Orcs ran away in a panic! wargs fled with their tails between their legs! If you want to know why~ just ask the wizard Arthur!
Fili, Kili, and Dwalin, who were singing a spontaneously composed song with their dwarf compatriots in Haight Fortress, suddenly felt a violent tremor, followed by a golden light shining into the room.
The tremor came abruptly, but it also left quickly.
The golden light disappeared, leaving only the dwarves in the room, holding whatever they could find to defend themselves, looking at each other in bewilderment.
"What's going on?" Kili asked, holding up a hard, dry baguette and leaning on the table.
Fili first looked around to make sure none of his compatriots were injured before letting out a sigh of relief.
Dwalin leaned by the window, holding a silver dinner fork with a half-eaten sausage still impaled on it, its aroma wafting through the air.
But Dwalin's gaze was somewhat dazed as he looked out the window, exclaiming to Fili, Kili, and his other dwarf compatriots inside: "Durin above… You all, come quickly, a huge castle suddenly appeared outside."
Fili and Kili exchanged glances after hearing Dwalin's words.
Fili spoke first: "Why am I not surprised at all?"
Kili calmly sat back down, dipping his dry baguette into the honey milk in his bowl, and said indistinctly while eating: "I have an idea, brother."
Fili also sat back down, continuing to eat his breakfast—a bacon and cheese sandwich: "What is it?"
Kili chewed a few bites, swallowed his food, and said: "When we need to build houses outside the Blue Mountains, we can ask Arthur for help. He just needs to wave that magical staff and lightly tap an empty space, and a fully equipped fortress or castle will appear."
He said, narrowing his eyes: "Wait, does Arthur have a staff?"
Fili chuckled: "Perhaps he can smash his greatsword into the ground."
Kili's eyes lit up and he echoed: "He can also blow a whistle on that whistle he uses to summon his horse!"
"And then the castle appears!" the two brothers said in unison.
Dwalin also returned to his seat from the window at this point, and the space he vacated was quickly filled by other curious dwarves.
Dwalin put the somewhat cold sausage from his fork into his mouth and said to Fili and Kili: "The location of the fortress seems to have changed, just like that outpost yesterday."
Fili asked somewhat curiously: "How big do you think the new castle Arthur conjured is? Is it like Haight Fortress?"
Dwalin shook his head repeatedly: "Haight Fortress? No, it's much bigger than Haight Fortress. It's not just a castle, it's more like a territory."
Then he chewed the food in his mouth, searching his mind for a town of comparable scale: "This territory is probably about the same size as the old Lake-Town, if you count the lands outside the castle."
Upon hearing this, Kili sped up his eating: "Then I need to hurry out and see. I was born in the Blue Mountains, but I've never seen what Lake-Town looks like. And Arthur also told me he found a teacher who can teach me magic, so I'll go together."
Fili also swayed his body cheerfully while, like his younger brother, speeding up his eating.
Clearly, he didn't want to be left behind by his brother, but wanted to go and see if he could also learn a spell or two.
Inside the towering Morne Castle castle, Arthur stood on the battlements where the former lord Edgar made his last stand.
At this time, Morne Castle was not like it was in The Lands Between, where bodies of the Kingrick Royal Army and the Misbegotten lay everywhere from their previous battles, and no corpses swayed in the wind from the gallows.
In the most open area of the castle, the pile of Golden Lineage bodies that the Misbegotten had massacred into a small mountain was also gone, replaced by the faintly glowing, unyielding figure of the Erdtree.
However, the vast castle was very quiet. Besides Arthur, no one else was present, whether the Kingrick Royal Army, the Misbegotten, or the innocent Golden Lineage.
Arthur walked alone within the castle, inspecting various areas.
Kenneth Haight was right; Morne Castle castle's interior was indeed complete, with artisan workshops capable of producing various tools and weapons, a central trading area for foreign merchants, and independent houses for nobles to reside in.
More civilian residential areas were still on the plains outside the castle.
The ruins of this town, formerly Minhiriath, had completely transformed into the territory of Morne Castle summoned by Arthur, no longer appearing desolate as before.
And the suddenly rising castle also made the orcs, who hadn't completely given up hope in the distance, realize that this land had a new owner.
