Chapter 148: Clan Rats!

The loud bell echoed in the castle of the Netherworld Dwarves, and one by one, Dwarves in heavy armor rushed toward the tunnel where the rat plague broke out, those bald heads tattooed with inscriptions looking just like freshly cooked braised eggs.

They didn't guard the city walls, but opened the city gates and walked out of the granite city wall that cut across the entire tunnel.

Perhaps to show off to their neighbors, Gelong Steelbone put on that five-hundred-jin heavy armor, held a black obsidian war hammer with gold edges, and rode a ground boar to the battlefield himself.

That is a kind of boar with thorns on its face, its physique larger than a cave spider, just like a Shire horse crawling on the ground.

Luo Yan had only seen this creature in textbooks before; I heard that Dwarves use them to replace pack horses, and at the same time serve as mounts, occasionally raising them to eat meat.

Besides the ground boar that Gelong Steelbone was riding, Luo Yan also saw many warriors riding ground boars in the Netherworld Dwarf army.

They, like Gelong, wore the most expensive armor and held the heaviest weapons, just like the knights in human knight regiments.

"Assemble!"

Gelong Steelbone raised the war hammer in his hand and let out a powerful roar.

Nearly two thousand Netherworld Dwarf warriors assembled at the entrance of the tunnel, looking like a city wall plated with steel!

Luo Yan's face showed a look of surprise.

This steel production is not low!

But thinking that this group of Netherworld Dwarves drinks, mates, and forges iron every day, it's not surprising that they can gather such a heavy armored corps.

It's not just the heavy armored corps that assembled, but also the artillery unit pushing stone-throwing cannons.

Looking at Luo Yan, who had a look of surprise, a touch of pride rose on Gelong's glowing face, and then he ordered the drummer to beat the war drum.

"Forward!!!"

"Drink—!"

In the drum sound that roared like thunder, the Dwarf warriors arranged in square formations made neat steps forward with powerful calls.

In the mine tunnel ahead, the hurried footsteps got closer and closer, and soon more than a hundred Netherworld Dwarves holding kerosene lamps ran out.

They are the miners of Calamity Castle, and also the supervisors in the mine tunnel; Netherworld Dwarves rarely dig mines themselves, mainly monitoring the alien slaves working in the mine tunnel.

When they saw the assembled army under the city wall, those dark faces all showed expressions of being saved.

And just not far behind them, a dozen Ratman assassins waving straight-edged long knives were chasing and shouting.

Those fiery red eyes and manic appearance were just like having a plague.

However, with a few gunshots from the city wall, the Ratman assassins chasing behind the miners fell into a pool of blood one after another.

Luo Yan turned his head and glanced, only to see more than a dozen two-meter-long gun barrels erected on the city wall, with cold-looking Dwarf gunners standing behind them.

Just like snipers!

The miners who escaped soon entered the castle, and at the same time, the mighty slave rat army also appeared in front of the tunnel.

When they saw the assembled Netherworld Dwarf army, the swarming Ratmen were all dumbfounded, and their faces showed expressions of fear without exception.

They are the

Facing that invincible power, the group of scantily clad slave rats panicked and screeched to a halt, chattering and screaming, as if they were cursing or perhaps begging for mercy.

However—

These little rats did not retreat after all.

After all, they were different from the stragglers in the Beifeng mine; behind them stood a powerful rat kingdom—

The Skot Clan.

A clan rat clad in armor rushed to the front of the military formation, drew a saber that towered over its head, and waved it while shouting.

"No retreating! Charge for me! Use your teeth to bite off their balls! Stab your daggers into the gaps of their helmets!"

"Charge—!"

Amidst the gibberish curses and shouts, the slave rats, clutching a motley assortment of weapons, finally overcame the fear in their hearts and launched a desperate charge while carrying the banner of the Skot Clan.

That dense tide of rats was like a black river pouring into a tunnel; just looking at it made one's sanity plummet.

Ouke's eyes went wide.

It wasn't just Ouke; the other goblins were the same, their faces all showing moved expressions, their shoulders trembling involuntarily.

