Chapter 159: The Rodent Horde (1/2)
“You’ve arrived.” Long before our arrival, the scouts we sent ahead had already informed Violet Snow of our impending arrival so she wasn’t all that surprised to see us now. She blandly acknowledged our arrival before continuing on, “There’s exactly 300 captives here with us right now, do you want them?”
“There’s no such thing as too much fodder.”
By now, the battle had already been decided. The hellhound unit was currently circling the survivors to prevent them from escape. Should they decide to make a concerted push, the cavalry devils would merely scatter before making using of their superior mobility to reform and charge. Naturally, the medusas would step in to stop the escapees as well.
However, with the rodent’s natural fear of the medusas and the airborne harpies ready to toss their javelins, there was basically no chance of them succeeding. Their previous attempts at escape ended in their complete defeat with them shrinking back in fear before ever touching the hellhound encirclement, the reason being that those who didn’t try to escape weren’t attacked at all. That was the lesson the escaping rodents swiftly learnt.
Violet Snow’s intentions were clear for all to see. Round them all up and wait for more rodents to show up. That was the tactic she was familiar with and employed to great effect.
After all, baiting their enemies into a trap was a lot smarter than foolishly rushing into their stronghold. They even let a few rat children escape to ensure that their leader would receive their cry for help.
“Initially, those rodents tried to fight us head on but the moment they realized they couldn’t win, they immediately fled. After multiple attempts at baiting them out, we finally managed to capture these rats who tried to ambush us.”
“The pack was mostly comprised of the young and healthy. They probably formed the backbone of their fighting force so as long as we keep them here, there’s no need to worry about their leader not coming to save them. In fact, I’m betting those three-stars in there have some sort of relationship to the four-star leaders.” Having roughly recounted what happened and what she was planning, she ended with this, “Right now, all we have to do is wait patiently.”
“You’re that sure that the ratman leader will try and save them? I heard that these rats are pretty fertile, shouldn’t they be more cavalier about their descendants?”
“They’ll definitely come.” She barked without any hesitation in her voice. “As long as we kill off these little rats, there will be a gap in their clan’s inheritance (TL: genetic memory) and that’s something they can’t allow. Besides, after that thrashing I gave them recently, it’s about time for them to break their silence and counterattack.”
Recently, these rats started to have ambitions of ruling the Prison of the Dead. Being pushed around like this probably stung especially since such a cowardly display ran contrary to their grand ambitions of subjugating the prison. In that case, were those rodents planning to strike back soon?
“Is that why you called me over?”
“Mhm, even with these forces, I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to hold off their concerted attack.”
Despite what she said, there was still the option of running away if the situation looked grim. However, with Habona’s smooth retake of the lizardman clan, Violet Snow’s performance seemed rather lacklustre in comparison.
For a competitive puppy like her, it was truly an awkward development. Don’t forget, these two ladies weren’t exactly on the best of terms either.
As we discussed that, Numila came over having just settled some matters with her own clan.
Even though she already spotted me from a distance away, she didn’t run over and hug me like usual but instead nodded her head and in an emotionless voice, said, “The scouts have just reported back, there’s a horde of ratmen approaching us, roughly an hour away.”
It was a short report but the moment those words left her mouth, Violet Snow’s ears immediately perked up and a grin crossed her lips, an excited grin. “So, they’ve finally come.”
The Abaddon Rodents are attacking!?
Whether or not they were here to save their brethren or vent their anger, it looks like these rodents finally decided to put themselves on the chopping block. That’s right, the chopping block.
Given the extreme speeds of these harpies, the information brought back by that scout was definitely up-to-date. With just an hour left, we should start preparing right away.
However, that report was didn’t give me much to work with, for example, I needed exact numbers. Thus, I decided to press her for more information, “How many are there?”
“Roughly ten thousand.” She replied, using that same, bland tone. However, the number that left her mouth was anything but normal.
We had less than 50 hellhound riders and we didn’t have that many medusas either —less than 600 or so— other than my devils, we had roughly two thousand or so harpies bringing our combined numbers to roughly 4000 devils. Our opponent on the other hand was a whole digit higher than us…
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Before the arrival of rodent horde, we still had a lot of preparations to finish. The first of which was handling those 300 rodent captives. What to do with them?