Chapter 200: Harvest and Reflection

Sinuoli and his subordinates were immersed in the joy of post-battle looting. This was the greatest harvest since he had transmigrated, following so many battles large and small; one could even say it was more than all the previous ones combined.

This was also unavoidable, as Sinuoli had previously been fighting within the Qunshan, battling either Skaven or Greenskins.

It was not that the Skaven lacked money, but the wealth of the entire Skaven Empire was mostly held in the claws of those Great Clans that held a seat on the Council of Thirteen. The small clans were being exploited; they had to take the meager resources they had worked so hard to obtain and trade them for high-priced war beasts and equipment to avoid being annexed by other clans.

As for those Greenskins, there was no need to even mention them; they did not even have the habit of collecting valuable metals, and many of their weapons and equipment were endowed with special abilities by Waaagh Energy, which were useless to ordinary people.

Relying on the prompts from the Artifact Treasury System, Sinuoli accurately fished the Dwarf collar out of the relics of Salazar; this item could be synthesized with the Spark Gem into Latong's Beast Taming Collar.

This artifact was developed by a Dwarf Engineer named Latong, who realized his dangerous and radical ideas with the support of the Engineers Guild. However, when he went to Lustria to capture beasts, he was killed by a behemoth in the rainforest, and the whereabouts of this collar became unknown.

By a stroke of luck, one of its components fell into the hands of a Vampire Coast captain, and after changing hands, it was recovered by the Dwarfs. In the game, it could directly place a Feral Carnosaur into the elite recruitment pool, but in reality, Sinuoli would need to capture the monster himself.

Sinuoli believed that such a change had more advantages than disadvantages; after all, there were plenty of behemoths in this world more powerful than a Carnosaur! Wouldn't it be better to find one that can fly? As for what to catch, Sinuoli would have to ponder that after getting his hands on the other component, the Spark Gem.

Sinuoli had cleared the battlefield and obtained wealth of approximately twenty thousand gold coins, the bulk of which came from the plunder Salazar had amassed at sea. The other portion was obtained by the Red Duke after he breached the town of Viscount Minaithir.

Sinuoli naturally did not intend to return this money; the poor original owner had already died twice, so could it really be returned to the taxed farmers? According to the prior agreement, these spoils of war belonged to the Dwarfs. It was just that Sinuoli still needed to split them fifty-fifty with the lord of Weifengbao.

Sinuoli had leveled up through this battle and gained an artifact component, so he was in a good mood. He simply took out half of his ten thousand gold coins and began to reward his men for their merits on the spot.

The cheers of the Humans in the castle for the Lady of the Lake could be heard standing at the city gate, and Sinuoli, this chosen one of the Dwarf Goddess, also wanted to make a gesture. Under the gaze of Sitelinge, which was half-reverent and half-surprised,

"Generous Snuori!"

"Praise the Ancestor Goddess!"

These cheers, relying on the loud voices of his clansmen, almost turned into a rival performance against the Humans.

That evening, after Sinuoli had rested, he sat in his room and listened to the reports from his clansmen regarding the losses and the situation from the previous night. After this battle, excluding the Slayers who sought death, the Dwarfs had lost more than fifty clansmen.

Most of them had met their end at the hands of that Corrupted Leviathan and the spirits. This directly reflected the two greatest weaknesses of the Dwarf army: apart from the Slayers, they lacked the ability to counter large units and rarely possessed magical lethality.

Such characteristics were related to the Dwarf style; in defensive operations, large units on the ground could be handled by Artillery, and they were simply immobile within the Earth Vein Network. Moreover, spirits were almost non-existent among the main opponents of the Dwarfs.

Sinuoli was determined to make adjustments; at least he had to find a way to improve his ability to counter large units. He knew that simply defending while hunkered down in a Shanbao would not work if he wanted to solve the Chaos threat.

Taking the initiative to leave the Shanbao to fight field battles like this one was precisely a good opportunity for large units to shine. Facts proved that relying solely on low-level War Machines like bolt throwers and Cannon was truly a bit of a struggle.

Their projectiles were decent enough for hitting monster infantry the size of Trolls or Ogres, but they were somewhat lacking when dealing with true behemoths.

Another point that Sinuoli found strange was that the scale of the ceremony for Fatisi's promotion to Grail Knight was strangely large. According to information the Dwarfs had gathered from the tavern, the Lady of the Lake not only appeared directly in front of all the nobles of Bordeleaux, but even opened her golden mouth to offer a few words of encouragement.

According to widely circulated epics, the process for Grail Knights to drink the liquid from the cup was usually as follows: guided by a vision that only he could see appearing in his mind, he would walk to a nearby forest, and then the Green Knight would appear to challenge him to a duel.

This was the final test of the Questing Knight's quest for the Grail, but it seemed to be for the purpose of sparring and served more of a ritualistic function, as there was no record of any examinee falling at this stage.

Subsequently, the Goddess holding the Grail would appear from a small lake, a well, or some other body of water, silently tilting the Grail slightly to allow him to take a drink, and the ceremony would end there.

Such a ceremony seemed to reflect a sense of privacy, but the scale of Fatisi's ceremony this morning was grand; perhaps the Lady of the Lake wanted to achieve some other effects beyond that.

Sinuoli once confidently suspected that the Elf Goddess wanted to show off her power, and after shocking him, take the opportunity to recruit him and create some kind of Grail Dwarf for fun.

But on second thought, not to mention whether he had caught her eye, even if she really wanted to do it, it didn't seem necessary to go to such trouble.

While he was pondering, the doorman handed in an invitation to the Humans' victory banquet, which was exactly what Sinuoli wanted; after nearly ten days of marching and fighting, he truly needed rest and relaxation.

This victory banquet was different from the small-scale welcome banquet before; it was held in the hall of the Duke's castle. Almost all the prominent figures of Bordeleaux city came to attend. Since many nobles had not yet returned from the expedition, this banquet was relatively less focused on etiquette and had fewer constraints.

The protagonists of the meeting were naturally the Regent Kangsitanting, Sinuoli himself, and the newly promoted Grail Knight Fatisi. Fatisi looked much younger; all the scars and weariness from his trials had been erased, and he had transformed from a slightly decadent middle-aged man into an energetic man in his prime.

Like all Grail Knights, he had become taller and stronger, and his voice was more resonant, but he was still immersed in the joy of his breakthrough, constantly offering blessings to everyone who toasted him.

Kangsitanting, however, had other things hidden beneath his superficial joy. The young man was trying his best to conceal it, but he was still inexperienced and let a little bit slip through.

Sinuoli didn't need to ask to know what he was thinking; to put it bluntly, it was a matter of faith. The thing his father and brother had been thinking about day and night, and had traveled thousands of miles to seek, had been obtained by an outsider at his own doorstep; anyone would have some thoughts about that.