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Wang: "It sounds like this thing has disrupted your front?"
"That's right! Cave dwellers are not a threat on the ground. They have good hearing and can identify their positions by sound and launch precise attacks, but we have found a way to restrain them!"
Wang: "How?"
"It's just beating the gong! We prepared a big gong, and several strong men beat it continuously. The loud noise covers all other sounds. The cave dwellers can only charge towards the direction of the gong, and then fall into our trap. Finally, the trap is filled up, and they rush towards our army formation stepping on the corpses."
Elizabeth exclaimed, "Filled?"
"Yes." Ralph nodded. "When they first broke through the cave dwellers' nest, my grandfather tried to organize an army to resist. They even planned to use alchemical explosives to blow up the cave dwellers' nest and bury them all inside. The records left from that era say that most of the cave dwellers' armies were small teams of dozens of people, and there were rarely large armies of hundreds of people moving together."
Wang: "The number of cavemen has obviously increased now, right?"
"Yes."
Wang stroked his chin and thought for a moment, then asked seriously, "Has the body shape of cavemen changed since your grandfather's time?"
Ralph: "This... you can check the records. When we first broke through the cave dwellers' lair, this fortress was where Grandfather and his men planned to take back the mines. They didn't give up until they ran out of money. At that time, Grandfather hired a clerk to record everything he found that would help defeat the cave dwellers."
Wang: "Let's go!"
Elizabeth let out a long sigh: "Finally, I don't have to endure this stench."
Xiaobai: "Guguda!"
**
The castle's library surprisingly did not have the musty smell of damp paper, probably because the castle was well ventilated.
Ralph took a book down from the bookshelf with ease. "This book records the body structure of cavemen in detail. I read it and learned how to kill cavemen, and then taught it to my warriors. I didn't expect the cavemen to bring out that kind of monster."
Wang took the book, opened it and flipped through it quickly.
Xiao Bai stretched his head to look at the scene, and after watching for a few seconds, he complained, "You're flipping too fast!"
Wang: "Don't worry, I'll show you the important part later."
Xiao Bai: "How do you know what is important and what is not?"
At this time, Wang stopped flipping through the book, pointed to the size of the cavemen recorded on it and asked Ralph: "Sir, are the cavemen you are facing now this big?"
Ralph came over to take a look, then turned a page and looked at the caveman sketch at the back: "The height is about the same, but the caveman we are facing is not so strong, and looks very thin.
"Before, I was focusing on physical weaknesses and didn't look closely at this diagram. I thought cave dwellers were just so skinny. I feel like all underground creatures are skinny."
Flint blew his beard in anger. "What did you say? Dwarves are not skinny! We weigh more than tall people who are just big!"
The king ignored Flint's protests and muttered to himself, "The number of cavemen has increased, but they have become thinner... Sir, are there no cavemen who are closer to the diagram drawn by your ancestors?"
Ralph answered immediately, "Yes. The priests of Lamashtu and the few remaining shamans are of this size. Ordinary cave dwellers also have this size from time to time, usually commander-level figures."
Wang: "Could it be that ordinary cave dwellers have developed a disease? In addition to catching live monsters tonight, we also need to catch live cave dwellers. It would be best if we could catch both thin and not-thin ones."
Ralph: "The caveman's body from last night hasn't been burned yet. We just didn't have the manpower, so we just asked the priest to do the ritual. Do you want to take a look?"
"Row."
**
Unlike the monsters, the bodies of the cavemen were piled directly in the tunnel, apparently in preparation for the next defense.
The king immediately found a thin one and a plump one and had Gotrek drag them out from the pile of corpses.
After placing the two bodies side by side on the ground, Elizabeth commented, "There is indeed a clear difference. The one here looks like a pillow filled with dried rice bran but not yet fully filled, while the one next to it is filled with velvet."
"Thank you for your vivid metaphor," Wang said as he put on his gloves.
After saying that, he took out a dagger from his dimensional bag.
Xiaobai: "Don't you need that thin claw knife anymore?"
"No, there is no need for dissection this time. We just need to see what's in the stomach." The wizard was about to stab with the dagger, but was stopped by the drow elf.
Marika: "Let me do it. I can't do your detailed dissection, but I'm good at cutting open the stomach."
Wang: "Then make sure you take out the stomach intact and then cut it open. I want to see the remaining food in the stomach."
Elizabeth: "Do you suspect that this size difference is due to not eating enough?"
Wang: "No, I plan to eliminate them one by one by elimination. The easiest thing to eliminate is the food gap."
Marika: “I’m going to do it!”
"Open it." Wang made a gesture of invitation.
The drow elf skillfully cut open the corpse, took out the stomach, and then cut it open in front of everyone and took out the food residue inside.
Wang squatted down and poked it gently with his gloved hands: "Mushrooms should be the staple food of cave dwellers, but this doesn't look like mushrooms. Even if it has been eaten for a long time, the remaining mushrooms in the stomach cannot be powdery. The peristalsis of the stomach cannot grind it into such fine pieces."
Wang picked up a handful of the black powder and looked at it carefully.
