Chapter 627: The Battle of Burial Peak!

On the southern slope of the Ten Thousand Swords Mountains, this was Burial Peak, controlled by the Shi Laike warlord.

"Burial Peak" was not a single isolated peak, but a rugged mountain range formed by five interconnected summits of varying heights.

From above, the five peaks twisted in erratic patterns, resembling the corpse of a giant sprawled across the earth.

The exposed gray-white rock was the giant's desiccated bones; the twisted vegetation clinging to it, its rotting flesh—hence the name "Burial Peak."

And now, this "corpse" was alive with chaos.

The Shi Laike warlord's rat army crawled like maggots infesting a carcass, swarming every inch of the slopes.

They cursed the damned human devices with shrill voices while swinging crude tools to frantically dig defensive trenches.

Admittedly, though filthy, these rats had exceptional learning ability.

They had stolen the dwarves' mine-digging techniques and innovatively improved them, carving a chaotic yet intricate network of trenches along the ridgelines.

Those trenches resembled scars on the giant's corpse.

The rats mounted stolen rune-heavy crossbows behind earthen mounds, clutching spears of varying lengths, rusted iron swords, and even farm pitchforks.

In addition, they wielded demon-stone guns seized from hellish dwarves, along with magic scrolls and arcane devices "abandoned" by magic apprentices in the Ten Thousand Swords Mountains.

Looking across, not a single unit in this tens-of-thousands-strong army was uniform, nor were there two identical pieces of equipment.

Yet even so, this force's combat power was not to be underestimated.

Though equipment was scarce, the rats' numbers were endless; the dwarves of the Ten Thousand Swords Mountains had more than once been crushed by underestimating the rats' fighting ability.

They were not as easy to deal with as imagined.

Of course, it depended on who they were facing.

"Snap to it, all of you! The hairless monkeys are coming!"

"Don't let those human devices climb up!"

Let them see the might of Lord Geluo!

"Die! Die!"

Shouts rose and fell in a relentless chorus.

The unified roar of the rats momentarily dispelled the fear clinging to their positions, making them forget the pain of being brutally beaten by the cave spiders just days ago.

Yet while the Shi Laike warlord's little fools remembered only the food and forgot the beatings, the frontline commander, Rat General Cracktooth Jiajia'er, was no fool.

He stood atop a protruding rock, his cloudy little eyes nervously scanning the surroundings, especially behind him, his heart pounding.

The cunning Shi Laike warlord had not shown his face for days.

Though he publicly claimed to be in seclusion practicing Lord Geluo's secret art, the rats whispered among themselves that their boss had long since fled through secret tunnels with his treasure and female rats.

To stabilize morale, Jiajia'er had hanged over a dozen rumor-mongers, hanging their corpses from flagpoles as warnings.

Morale was stabilized, but the little rats grew arrogant again—and Jiajia'er's own nerves remained frayed.

According to frontline scouts' desperate reports, the human army gathering below was staggering in number, including not only humans but also legions of heavily armored dwarves and lizardmen from the southern swamps, said to snack on rats.

Lord Geluo above…

Jiajia'er couldn't help groaning inwardly—what the hell had their boss Mo Ke done to deserve this?!

Just days ago they had repelled the terrifying cave spider assault, thinking they could catch a breath—only for an even worse threat to appear out of nowhere.

Poor Jiajia'er didn't know they hadn't repelled the cave spiders at all; they had merely been spared by Arakdo.

The Demon King's vanguard had achieved its first-phase war objective: weakening Burial Peak's defenses, securing the facility before its transfer, and stirring chaos before the main force arrived—then vanishing with the "spoils," hidden and unacknowledged.

Though Arakdo was merely the Demon King's pet, he'd executed his tasks with ruthless efficiency, completing all four strategic objectives without fail.

As for now—

It was phase two.

As Jiajia'er drifted in thought, a strange sound suddenly echoed from the distant sky.

