“I am Zenberu Gugu, chief of the Dragon Tusk Tribe, until the day your brother agrees to take over.”

“Thank you for coming. You are indeed worthy to be the chief of the tribe which values strength over everything, I welcome you.”

“So, want to have a match? Shouldn’t we find out who is stronger?”

“... That’s a great idea.”

Zaryusu didn’t want to intervene. Finding out who was stronger now will definitely make things easier in the future.

But Shasuryu raised a hand, diminishing Zenberu’s urge to fight.

“—I agree with you, but this an awkward timing.”

“Why is that?”

Shasuryu smiled at Zenberu’s unhappy face.

“... The scouts we sent out are about to return, we should be able to obtain detailed intelligence about the enemy. We can fight after hearing their reports, right?”

♦ ♦ ♦

A small house was used as the conference room of the chiefs.

The chiefs of the gathered tribes and Zaryusu were gathered here, a total of six.

Zaryusu, the one who killed the previous ‘Sharp Edge’ Chief, bearer of Frost Pain was famous and all the chiefs knew of him. He was also the brave one who convinced Red Eye and Dragon Tusk to join the alliance, so no one was opposed to him taking part in the conference.

In the small house, the six sat in a circle. When the other three chieftains saw Crusch’s white scales, they were surprised, but had already regained their composure.

After finishing their greetings, the first who spoke was the chief of ‘Small Fang’.

He was petite compared to other lizardmen, but his limbs were as strong as steel. Originally from the hunter group, his ranged attack skill was the best among all lizardmen in the vicinity of this lake. In fact, during the fight to decide the position of chieftain, he settled each of his matches with just one precise rock throw.

In order to determine the position of the enemy troops, he mobilized all the hunters to reconnoiter.

“The enemy numbers nearly five thousand.”

This number exceeded the total population of all lizardmen, but was still within expectation. Some even sighed in relief when they learnt of this number.

“... And the leader of the enemy?”

“I can’t say for sure, there are monsters that looked like giant mass of red meat in the middle, but it’s too difficult to get in close.”

“What about the make up of the army?”

“An army of undead, mainly skeletons and zombies.”

“The undead of lizardmen?”

“No, they are not lizardmen. I don’t really know about the creatures living on land, so I can’t be certain. But it should be human types, I didn’t see any tails either.”

When Zaryusu heard that, he was sure that they were the race living on plains, humans.

“Can we launch a surprise pre-emptive attack?”

“That would be difficult, the other party is using an open space cleared out from a corner of the forest. How long did they take to clear the trees? It is strange that the felled trees are nowhere to be found— Ah, I digress. Anyway, they are in the forest. Leaving whether we can succeed aside, it would be very hard to bring warriors along.”

“What about a sneak attack with just the hunters?”

“Spare us, Ms. Crusch. There are roughly twenty five hunters, how could we defeat the undead army of five thousand? We will just get wiped out.”

“Hmm… What about using the power of the druids?”

Several of them nodded in agreement to Shasuryu’s suggestion and their eyes fell on Crusch. But the one answering was Zaryusu.

“No, let’s not do that.”

“Ah? Why?”

“The other party had kept their words so far, but they won’t do so if we attack them.”

“Indeed. We should avoid initiating the attack before we gather all the tribesmen.”

“So we will prepare for a defensive battle?”

“Defend, hard.”

The lizardman who spoke with a strong slur was the chieftain of the Razor Tail.

He was covered in white armor that was shining in a different manner from metals.

The armor was emitting a soft magical gleam. That was one of the four treasures of the lizardmen, White Dragon Bone.

It was a set of armor made from the bones of a frost dragon that had resided in the Azellerisia Mountain. Armor made from bones — even that of a powerful dragon — would not be imbued with magic. But that set of armor was enchanted with magic without anyone knowing when.

The problem was that the magic could possibly originate from a curse.

This was because the White Dragon Bone converted intelligence into defence power. If an intelligent lizardman wore it, it would turn harder than steel, matching mithril and even the legendary adamantium.

But even if you removed the armor, the intelligence would not recover. That’s why there were some who said this magic was actually a curse.

Among the lizardmen, he was widely known for his intelligence. After wearing this armor, the defence of the armor was strong enough to deflect all the weapons of the lizardmen, even one of the four treasures, Frost Pain. It was probably as strong as adamantium.

And normally, those who don the armor would lose all intelligence and appeared to be brain damaged. But he was still able to think, proving how high his original intelligence was. Hence, ‘Razor Tail’ had never decided the position of chieftain through physical combat after his birth.

“Here, swamp, weak foundation, wall… easy break down.”

“I see, so we should initiate the attack?”

“Yeah, why not, attacking is better than defending, each of us just needs to take down three to four foes right? We just need to defeat them, piece of cake.”

The others in the conference looked at each other after hearing what Zenberu said. In the end, Crusch changed the topic.

“The problem is enemy reinforcements… They might be gathering their forces.”

“Hmm… That is hard to say. From the size of the open space, they can’t fit in anymore undead… Though they just need to place them inside the forest.”

The undead don’t need food, rest or large open space to set up camp. It would be hard to gauge their numbers from the size of the area.