of the same level in pure strength. But their power goes far beyond that! Their horrifying regenerative abilities strike dread into anyone foolish enough to oppose them. A Legendary Mage once used this phrase to describe a troll's terrifying regeneration: chop off a troll's head, and the next day you'll reap two trolls!"

Hearing this, the corners of the White Dragon Lord's mouth twitched imperceptibly. A Legendary Mage had indeed said that once, but it was purely a joke. If you chopped off a troll's head, the head would indeed grow a new body, but the process took a full week.

As for the headless body, it would retain its vitality for a long time. If someone slapped the troll's head back onto its neck during that window, the head would reconnect with the body in just a few minutes.

Trolls were simply that resilient of a race. However, they suffered from one massive flaw: a crippling weakness to fire and acid. Both elements nullified their regeneration, and the only way to restore it was by gouging out the scorched or melted flesh from the wound.

And mages who specialized in fire were practically a dime a dozen. Furthermore, a troll's reproductive capacity was even worse than an ogre's, their growth cycle was longer, and their intelligence fell short of the ogre race as well.

Because of these limitations, the trolls' status in the White Dragon Lord's heart was far lower than that of the ogres. The resources allocated to them were similarly inferior, arguably even slightly worse than what the gnolls received.

Because of their limited intellect, the troll leader, Rog Giantfist, had always been partnered with Hogg Riverclaw. Or rather, Hogger handled all the brainwork, while Rog Giantfist was strictly responsible for charging into battle.

Relying on their robust physiques and potent regeneration, the trolls had still managed to maintain their spot in White Castle's first-string combat forces. After decades of development, their numbers had reached over a hundred thousand.

However, their potential for further advancement was severely lacking. Bound by their limited intellects, the only Master Tier powerhouse among the trolls was Rog Giantfist, who had received the White Dragon Lord's special care. Even high-tier professionals were exceedingly rare among them.

And the three trolls currently dropping to one knee before the plaza were among the exceedingly few high-tier professionals the troll race possessed.

The trolls departed, but the shock they left behind lingered. The spectators immediately burst into fervent discussion.

A mercenary imagined the consequences of getting smashed by one of those morning stars and couldn't stop himself from shivering.

"Running into those things on the battlefield would be an absolute nightmare."

"Shh! Keep your voice down. There's another troll watching the show right behind us."

Alerted by his companion, the mercenary hurriedly threw a glance over his shoulder. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the troll spectator in question boasting to an ogre beside it, completely oblivious to him.

"Next up, the gray dwarves!"

For once, the gnoll announcer didn't bother building suspense and directly announced the gray dwarves' name.

"What? Dwarves?! There are dwarves in the Overseas Archipelago?!"

The audience instantly exploded into an uproar. Ever since the White Dragon Lord had slain the Demon Eye Tyrant occupying Darkforge, the surviving gray dwarves had been working for White Castle.

However, because the survivors were so few—a mere few thousand—even after decades of reproduction, their population had yet to surpass twenty thousand, and the majority of those were children. As a result, the White Dragon Lord had never let them reveal themselves to the outside world.

Because of this, the ordinary residents of White Castle didn't even know they had a faction of gray dwarf allies. Aside from White Castle's upper echelons, only a few major powers that kept a close eye on the territory had deduced their existence through various subtle clues.

But not every faction monitored White Castle, and not every faction that did possessed the capability to uncover the gray dwarves' existence. Thus, the announcement caught the vast majority of the esteemed guests on the viewing platform completely by surprise.

Dwarven weaponry was world-renowned. With a contingent of gray dwarves supporting them, White Castle's military evaluation in the eyes of the crowd instantly climbed another tier.

As the announcer's voice echoed out, the grating clatter of armor rang from the city gate, and one hundred gray dwarf Warriors marched into view.

Clad in standard-issue, silver-white full body armor, they looked like a line of mobile steel fortresses. In their hands, they gripped two-meter-long spears, the tips glinting with a cold, deadly light.

