Chapter 111 Chapter 109 Ji Ma Sings
Ji Ma flew back along the original path, crossing the stone bridge. Her gaze swept over the towering walls of the fortress, where mouse-men warriors were continuously descending, yet she did not see any signs of elite mouse-men troops. It could be due to poor coordination, information delays, or confusing messages; such things were all too common.
During her previous military engagements, Ji Ma had encountered many similar situations. When setting up ambushes, for instance, a torrential rain poured down, throwing the bloodthirsty demon army into chaos and delaying their progress, making her furious enough to stomp her feet, resulting in a delay of a day before they finally reached the ambush zone.
However, the ambush was still a success because the rain had also delayed her opponents for a day and a half.
Strangely, though, there weren’t many mouse-men on the walls.
As she flew, a burp that carried the smell of various potions surged up her esophagus to her mouth. Having overdosed on demonic potions, her body felt a bit better, which Ji Ma knew usually meant she could drink another vial of potion.
She picked up a vial of “Witch’s Elixir” from her waist, the one she had brewed herself, capable of infusing part of her abilities into the potion for future use. Before drinking, Ji Ma glanced at her personal system interface to confirm that her status barely allowed for another vial.
Additionally, she noticed her mana had recovered to thirty percent. Ji Ma used her teeth to pull out the cork and gulped down the potion. The taste was quite unpleasant, akin to drinking pulverized, sun-dried geckos dissolved in water, with the kind that did not touch the internal organs.
Her stomach cramped violently, as if it wanted to detach from her consciousness.
Accompanied by the tumult in her stomach, her form became transparent, blending into the air and disappearing. She intended to toss the empty glass vial away but realized that her “jarred magical potions” were nearly depleted, and the expenditure had cost a fortune that would require numerous gambling sessions for the “dog” Li Anya to recover.
Immediately, she regretfully stuffed the glass vial into her interdimensional bag.
Using her invisibility, Ji Ma flew back to the bridgehead.
George and his group had already fought their way out of the city cavern. He swung his massive double-handed sword, hacking away furiously, barely carving a path through the continuously surging tide of mouse-men. A few mouse-men clung to him, attempting to bite through the straps of his armor.
There were so many mouse-men that Eve Frostleaf even abandoned her archery, unleashing a dragon of fire from her palm that indiscriminately scorched everything in its path.
Ji Ma was astonished to see that there were still dwarves alive; several dwarves held the rear as Felix sang and played music in between the troops. Butcher Gothric grew more ferocious, covered in blood, roaring as he chopped down a rat-troll with his axe, shouting:
“Come on, try to kill me!”
Unfortunately, most of the mouse-men on the bridge were clan rats and slave rats, the latter suffering extreme torment, small in stature, often wearing only ragged cloth as armor, serving merely as cannon fodder—with no mouse-man to grant Butcher Gothric an honorable and glorious death.
However, the sheer number of these mouse-men provided cover for the mouse assassins’ attacks, who struck from the shadows, suddenly appearing behind George and plunging their daggers into him, delivering a hit before vanishing.
George, furious, swung his sword in retaliation. The mouse assassins either vanished back into the shadows or used secret arts to block his attacks, managing to escape. Stuck in this endless cycle of ambushes, he gritted his teeth and expanded his light wings, unleashing his divine sword strikes to carve out a path.
One mouse assassin, having landed a hit, had blood on the tip of his dagger. George’s reply with a divine strike only nicked the assassin, who promptly leapt backward, soaring seven to eight meters high, using secret arts to diminish some of the impact, but leaving a deep wound on his chest.
He sneered:
“Useless!”
An axe-pike came slashing from his side: “Useful.”
As Ji Ma spoke, the axe-pike embedded itself into the assassin’s neck. It didn’t sever entirely but was deeply lodged in the bone, a deliberate act by Ji Ma to collect a bit more suffering.
The “branch axe-pike” extended its tongue, licking and sucking the assassin’s blood. The assassin struggled, forcefully attempting to remove the axe blade from his neck; the bright blade had only just cleared the wound.