"Woo—!"

It was a piercing shriek the rats of the Ten Thousand Swords Mountains had never heard—dense, agonizing, like ten thousand killer hornets roaring toward them!

Jiajia'er froze, his damaged ears twitching; before he could process what was happening, the shriek was already overhead.

"Boom, boom, boom—!"

The forward frontline position, a kilometer ahead, was instantly swallowed by countless orange-red fireballs, turning into a boiling sea of flame!

Violent explosions deafened the air; shockwaves hurled shattered rocks and rat limbs into the sky. The rats crouching in the trenches hadn't even seen the enemy before half of them were obliterated by the ground-scorching rocket salvos.

The rats in the rear trenches were paralyzed with terror.

They stared in horror at the raining destruction from above, their faces twisted with fear just like the rats who'd seen angels descend beyond Dusk City.

"Fire meteors! It's fire meteors—!"

"Damn it! The enemy has a Diamond-rank archmage!"

"No… this scale… could be Crystal-rank!"

The rats screamed, scrambling in panic across the battlefield; only the threats and bribes of the enforcers forced them back into the trenches.

Yet even the enforcers were terrified—if not for their families held hostage by Lord Shi Laike, they'd have fled faster than the slave rats.

In the rats' impoverished understanding, only legendary high-rank mages could produce such terrifying devastation.

But the truth was otherwise.

This was no magic at all—it was the crystallization of industry and alchemy: the Gao Ta Kingdom's organ rocket artillery.

On the temporary artillery position below the forest, rows of hive-like wooden crates pointed skyward, their muzzles still smoking.

In less than three minutes, the Gao Ta United Kingdom's artillery had unleashed three hundred heavy incendiary rockets onto the rats' first peak.

In sheer destructive power, these weapons rivaled, even surpassed, the magic of high-tier transcenders!

Magical damage was mitigated by magic resistance; physical and chemical damage was not—it could only be countered by transcendent power itself.

And most rats had none of that.

"Awesome!!"

"Hah! I'm loving this!"

"Load faster, don't stop!"

A lizardman artillery officer clad in bizarre gear waved his command flag excitedly, bellowing to his comrades.

"Let's fire another volley before the charge!"

"Ooooh!"

The players loaded with all their might; within half an hour, the rocket nests stood full again.

At the player commander's order, the rockets roared once more, spewing long tongues of fire across the sky!

These arm-thick warheads were no ordinary gunpowder weapons—each bore engraved "Nether Script" from the Great Cemetery.

Upon impact, not only the explosive charge but also the magic-crystal powder smeared inside the casing was activated.

As the Nether Script flared, a chilling energy surged through the flames, gnawing at the rats' fragile nerves.

The destructive power surpassed ordinary incendiaries by a notch; the once-sturdy trenches crumbled in the fire, the flames laced with nether energy turning the rats into wailing, panicked rats fleeing in terror.

Seeing the moment was ripe, the "Gao Ta officer" on the frontline drew his command saber and slashed downward toward the distant position.

"Attack!!!"

As the rockets screamed overhead, the clarion call of war horns rang out—every allied force, primed and ready, surged forward in a full charge!

On the left flank, the Gao Ta Kingdom's First Regiment, First Battalion's lizardman hand-cannon troops charged forward, their tails whipping like cavalry racing along the ridgeline.

On the right flank marched the Campbell First Mountain Regiment's Lan En Company, clutching "Luo Ke 1054 rifles."

Though their physiques were less imposing than the lizardmen's, no one could ignore their combat prowess or their resolve to save their kin.

"Charge—!"

"Kill—!"

Amidst the tidal roar of battle cries, Sir Dickbin blended into the crowd like a husky lost among wolves.

The once-arrogant envoy now wore a face caked in mud, gripping his rifle slick with sweat and rain, his face stripped of all composure and ease.

Watching his comrades roar forward, hearing the artillery thunder ahead, his legs felt like wet noodles.

