Errwhy did it seem like I missed out soone?
Having been deprived of his share of souls, Vick was currently floating around with a resentful look on his face. Unfortunately, his atrociously ugly mug and shiny pinball of a head wasnt the least bit appealing as he tried to badger for souls. Even so, I had to admit that having this potato float around all the ti was annoying. In the end, I gave into the pressure and gave him so souls, only then did he finally leave alone.
Now that the spoils had been divvied up, it was ti to move on with our main mission assaulting the ratmans nest.
Because those rodents sent out the majority of their elite fighting force and ended up getting defeated, their nest was extrely vulnerable now. According to our new road guides, there were only 15 000 rodents leftmhm, you heard right, 15 000 or so rodents. However, this number wasnt as terrifying as one would expect because the number of combatants were less than 5000. The rest were the injured rodents or their wives and kids.
Thanks to the harsh realities of Prison life, there was basically no place for the elderly who couldnt fight. The wives and kids ntioned in that report were their pregnant wives and kids who simply werent old enough to fight.
Strictly speaking, this was a giant haul for us.
While boosting their strength also boosted their lifespan, the Abaddon Rodents as a whole were a lower race. Even if they wanted to boost their strength, their inborn talent limited their developnt. Thus, an ordinary Abaddon Rodents lifespan was extrely short, roughly 30 years.
Because of that, they adapted to have an astonishing fecundity. Their pregnancies only lasted for less than six months and their infants only needed a year to reach maturity. Upon reaching maturity, they already possessed a certain degree of combat strength. While it wasnt much, their numbers more than made up for it. Using human wave tactics or rather rodent wave, there was nothing they couldnt conquer, most of the ti anyway.
Within the nest, there were five four-star ratman lieutenants. Each had their own fighting force aiding them in the defense. Not long after they realized that their overlords punitive force had been wiped out, our army, under the guidance of our new road guides, had already begun surrounding their nest.
In order to stop them from escaping, I dispatched a group of devils under the leadership of Numila and a few of our new rat slaves out to be our advance party while I rushed the main army along. The plan was to have them stall for ti and catch up before the battle escalated to the point of no return. Yet, the mont we rushed onto the scene, I discovered a different scenario than what I had expected.
Like Mo Ens nest, their nest was carved out of the Prisons wall by expending a large amount of souls.
Littered around the entrance were a large number of rat corpses peppered with bone javelins. From the looks of it, these mustve been the ratn who tried to resist but were gruesoly shot to death by Numilas forces.
Having encountered our air forces before when Violet Snow attacked them, they knew to guard against our air squadron by turtling up in their nest. Should the harpies rush into the nest, they would lose their advantage of flight. Without that, theres no guarantee that these shedevils could win in a fight against the ratn. Thus, Numila made the wise choice of holding position in mid air while I brought the rest of the main army.
Given that stepping out of the nest guaranteed them a mouthful of bone javelins, those ratman defenders should be too scared to even show their ratty faces right now.
Yet, I found that they had no intention of giving upthat was clear from the fact they hadnt sent out an emissary to declare their surrender yethmmm, could it have been a communication problem
Translate for , surrender or Ill massacre all these rodents.
Naturally, Violet Snow wasnt the one to deliver this ultimatum. Instead, it was delivered by one of the four-stars who surrendered, they were of the sa race after all. Having a ratman persuade them would undoubtedly raise our chances significantly.
However, things werent as simple as I had thought. Having just said a couple of words, a bone spear aid directly at that ratman ca flying out of the cave. Thankfully, that ratman was a nimble one and managed to sidestep in ti causing the spear to barely graze against his black fur.
This sudden show of hostility was truly an unexpected one. Glancing at the fallen bone spear, I discovered that it wasnt one of the javelins used by my harpies. Because of the vast number of javelins required, the javelins I crafted were made from a bunch of short bones which resulted in each javelin rarely being over a ter long. That spear was clearly not one of my works.
Was that spear throw a sign that they were planning to fight till the end? Wait, thats not important right now. What was important was: were those rodents able to create bone javelins?
That wasnt good news for us at all. If they had such long range weapons as well, forcefully breaking into their nest was no longer an option. After all, they had the ho advantage here. Compared to that, we had a bunch of ratman slaves who couldnt even be deployed because they had just surrendered to us.