"Artillery unit! Fire!" Gelong Steelbone raised the warhammer in his hand and let out a roar that could pierce clouds and shatter stone.

Under his command, twelve stone-throwing cannons simultaneously spewed pungent, thick smoke, and the flying stone projectiles drew arched trajectories in the air!

The bursting gravel slammed into the ranks of the rat army, instantly shattering into countless tiny fragments, splashing wildly in all directions!

Struck by the splashing stone projectiles, the defenseless slave rats were either killed or wounded, instantly falling in rows like harvested wheat!

The sound of the cannons shook the formation of the slave rats.

Facing the whistling stone projectiles, the charging slave rats were clearly terrified; their legs felt as if they were filled with lead, and they refused to obey no matter how the clan rats behind them screamed.

This wasn't over yet!

I saw that in the advancing Hell Dwarf phalanx, the dwarf soldiers standing in the second row took out wooden tubes as thick as wrists from behind them.

Behind those wooden tubes was a flexible hose made of animal intestines, connected to the "wine barrels" carried on the backs of the dwarf soldiers in the third row.

It was clear that what was inside those barrels was not wine.

Following an order from the frontline commander, the wooden tubes held in the arms of the dwarf soldiers suddenly sprayed thick, long columns of liquid forward!

Before the running slave rats could realize what was happening, the oil falling from the sky turned into streams of burning fire dragons!

"Ah—!"

Piercing wails resounded throughout the entire battlefield; the slave rats drenched in fire oil turned into running fireballs, scurrying about in the tunnel and completely losing their way.

The clan rats standing in the military formation also showed expressions of terror, fearing they would be caught by the scurrying fireballs and flames, and were the first to flee toward the rear.

The rat formation fell into complete chaos; some rushed to the other end of the tunnel, while others crashed into the dwarf phalanx.

The dwarves standing in the first row pushed out their shields and slammed them heavily onto the ground, forming an impregnable shield wall.

They did not fear fire.

Their hands could even reach into a furnace with temperatures of over a thousand degrees to retrieve scorching charcoal, let alone this level of heat; to them, it was like being scratched.

However, those ratmen could not take it.

Facing the tunnel where the temperature had suddenly risen by more than ten degrees, even if they weren't burned to death directly, they were all scalded and squealing, or suffocating in the fire.

"Hahaha! Satisfying!"

Gelong Steelbone laughed, took a wine flask from his waist, and took a big gulp, with at least half of it feeding his thick beard.

Now Luo Yan finally understood why they didn't bathe and didn't get sick; it turned out they were disinfecting themselves with alcohol all day long...

"It seems it's already over," said Luo Yan, who was standing nearby.

"Over? This is just the beginning, my friend; the good show is still to come!"

Gelong laughed, handed the wine flask out, and seeing that Luo Yan didn't reach out to take it, he hung it back on his waist with a sense of disappointment.

Luo Yan raised his eyebrows slightly.

In his view, this was a completely one-sided slaughter; the rats on the opposite side had no strength left to fight back.

"Are you saying those rats have other trump cards?"

Gelong grinned and said.

"They aren't ordinary ratmen, but a branch of the Thirteen Tooth Council of the Wan Ren Mountain Range—the Skot Clan. This bunch of cunning and cruel things is the hardest to deal with; they not only steal technology from us but also listen to the whispers of Chaos... although they call it the Rat of Trickery."

The Rat of Trickery, Sluwit, one of the three rat gods.

The mainstream view in the Netherworld academic circle is that it belongs to the gods of this world, partly to sing a different tune from Saint Xisi, who wholesales foreign gods everywhere, and partly due to the political goal of the Demon Capital's high-level officials hoping to win over the ratmen to deal with surface humans.

But some scholars also believe it is a mask for the Fog of Trickery, "Nuo Weier," and that it and the ratmen who believe in it are all filthy things; after all, their divine personas are really similar, and furthermore, discriminating against ratmen is the "mainstream public opinion" of Netherworld society.

Disaster Fortress is on the frontier of the Netherworld, so naturally, mainstream public opinion prevails.

However, Luo Yan had met Nuo Weier, and those ratmen were clearly not Mad Whisperers, just purely more insane.

