I became a legion lich

167 Hidden kingdom

The queen wasted no time and immediately folded her wings, diving towards the dwarves. She even used wind magic to speed herself up even more and correct her falling trajectory whenever she strayed away from her target.

She accelerated more and more until her body began to cut through the wind, the air rushing past her bones and making an odd hiss.

The dwarves noticed the strange noise and looked up, only to see the queen swoop down on them. She was still hundreds of meters away, but they could see her, thanks to their helmets with vision-enhancing and night vision enchantments.

They panicked for a moment, but their instincts as soldiers spoke louder and immediately raised their weapons to defend themselves, certain that it would be impossible to run away from an enemy that fast.

There were no mages among such a small team of sentries, but they activated their weapons’ enchantments, sending fireballs and rocks floating overhead. They intended to use them as projectiles when the queen came within range and as shields for her attacks.

What they didn’t expect was for the attack to come from below.

‘Now!’ Emilia ordered and transmitted her spells to the queen, quickly followed by the mage slayers.

The queen came within range of the dwarves, but before any of them could react, she spread her wings with a gust of wind to slow her down and released a curtain of darkness, obscuring her surroundings and blinding the dwarves’ vision.

Even night vision was blinded, as the curtain of darkness was magical in nature and night vision still needed a minimal amount of light.

.....

Completely blind, the dwarves just released the projectiles conjured by their weapons at the queen’s last position, hoping that she was still close.

The queen could still see and conjured a barrier of wind to block the fireballs and simply dodged the rocks, before releasing the spells transferred by the mage slayers.

The first generated a focused earthquake that knocked the dwarves off balance, and the second conjured stone spikes that hit the dwarves from below and threw them into the air.

Their enchanted armor protected them from the spell’s damage, but not the subsequent damage. The stone spikes threw the dwarves in the opposite direction of the mountain, making the fall that much greater.

The dwarves dropped more than 30 meters with the grace of a sack of potatoes and rolled down the mountain, their bodies slamming against the jagged rocks and breaking several bones.

“Cough, cough.” The dwarves coughed up blood as they rose to their feet, but the queen didn’t give them time to recover.

She cast her float spell on all the dwarves before they could recover from their fall. It wasn’t an offensive spell, it just made bodies light enough to float, but its effects were deadly to dwarves. If a fall of tens of meters didn’t kill them, a fall of hundreds of meters should do the trick.

With a light flutter of her wings, the queen conjured up winds that pushed the dwarves away from the mountain, making them struggle desperately like fish out of water.

To the dwarves’ despair, the queen continued pushing them until they were clear of the mountain, before undoing the float spell. Gravity did its work and the dwarves began to fall as they screamed in despair, but it did little to improve their situation.

They slammed into the rocks at the foot of the mountain, their organs exploding from the violence of the impact as their bones shattered horribly.

None of them were able to survive the fall, their disfigured corpses lying on the ground.

‘Good. Now come back queen, we’ve accomplished our goal here.’ Emilia said, as she ordered the skeleton mage slayers to retrieve the dwarf bodies for her. Emília quickly turned them into skeletons, healing them enough to at least walk.

The queen quickly fled the scene and was reunited with Emilia, before fleeing the mountain with the new skeletons.

The interrogation could wait until they were safely in the fortress.

A few minutes after they left, a new hole appeared in the earth and a group of dwarves emerged from it, their numbers far greater and better equipped than the previous dwarves. One of the dwarves who appeared to be the leader looked down the mountain and muttered in frustration in an unknown language.

“Those damn undead tricked us. I thought we were safe since we didn’t do anything that would reveal our existence, but it looks like they knew about our presence on the mountain.” The leader of the dwarves spoke as he clenched his fists tightly.

“Should we chase them, sir?” One of his subordinates asked as he watched the sky vigilantly, fearing that there might be other undead across the sky.