He placed Haight Fortress to the northwest of Morne Castle, near the Brandywine River, and further northwest of the Brandywine River were the Blue Mountains where the dwarves resided.
Arthur was preparing for future communication and trade with the dwarves, and placing Haight Fortress here also made it convenient to dispatch patrol teams to protect the dwarves who would come and go for trade in the future.
Of course, Haight Fortress was still very close to Morne Castle's territory. If compared to the previous map, Haight Fortress was at the outermost edge of the former town ruins.
Fili and Kili also didn't expect that merely while eating breakfast, they would be moved to a relatively distant location.
They would probably have to walk for half a day to reach Morne Castle castle.
As for Teacher Sellen's inn and small outpost, Arthur placed them together not far to the northeast, near the towering city walls and gates outside Morne Castle.
Because Teacher Sellen inherently disliked crowded places, she didn't object when she discovered her location had changed.
However, she suddenly had to walk a longer distance to Haight Fortress for breakfast today, and Sellen did have a slight opinion about this matter.
As a result, the three landmark buildings with military defensive capabilities were arranged in an inverted triangle.
Whether Haight Fortress was attacked, or the inn and outpost were attacked, Morne Castle could quickly dispatch troops to support and reinforce friendly forces.
And if the orcs still wanted to attack Morne Castle, they were bound to be noticed by the soldiers of Haight Fortress and the outpost.
Not to mention that a Golem Guard, about ten meters tall with an extremely exaggerated enemy detection range, stood quietly outside Morne Castle's castle at this moment.
As soon as an orc approached the city wall, it would be sensed by the Golem Guard, and then pleasantly dispatched by its absurdly large arrows.
After successfully summoning Morne Castle, Arthur did not summon the residents along with it.
Firstly, to summon Morne Castle to Middle-earth, the souls of orcs and wargs that the Erdtree had just absorbed were almost entirely depleted.
Secondly, Haight Fortress had already been summoned yesterday due to the orc attack. Not only was there an extra fortress, but there were also a dozen more mouths to feed.
Arthur did not want the food shortage problem, which the dwarves had finally helped solve, to reappear.
He never dreamed that one day he would be constrained by the problem of feeding people.
However, Arthur believed that he would soon no longer have to worry about this problem. Morne Castle had appeared, and after the first batch of crops matured, he could plant some specialty plants from The Lands Between, which could then be used for trade with the dwarves of the Blue Mountains.
In particular, Arthur noticed that the dwarves were very fond of "alcohol" as a drink, so once food reserves were sufficient, it could be used for brewing.
Arthur believed that alcohol brewed from grains matured under the Grace would undoubtedly be more palatable and delicious than ordinary alcohol.
As for the policy of trading with the dwarves, he had already decided to leave that headache to Kenneth Haight; after all, Kenneth was summoned precisely for that purpose.
Arthur quickly exited Morne Castle's castle and arrived near the outer walls.
The Kingrick Royal Army, who had come from the outpost, were already stationed atop the walls and at the gate, indicating their quick acceptance and adaptation to Morne Castle's appearance.
However, their numbers were still too few compared to the vast walls.
Alas, manpower.
Arthur sighed inwardly, then thought of how more manpower would consume more food.
Alas, food.
Arthur changed the word and continued to sigh.
"What are you sighing about?" Sellen's mature voice sounded to Arthur's right.
Arthur looked in the direction of the voice and saw her, wearing that Witch's Gown, gazing at him, as if she had been watching him for a long time.
He asked, "Is there something you need from me, Sellen?"
The Witch's Gown bobbed up and down as Sellen nodded and said, "Yes, come with me to the basement. I have something to show you."
Then, she extended a finger, as white as jade, from her deep blue sorcerer's robe and pointed towards the shining Erdtree in Morne Castle: "It's related to that."
Hmm?
Upon hearing that it was related to the Erdtree, Arthur immediately became alert and followed behind Sellen.
Due to the Tree-Returning phenomenon caused by the orc corpses in the underground passage of the relay station, apart from the marks where Pumpkin Head Soldiers had slammed into the walls, there was no sign that a massacre of orcs had occurred there last night.
The originally dark basement became bright as Sellen opened the door to her small room, filling the entire space with the glowing, azure light of the source stone.
Sellen quickly walked into her room, and before Arthur could follow, he saw her holding a rectangular, deep blue source stone crystal the size of her forearm.
