Chapter 164: Nest of the Rodents (2/2)
Based on what we achieved so far, we still weren’t 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 medusas, 40 hellhound riders and lastly, 300 guardsmen.
Looking at the narrow pathway, it was clear that the hellhound riders were basically useless in this engagement thus I had no choice but to put them on reserve. At the same time, because we were fighting in a cave, the harpies lost their flight abilities. However, I couldn’t 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 medusas and my 300 guardsmen. However, that wasn’t even a thousand troops…less than a thousand troops to face off against an enemy that we had no intelligence on. To make matters worse, they had the home ground advantage as well…
I guess I should be thankful that the medusas were experienced with fighting in constricted spaces. Given my guardsmen’s equipment advantage, they shouldn’t 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 shouldn’t be that stupid, right? It wouldn’t be surprise me if they had another exit somehow.
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.
Sigh…I guess wiping out your opponent’s homebase 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 time for me to try and assault this nest.
The cave entrance wasn’t small, in fact it could probably fit ten devils walking in a row and they wouldn’t find it cramped either. With that in mind, I had five of the guardsmen 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 immediately met 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 merely 80 cm tall and 50 cm wide, it wasn’t 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 guardsmen, 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.
This…were they rats or porcupines?! Or maybe even bees?
Gosh darn it, how do you expect me to wipe you guys out if you indiscriminately toss your spears like that…err, come to think of it, they probably learnt to do that from my army…in that case, I don’t really have the right to blame them do I?
Darn it, their caves seem rather complicated as well, if I send in our newly-recruited cannon fodder…it would basically be same as letting the tiger return to its mountain…what if I led that army myself…would they still betray us and join up with their brethren?
The situation had definitely taken a turn for the worse yet I still wasn’t willing to give up on capturing this batch of rodents. However, forcefully attacking them wasn’t 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 home 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!
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Thus, in order to avoid any unnecessary losses, the only other option left was to seek reinforcements. Though that was embarrassing as well, it was still a lot better than returning empty handed.
Come to think of it, weren’t the lizardmen cave experts? With Habona’s overwhelming might and Westley controlling them, the lizardman operation should be over by now. If that’s the case, we could get them to send us some lizardmen.
Since they weren’t my direct subordinates, losing them won’t really cause me 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 lizardmen to aid in our war effort.