Xiaobai: "It's moss."
The king looked at the werewolf girl and asked, "Are you sure?"
"Sure, this is moss."
Wang: "Okay, moss. What are these granular things?"
Xiaobai: "I don't know. They have no taste."
Wang rubbed the granular substance carefully with his fingers: "It still feels hard, and it's not completely powder. There are particles of different sizes."
He took out the water bag, grabbed a handful of food scraps, rinsed them with water, and fine black particles appeared in his palm.
Flint came up to take a closer look and said, "This is sand from the sandy soil layer in the earth's crust. It is said that the besieged city-state of Oriath was so poor that it had to mix this into its bread."
Wang shook his hands and threw away the sand, then said to Marika, "Tear down a few more thin ones and see if this is what's in their stomachs."
Marika: “Leave it to me.”
A moment later, the drow came back and reported, "It's not all of this stuff. Some people have sawdust in their stomachs. I don't know how the cave dwellers got sawdust underground."
Wang nodded and pointed to the rounder caveman corpse and said, "Take out this stomach and see what's inside."
Marika did as she was told, and after a few deft movements, she emptied the contents of the plump caveman's stomach and spread it flat on the ground.
Wang picked up a thin stick-like object and said, "I feel like this is the stem of a fungus."
The druid immediately said, "Ghost mushrooms are a delicious kind of mushroom. They emit a faint light in the dark."
Wang threw this away and picked up another piece to show Xiaobai.
"Midnight Morel, this mushroom tastes like fish, and I don't like fish, so it doesn't taste good." Xiaobai said firmly.
Wang: "Do both of these mushrooms live underground?"
"Ghost mushrooms are everywhere underground, but morels can only live on the ground."
The dwarf said excitedly: "It seems that the cave dwellers have entered the feudal society from the primitive society. This cave dweller who eats mushrooms may be their baron!"
Wang: "No, I think it's more likely that the underground can no longer support such a large population of cave dwellers. The resources underground have always been a problem.
"Dwarves don't live entirely underground. They grow dwarven barley on the terraces of the Mountain Kingdom. Dwarves also hunt on the ground, using the meat of wild beasts to enrich their tables.
“They don’t just rely on the crops in the ground.”
Flint: "You are not telling the whole story. We dwarves can also domesticate goats. Goats are a kind of livestock that is very suitable for grazing in mountainous areas. They can produce delicious meat and goat milk."
Wang: "That's right. Many of the so-called underground races actually rely on things on the ground to survive. The drow are the same. They will hunt on the ground. But cave dwellers are different. They almost never appear on the ground, not even in the shallow ground.
“They can only rely on various crops grown underground, so their population has never been large and has always been in balance with food production.
"Consistent with this characteristic, their birth rate was not high and their children were prone to premature death. Now there are signs that cavemen seem to have solved the problem of fertility."
Elizabeth: "Then there was famine. They ate all the mushrooms underground, and could only eat moss mixed with sand and gravel to fill their stomachs. In the end, they had no choice but to wage war on the surface world to seize the land under the sun."
Wang: "That's a good summary. That's probably what it looks like at the moment."
Marika didn't seem to care about whether she could have food or not. After Wang finished speaking, she asked, "Is this abnormal increase in fertility related to the crisis we are about to face?"
"I need to collect more information on this." Wang shrugged. "Of course, it is also possible that after we stop the attack tonight, most of our questions will be answered."
Flint: "You have forgotten one thing. There is an angry fake duke who wants to kill everyone except the princess waiting for us to overthrow him."
Wang seemed to have just remembered this matter and nodded repeatedly: "Yes, there is also this matter."
It seemed that his interest had been completely captured by the astonishing facts happening in the caveman community.
He was already looking forward to the attack tonight.
Chapter 86 Night Fight
At night, Wang's team, together with the soldiers stationed in the fortress, entered the underground fortification area of the fortress.
They had been here during the day, when there was light leaking in from the ventilation shaft, so the entire underground didn't look so gloomy.
Now that there was only the light of torches, the whole environment suddenly became different.
Elizabeth was the first to express her feelings: "It's really eerie. I feel a little creepy and cold."
Wang: "You feel cold because there is wind blowing in from behind."
He grabbed a little bit of powder from the spell material bag and sprinkled it in the air, observing the direction of the scale powder flying in the firelight: "My feeling is right, there is indeed wind. This shows that the air is circulating."
Elizabeth waited for a while, and when she found that the wizard had no intention of continuing, she asked, "And?"
Wang: “Ah?”
He looked at Elizabeth blankly.
Elizabeth blinked and expanded her question: "Air circulation then?"
"Ah?" The wizard was even more confused. "Does it have to be something else? Can't you just describe this fact?"
Elizabeth: "I thought you would come up with a series of inferences and then discover some crucial clues."
Wang scratched his head: "Sorry, no. I am just describing the facts I observed."
Xiaobai: "Your conversations are so hard to understand. They're all in the common language."
Gao Trik nodded: "Gao."
Flint: "You're human too, right? Don't count yourself out."
The drow coughed and said to the wizard, "King..."