After the smoke from the training ground cleared, Deson turned to Derrick: "Colonel, I need a few dwarf prisoners."
Derrick frowned. "Yes, they are. They're locked up in jail. We tried to get a detailed map of the tunnel from them, but those guys are stubborn and inflexible. We tried everything, but we couldn't get a single word out of them. We beat them, we starved them, and even the oldest interrogator was at a loss."
"Perhaps we can try a different approach," Deson said calmly. "I need a completely enclosed room, dark and stuffy, with a thick door. Also, no one is allowed near it during the interrogation, including you."
Derrick stared at him, his eyes flickering slightly. He sized up this seemingly refined intelligence officer and already had a guess in his mind— a "special project officer" from Lakeheart Town, his methods would certainly not be ordinary whips and branding irons.
"Are you going to use torture?" he asked in a low voice.
Deson did not deny it, but simply said, "Sometimes we have to resort to extreme measures for the sake of efficiency. Please believe me, as long as they are alive, they will not have any external injuries."
Derrick was silent for a moment, then finally nodded: " There's a stone chamber downstairs in Sita, originally intended to hold serious criminals. The walls are made of three-foot-thick stone. Here's the key, but don't kill anyone. I need to keep it to exchange for Viscount Helson."
"I understand." Deson took the keys and then summoned two attendants, who kept their heads down and wore ordinary gray robes, showing no particular distinguishing features.
Shortly afterward, four chained dwarf prisoners were led into the basement of the Sita building. The heavy stone door was closed, and two soldiers stood guard outside with guns.
At first, the room was silent. About half an hour later, a hoarse roar suddenly broke the silence, like a howl squeezed from the depths of a throat, followed by intermittent groans and whispers, the sounds distorted and painful. After a while, screams rang out one after another, sometimes high, sometimes low, as if someone was enduring unspeakable torture.
The soldiers outside the door exchanged glances, their faces turning pale. One of them muttered under his breath, "These intelligence operatives... they're ruthless."
Nearly an hour later, the stone door finally opened, and Deson stepped out first, his face showing signs of fatigue, but his eyes were clear and his breathing was steady. His two attendants followed him out one after another, their movements slightly slow, as if they had just experienced a period of physical exhaustion.
Inside the house, the four dwarves lay paralyzed on the ground, foaming at the mouth, their eyes rolled back, convulsing, completely unconscious. Several scratch marks remained on the stone wall, as if they had desperately dug at it with their fingernails.
The soldiers dared not look any longer, only hearing Deson calmly say, "Take them away and keep a close watch on them, don't let them die."
Those outside knew that the screams they had just heard were not from physical pain, but from the tearing of the soul— Deson and his group had launched a "memory rewind," forcibly penetrating the dwarves' stubborn mental barrier and seizing intelligence about the tunnel network, troop deployments, and other information (of course, only what the prisoners knew). As for Solan Viscount Helson, the prisoners were unaware of this.
However, for the time being, Deson and his associates cannot disclose their methods to outsiders.
In the operations room of Mountain Throat Fortress, a detailed topographic map covers the entire long table, with contour lines, rock strata orientations, and stream sources clearly marked.
Combined with the information Deson extracted from the prisoners, several hidden underground passages were outlined in red ink on the map, one of which, a main passage, led directly to an important stronghold of the Stonemason Clan —the Anvil Hall.
Derrick stood in front of the table, traced the red line with his finger, and said to the officers with a smile, "After waiting so long, we can finally do something big."
At dawn the next day, he personally led two hundred elite infantrymen and engineering squads to set off, with three specially made light carts in the procession, each loaded with sealed explosive boxes, which were guarded by special personnel.
They ventured deep into the Eastern Rocky Mountains canyons along the safe routes marked on the survey map, firearms loaded, and artillery observers carrying portable rangefinders to calibrate the terrain at any time.
At noon, the group reached a narrow mountain pass with steep cliffs on both sides. Suddenly, arrows flew down from above. The soldiers immediately raised their guns to find the target. Dozens of dwarf warriors leaped out from behind the rocks, wielding short axes and heavy hammers, and roared as they charged down the hillside.
Gunfire erupted, and after three volleys, the dwarves' formation was disrupted, several corpses lying strewn across the slope. The survivor let out a sharp whistle, turned, and scurried into a crevice in the rocks, quickly retreating.
This is a scene that the garrison at Mountain Throat Fortress has experienced countless times.
But today will be different.
"Chase!" Derrick ordered without hesitation.
The group advanced along the route the dwarves had taken, and soon discovered a low tunnel entrance beneath a rock wall hidden by vines, just wide enough for one person to pass through by bending over.
Derrick crouched down, checked the map, and confirmed it was correct. They lit torches and filed in, the tunnel damp and cold, ancient runes carved on the stone walls, the air thick with the smell of rust and underground moss. Ausser Army Soldiers held torches, their flickering shadows cast on the rock face, and their footsteps echoed through the narrow passage.
After marching slowly for less than half an hour, the team clearly sensed something was wrong.
The compass needle began to swing erratically, and eventually came to a complete stop. There might be magnetite in the mountain, or the dwarves might have tampered with the tunnel.
The textures of the surrounding rock walls were almost identical, with branching paths appearing one after another, some only wide enough to pass sideways, others extending downwards into seemingly bottomless depths. The engineering captain took out the sketch provided by Deson for comparison, only to find that the actual tunnel was even more chaotic than depicted in the sketch.
"We can't go any further." Derrick stopped and lowered his voice. "This place is a maze. If we go any deeper, we might not be able to get out."
He looked around and estimated that he had gone about 500 steps into the tunnel. The rock strata above him were thick and heavy, and the rock walls on both sides were solid. This passage was a key choke point connecting the external and internal networks. Destroying this place would be equivalent to cutting off the entire passage.
"Plant the explosives right here," he ordered. "Block all the side roads from the entrance to this position, and bury at least three explosive charges in the main passage to ensure a complete collapse."
The engineers acted swiftly, filling the pre-drilled rock holes with explosives in sections, securing them with wooden wedges, and connecting the fuses in series to a remote ignition device. Each box of explosives was precisely positioned to ensure the impact force would tear the rock strata to the maximum extent.
Derrick took one last look into the depths of the tunnel—the world of the dwarves, dark, complex, and full of unknowns.
But now, they don't need to go in.
"Don't they love digging holes?" Derrick sneered. "Then let them take ten or a hundred years to dig all over again from scratch."