Chapter 230: Unknown Fear and the Provoked Battle

In the land of Middle-earth, most creatures do not like to stay in pure darkness.

Whether it is the Elves blessed by starlight, or the Humans who awoke at the first rising of the sun, both are races that chase the light.

Even the Dwarves, who spend their years in the mountains, will try every possible way to make the stone halls they inhabit full of brilliance and brightness.

Yet Moria, now abandoned by Durin's Folk, has the vast majority of its regions plunged into a shadow of suffocating darkness and fear.

As for the Second Valley, located in the lower region of the Second Hall, besides the darkness, the terrain is even more complex; in addition to the hall, there are cracks, stone stairs that either ascend or descend, and grand halls whose purposes are unknown.

In order to find the passage leading to the Third Valley, Holimion's squad spent nearly four full days groping through the vast, empty, and pitch-black Second Valley.

Even for the powerful Twilight Knights, walking for several consecutive days in this endless darkness began to make them feel a hint of fatigue.

However, finding the road to the Third Valley kept their pace light and maintained a good speed; fortunately, after half a day of trekking, Ori followed a vague hint on a wall and finally led Holimion to their destination for this trip: the Armory.

It was a forging area with numerous blast furnaces standing tall; in the past, when flames steamed upward, it must have been an extremely lively and busy scene.

Now, however, deathly silence and pitch-black darkness cover everything.

To complete the goal of this exploration, the group followed Holimion's lead and stepped firmly onto a wide, descending staircase; now, to their right was a crack where darkness seemed to be rolling incessantly, and to their left was a bottomless abyss of darkness.

"Hoo~ hoo~"

Just as the entire squad finished walking half the stairs, a sound of breathing reached Holimion's ears from the darkness beneath their feet; the sound was barely audible, and its distance from his position seemed extremely far.

But the keen perception of the Noldor Elf began to incessantly release signals of extreme danger to its master.

This terrifying feeling came so suddenly and so intensely that Holimion felt as if he were a lamb being stared at by a fierce tiger.

Even when facing hundreds or thousands of Gatu alone, such an uneasy emotion had never appeared in Holimion's heart.

This caused his light footsteps to become heavy in an instant, and the next moment, he stopped moving altogether.

Subsequently, the entire team stopped due to Holimion's strange behavior, because other than him, no one else had heard anything in such a silent environment.

With a serious expression, Holimion quickly gestured for silence to those behind him, while his eyes, flashing with sharp light in the darkness, stared at the darkness beneath his feet, hoping to find the source of his unease.

Unknown fear is the only true fear.

Yet beneath his feet, there was still only the rolling pitch-blackness and that strange, faint sound; other than that, the only noise was the sound of everyone's breathing, which had begun to grow tense.

Although Holimion did not discover anything amiss in the vast darkness, he would never doubt his ears, for these sensitive ears had saved his life countless times in dense forests.

"If you discover any accidents, retreat; abandon everything and retreat. If something is chasing you, rendezvous with Dain's squad and run out of Moria immediately, heading toward Lothlórien. Do not worry about me; I have a way to survive in the darkness."

The order Allen had given several days ago immediately surfaced in Holimion's mind; he did not know how his lord could survive for a long time in this sunless place, but now, he prepared to obey Allen's order and lead the group to retreat.

Even though the distance between them and the Armory was not even a mile, as if they could reach it by just lifting their feet, Holimion prepared to lead the people away.

And just as Holimion turned back to give the signal to retreat, the Twilight Knights accompanying him all changed color; once the interference of footsteps was gone, they too heard the faint "hoo~ hoo~" sound in the darkness.

For a time, an atmosphere of tension and unease shrouded the entire squad; only Ori, with bewildered eyes, kept looking at the Elves who had suddenly stopped beside him.

At times, the Dwarves' ability to perceive danger is indeed inferior to that of the Elves.

And after seeing Holimion give the signal to retreat, Ori even wanted to open his mouth to ask why, because their target was right before their eyes.

But the two Twilight Knights beside him suddenly reached out as they turned, covering Ori's mouth just as he was about to open it with lightning speed, while simultaneously using their other hands to hoist the bewildered Dwarf and quickly retreat along the path they had come.

Their actions were stealthy and nimble; they made only a tiny sound while completing the series of movements, not even comparable to the sound of a Dwarf's footsteps on the floor.

Before long, the entire squad left the staircase at double speed, and Holimion lingered at the starting point of the stairs, staying quietly for a while.

Finally, after confirming he heard nothing unusual, he waved his hand and led the remaining people toward the passage returning to the Second Valley; not until they were far from the forging area did Holimion let out a soft sigh of relief.

He knew that his mission to search the Armory had failed, but the good news was that the existence he found so terrifying had not discovered the squad's tracks, and this information had to be brought to his lord.

However, when Holimion returned to the First Hall, he did not find Allen there, and the Noldor Rangers who had followed him were carrying large and small bags, leaving the gates of Moria, preparing to transport these items to the edge of the Golden Wood.

After all, if they really disturbed an existence that even Allen could not afford to provoke, running away was certainly the only choice; the spoils transported down from the Sixteenth Hall could not be taken in one trip, and when fleeing for one's life, there was no time to care about these precious worldly possessions.

It was better to take advantage of the fact that Moria was still relatively quiet to transport these things out first; when it was truly time to run, they could focus on retreating without worrying about the things they had worked so hard to find falling into the hands of the Orcish who would come rushing in.

No, in the end, it would all likely fall into the hands of that hateful fellow, Sauron.

And what was Allen doing? He was at the entrance of a secret passage on the west side of the Sixteenth Hall, staring intently at two Orcish who were strolling leisurely.

