Chapter 37
War of Liberation (2)
The massive forty-meter-long body crashed to the ground, sending out a violent tremor as though an earthquake had struck. The dwarves standing upon the heaving earth staggered, unable to keep their balance.
They stumbled and fell.
Yet every one of them was smiling.
Throughout their long history—from their most primitive age to their most glorious—they had never once been able to bring their absolute natural enemy to its knees. But now, for the first time, they had knocked it out of the sky. They had dragged the most terrifying predator, which had always looked down upon them from its lofty perch, to the same level as themselves.
The ecstasy the dwarves felt at that moment was beyond description. As the despair that had hung so heavily over them transformed into radiant hope, a pillar of fire erupted far above.
Within it stood a young man who resembled a living flame.
The blacksmith of the last flame, the symbol of the glory of the small—a young man with red hair and red eyes.
He carried no sword.
For the sake of breaking their shackles once more.
“Fly, Partmos.”
[I... cannot.]
“You have to fly. If you stay still—”
[My body... will not move...]
Governor Johan sensed that something was wrong.
However—
“‘The strongest steel is forged in the hottest flame.’”
The young man carried no gun.
He carried no spear.
He wore no armor.
Instead, he held the tool that symbolized the dwarves and wore the garb that represented them: the crude, rugged clothing of a blacksmith and a gleaming hammer dusted with ash.
There stood a blacksmith.
In the distant past, an ancient god had abandoned them.
Now, before them stood the blacksmith of flame who bore that god’s name.
Hephaestus.
Dragon Partmos, sprawled across the ground, also saw the young man through the pale cloud of dust. In Partmos’s eyes, that dwarf no longer appeared to be an immature youth, but an entity that had truly existed in the distant past.
The first dwarf to break his shackles and descend from the rocky mountains. The first “dwarf” to carve stone, melt iron from the mines, and hammer it into something new.
That figure overlapped with Hephaestus.
Across the boundaries of time, the first dwarf had borrowed the body of the last dwarf and appeared once more.
「Lower believer Hephaestus activates the special skill, [Masterpiece].」
It was already too late.
“We are—!”
Hephaestus burst out of the pillar of fire.
Like a fledgling bird yearning to fly, the wingless dwarf leaped from high above with only a hammer in his hands. Raging flames wrapped around his body, and soon the blazing inferno surged forward like a tidal wave.
“Small but deadly dwarves—!”
Gripping his hammer, he raised both arms overhead as he plunged downward. Hephaestus roared until his throat threatened to tear apart, while Dragon Partmos, sprawled on the ground and twitching, laboriously swung its tail.
The enormous tail befitting its gigantic body hurtled toward Hephaestus.
Crack!
With a sickening sound, most of his upper body was torn away. Bone and flesh scattered through the air, and the light vanished from Hephaestus’s eyes.
But only for a moment.
His shattered body reassembled itself. His extinguished consciousness reignited, and the hope that seemed to have been sent flying away blazed anew.
Then the dwarf who had returned from death finally fulfilled the role entrusted to him.
Clang—!
A deafening impact rang out.
The violent sound of metal being hammered shook both earth and sky. The iron clinging to Dragon Partmos’s body glowed bright red, as if it had just been pulled from a furnace, before melting into viscous liquid metal.
Soon, the molten iron assumed a new form.
The streams of molten metal fused together and rapidly cooled. The once-scorching iron became cold steel—shackles that bound the dragon’s wings and restrained its massive body.
Just as the dragons had once placed shackles around the dwarves’ ankles to steal their freedom in the distant past.
[How dare—!]
Dragon Partmos was enraged by the situation.
Crunch!
Hephaestus was sent flying by another sweep of Partmos’s tail. After tumbling across the ground several times, he coughed up blood. Meanwhile, Dragon Partmos thrashed desperately, attempting to break free of the shackles.
But they would not break.
Far from breaking, they did not even suffer a scratch.
「A [Masterpiece] created through the special skill [Masterpiece] cannot be destroyed. As long as the Blacksmith of Flame remains alive, the masterpiece cannot be damaged.」
That was the key to the entire operation.
“Now—!”
The operation was called “Break the Wings.”
First, they would drag the gigantic monster that soared freely through the sky down to the ground. Hephaestus’s plan had succeeded, and at the blacksmith’s shout, the dwarves raised their weapons.
Ratatatatat!
New weapons built with the advice of military specialist Raymond—modern firearms modeled after massive machine guns and tank cannons exceeding 120 millimeters in caliber.
Flames erupted from the long metal barrels as steel poured out from every direction.
All toward a single target.
Boom!
A thunderous explosion snapped Dragon Partmos’s head upward. Amid the billowing black smoke, bullets flying in from every direction began gradually grinding away its thick scales.
The marks were small, but unmistakable.
Not only the dwarf soldiers but also the paladins charged forward without fear of death. The armored knights died again and again, raising pillars of fire each time.
All to scorch those scales, even if only slightly.
All to prevent their horrific history from repeating itself.
[God... damn you—!]
Faced with the relentless barrage of bullets and shells, Dragon Partmos was visibly shaken. No matter how violently it struggled, the shackles showed no sign of loosening. Instead, they only pulled tighter.
Like prey caught in a net.
Governor Johan frowned.
‘What... is this?’
An intricately constructed trap.
In Johan’s eyes, the dwarves’ entire operation was precisely that—a trap.
‘How could the dwarves possibly...?’
Even during their most glorious age, the dwarves had never been able to abandon their fundamental nature as blacksmiths. Tactics and strategy were foreign concepts to them.
They were not a race capable of devising such a cunning and meticulous operation.
‘Is this the influence of that god who was once human?’
The god mocked by the entire World of Stars.
The god of the lowliest origins.
