CHAPTER 947: PUPPETS AND PAWNS

On the walls of Soaring Bird City, the human spectators who had gathered to watch the spectacle felt a chill run down their spines whenever the gaze of a passing cave spider or ogre swept over them.

As the reinforcement army vanished into the distance, Lireesa and Ava shared a silent, loaded look.

Their understanding of the stoneheart horde had been completely redefined. With that spider broodmother holding down the south, their flank was secure. The threat of the Northern Coalition suddenly seemed less insurmountable.

"Grand Elder Lireesa, I must return," Ava said, giving a slight, formal bow. "This news about the stoneheart horde’s reinforcements must reach the rest of the kingdom immediately."

The arrival of this army was a massive shot in the arm for the kingdom’s morale. It was critical.

"Go with peace of mind, Princess Ava," Lireesa replied calmly. "Our own blood elf race reinforcements are scheduled to arrive in Soaring Bird City shortly."

The North, Northern Coalition

The camp of the Avenger armies had swelled to several times its original size. Deep within the sprawling labyrinth of tents, Torin’s command post was buried, heavily fortified, and nearly impossible to locate.

"Yi," a voice drawled. "More and more of the northern lords arrive every day. You should be pleased."

The speaker was Grand Duke William, slouched in a chair across from Torin. Or rather, it was the thing that wore his face.

The clothes were the same, the body was the same, but the eyes were vacant, devoid of all life or spirit.

If you looked closely, you could see the tell-tale signs: faint, web-like lines, almost invisible unless you knew where to look, traced the contours of his face—from the corner of his eye to his neck, from his mouth to his ear.

The subtle, horrifying seams of a puppet. The Grand Duke of the human kingdom had been turned into a plaything for the clown, Ogu.

"Yes, it’s certainly something to be happy about," Torin snarled, his temper growing more volatile by the day. His face was a thunderous mask of rage. "So why don’t I feel happy at all?"

"You must understand, Yi. These northern lords are nothing but pawns on our board," the Ogu-puppet said, its voice unnervingly calm. "For pawns, there is a simple rule. If they are useful, we use them. If they defy us, we discard them."

"Now that they have entered the game, their lives are no longer their own to command. They are a show of force, nothing more. Why are you so obsessed with making them submit to you?"

Ogu, speaking through William, stared at Torin with those dead eyes.

Torin looked up, locking his gaze on the puppet. It had no expression, but Torin could vividly imagine the real entity behind it, Ogu, watching him with a mocking smirk. Watching his powerlessness. Watching him sink deeper and deeper into the trap.

"Hah! Easy for you to say!" Torin shot back. "If I don’t forge these northern tribes into a unified force, what are we going to fight the southern armies with? Your handful of Dark Dwarves and puppet armies?"

Torin was no fool. He had been ecstatic when he’d first ascended to the lord level, but after the initial rush wore off, he realized something was terribly wrong. He could feel it in his gut: he was caught in a death spiral, a vortex he couldn’t escape.

Even if he managed to lead the northern tribes to victory against the south, he would still have to face the unfathomable creature before him—Ogu, another survivor, and a powerful one at that.

That was why Torin was so desperate to bring the northern lords under his direct command, to build his own power base, to give himself a fighting chance.

But the lords he was trying to recruit were all sharks. Every last one of them was a cunning, selfish bastard. They had come south to feast on the spoils of war with Torin, not to become his grunts. They simply ignored his commands.

Their insolence infuriated him.

There were times Torin wanted to make an example out of one of them.

But as more and more of them arrived, their combined forces soon dwarfed his own, and he no longer had the power to carry out his threats.

What drove him mad was that Ogu offered no support, refusing to help him suppress the unruly lords. Torin felt like he was being sidelined, a commander in name only, slowly being roasted over a spit. It was infuriating.

This was nothing like what he had imagined.

What happened to helping me conquer this world?

"You don’t trust me, Yi. That’s not a good sign," Ogu’s voice purred from William’s throat. "The quickest way for a faction to collapse is for it to rot from the inside. Our interests are aligned. You and I both want territory of our own. Once we win this war, we can sit down and negotiate the details. I promise, you will get the share you deserve."

Torin said nothing. He didn’t believe a word of it.

By the time that happens, I probably won’t even have the strength to fight back.

"Think about it, Yi. Those lords outside your tent... we have no history with them. They aren’t even true allies." Ogu’s voice grew deeper, raspier, threaded with a filament of killing intent. "At best... they are a temporary convergence of interests. They won’t listen to you, and they won’t listen to me. So why not use the promise of spoils to make them bleed for us? To pave our road to victory with their bodies?"

The puppet’s voice turned to ice. Ogu could feel Torin slipping from his control, and that was a dangerous development.

"A single victory is built on a mountain of corpses. Did you really think carving out a foothold on this continent—snatching a piece of the pie from the major powers—would be easy?"

Torin ignored the lecture. He felt like a caged beast.

He stared at the puppet and demanded, "Tell me. What do you really want?"

But he received no answer.

Emerald Dream Realm, Gloomwood Forest

The sun beat down, but its light was swallowed by the deep woods, where the sound of snarling and barking echoed through the trees.

A demonic wolf and a hellhound were locked in a furious battle, a whirlwind of snapping teeth and burning fur.

Dirtclaw, the hellhound, was a beast of thick muscle and brutal intent. He fought with a suicidal abandon, a berserker’s fury that ignored his own wounds.

He lunged, his jaws locking onto the wolf’s neck, his face a demonic mask, radiating an aura of death.

"Dirtclaw is the strongest gnoll on Dusk Continent!" he roared in his mind, the thoughts a savage litany. "And the strongest hellhound! All canine creatures who do not submit to Dirtclaw should be ripped apart! They will lose the right to breed!"

After a desperate struggle of rolling and tearing, the demonic wolf’s strength finally gave out, its body going limp from blood loss.

Only then did Dirtclaw release his jaw lock.

With a final, vicious bite, he ripped open the wolf’s chest, tearing out the crystal core hidden within.

He swallowed it whole.

"The weak," he growled, blood dripping from his maw, "are just meat for the strong."