"Take this," Sellen said concisely.
Arthur took the source stone crystal from her hand and immediately noticed something strange.
He felt as if this source stone crystal was alive; the patterns within the source stone resembled blood vessels in a human body, even subtly pulsing.
"This is?" Arthur frowned, recalling something very similar that he had also obtained from his teacher, Sellen.
More precisely, the item he thought of was obtained from Sellen's body.
Sellen let out a soft laugh: "It seems you still remember the source stone I gave you, my dear disciple."
Upon hearing the words "source stone," Arthur, fearing the source stone in his hand might drop, quickly gripped it tightly, then asked in confusion, "Teacher, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to..."
Sellen removed her Witch's Gown, revealing her beautiful face, and interrupted Arthur: "Don't overthink it, my disciple. This contains not my soul, but a blank slate."
Arthur's expression grew even more perplexed.
Sellen continued to explain in a calm tone: "Just now, I observed the corpses undergoing the Tree-Returning phenomenon, and then I noticed the Erdtree growing at a visible speed, followed by Morne Castle's inexplicable appearance. It's not difficult to guess, with normal thought, that the Erdtree you planted requires a large amount of souls as nourishment, which then transforms into Grace to summon those things from The Lands Between, right?"
Arthur nodded; there was nothing to hide about that.
But he knew that his teacher, Sellen, calling him over privately was definitely not just to discuss this simple matter.
Indeed, as Arthur expected, Sellen's next words surprised him.
"The range of the Tree-Returning phenomenon is only within the Erdtree's influence, right? Beyond its range, souls from corpses cannot be converted into Grace. So, I created this for you. The principle is a source stone that can store souls, but this particular source stone has a very large soul storage capacity."
"I made some modifications to the sorcery within it, allowing it to attract and absorb the souls of the departed, much like the Erdtree's Tree-Returning phenomenon. This way, the souls of creatures you kill outside the Erdtree's domain won't naturally dissipate. You can use it to collect them and bring them back to the Erdtree. As for what it's called, you can simply give it a name."
Sellen spoke in one breath, her calm demeanor completely unlike someone who had just created something extraordinary.
Of course, it was also possible that, from Sellen's technical perspective, creating such a thing indeed required little effort.
Arthur exhaled and said, "Then let's keep it simple and name it according to its function: soul collector."
With this item, Arthur no longer had to worry about not having enough orc souls to supply the Erdtree's growth.
At the same moment, all the orcs in Middle-earth suddenly felt a chill for some unknown reason.
Sellen nodded, said nothing more, and raised her gaze to look at Arthur.
Arthur blinked, unsure why his teacher was looking at him like that.
Sellen looked at Arthur's innocent expression and sighed softly: "Go fetch me some breakfast. You've placed the relay station and Haight Fort too far apart."
"Alright, I'll go now."
Even as Elden Lord, under his teacher's words, Arthur still obediently went to fetch her breakfast.
With Torrent's help, Arthur quickly arrived at Haight Fort and saw Kili, who had finished breakfast and was looking somewhat dejected in the square.
Beside Kili, Fili was comforting him, but the latter's face also showed an undeniable expression of disappointment.
Arthur stopped his steps towards getting breakfast and looked at Rogier, who was behind the two with a helpless expression, asking loudly, "What's wrong with those two? It's not common for Fili and Kili to look like that."
Fili and Kili, seeing Arthur's arrival, forced themselves to salute him.
Rogier, behind them, bowed gracefully to Arthur, then explained, "They said you recommended them to learn magic, so I didn't refuse. I chose the simplest source stone sorcery, Starlight, to teach them. However, these two dwarves seem to have no magic reserves in their bodies and cannot cast spells at all."
"Hmm... I see." Arthur pondered for a moment and nodded.
He then noticed the hope in Kili's eyes when he saw him and said to Rogier, "Thank you for your trouble, Rogier. I think I have a way to solve their problem."
Arthur recalled Thorin, holding the frozen shell axe, saying that he felt a clear depletion of stamina after performing a Battle Skill.
It was very likely that dwarves indeed could not cast magic, but they could use Battle Skills.
So he called out, "Fili, Kili, fetch me a breakfast from the kitchen, then come with me. I'll teach you personally."