Asking a disloyal army of slaves who had just surrendered to fight by our side was the sa as having a ticking ti bomb in our midst. Thus, I had Elena guard over these rodents in a distant location with 2000 of her brethren. Her mission was simple: just make sure they didnt cause any trouble.
So, when did those rodents learn to craft bone spears? Pulling out those nine rodent lieutenants, I questioned them one by one and got a very uniform answer from each a shake of their head and a simple no idea. Even so, there was no ruling out the possibility they had colluded beforehand.
Based on what we achieved so far, we still werent any further along our mission to uncover more intelligence about this nest.
In that case, attacking them blind was our only option. Given that Elena had to guard those rodents, our attack force was left with 2000 harpies, around 600 dusas, 40 hellhound riders and lastly, 300 guardsn.
Looking at the narrow pathway, it was clear that the hellhound riders were basically useless in this engagent thus I had no choice but to put them on reserve. At the sa ti, because we were fighting in a cave, the harpies lost their flight abilities. However, I couldnt exactly expect them to give up flying and turn into foot soldiers either.
Thus at the of the day, the forces we could employ for this assault was reduced to the dusas and my 300 guardsn. However, that wasnt even a thousand troopsless than a thousand troops to face off against an enemy that we had no intelligence on. To make matters worse, they had the ho ground advantage as well
I guess I should be thankful that the dusas were experienced with fighting in constricted spaces. Given my guardsns equipnt advantage, they shouldnt fare that badly even with those disadvantages either.
However, was it really that simple? As they say, a cunning rabbit has three holes to hide in; a ratman that knows how to craft weapons shouldnt be that stupid, right? It wouldnt be surprise if they had another exit sohow.
After interrogating our helpful road guides once more, I found out that they did in fact have another two more exits just as I had expected. In that case, our job just got a whole lot harder as we had to split up our remaining troops to block off those exits.
SighI guess wiping out your opponents hobase only happened in those crappy webnovels
Having finished my deliberations, I had Numila lead a separate division to guard the two other exits.
Then, it was ti for to try and assault this nest.
The cave entrance wasnt small, in fact it could probably fit ten devils walking in a row and they wouldnt find it cramped either. With that in mind, I had five of the guardsn line up in a row and advance slowly with shields raised in order to scout out the cave. The end result was, having taken a few steps forward, they were imdiately t with a hail of bone spears.
Their accuracy was average at best so the majority of the bone spears were harmlessly deflected by the bone shields with only one spear making through and piercing the calf of a guardsman. Given that the shields were rely 80 cm tall and 50 cm wide, it wasnt that strange that a bone spear was able to make it through.
Having lost one of the shields, the five devil formation quickly buckled under the withering fire of a second volley of bone spears. Of the five guardsn, three died. The lucky two survivors stumbled shakily out of the caves, their minds still in shock from the close brush with death they just had.
Thiswere they rats or porcupines?! Or maybe even bees?
Gosh darn it, how do you expect to wipe you guys out if you indiscriminately toss your spears like thaterr, co to think of it, they probably learnt to do that from my armyin that case, I dont really have the right to bla them do I?
Darn it, their caves seem rather complicated as well, if I send in our newly-recruited cannon fodderit would basically be sa as letting the tiger return to its mountainwhat if I led that army myselfwould they still betray us and join up with their brethren?
The situation had definitely taken a turn for the worse yet I still wasnt willing to give up on capturing this batch of rodents. However, forcefully attacking them wasnt an option either since that would incur heavy losses for our army.
Damn, must I really give up now? No, I already made the long trip here so how can I simply return ho like this? If I really gave up like that, how will I show my face in public ever again? I might as well just slap my own face and be done with it!
Thus, in order to avoid any unnecessary losses, the only other option left was to seek reinforcents. Though that was embarrassing as well, it was still a lot better than returning empty handed.
Co to think of it, werent the lizardn cave experts? With Habonas overwhelming might and Westley controlling them, the lizardman operation should be over by now. If thats the case, we could get them to send us so lizardn.
Since they werent my direct subordinates, losing them wont really cause pain anyway.
With that in mind, I promptly had Numila deliver a letter to Habona in hopes that she could send us a division of lizardn to aid in our war effort.
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