Chapter 89: Gulag

The female Troglodyte stared at the massive Hydra skull. Her mind scrambled to comprehend the sheer scale of the monster and the impossible reality of the settlement.

She snapped her gaze back to the Warlord. “Where are the others, Gorak? Where is the rest of the horde? Where is my father?”

Gorak looked down at her. His expression remained entirely stoic. “I already told you. We lost the war. They fell in battle.”

The words hung in the air. Her eyes widened, the shock instantly dissolving into a blinding, feral rage. She lunged forward. Her heavy fist slammed directly into Gorak’s jaw. The Warlord’s head barely moved from the impact.

“Where is your honor?!” she screamed, striking his bone-plated chest. “Your comrades died in the dirt! My father was slaughtered by these lizards! And now you bow to them? You serve the very creatures that killed our kin!”

Gorak didn’t raise a hand to stop her. He let her strike his armor. “Honor does not bring strength,” he rumbled calmly. “Honor does not put food in the bellies of our starving people. And honor absolutely does not bring victory in a war.”

She refused to listen. She pushed him, yelling frantically about loyalty, blood debts, and the absolute disgrace of Onyx Hall kneeling to weak swamp creatures. Her voice cracked as she hurled every insult she could think of at the Warlord, completely ignoring the crowd watching them.

Gorak waited for her to run out of breath. Then, he stepped closer, forcing her to look up at his towering, mutated frame.

“Look at me,” Gorak commanded. He flexed his massive arms, the thick, pale bone-plates shifting over bulging muscle. “Look at what we can become. Look at what I have become. I am evolved. This is the true strength of our ancient ancestors, returned to us.”

She glared at him, tears of fury welling in her eyes. “You sold everything! You sold our blood and our home to some ghost claiming to be a god, just to get a little stronger!”

The atmosphere in the training yard shifted instantly. The ambient noise died. Iron-Scale tightened his grip on his scythe. The surrounding Troglodytes and Kobolds tensed.

Gorak’s calm demeanor vanished. His eyes darkened, and a lethal, crushing pressure rolled off his massive frame.

Then, he leaned down, bringing his scarred face inches from hers.

“Insult my God one more time,” Gorak said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, fanatical growl, “and you will be punished accordingly. Blood or not, I will break you myself.”

The crushing weight of Gorak’s killing intent forced the female Troglodyte to take a step back. She looked into the Warlord’s eyes and saw absolutely no hesitation. He would kill her right here in the dirt if she spoke another word against his God.

She gritted her teeth, swallowing her immediate fury, and lowered her heavy axe-hammer.

“Fine,” she spat, her voice trembling with barely contained rage. “I challenge you, Gorak. A formal duel. At Onyx Hall, in front of our remaining kin. I will take back the honor of our people. I will strip that bone armor from your flesh and prove to everyone that we do not need a ghost to survive in this wasteland.”

Gorak did not accept or decline. He simply watched her as she turned her back on him. She vaulted onto her massive, scaled beast, yanked the reins hard, and charged out of the Bastion’s gates, leaving a trail of kicked-up ash in her wake.

The tense silence in the training yard lingered for a few seconds before the surrounding monsters slowly returned to their drills.

Iron-Scale picked up his scythe and slithered over to the Warlord. The metallic Kobold tilted his head. “What will you do, Warlord? Kill her?”

Gorak uncrossed his massive arms. “I will do whatever the Lord decides.”

Iron-Scale clicked his metallic claws against the shaft of his weapon. “And who exactly was her father?”

Gorak let out a heavy, exhausted sigh that rattled deep in his chest. “Korg. Her name is Gulag.”

The Inquisitor froze for a split second. A raspy, metallic snicker began to vibrate from Iron-Scale’s throat. The snicker grew into a full, hissing laugh.

“Oh, this is perfect,” Iron-Scale mocked, his yellow eyes gleaming with dark amusement. “I wonder how the proud daughter will react when she learns that you ate your own kin after the war. Especially when she finds out that you particularly enjoyed the soup made from Korg’s flesh.”

Gorak’s eyes flashed with sudden anger. He shoved a heavy, star-iron gauntlet against the Kobold’s chest, pushing Iron-Scale back a few feet.

“I did not know what was in the bowls,” Gorak growled, pointing a thick finger at the Inquisitor. “You and that fanatic Krug tricked me and my men into eating the dead. One day, when the Lord is not looking, I will take my revenge on both of you for that.”

Iron-Scale just kept laughing, entirely unthreatened by the Warlord’s promise. Gorak turned away in disgust, stomping over to the weapon racks to resume his training and burn off his frustration.

Up in the Void, Red leaned back in his chair and watched the live feed on his primary monitor. He pulled up the localized data on the retreating Troglodyte and the warband waiting for her outside Onyx Hall.

[UNIT SCAN: FEMALE TROGLODYTE (HUNTER CASTE)]

[AVERAGE COMBAT POWER: 140% HIGHER THAN BASE MALE]

Red scrolled through the biological hierarchy of the species. It turned out the societal structure of the original Onyx Hall was entirely matriarchal when it came to survival. The females were the natural hunters and the males frontline soldiers. That was also the reason why females were less in number.

They possessed denser muscle mass, better agility, and superior combat instincts. The males were primarily relegated to manual labor, deep mining, and breeding. Including a few others, Gorak, with his massive size and Warlord status, was an extreme biological anomaly even before Red evolved his bloodline.

“The actual army just got home,” Red mused to the empty expanse.

He hovered his hand over the interface. He could easily intervene, issue a divine mandate to cancel the duel, or just drop a localized punishment on the challenger. Instead, he closed the window.

He needed his empire to be self-sustaining. He wanted to see exactly how his newly minted zealots handled an internal cultural crisis without him micromanaging their every move. Red stepped back from the feed, leaving them to their own devices.

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