Yet he dared not stop.

He felt that if he halted, the man-eating beast behind him would snap his neck and swallow him whole.

These barbarians downstream of the Flowing River—

Sir Dickbin, cowardly as a rat, cursed inwardly, then finally opened his mouth and let out a hysterical scream, venting decades of fear.

"Aaaah—!"

Head down, he charged up the burning slope with his comrades, remembering just a sliver of what he'd abandoned long ago.

Bullets and arrows whistled through the air; he and his comrades fired uphill while using cover, then advanced under the protection of battlefield mages and artillery.

Meanwhile, on the northern slopes beyond Burial Peak—here, the northern border of the Carrion Clan, a region repeatedly contested by rats and dwarves—

Both sides had carved their marks into the rock walls, leaving the hard granite pitted and jagged as if gnawed by dogs.

Each time the rats seized the area, they destroyed the dwarven lord's bas-reliefs; when the dwarves reclaimed it, they carved them anew.

Now under rat control, they'd used dwarven explosives to obliterate several tunnels leading to the Mountain Kingdom, building impregnable rat nests into the solid granite.

All the little rats believed they were now safe—since they'd blown up the mines, the dwarves hadn't returned.

Yet the rat battalion commander guarding this area, "Tailcut," sensed something wrong.

His sensitive whiskers trembled violently, picking up a low, rhythmic hum in the air.

What… was that sound?

He searched carefully and found it seemed to come from the rock wall—and it was growing clearer.

"Hum… hum…"

The hard rock walls began to tremble, fragments of stone rattling down from above, as if a colossal beast lurking deep within the mountains was awakening.

"Stumptail" clung fearfully to the rock wall, trying to listen more closely.

But the next instant, a deafening explosion blasted him straight off the wall!

"BOOM—!"

The entire mountain seemed to shudder in the roar of that explosion!

The Silver-rank clan rat captain "Stumptail" died on the spot, never even managing a scream.

The power of "Yellow Explosive" was this terrifying!

The children of the Dragon God had not merely offered the dwarves empty promises—they had brought many novel devices the dwarves had never seen.

And all of this was merely the beginning—

Amidst a storm of shattered rock and dust, a massive steel drill spewing white steam crashed through the obstruction and slammed into the rat folk's tunnel!

The dwarf runes engraved on the drill glowed with blinding orange light; its spinning tip effortlessly shredded every rock and flesh that dared block it.

"Squeak-squeak-squeak—!!"

Dozens of unlucky clan rats never even screamed before being sucked into the drill and turned to pulp. A few who barely escaped were promptly chopped into mincemeat by the axes and blades mounted on either side of the drill.

"Shield wall!"

"Hah!"

Before the rats could react, a heavy hiss echoed from behind the steel beast—and from behind the rolling steam and dust, a "wall" materialized out of thin air!

A wall made of steel and beards.

Led by a dwarf lord wielding a warhammer, each of them mounted a firelock the size of a bowl upon that shield wall.

"For the mountains! For the king!"

"Fire!"

Bang, bang—!

The successive bursts of white smoke shattered the rats' hastily formed formation; volleys of buckshot rained down within the narrow cavern!

In a single volley, the rat company stationed here lost more than half its numbers, leaving behind a litter of twisted corpses.

Fear stamped upon every rat's face, their morale collapsed again, and they screamed as they turned and fled deeper into the tunnel.

The dwarf gunners retreated to reload.

Next came the rune warriors, wielding axes and cleavers.

Their bulging muscles were carved with black runes; under the blessing of dwarf priests, they smeared black beast blood across their faces, their pupils and axe handles glowing golden.

"For the king—"

"Charge!!"

"Kill!!!"

The rough battle cries echoed through the narrow tunnel, shaking the rats' eardrums raw!

The rune warriors, axes in hand, leapt forward and felled a vast swath of fleeing rats within mere breaths—like a hurricane cutting down wheat.