The “branch axe-pike,” thirsty for blood, sprouted more than a dozen sharp-toothed tongues, akin to a serpent, wrapping around the assassin’s neck and pressing him hard onto the axe blade.
The mouse assassin emitted a terrified scream, and no matter how much he fought, he couldn’t push away the axe blade from his neck. Instead, it was driven even deeper.
Ji Ma dragged the mouse assassin’s corpse through the air, flying above the heads of the mouse-men, not a drop of blood falling, as the sharp-toothed tongues contentedly drank their fill, rendering her actions bloodless. The rear legs of the mouse assassin went limp, kicking a bit, then ceased to move.
Ji Ma flew over the river of lava and swung the axe-pike, letting the emaciated body drift down, falling into the lava river. His blood replenished Ji Ma’s axe-pike. The suffering he experienced just before death was as sweet as honey, transforming into pain energy that filled Ji Ma.
Mouse-men who witnessed his death, filled with fear, recoiled.
Ji Ma brandished her axe-pike, laughing: “Who wants to be the next lucky mouse-man?”
Ji Ma’s sudden entry into the fray merely added a grain of sand to the balanced scale, not affecting the equilibrium. At least, that was how the mouse-men thought at first.
A whole squad of storm mice, clad in iron armor and full of spirit, pinned down at the entrance of the stone bridge, buying time for George with the help of cannon fodder. They stood a full head taller than ordinary mouse-men, and with their officer’s command, they moved in perfect unison, angling their spears toward George.
The mouse standard-bearer shouted: “Brothers! Hold on until reinforcements arrive! We will not retreat!”
The storm mice echoed in unison:
“Never retreat!”
“Brave and fearless!”
This sounded a bit ironic, and Ji Ma couldn’t help but glance at this mouse infantry formation to see how they were doing.
George stepped on mouse corpses, flapping his white wings, wielding his bloodied golden double-handed sword, charging towards this last mouse infantry formation. In front of him, a group of powerful mouse-men scurried back into formation, seeking cover, making George appear like a war god in the flesh.
He plunged into the fray; his sword shone like the sun, wreaking havoc. Meanwhile, Eve Frostleaf’s arrows soon arrived to support, and a fireball exploded, flames spreading. Within the flames, the battle formation remained unmoved, the enchanted iron armor perfectly countering the expanding fire.
Yet George resembled an insect trapped in pine resin, engulfed, as the storm mice fearlessly charged at him, with one dying and another taking its place. The powerful mouse-men continually surged forth to attack, causing George to feel a mounting dread.
If he couldn’t break this morale-boosted storm mouse formation in a short amount of time, once George’s wings of light were fully extended, it would become increasingly difficult to advance further. Jenna was still fiercely battling alone at the opposite bridgehead, holding the line for them. Behind, an elite squad of mouse-men was in pursuit.
Even George, typically calm, couldn’t help but feel anxious inside, making his attacks more aggressive. A mouse assassin took advantage of the openings, using the “Weeping Sword” to weaken his armor and landed another stab wound on George. Eve Frostleaf received a cut on her thigh but was still able to fight.
Ji Ma remained very calm, primarily because she was happy collecting heads, relieving her stress. She could easily spot the injured mouse-men within the dense crowd, flying in and taking them out with a single axe stroke. With each one she took, her pain energy increased, boosting her flight speed and damage.
Seeing the situation worsen, Ji Ma understood that to break the deadlock, she needed more pain energy.
What to do?
She had already made significant efforts to collect heads.
At this moment, another desire to sing surged in her heart. Ji Ma was too lazy to hold back; after all, she didn’t need her mouth to fight, so she opened her mouth and sang freely:
“Ah ah ah ah~ that black cat officer…”
“Kill the mice! Kill the mice! Kill the mice♪ Kill the mice! Woo woo!”
She sang whatever came to mind, breaking all conventions, becoming increasingly fluid in her performance and feeling good about herself.
Perhaps I am a genius at singing medleys.
She thought, realizing the flow of “pain energy” within her was increasing, those sweet “pain energies.” Like the glow sticks waved by an audience, it encouraged Ji Ma, making her sing bolder and more fearlessly, and her harvesting speed increased.