If you called it patrolling, it didn't look like it, as they were loosely carrying pitch-black serrated Curved Blades in their hands; if you called it exercising, it didn't fit the living habits of the Orcish, so Allen, watching them, could only conclude that these two gray-skinned fellows were just loitering.

Sometimes Allen couldn't quite figure out how the two factions of Orcish currently in a bloody conflict distinguished their own companions.

Their equipment was more or less the same, either pitch-black or ink-black, and there was no obvious difference in the weapons in their hands—either Curved Blades or Spears; some of the taller fellows held large clubs or short-handled war hammers, and they all carried shields without emblems.

This caused a slight problem for Allen's plan, but it did not affect his subsequent actions.

He was seen gently pulling a similarly pitch-black short bow from behind his back, then slowly drawing two Black Arrows that emitted a foul odor from the quiver at his waist; throughout the process of completing all these movements, Allen kept his eyes fixed on the two Orcish not far away.

If the enemies made the slightest unusual move, Allen would immediately stop his actions, turn around, retreat into the passage behind him, and then move far away from here.

Yet everything went extremely smoothly; the Orcish walking on the left fell to the ground after a muffled grunt and stopped moving, while the other was pierced through the thigh by a black arrow and let out a miserable wail, but Allen's figure had already disappeared into the passage, moving away from the scene amidst the commotion that was about to erupt.

Allen certainly did not want to use this method to slowly wear the enemies to death, because that was an impossible situation; the moment he killed a few more, the enemies would have unpredictable reactions.

They might send more Orcish to patrol, or gather everyone together, and once the Orcish discovered Allen's tracks, it was very likely that they would search the entire Moria.

And when that time came, Allen would only be able to take his people and run away immediately.

His plan was actually very simple: to provoke a second bloody conflict between the two Orcish factions, and while the Orcish were slaughtering each other, he would go to retrieve the short-handled war axe belonging to Durin's Folk, so as to obtain more Mithril.

Since he was already here, it was best to take more back; by the time he came again, the Orcish might have already ended their infighting, and it would be very difficult to find such a good opportunity again.

For this plan, Allen had been exploring the sixth level alone for nearly three days, basically figuring out the activity areas of the two Orcish factions, and he did indeed possess the ability to live alone in the darkness.

Because Allen could purchase most of his supplies from the Simulator, he did not need to worry about food and water, and the place where he rested was not on the sixth level, but on the seventh level, which was higher and had sunlight; most Orcish were unwilling to go there, especially during the day.

If he were truly blocked by the Orcish, Allen had also left himself a way out; at worst, he would activate his ability and dive into a well that still had water, staying there; as long as he wasn't seen on the spot by the Orcish, there wouldn't be any major problems.

Allen's plan only officially began to be executed today; the black bow and black arrows were both found by him in the Guard Room of the First Hall, and before ambushing these two pieces of trash, he had already killed several disgusting fellows from the other Orcish faction, and similarly left behind a wounded one capable of screaming.

The black bow and black arrows he used were all found in the Guard Room of the First Hall and were weapons belonging to the Orcish; now it remained to be seen whether the leaders of both sides would pay attention to the provocation coming from the "other" Orcish.

When Fimbul arrived at the scene with his elite, he felt something was not quite right at the first moment, because he had been fighting with Black Face for a long time; although that fellow would provoke, feign defeat, and set ambushes, he had never dispatched archers to perform assassinations.

This made Fimbul sense a little something wrong; he hadn't thought that Humans would participate in this war for the control of Moria, he just instinctively felt that the situation was not right, fearing that Black Face was preparing a more insidious scheme.

However, before he could think carefully, the Orcish with the injured leg let out an even more miserable wail under the gaze of his companions; his not-so-bright brain thought that by doing this, he could make his hesitating leader take revenge for him.

After the Orcish were created, most of them were actually not particularly smart; only a few could master some craft skills and know how to control these not-so-bright clansmen of theirs.

Then, this small group of people would quickly stand out and become important figures and leaders of an Orcish tribe.

Fimbul was an Orc who relied on his brains to gain status and power, so he did not care about the screams on the ground, but instead pondered whether he should launch a second battle against Black Face in a short period of time.

In his view, this frequency was still a bit too fast; in the last struggle, he had lost a subordinate wearing Chainmail, yet his plan had not succeeded, and although Black Face chose to retreat, in fact, Fimbul had not won that battle and had instead suffered greater losses than the other side.

However, although Fimbul was full of concerns, the elites he relied upon and those lackeys who had been temporarily subdued did not possess such high intelligence; bloodthirst and belligerence were the traits generally possessed by Orcs.

This was the greatest reliance for Allen's decision to execute this plan, because he understood the habits of Orcs and knew what these guys would do after being attacked.

And the situation was exactly as Allen had planned; in the short time Fimbul was thinking, angry shouts and curses already filled the entire empty hall, and most of the Orcs, infected by the emotion of anger, all stared at their leader with blood-red eyes, waiting for the order to fight.

In the years of fighting in Moria, the two groups of Orcs had indeed forged a significant grudge; unless Black Face or Fimbul died on the spot and the remaining leader suppressed everything with the terrifying prestige gained from victory, there was simply no way for these two groups of Orcs to get along well.

When Fimbul saw everything around him, he knew the situation was not looking good and that this battle would likely be unavoidable, and just as he was preparing to issue the order to fight, bursts of clamor broke in.

Soon, a very tall Orc with a dark face walked out from a distant passageway with a group of lackeys.

Now Fimbul no longer needed to struggle, as the other side had already brought people to attack.