Chapter 165: The Lizardwoman Weslin (1/2)

The harpy messengers I sent out were extremely fast flyers. However, the nest wasn’t exactly near us either. If you added in the fact that the lizardman reinforcement couldn’t possibly be faster than these harpies, the entire back and forth would probably take over half a month.

While waiting for these messengers to do their job, I wasn’t idling around either. I commanded the army to assault the ratman nest several times however they all ended in failure.

After the third assault failed, I experimented with dispatching our new slaves into battle. I had a hundred rodent slaves enter the nest to scout it out. The plan was to have them prod around the nest and return once the spears came raining down. Surprisingly, the rodents inside the nest didn’t attack them right away but instead waited for the rodent slaves to enter the nest and then…well, that was the end of the story.

I couldn’t hear any noise unique to fighting emanating from the cave and based on the movements within, it had basically been determined that they had left my control.

In short, they were now escaped slaves.

In the face of that, even I didn’t know if I should consider myself smart or stupid. I already knew that those rat slaves didn’t choose to be my slaves of their own volition but I still couldn’t curb my desire to take a chance and finally dispatched them in an experiment. As for the results…having left the range of my supervision, they naturally went back to their visit their moms.

Faced with the prospect of an unassailable rat nest, Numila first reacted with disdain, followed by indifference before finally becoming the annoyed harpy witch we see today. They were nothing but a bunch of walking steaks so why were they so damned hard to kill!? Numila found herself screaming that in her head one day.

Strictly speaking, the whole reason for this stalemate was because I didn’t want to suffer too much losses before we assaulted the prison exit. Besides, we didn’t actually have any reliable intelligence on the interior of the nest. All we had was the information given to us by the lieutenants who surrendered. Whether or not that was even trustworthy was still up for debate.

If I had to describe the situation we were in right now, it would be as such:

Imagine you were playing League of L**ends and you were about to camp the bushes in order to ambush that lone enemy in the solo lane. Yet the moment you step into it, you found yourself surrounded by the five heroes from the other side…seeing you appear, they immediately pounce on you like a bunch of ravenous wolves and before you could even react, inflict an inhuman level of torture upon you — Crowd Control skills, focused attacks, weakening debuffs, the whole shebang — killing you in one wombo combo…

In order to avoid such an awkward situation, the best option would be to avoid the bushes entirely and find some way to gain vision over the bushes. After all, there’s no guarantee that there wasn’t a Gare* squatting in the bushes waiting to jump you.

That was basically my train of thought now –avoid the bushes and gather intelligence.

Based on what we knew so far, the rat nest was in fact, occupied with enemies and their numbers weren’t low either. They even picked up a ranged skill in the form of throwing javelins. In the field of ranged attacks, I dare say that I was the leading expert, at least when compared to the other creatures in the Prison of the Dead. With the enemy in the dark and us in the light, I truly didn’t dare to launch a full-scale assault.

Since an assault wasn’t an option, what was? Calling in your brothers, of course.

With regards to our passive situation, Numila wasn’t the least bit comfortable with it at all. On multiple occasions, her temper would get the better of her but thankfully, I was there to stop her before she tried to assault the nest herself. What was hidden in that nest; who amongst us truly knew the answer to that?

Was that report about the 5000 warriors true? Were there only five four-star rat lieutenants waiting for us inside? These were all questions we couldn’t answer. After all, just because the rat slaves said something didn’t mean we should believe them as is. The only people who would take their word at face value were…fools and the gullible…without any way to verify those claims, there’s no way I would allow my direct subordinates to risk themselves any further.

Thus, I needed those lizardmen to reinforce us. They weren’t my direct subordinates anyway so who cares if they died.

Naturally, Numila wasn’t the only temperamental one here, Manasha was as well. However, after a round of persuasion, she calmed down as well. Since the medusas were lacking in numbers to begin with, that resulted in them picking up the excellent habit of not pushing themselves too much.

Thus, after calming down, she wasn’t one to foolishly risk her clan. Of course, she wasn’t being cowardly but rather it was a matter of perspective. Had it been her only, I bet she would’ve charged in already and slaughtered these rats, everything else can come after the killing.

(TL: Honestly, I’m not sure what the author meant by behavioral problems??? Anyway, I changed it to a matter of perspective. )

The days we spent waiting for the reinforcements were drab but in order to prevent any unnecessary losses, we ended up sieging their nest for twenty days. On the twentieth day, the messenger we sent out finally returned along with a division of 2000 lizardmen.The lizardwoman leading the division was the sister of the current head of the lizardman clan, Westley’s sister, Weslin.

Weslin was one of the lizardmen captured by Habona. As the sister of the clan leader, she naturally held an influential position amongst her clan. However, because Westley ended up pledging allegiance to Habona after she beat him up, it wasn’t a stretch to consider Weslin as one of us.

Of course, that didn’t mean that she was one of my direct subordinates.

Because we already made the decision to wait for reinforcements, we ended up digging a hole near the ratman nest to use as a temporary habitat.

It was Violet Snow who brought Weslin to my personal cave. At that moment, I was alone by myself so I decided to experiment with some new gear designs out of sheer boredom. I ended up crafting a few sets but because they were still ridden with flaws, I had no intention of using them immediately.

Westley had seen me before and knew of my relationship to Habona. Thus, the fact that he sent over Westlin confused me. If I’m not mistaken, he still had a younger brother so why did he dispatch Weslin? Shouldn’t fighting and leading the troops be left to the males to handle?