The victory report from the eastward exploration team was like a pebble containing infinite possibilities cast into the lake of Colin's heart, known as the "Imperial Blueprint," creating ripples that refused to subside for a long time.
Three days later, when a small, slow-moving group finally appeared on the horizon outside Blackwood Fortress, another distinct yet equally important force finally merged into the increasingly vast river that was Blackwood Fortress.
The Broken Claw Tribe had arrived.
The first to discover them was a Werewolf sentry on lookout duty at the city wall construction site. He saw five familiar figures—four Snow Giant Wolf riders clad in light armor, surrounding an elderly Werewolf who was slightly hunched yet still stood tall.
It was Nuo!
The sentry recognized the elder. Behind them followed a group of ragged, staggering "kin."
It was a heartbreaking procession.
Among the eighty-some people, there was hardly a male in his prime to be seen. Walking at the very front were several elders leaning on canes and staggering along. Behind them were dozens of female Werewolves with numb expressions and hollow eyes; some carried infants in swaddling clothes, while others tightly held the hands of half-grown children whose faces were still filled with terror and confusion.
Every single one of them was so thin they were unrecognizable. Their fur was matted and dull due to long-term hunger and lack of grooming. Their tattered beast-skin clothing, which barely covered them, still bore the stains of dried, dark-brown blood.
Sorrow, exhaustion, and despair hung over this group like dark clouds, having just survived the destruction of their clan.
When they were finally escorted thru the massive, bustling construction site and stood beneath the towering, nascent stone walls of Blackwood Fortress, the group came to a halt.
Everyone looked up. Their movements were stiff and slow, as if they had been struck by a freezing spell. Then, an extreme shock, like being hit in the chest by a giant hammer, seized all their hearts and minds.
What did they see?
It was a wall. A majestic, giant wall beyond anything they could have imagined in their lives.
It was built from massive, smooth blocks of stone, soaring into the clouds as if to prop up the sky. Countless Werewolves and Boar-folk were as busy as ants on massive scaffolding. The earth-shaking work chants, the crisp sounds of hammering, the sight of giant stones being slowly hoisted by cranes... all of this far exceeded their understanding of the word "tribe."
In their cognition, home was a crude shack built of wood and mud, at most surrounded by a fragile wooden fence. But the giant city rising before them, with its overwhelming pressure as heavy as a mountain, made these Werewolves from the bitter cold lands feel small for the first time.
"What... what is that? " a young female Werewolf asked her mother with a trembling voice. She instinctively clutched her child tightly in her arms.
Her mother, an old woman with graying hair, also stood with her mouth agape, her cloudy eyes filled with disbelief. She had lived for nearly fifty years and traveled to countless corners of the North, but she had never seen such a magnificent sight.
Was this truly... the work of demi-humans?
And when their gaze crossed the stone wall toward the vast grasslands in the distance beyond the castle, a second, even more violent wave of shock followed.
They saw herds of livestock. Not dozens, not hundreds, but thousands!
Countless sheep moved slowly across the lush green grass like white clouds. Large herds of Frost-Horned Deer leisurely flicked their tails, bowing their heads to graze on the fresh grass. They even saw massive Giant-Horned Oxen being led tamely by equally tall Boar-folk.
Food.
For these Werewolves who had struggled on the brink of starvation for too long, those moving "clouds" and those grazing figures represented only one thing—endless food, enough so that they and their children would never have to go hungry again.
*Gulp.*
Someone in the group swallowed hard. The sound was exceptionally clear in the silence.
Following that, suppressed, low sobs began to spread thru the crowd.
A mother holding a child could no longer suppress her emotions. Looking at the fertile pastures, then down at the emaciated child in her arms, who looked exceptionally frail due to long-term malnutrition, her tears fell silently like broken pearls.
If... if only they had come here sooner. Would her husband, her brother, have had to risk their lives, fight, and... die for half a frozen rabbit?
She knelt on the ground, burying her face deep in her child's fur, letting out painful and suppressed whimpers. Her grief was like a contagious plague, instantly igniting the emotions of the entire group. All the women, children, and elders knelt on the ground at that moment, weeping uncontrollably.
They wept not only for their dead kin, but also for the sudden, miracle-like hopliary powders, and his eyes became incredibly focused and intensely fervent.