Chapter 6: The First Battle—The Great Duel of the Two Dwarves

“Haha, Brother White, I’ve heard that line from you hundreds of times already, and I still haven’t seen you do a thing,” Trist laughed loudly.

“Hmph. I’m just temporarily out of money,” Bai Lingyu said awkwardly.

“I think you should forget it. Now that Brother Li has arrived, life is going to be much better,” Almu said at the top of his voice, though his eyes kept drifting toward the female heroes behind Li Bin.

Li Bin stepped in front of Almu with a bitter smile, then said to Bai Lingyu, “I heard you have a way to move quickly through the forest?”

“It’s not moving quickly through the forest. My Flood-Dragon Long Cart can move swiftly underground and at sea. But if you think you can borrow it and take it out, that’s impossible. A Flood-Dragon Long Cart without fuel is worse than scrap iron,” Bai Lingyu said, perhaps because he had seen too much and understood what Li Bin was planning.

“What if the fountain has energy?” Li Bin asked.

“How could that be? That fountain hasn’t had any energy in a very long time,” Trist said from the side, his face full of disbelief.

“I’ve never believed the fountain’s energy would disappear before the town hall fell,” Li Bin said coldly.

His words displeased the three men trapped in the village. Almu jumped out and said, “Then what do you mean? Have we been trapped here for nothing? Didn’t you see what’s grown all over the fountain outside?”

“Then clear it away,” Li Bin said, staring into their eyes.

“Even if we clear it away, there are forests all around here. There’s no way enough energy will appear,” Bai Lingyu said as well.

“Then clear the forests away.”

“You’re insane. Don’t you know the Verdant Leaves Everywhere Great Alliance has already ordered that the forests must not be destroyed? If we damage the forest, they’ll attack us,” Bai Lingyu shouted.

“Given your situation, are you still afraid of their attack?” Li Bin’s gaze turned colder and colder.

Yes. In their present state, after being trapped here for so long, were they still afraid of attack? The same thought rose in all three of their hearts at once.

Still, Bai Lingyu remained levelheaded and asked, “What exactly do you plan to do? If you don’t have a detailed plan, we’re not going to go mad with you.”

Li Bin did not answer Bai Lingyu directly. Instead, he asked, “If the fountain starts working, how long will it take you to replenish and convert enough energy?”

“That depends on what you mean by enough,” Bai Lingyu replied.

“Enough to let everyone here and the troops escape to the largest non-natural city nearby,” Li Bin said word for word.

Bai Lingyu calculated for a moment, then raised his head and said, “Three days. We need at least three days.”

“Fine. If you can repair the fountain and clear the forest within today, I’ll hold the line for those three days,” Li Bin said slowly.

“You?” the three of them said in disbelief.

“What, you don’t believe me? I won’t even mention the strength of the troops under my command. Just the numbers alone should be enough to hold out for a while, shouldn’t they?” Li Bin said calmly.

“Ridiculous. You only say that because you don’t understand the strength of the Verdant Leaves Everywhere Great Alliance. Let me tell you the truth: there are two NPC experts in the alliance whose levels exceed twenty,” Almu said coldly, apparently not at all optimistic about Li Bin’s plan.

But Li Bin only replied offhandedly, “It’s just a small patch of forest being destroyed. Send someone over to teach them a lesson. Is it really necessary to dispatch top experts?”

As Li Bin had expected, the Verdant Leaves Everywhere Great Alliance was already in a state of confusion from Disaia’s fierce counterattack. When they learned that a public village of the mech-spirit faction had cut down every tree within a ten-kilometer radius around the settlement, their first reaction was to simply send someone to deal with it.

So on the second day after Li Bin and the others cleared the trees near the village and restored the fountain, a natural-faction force appeared outside this mech-spirit village.

From atop the city wall, the force looked alarmingly large. Behind a banner emblazoned with a pickaxe were five full dwarf battalions.

From the trees being hauled behind them, however, it was clear that not all of them were combat troops. It seemed the Verdant Leaves Everywhere Great Alliance had great confidence in the strength of its subordinates: not only had they sent soldiers, they had even sent the people needed to replant the trees.

As Li Bin was imagining the scene, a somewhat taller dwarf stepped out from the crowd and shouted at the wall, “People inside the city, listen up! You have violated the rules of our Verdant Leaves Everywhere Great Alliance. Since we’re all players here, I’ll go easy on you this once. If you replant these trees, I’ll represent the alliance and let this matter go.”

“Do you even have that authority?” Almu, unlike Bai Lingyu, who was busy refining energy, was idly standing beside Li Bin and spoke carelessly.

“Of course I do. Anything I say always counts,” the dwarf shouted.

“You say anything you want?” Li Bin heard it however he listened, and it still sounded wrong.

“I said, I say anything I want...” The dwarf’s face turned red with either anger or panic; in any case, the veins on his forehead bulged out.

But Li Bin still caught on: that dwarf’s name was probably Whatever. Yet Almu would not let this dwarf off so easily, repeatedly throwing “whatever” back at him until the dwarf roared three times in fury and pointed at the mech-spirit village below, issuing the order to attack.

Seeing the dwarves begin their assault, Almu casually said to Li Bin, “I’m not into men, and I have no interest in this kind of burly fellow, so I’ll leave this to you.”

Li Bin shook his head repeatedly at that and sent his subordinate Wine Vat out of the city.

Below the walls, the two dwarf leaders stared at each other for a moment, then both activated their skills at once. The dwarf warriors behind Wine Vat each took a bucket of ale, knocked it back in one gulp, and then raised their weapons and charged.

The dwarf called Whatever was not to be outdone. Roaring, he stripped off all the armor on his body and led his own shirtless men to meet the charge.

Watching the battle from atop the wall, Li Bin wore a look of astonishment and muttered, “Who does he think he is? Some ancient purple dragon out of legend, whose attack doubles the moment he takes off his clothes?”

“I don’t think so. It must be his special skill. There’s no justice in this world. If only that skill had been learned by a lady. Even a female dwarf would be fine,” said Almu, who should have been running down the wall but had somehow come back, now staring bitterly at the battle below.

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