Just as the two were talking, a deafening roar suddenly came from the distance, and whistling sounds flew over their heads.

Luo Yan had already gripped his magic wand and silently recited the spell for passive defense against flying projectiles, while Gelong was so thick-skinned that he didn't dodge at all, but instead showed an excited expression on his face.

"Ratman lift-gun team! Hahaha! It really is the stuff of the Skot Clan!"

At the end of the tunnel in the distance, strong ratmen were carrying gun barrels over a meter long, firing and reloading in an orderly manner under the command of ratman officers waving sabers.

These were not gunpowder-driven muskets, but rather stone projectiles triggered by magic energy, so the bullets dragged trails of distinct green light behind them.

Luo Yan glanced at Gelong beside him, not knowing what this guy was excited about.

And Ouke, standing beside Luo Yan, was shivering and said in a stuttering voice.

"Lord Demon King, swords and blades have no eyes; w-we should stand further back; Ouke is worried about your safety!"

This guy was clearly afraid of death himself, yet he had to use loyalty as a pretext.

Luo Yan rolled his eyes in his heart but didn't roast him, just threw out a faint sentence.

"Stay close to me."

"Yes!" Ouke nodded tremblingly and quickly hid behind Luo Yan's heels.

Looking at this shameful goblin thing, Gelong let out a heroic laugh and comforted him.

"Hahahaha! No need to panic! We've been fighting these rats for hundreds of years, and they've never won!"

These Hell Dwarves indeed had the capital to be proud. Their skin itself was as thick as a city wall, and they were also wearing steel plates thicker than a palm!

The ratman infantry in the distance fired a chaotic volley, but the output was like scraping sand; not a single Hell Dwarf in the front row fell, while on the ratmen's own position, many ratman officers directing the battle were shot and killed by dwarf snipers on the city wall.

Seeing that the formation of the ratman lift-gunners was about to collapse, a deafening roar suddenly came from the end of the tunnel, and then a huge black shadow appeared on the battlefield.

It was a five-meter-tall behemoth; its head looked like a duck neck chewed in half, its asymmetrical eyes emitted turbid, fierce light, and its open mouth was like rotting dead wood.

What was even more terrifying was its burly body, like a giant elephant, as if the flesh and fat of dozens of magical beasts were wrapped in animal skins of different materials. Under the coarse hair, one could see shocking suture lines and black threads as thick as index fingers, just like scars left by surgery!

This is...

A stitched beast?

Luo Yan was stunned the moment he saw it.

It wasn't just Luo Yan who was stunned; Gelong, who had been laughing heartily a second ago, was also stunned on the spot, unable to figure out what that thing was, and muttered with his mouth covered by his beard.

"What is that thing..."

Before his words fell, the huge stitched monster had already rushed to the Hell Dwarf position on all fours, waving its raised arms in a wide, sweeping motion, instantly tossing a dozen Hell Dwarf warriors into the air and slamming them heavily onto the ground.

Those dwarf warriors were indeed meaty enough; they flew more than ten meters and fell to the ground without dying, and were still able to pick up their axes and stand up while cursing.

Seeing a gap appear in the position, Gelong could no longer care about showing off and hurriedly ordered the stone-throwing cannons to aim at the behemoth.

Following another round of roaring cannon fire, several stone projectiles grazed the monster's shoulder and smashed onto the heads of the ratman lift-gun team, while several others hit the target directly, smashing into the monster's head and shoulder respectively.

"Roar—!"

The stitched monster let out a roar of pain, its huge body swaying and staggering backward, then losing its center of gravity and falling to the ground.

Boom—!

Boiling dust rose instantly, and the entire tunnel shook unbearably, as if hundreds of kilograms of explosives had been detonated.

"Chop it to pieces for me!"

Gelong roared at the top of his lungs, and the nearest dwarf phalanx immediately launched a charge, submerging the giant that had fallen to the ground like a rolling torrent of steel.

Hundreds of axes hacked wildly, like blades spinning in a meat grinder, and in a moment, they hacked the stitched behemoth into a bloody mess.