“No, it’s useless to do that. This undead is agile, probably assassins when they were alive. We won’t be able to catch up with them and we risk being killed. Let’s go back and inform the elder that our presence here has been discovered. That’s a matter of extreme importance that involves not only our small village, but the lives of all our people.” The leader spoke seriously.

His subordinates nodded with grim expressions, before heading back to the underground village.

*************

The trip back to the castle was much slower than the trip there, as they had to keep up with the speed of the dwarves. They were all mana users, but they couldn’t run very fast because of their short legs.

“The mission was a success, as far as I can see.” Treevor spoke as soon as Emilia entered the fortress. He was in his real body, as the corrupted willow was still recovering.

“Successful, but there were complications. The dwarves discovered us and we almost failed in the mission, but we managed thanks to the queen. Let’s gather the other generals, it’s better to explain everything at once and we still need to interrogate the dwarves.” Emilia suggested and called all high ranking skeletons.

They met in one of the stronghold’s meeting rooms, before Emília detailed the mission, making most of them sigh.

“So there really were dwarves so close to the realm and we never knew about it?” Astrus muttered in shock. He didn’t believe that Emilia would succeed in finding anything relevant in the mountains, as he had been the general of that fortress for over 15 years and never suspected a thing.

“I didn’t believe it either until I saw it with my own eyes, but they are here and we need to think about what to do now.” Emilia spoke as she looked at the dwarf skeletons in the corner of the room.

“But how are we going to interrogate them? We could use paper and ink as we always do, but we want as detailed information as possible and I feel that will be difficult to get without their cooperation.” Caio asked.

He knew that the information could be inaccurate if they used this method to extract information. The chains would force the dwarves to answer any questions honestly, but any further details would be lost.

If the skeletons asked ambiguous questions or weren’t precise enough, the dwarves could end up tricking them without their realizing it. Caio doubted the dwarves would be able to deceive them that way, but it was preferable to turn them into allies and have them spit out information of their own free will.

“Just give one of them control of some mouse and rabbit skeletons. Hey, which one of you is your unit leader?” Treevor asked the dwarves and one of them raised a trembling hand, probably trying to resist the order.

Treevor put a few dozen rats under the dwarf’s control and broke his mind, before starting to question him.

“What is your name?”

“Durui...my...lord.” The dwarf answered with difficulty.

Treevor gave away a few dozen more unimportant undead so the dwarf could speak more eloquently before continuing. “First of all, I am not your lord. My chief is away on a reckless journey, but he should be back in a few days. For now, I am more interested in your people and where you come from, Durui.”

“I am one of the sentinels... of the silver village. We are the only residents... of Keirasa Mountain.” Durui spoke.

“And how long have you lived on the mountain? How many of you are there?” Astrus asked.

“Since forever, I think...All my ancestors...have always lived in the mountains...and our numbers are...approximately 600. We are a small village...so we don’t have many members.” Durui spoke, surprising everyone present.

They expected a few dozen members in a small community, not an entire village.

“How do you manage to feed so many mouths if you live underground? No, more importantly, are there other hidden villages like yours?” Emilia questioned.

“Thousands, not counting... the major cities... Our hidden kingdom of Dorvem... is extensive and encompasses all... the central range.” Durui spoke with undisguised pride.

“That’s impossible! Some villages I understand, but it’s impossible that there’s an entire kingdom and the order doesn’t know about it!” Emília screamed in shock, refusing to believe his words.

“It’s true...we dwarves use magic...to keep our existence hidden...from the human realms. As for order and the church...our king has...a treaty of non-intervention...with they.” Durui spoke, turning the skeletons’ shock to disbelief.

None of them could believe that both the order of magic and the church of Eishin knew about the dwarven kingdom and just ignored its existence.

What none of them knew is that hundreds of years ago, when the human kingdoms were still forming, the church and order joined together in an expedition to attempt to invade the central mountain range, resulting in one of the greatest failures in human history.