"That height! Those beards! They really are dwarves!"

The gnoll announcer's voice rang out again.

"The gray dwarves are born Warriors! Their rippling muscles and supreme forging techniques make them unstoppable! Furthermore, their powerful resistance to mental magic makes them the absolute nightmare of all psions! ..."

Seeing the scores of gray dwarves, more than a few people began scheming. Tens of thousands of years ago, the dwarven race had failed in their bid against the elven race for continental supremacy, causing their population to plummet. They had then suffered catastrophic losses during the world-ending war ten thousand years ago.

This caused the dwarven race on the Nordhill Continent to steadily decline. Today, only a single Dwarf Kingdom with a population of less than a million remained, scraping by in the depths of the Thunder Mountains in the center of the continent.

The dwarves did not farm. They mined underground ores and smelted them into weapons. Relying on their peerless forging techniques, they crafted exquisite weaponry, which they then used as capital to navigate smoothly between the major human kingdoms.

Since the Dwarf Kingdom was situated deep within the mountains, their underground cities were easy to defend and agonizing to assault, and humanity controlled the dwarves' true lifeline—their food supply—the Dwarf Kingdom was allowed to survive. It certainly helped that humans coveted dwarven weapons.

It wasn't until the Dwarf Kingdom's guardian deity—Muradin Firebeard—broke through to High-Tier Legend and became a member of the Council that the dwarven race finally ended their days of living in fear, earning themselves a sliver of speaking power on the continent.

That very same guardian deity, the invited guest Muradin Firebeard, was currently standing on the viewing platform beside the white dragon. He stared down at his distant relatives below with complex emotions in his eyes.

At this moment, the one personally leading the procession—the gray dwarf prince, Thaurissan Darkforge—led his kin into Kingdom Square. He dropped to one knee and removed his helmet to salute the White Dragon Lord on the platform. Once the ordinary gray dwarves marched away, Thaurissan Darkforge leaped up onto the high platform and took his place behind the White Dragon Lord.

This gesture demonstrated that the gray dwarven race had officially emerged into the outside world, and that they had secured the White Dragon Lord's protection.

Thaurissan Darkforge shot a fleeting glance at Muradin before ignoring him completely.

Tens of thousands of years ago, after the dwarven race failed to seize continental hegemony from the elves, the ancestors of the gray dwarves decided the defeated Dwarf King was unfit to lead their race. They launched a coup, but it failed.

Following the failed coup, the ancestors of the gray dwarves took their followers and fled into the Dark Lands, where they rebuilt the Dwarf Kingdom.

Later on, the dwarves in the Dark Lands provoked the Mind Flayers lurking in the deep underground and were enslaved for an agonizingly long time. Tortured by the Mind Flayers' mental magic, the naturally good-natured dwarves gradually grew mentally warped, eventually shifting into beings of the evil faction.

Through that endless torment, the surviving gray dwarves gained a powerful resistance to mental magic. Eventually, they seized the right moment to rebel against the Mind Flayers, reclaiming their freedom and rebuilding their civilization underground.

But because they had lived underground for so long and suffered under the Mind Flayers' enslavement, their skin color and temperaments diverged drastically from their surface-dwelling relatives. Thus, they earned a new moniker—gray dwarves.

Because of this, the gray dwarves and the surface dwarves were not on the same path; one could even say they belonged to naturally opposing factions.

And exactly because of this history, the White Dragon Lord had invited Muradin Firebeard without any fear that the guardian deity would try to demand the return of his already scarce kin.

Make no mistake, the gray dwarves were the single most important pillar of White Castle's military industry. Bar none.

The White Dragon Lord treasured them fiercely, treating the gray dwarves on the exact same tier as the ogres.

Unfortunately, because gray dwarves had lifespans extending up to four hundred years, their reproductive capabilities were strictly limited, and their population simply refused to grow quickly. Today, the equipment forged by White Castle's gray dwarf blacksmiths was only enough to supply their steadily expanding elite ace units.