The angry roar gradually turned into a powerless wail; the stitched behemoth struggled for a long time, but ultimately failed to stand up successfully, and its throat was cut by a Hell Dwarf holding a two-handed axe who had climbed onto its chest.

The blood-drenched Hell Dwarf let out an excited roar and held his battle axe high above his head to show off.

However, before he could be proud for two seconds, the stitched behemoth under his feet suddenly trembled, and then, like a hippopotamus lying dead by the river, it instantly exploded into a sky full of minced meat and blood!

The Hell Dwarf standing on its chest was instantly blown away without a trace, and the surrounding dwarf warriors were also rolled away like potatoes dug out of the ground.

Looking at the miserable state of the Hell Dwarves, the rats in the distance immediately let out squeaky mocking laughter, completely ignoring that they themselves were being beaten even worse.

Seeing an entire hundred-man phalanx almost wiped out, Gelong Steelbone, riding on the back of a hell boar, instantly turned red-eyed, his gaze seemingly about to spray fire.

"Damn it!"

He picked up the warhammer in his hand and was about to personally lead his Hell Dwarf knights to charge, but was stopped by Luo Yan beside him.

"Wait, there's movement ahead."

Gelong was slightly stunned, and just as he was about to ask what movement, the earth-shaking footsteps had already answered his question.

I saw that on the opposite side of the tunnel, a dozen stitched beasts were lined up in a row, like a torrent made of flesh and blood, aggressively pressing toward the dwarf position!

Seeing this scene, Gelong's expression changed instantly, as gloomy as coal.

Luo Yan, seeing this scene, no longer held back, took out the magic wand from his sleeve, and pointed it at the advancing stitched behemoths.

"Raise Dead!"

The emerald green light streaked across the battlefield and hit the synthetic stitched behemoth in the front center without deviation.

At first, the rats around the stitched beast were startled, thinking it was some incredible magic, until they found that nothing happened, and then they felt relieved and laughed wantonly.

However, they didn't get to be proud for too long.

The stitched monster's shoulder blade suddenly twisted, and a distorted arm and hand stretched out from the pile of stitched fat.

That arm, like a chick breaking out of its shell, tore at the flesh and animal skin that bound it, trying hard to crawl out of the stitched behemoth's body.

The stitched behemoth let out a roar of pain, suddenly knelt on one knee, and reached its hand behind its back, trying to press the suddenly resurrected corpse back into its own body.

However, its struggle was in vain—

Because the resurrected corpses were not just one, but almost all of them inside its body!

In just a few breaths, the stitched behemoth began to expand like a balloon being blown up, and finally exploded into a sky full of corpses with a bang!

The shockwave of the explosion not only blew down a group of ratman soldiers but also caused the other stitched behemoths to sway.

Luo Yan didn't stop there, but continued to chant spells without stopping, throwing a few more green rays at the battlefield.

The stitched behemoths hit by Raise Dead fell to the ground one after another, and then their bodies began to swell in the same way, and then exploded like blown-up balloons!

Seeing that the torrent of flesh and blood had exploded into a pile of giant corpses before it could even reach the opposite side, the rats who had been clamoring and mocking a second ago were suddenly panicked, threw away the weapons in their hands, and fled backward in a collapse of morale.

That bloody and cruel scene made even many Hell Dwarves unable to stop their stomachs from churning, and they couldn't help but vomit on the armor of the soldiers in the front row.

Seeing that the opposite side had no strength left to fight, Gelong finally gave the order to charge, and this time Luo Yan didn't stop him.

"Charge!"

Hundreds of dwarf knights riding hell boars killed their way out of the position, chasing the fleeing rats like speeding tanks, hacking and slashing wildly like cutting watermelons and vegetables.

At the same time, the dwarf heavy infantry lined up in phalanxes also advanced forward, cooperating with the cavalry to capture the rats who had thrown away their weapons.

In just a few minutes, more than two thousand dwarf warriors captured over five thousand ratman slaves, all of them with a bountiful harvest.

The experienced Hell Dwarf miners poured out of the castle again, stringing those rats together with iron chains as thick as little fingers.

