Stray

It was clearly noon, but the darkness and lights turned the atmosphere into night.

Unlike the four members of Tumbleweed who behaved like tourists, Godwin and Debby stood very quietly in the shaded corner. No matter who the person who came to negotiate was, the escort had no position to participate.

Tumbleweed’s few members wouldn’t come forward to join in on the fun on such a serious occasion, but their curiosity was still very strong. Oliver, not far away, was the first to react. He quickly retracted his gaze above the town and turned it to the owner of the voice, then he gulped.

The creature who made the sound was extremely short, and Oliver almost didn’t see it at first glance. The creature was as tall as less than half of an adult and wore a strangely decorated short robe. Its head was twice the size of a human, shaped like an overstuffed jellybean, with the back of its head bulging towards the ground. There were no hairs or scales on the scalp; only layers of wrinkles.

There was only one giant solitary eye, and under it were two snake-like crevices, with only nostrils and no nose. The mouth of that thing was smaller than that of a human, and it was almost buried by an overly vigorous hard beard, which looked a little uncomfortable. Its body didn’t have much in common with humans— The creature’s upper body was very long, its spine was bent like a shrimp behind it, and its limbs almost touched the ground after two folds.

Oliver had seen this creature in a picture book before.

One-eyed dwarves who lived underground all year round. They were extremely repulsive to sunlight, and their IQ was generally higher than that of humans. Despite their dark nature, the one-eyed dwarves are a genuine surface race, and they are one of the intelligent races with their own brilliant civilization. When it came to which race on the surface was best for exploring the Abyss, the answer was definitely these paranoid and xenophobic guys.

They weren’t good at hand-to-hand combat, and at the same time they were dismissive of the human adventurer system. Oliver had never seen a real one-eyed dwarf in his inn. He clung to Nemo, who was still lying by the fence, and listened intently to the conversation in the center of the wooden platform.

“Praise Vulcan.” The Preceptor Bishop half-crouched down and made a weird salute. “Venerable Lord Rugo.”