Chapter 159: The Rodent Horde (2/2)

Violet Snow’s opinion was that they were a bother and we should just kill them off. Manasha was neutral on this while Harlow and Majosha simply followed her decision. Elena was as quiet as always while Numila basically had no opinion of her own and simply followed mine. Big 5 wasn’t a part of the decision making process.

As for my own opinions…I felt we should keep them alive for now. However, with the prison’s desolate environment, there weren’t any resources for miscellaneous objects like ropes. Thus, these defeated rodents ended up being handed over to Big 5’s unit and 20 other medusas for safekeeping. Having been herded to a dead end, all they had to do was guard this singular exit.

Seeing that was what I decided upon, the rest didn’t express much objection to it either and followed my instructions.

Thus, Majosha began the task of herding the captives into their corner. Faced against their natural predators, these 300 rodents didn’t even dare to squeak as they obediently entered that dead end. The moment all of them were accounted for, Big 5 immediately blocked off the exit with his riders.

With the other escape routes blocked off, the little rodents began to panic and tried to escape. Seeing as the riders stood in the way of the only escape route, they turned around and charged at the hellhound riders in hopes of breaking through the encirclement. Unfortunately for them, before they could even take a second step, the 20 medusas mixed in with the hellhounds, reared their snaky heads.

The young ratmen at the head immediately braked, legs trembling as they fixed their panicked eyes on the medusas. Standing right before them, was a predator who specifically preyed on their race. In the face of such a terror, it wasn’t strange that they froze with fear. After all, using a meat bun to beat a dog wasn’t the smartest thing to do either, though it was probably a rat bun in this case and it was a snake that was the target.

With the captives safely secured, the next thing we had to do was collect the bone javelins. Our previous clash with the rodents had basically expended all of the harpies’ ammunition so recollecting these javelins was absolutely critical especially given our tight schedule. Hopefully, most of them were still intact.

If I had known that such a colossal battle awaited us, I would’ve instructed Numila’s harpies to pack a couple more javelins before coming. Even though six javelins would slow them to some extent, these extra javelins could’ve been split with Elena’s harpies.

A while later, all the serviceable javelins had been scavenged. Adding on the javelins that we brought and those that weren’t used, we had over 10000 javelins to throw.

With that, the captives and the issue of ammunition had been taken care of, next was rest. The devils in Violet Snow’s army had just fought a battle so they were now in the midst of a break. They feasted on some ratmen meat and souls while waiting for the ratmen horde to arrive.

Speaking of the horde, how does your mind even process 10000 over rats? The moment I laid eyes on such a sight with the help of Numila lifting me up into the air, I saw nothing but a sea of black flowing towards us like a wave. The prison hallway was filled to the brim with squirming furry dots with only the bony white walls serving a stark contrast to the sea of black.

Fortunately, I didn’t suffer from trypophobia or I would’ve really suffered a major attack there.

Looking at the spearhead of the ratmen horde, I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for those poor souls. Without any weapons in hand, these ratmen rushed forward towards their death.

Numila’s and Elena’s harpies swiftly took to the air before the advance party of the ratmen even arrived and without any hesitation, fired the first wave of bone javelins. With claws gripped firmly around the javelins, they built up some distance between their targets before tossing their payload in a short dive of sorts.

The rain of javelins descended on the advance party and peppered their furry bodies. However, the first wave didn’t accomplish much with less than a hundred ratmen dying while the others merely suffered minor injuries.

While it might not sound impressive, let’s not forget that the harpies didn’t possess a pair of hands but merely the claws on their feet. Given such circumstances, they naturally weren’t able to control their toss. All they could guarantee was that the javelins left their hands, as for whether it hit or what it hit, that was all up to luck.

It was precisely this lack of accuracy that resulted in so little casualties. Even so, such a flashy method was perfect for damaging their morale.

This reminded me of the first time I played LoL…back then, I didn’t know what last hitting meant. As long as it was an enemy creep(mob), I just hit it with my basic attack, all the way from 100% to 0%. Basically, I was able to snag a couple of kills per minute…later on, I found out that this was called “pushing”.

The harpies were basically “pushing” right now.

Putting aside the matter of their accuracy for now, they clearly demonstrated the fruits of their training. Like a squadron of fighter jets, they were able dart around the air while firing off javelins. It merely took them two minutes to unload a complete volley. A total of four thousand javelins were thrown in this volley and the results were pretty good.

There were over a thousand casualties with half of the survivors losing their ability to fight. While this wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, don’t forget we still had over ten thousand javelins to go.

As for why it took them two minutes just to throw their javelins, that had to do with the new method of reloading I taught them. Normally, the spare javelins were slung on their bodies. However, because they had no arms, they had difficulty reaching for their spare javelins. In fact, they would even drop the javelin by mistake…sigh, this racial trait of theirs was such a stumbling block. In fact, it almost made me abandon the idea after the first session of training.

Later on however, I thought of an idea to solve this issue. Now, a harpy javelineer worked in pairs where they would help each other reload. Instead of grabbing the javelins themselves, they would snatch it from their partner. Being a race that acted like bandits most of the time, they took to this method like fish to water.

Now that the first volley was completed, the four thousand strong squadron began reloading. Closing on each other, they promptly began the highly complicated aerial maneuver of using their claws to grab a javelin slung over their partner’s breasts…

With bone javelins in hand, it was time for the second volley.