These rats with their feet chained together would be sent back to the mines of Disaster Fortress as new fuel, working in the coal mines that never see the sun until they die.

Looking at the victorious battlefield, Gelong Steelbone, returning triumphantly from the front, showed joy on his face, dismounted from his boar, and hugged Luo Yan's shoulders.

"Hahahaha, Demon King of the Great Graveyard! Thank you for your help! I, Gelong Steelbone, will remember this favor!"

Although dwarves don't like necromancy, he wasn't a traditional dwarf after all, and besides, Luo Yan had just done him a huge favor.

If those stitched behemoths that could not only fight but also self-destruct had rushed to his position, the consequences would have been unimaginable!

"You're welcome," Luo Yan smiled and said, "I didn't bring you any gifts when I came from the Demon Capital, so let's take this as my meeting gift."

"Then this gift is too valuable!" Gelong laughed, suddenly changed to a serious expression, and continued, "Besides, one thing is one thing; according to our tradition, those who fight do not return empty-handed; you have a share of these spoils! How about a thousand slave rats? We can help you tie them up and send them to your door!"

If it were usual, Luo Yan might have agreed, but now the Great Graveyard is facing the threat of a Chaos invasion, and he has no time to deal with these slaves for the time being.

"... We just settled a rat infestation there, and I don't want to see these ugly little rats for the time being, but their weapons are quite interesting; I want to take them back and study them."

"You mean those iron tubes that fire stones? No problem! As many as there are on the battlefield are yours!" Gelong waved his big hand and said generously.

The inscriptions of Disaster Fortress are much more advanced than those things, and there are even more powerful firearms, so he really didn't look down on those tickling things.

In fact, Luo Yan also felt that those iron tubes that fired stones were a bit weak, with a muzzle velocity too low, only slightly better than the slings of slave rats.

However, as long as you open up your thinking, there are always more solutions than problems.

Although this thing cannot replace a musket, it should be very useful if modified into a grenade launcher.

Looking at the generous Lord of Disaster Fortress, Luo Yan said with a smile.

"Then I won't stand on ceremony with you."

As the words fell, he looked at Ouke, who was sticking to his heels, and ordered.

"You take five hundred goblins over and recycle all the iron tubes and ammunition used by the ratmen to fire stones."

Ouke nodded hurriedly upon hearing this.

"As you command! Lord Demon King."

After speaking, Ouke immediately ran back into the castle, caught the goblins who were hiding on the city wall watching the show, and urged them to go to the battlefield to recycle the spoils.

The goblins were still very interested in cleaning up the battlefield; under Ouke's urging, they swarmed up, and before long, each of them was carrying a dozen iron tube guns, and everyone was stuffed full.

The joy of victory permeated the entire Disaster Fortress, and the Hell Dwarves, who were already hospitable, became even more enthusiastic after Luo Yan helped out.

Gelong pulled Luo Yan back into the banquet hall; the interrupted banquet continued, and there was one more reason to celebrate.

Looking at the Hell Dwarves who had bloodstains all over their beards and continued to drink and make merry as if nothing had happened, Luo Yan was influenced by them without realizing it, and felt that the wine in the cup didn't seem so hard to swallow anymore.

Compared to the demons in the Demon Capital who were scheming against each other, it wouldn't be bad to be friends with these guys.

Although they were cruel, vulgar, and barbaric, they didn't have so many hidden agendas, and they were also incredibly good to their friends.

After many rounds of drinks, Gelong stood on the banquet table with a hiccup, raised his glass, and said loudly.

"From now on... the Great Graveyard is an ally of Disaster Fortress! The enemies of the Great Graveyard are the enemies of our Disaster Fortress!"

"Ooh ooh ooh!" A group of Hell Dwarves also shouted excitedly, whistling and cheering for their leader.

Seeing that the atmosphere had been heated up, Luo Yan was embarrassed to continue sitting reservedly, so he also got up from his chair and raised his glass.

"May our friendship last long! Cheers!"

Looking at the Demon King who drank the wine in one gulp, Gelong let out a heroic laugh and also drank the wine in his cup in one gulp.

"To friendship! Cheers!!!"

(End of chapter)