Could the existence of that one god...
truly change this much?
“Keep firing! Its scales are coming off! They’re definitely being worn away!”
“Fire until its reverse scale is exposed—!”
In Johan’s judgment, the situation was deteriorating.
As a Dragon Rider, he knew under what circumstances a living weapon known as a “dragon” could unleash its greatest violence.
When it was flying freely through the sky.
But what was the situation now?
Far from soaring freely through the sky, Partmos had been slammed to the ground, and the countless powers that made it no different from a living calamity had been completely sealed. This went beyond merely wounding its pride.
It had fallen into genuine mortal danger.
‘Should I call for reinforcements? No...’
He could not call for reinforcements.
It was not that he chose not to.
He was simply unable to.
Governor Johan’s position was already precarious.
He had been granted the support of Dragon Partmos on the condition that he would deploy alone and bring the situation to an end. In this war, Johan could not settle for merely winning. He had to achieve a “perfect and overwhelming victory.”
Not only the result, but the entire process had to be flawless.
Moreover, a dense jungle lay between the dwarves’ fortress—the Red City—and their workshops. It was a natural obstacle that made the advance of an army impossible. That jungle was precisely why Johan, who could move freely through the sky, had been sent in the first place.
‘...Should I have burned down the jungle first and advanced slowly? Should I have brought a complete army instead of coming alone?’
Had I been arrogant?
Yet it was difficult to dismiss this as mere arrogance. The dwarves of today were far too different from those of the past.
Even in an age when they had been stronger, more numerous, and more glorious than they were now, they had never possessed what these dwarves did.
‘...There’s no point dwelling on my mistakes.’
No one could turn back time.
For now, he had to deal with the situation before him.
Johan squeezed his eyes shut and muttered,
“Curl up, Partmos.”
Then he spoke in an astonishingly calm voice.
“They cannot maintain the powers sealing your abilities forever. Stall for as long as you can—until that damned miracle comes to an end.”
A perfect victory would have to be abandoned.
“Whether they take your wings, your claws, or your fangs, mere dwarves cannot kill you in such a short time. If you focus entirely on enduring, buying time should not be difficult.”
[...]
“I don’t care how disgraceful it looks. We must win here.”
The most important thing was—
ultimately, the result.
[Understood, Master.]
Immediately after answering, Partmos stopped thrashing. Instead of spreading its proud wings, the dragon folded them neatly against its body and began digging into the earth with its long claws.
“...Wait, that bastard—”
“Stop it! It’s escaping!”
After digging a massive hole, Partmos began shoveling aside the soil and burrowing forward, looking less like a dragon and more like an actual lizard.
Moments later, the dragon vanished beneath the ground.
Without leaving a trace.
If this had been a game, it would have marked the beginning of the second phase.
The dwarves were visibly bewildered.
‘We never accounted for something like this...’
Hephaestus was the most shocked of them all.
‘What did Raymond say? Once the Break the Wings strategy succeeds, calmly wear down its scales, accumulate damage, and then locate its reverse scale—the most vulnerable part of its body... Concentrate all firepower during that process, which is why we would need heavy weapons and tank-cannon models...’
They had discussed tactics and strategy countless times.
But Raymond had never mentioned a “fleeing dragon.”
No one had ever imagined such a situation.
Who could have anticipated that their most arrogant and powerful natural enemy would run away?
With Dragon Partmos gone, everyone stood frozen in a daze.
At that moment—
“Pursue... it,” Santiago said.
“We must not let that creature tuck its tail between its legs and escape. That can never be allowed to happen.”
“......”
“It will return. And when it does, it will know exactly what we have prepared. It will never expose an opening like this again.”
“Miss Eve’s power is almost exhausted. Go before the flames die out. Aren’t you a blacksmith? Can you forge a sword by hammering steel that has already gone cold? Can you reignite a cold, extinguished furnace with nothing but ashes...?”
Santiago looked at everyone.
“We have nothing left. We can only burn once. So do not let this fire die. Keep hammering until these flames have burned every last one of them away.”
The miracle of immortality bestowed by Eve’s holy relic would soon end. If their various powers vanished as well, they would have no chance of victory.
Santiago was right.
The dwarves could not burn twice.
This was their final flame.
“But if we do that...”
“......”
People will die.
If we pursue that monster, they will truly die.
Our miracle is already nearly exhausted.
Hephaestus swallowed those words.
‘There is no war in which no one dies.’
Hephaestus’s grandfather, Vulcanos, had said that.
And not a single dwarf standing here had come without preparing to die. Every one of them had entered this battle ready to burn themselves away.
They did not need his shallow pity.
Then—
“Let’s go.”
A dwarf stepped forward to take the lead.
A tiny girl.
A girl with star-shaped eyes.
“If we remain here, we’ll lose everything.”
She was the last priestess who had refused to abandon hope even when the ancient dwarf god turned his back on this world.
The first believer of a new god.
The dwarves gathered there began to see Eve differently. Her radiant halo, immaculate clothing, and pale, pretty face faded from their sight.
Instead, they saw a tiny girl standing upon a desolate land, her hands clasped tightly together.
Her priestly robes were covered in dirt. Her face and body were painfully thin from prolonged starvation.
Yet her eyes alone burned as fiercely as the sun.
“God does not extend His hand to those who refuse to act. The only ones worthy of advancing into tomorrow are those who take a step toward it.”
A faithful believer who had clung to her faith until the very end, even in a forsaken world.
The first believer rekindled the flame once more.
And then—
「The purest soul begins to resonate.」
Eve’s star-shaped eyes...
began to shine even more brightly.
「Intermediate believer Eve has fulfilled the conditions for activating a special skill. Intermediate believer Eve’s status has been updated!」