Beneath the Red Dragon

Chapter 382: Chapter 146: Overlord-level Creatures

”The Giant Dragon residing in the mountains, generous and forgiving,”

”The Giant Dragon promises the creatures a dwelling place, granting them lands flowing with milk and honey.”

”The Giant Dragon’s eyes are like the sun, watching over its people, who offer devotion and tend the cattle and sheep for the dragon...”

A human ranger strolled through the dense forest, leisurely humming the slang tunes adapted by the minstrels and spread in the countryside.

He sat on the branch of a tall tree, swinging his legs, while waving a long whip in his hand, driving the giant trees across the desolate land.

These tall trees, with their long, thick roots twisted into several legs, slowly marched forward at the urging of the ranger.

Occasionally, flying birds descended from the sky, fearlessly resting around the ranger to replenish their physical strength, with a few mischievous cheeping birds offering a few splashes of wet sticky droppings as a friendly greeting.

And in the forest, sometimes hidden ferocious beasts with emerald green eyes watched the moving woods warily from dark corners.

Only when they saw the ranger driving the forest would they reveal their heads from the shadows, and let out low growls, engaging in friendly communication with the ranger.

”Awoo! Awoo!...”

”Hey, folks, looks like today is another beautiful day, may the Giant Dragon protect you from those Beastman brats!”

The ranger received a response from the fierce demon-patterned tiger in charge of this territory, happily shaking the long whip woven from the oldest and toughest branches of the Tree of Life.

The whip lightly tapped his forehead, acknowledging the friendly attitude of this clever ferocious beast.

The whip in his hand, woven from the vines of the Tree of Life, was imprinted with countless dense Druid natural magic symbols, allowing even a novice ranger to drive dozens of trees to walk at once.

This newly emerging profession in the Dragon Group Territory developed and thrived due to warfare. They were selected based on certain talents, to learn from hunters and Elf Druids how to communicate with nature and harness its powers.

These rangers were incorporated into the peripheral legion of the Dragon Group Territory, similar to the guard army, but patrolling the entire forest region.

Replacing the original Giant Dragon, sharing the Dragon’s responsibilities, they managed the intelligent flying birds in the sky and wise beasts on the ground, forming an intricate woven network covering every area of the domain.

They are elite spies, skilled in tracking enemy footprints, also hunting rebellious beasts and fugitives wanted in the domain, protecting the frontier of the territory.

During the nearly two-year prolonged war, the Dragon Territory, due to its originally small population, adopted guerrilla tactics to compensate for the numerical gap with the Beastman Kingdom’s seemingly endless warriors.

Thus, the rangers arose.

Exchanging land for people, prioritizing humans.

Under the growing consciousness of World Tree Ovo, all the Trees of Life formed a forest will covering the entire forest range, akin to the Greenfield Forest.

The burgeoning forest will not only sheltered every Golden Person walking within the forest realm but also suppressed all creatures harboring hostility towards the Dragon Group Territory.

Despite the increasing number of support troops sent by the Beastman Empire, they struggled to directly contend with the Dragon Group’s warriors in the forest. For they must first address the endlessly troubling forest under the unending harassment of the Dragon Group’s warriors.

Especially since the warriors of the Dragon Group are mostly a race adept at fighting in mountains and forests. Even the Centaur cavalry led by Chiron traversed the forest as if it were flat land.

Should the Beastmen make a single misstep, they would die under the ubiquitous arrows and firearms, elusive, unpredictable.

And once the Beastmen finally dealt with the forest, they discovered the warriors of the Dragon Group had vanished without a trace.

But when the Beastmen woke up the next day, they found the forest had returned before them. Even the defense strongholds established at road passes couldn’t hold swiftly.

The warriors of the Dragon Group, after exhausting the arrows in their quivers and emptying the bullets in their gun pouches, would directly retreat from the stronghold to the next defense line.

The vast numbers of Dogman’s Beloved within the Dragon Group Territory greatly contributed to these continuous, indestructible defense lines.

These Kobolds skilled in digging, leading large numbers of support corps, could establish a defense line overnight and excavate a deep trench.

Under such circumstances, the Beastmen struggled on this land stretching hundreds of kilometers, consuming vast resources and time, barely managing to peer from dozens of miles away at the Dragon Group Territory’s City of Capito, translated into the continent’s common language but the capital of Dragon Group Territory, the Royal Capital.

The ranger driving the forest aimed to reinforce the frontline defense line, relying on the forest’s suppression to reduce the Dragon Group Territory’s warriors’ losses and delay the Beastman army’s advance.

The Beastmen have already invested too much; sunk costs prevent them from giving up, especially as in the eyes of the Beastmen, breaking through this city would shatter the operational system of the Dragon Group Territory, making it impossible to contest the Beastmen any further.