Ethan kept walking, his mind racing.
'Damn old man, why are you talking to now? I've got people around , how the hell am I supposed to respond?'
"You just called an old geezer. Want to send you back to your previous life?"
Ethan froze.
'Wait… he can hear my thoughts?!'
"Try calling that again, you little brat."
'Old geezer old geezer old geezer! Ethan chanted in his head with amusent.'
"You—!"
'What?" Ethan asked, completely unfazed by the supposed threat.
"You've got guts, kid. I'm asking you, did the Ninth Division contact you?" Morzan finally cald down.
"I ran into a recruiter. You know about the Ninth Division?" Ethan responded ntally.
"Of course I do. How could I not?" Morzan's voice carried an unmistakable grudge.
Ethan caught on imdiately. "What, you got beef with them?"
"Just join if you get the chance. I'll have a job for you when the ti cos," Morzan said, and then went completely silent.
Ethan frowned. "The hell is that place anyway?"
"Hey, you still there?"
"Old man?"
Nothing.
"Tch… for soone who needs a favor, you sure have a bad attitude."
No matter how many tis he called out, Morzan refused to answer.
Ethan wasn't intimidated, though. He knew Morzan hadn't regressed him out of kindness. He had been chosen for sothing.
For what? No clue. But whatever it was, it had to be big, sothing only he could do.
And if that was the case, there was no way he was going to just blindly obey. If he had leverage, he was going to use it.
"Hmph, whatever. I'll ask Lyla about it later."
'The Ninth Division, huh?'
Now, Ethan was genuinely curious.
By now, the group had descended into the depths of the Iron Mountains, following a spiral staircase through a narrow passage. It was clearly built for Dwarves, the ceiling was so low they had to hunch over just to fit.
Ethan, however, smoothly shifted into Panther Form, glancing back at them.
"Heh, maybe you guys should crawl too," he teased.
"You wanna die?" Lyla shot back from up ahead.
"Almost there!" Ethan ignored the threat and bounded forward, slipping through a cave opening.
On the other side was a wide platform, big enough for the entire team.
"That's a lot of enemies," SeraphWarrior muttered, peering down.
"Keep your voice down!" Ethan hissed, dragging them behind a low stone wall for cover.
Just in ti.
A Dwarven patrol squad, at least fifty of them—imdiately turned their heads toward the sound. For a tense mont, they scanned the area. Then, finding nothing, they resud their rounds.
Skyblade turned to SeraphWarrior, shaking his head. "Were you trying to get us killed?"
"I… I… okay, my bad," SeraphWarrior admitted.
"It's fine," Ethan reassured him. "First ti I ca here, I was just as shocked."
Once the patrol moved away, they stood up and took in the view. A massive underground plaza stretched before them, nearly a kiloter wide.
And it was packed with Dwarves.
The Dwarves below looked nearly identical to the ones they had seen in Harmony City, except for one key difference.
Their skin was pitch black, charred as if burned.
Many of them had chanical limbs, so even with fully chanical heads, making them appear more machine than flesh.
Curious, the group quietly activated Appraisal.
But every single one returned question marks.
"Why are so many monsters gathered in one place?" atball muttered.
"Yeah, and in such a tight formation… no way any team could clear them all at once," SeraphWarrior added.
As they spoke, drill-shaped constructs suddenly erged from the ground across the plaza.
Once they surfaced, their outer shells split open, revealing hatch-like doors.
Then, from within, more of these half-chanical Dwarves stepped out in organized ranks.
Everyone watched in stunned silence.
The sheer technological advancent on display was far beyond anything they had seen before.
"These Iron Dwarves aren't normal Dwarves," Ethan explained. "They're hybrids, part machine, part reanimated corpse. After the war, the Black Iron Dwarves used fallen warriors to create them."
"They're using the dead for this?" Skyblade frowned.
"The Dwarves in Iron Mountain aren't the sa as the ones on the surface," Ethan continued. "This place has been taken over by the Black Iron Dwarves, a war-driven offshoot of their race."
Ethan knew this all too well.
In his past life, the Northern Frontier Region had been hit by a Black Iron Dwarf Invasion.
Two months from now, this very army would march on human cities, launching a global siege event.
Every region faced its own invasion:
Here, it was the Black Iron Dwarves. In the Eastern Region, it was the Tide of Sea Beasts.
Other zones had their own monstrous threats, each one devastating in scale.
The Black Iron Dwarves were different from other invaders, though. They were master engineers.
Their forges churned out endless waves of chanical soldiers, which were then deployed to the battlefield in droves.
Back then, Ethan had led a massive rogue faction to infiltrate this very stronghold.
But all they could do was watch.
No matter how many tis they scouted, no matter how carefully they planned, the Black Iron Dwarves continued mass-producing their army without pause.
When the invasion finally began, players were helpless.
At level 30, they barely stood a chance against these level 40 chanical soldiers, let alone the elite level 45 units.
Even with an army of ten thousand rogues, Ethan's faction had been forced to retreat.
The invasion left major cities in ruins. NPC strongholds were shattered. In the end, only legendary-tier NPCs could suppress the attack, barely turning the tide of war.
Because of that disaster, humanity built fortresses across every major region, ensuring that future monster sieges wouldn't reach the cities so easily.
And once the fortresses were complete, Ethereal's system updated, unlocking Fortress Wars, where factions could battle for control over these new strongholds.
But Ethan had co here for a different reason. This place was perfect for testing Lyla's Forbidden Spell.
First, because this was one of the most monster-dense areas he knew. Second, because the enemies were high-level.
If he used the spell on weaker mobs, they'd die instantly, making it impossible to gauge the spell's true damage potential.
Skyblade, however, was starting to sweat. "Boss… we're not actually planning to fight these things, right? If we pull one, the entire army is going to aggro on us!"
Ethan glanced at him.
"We are fighting them," he confird. "But not in a direct battle."
"Then… how do we do it?" Skyblade asked hesitantly.
Ethan simply pointed to sothing in the distance.
"Watch that."
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