On the battlefield, Ji Ma moved like a ghost, darting from one end of the battlefield to the other in the blink of an eye, defying the laws of physics, ignoring inertia, executing a direct one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. More terrifying was that this shadow emitted an eerie sound that tormented everyone.
The mouse-men covered their ears with one hand while wielding weapons with the other. The slave mice felt tremendous suffering in their miserable lives caused by servitude; even worse was having to listen to songs on the battlefield.
Several slave mice broke down, covering their ears, but the song pierced through their palms with crystal clarity. They screamed, ignoring the lashing of the overseer’s whip, and turned to leap straight into the abyss.
This triggered a collective breakdown among the mouse-men, who all clutched their ears and rushed toward the abyss to leap in, resembling the suicidal lemmings driven down the river in documentaries. Even clan rats followed suit, with the overseer frantically waving his whip to try and stop the horde.
Just as Ji Ma started to sing her soprano line: “..the marvelous heavenly road!!!”
The overseer abandoned his whip and, like a fleeing animal, jumped into the abyss alongside the mouse horde. From the high fortress walls, a dozen despondent mouse-men jumped down, smashing into the ground like pancakes.
It must be my valiant fighting stance that scared off the timid mouse-men.
Ji Ma thought, soaring down into the abyss, swinging her axe blade, recklessly reaping the lives of the mouse-men, moving so fast that her afterimages blurred together, connecting the mouse-men alike.
A massive amount of pain energy gathered in her chest; Ji Ma felt it was time to assist George in breaking the line. With a blink, she leaped over a hundred meters, soaring from the abyss up to the stone bridge, moving at such speed that everything around her became a blur.
But Ji Ma had excellent dynamic vision and quickly spotted a low-health mouse warrior, who was backpedaling to escape George. With a symbolic flap of her wings, like an arrow released from its bow, her axe-pike pierced through his back before the victim even realized what was happening.
She then circled around the storm mouse formation. The mouse-men began to experience their nightmares, surrounded by singing that reverberated 360 degrees, personally sung by Ji Ma. Every wounded mouse-man would soon have a white shadow swoop in to claim their life, as the storm mice and powerful mouse-men fell one by one until, before George’s wings of light extinguished, less than twenty storm mice remained, crumbling.
George stepped over a storm mouse’s corpse and onto the stone bridge, waving his hand: “Quick! Keep moving forward.”
Butcher Gothric dragged a barely conscious Felix, saying, “The mouse-men even have such brave soldiers, and they barely compare to us dwarves.”
“Is Felix injured?”
“He says he was half scared to death by the banshee’s wail.”
Finally, the singing stopped. Ji Ma no longer pursued the fleeing mouse-men on the bridge; she turned and hovered in the air, asking: “George, am I amazing?”
George took a breath, about to answer.
Suddenly, a volley of green lines shot from the fortress wall aimed at Ji Ma. A dozen lines were deflected or skewed, but two struck Ji Ma in the chest.
She felt a pain in her chest, followed by the sound of gunfire echoing across the battlefield. Instinctively, she glanced toward the walls and saw a dozen black gun barrels pointing at her. The gun barrels were dissolving from their invisible state, transforming from transparent to semi-transparent.
The mouse-men’s gun crew had remained invisible, waiting for this moment to fire together.
Ji Ma’s wings drooped, and she began to fall headfirst toward the fiery lava river. During her descent, she saw the gun crew on the walls continuously firing at her, the dimensional bullets whizzing by her. She could hear George yelling her name.
She also saw ten rat-trolls leaping down from the wall, each carrying a heavily armed mouse-man on their backs, with the strongest rat-troll carrying a red-armored mouse warlord.
At this moment, Ji Ma understood.
This mouse warlord truly was a cunning and patient opponent; he must have already led an elite squad hidden in invisibility, waiting for the right moment.
He had waited until the savior squad was at its weakest until Jenna had left and George’s wings of light flickered out, waiting until Ji Ma thought she was safe to strike suddenly and emerge for battle.
I truly underestimated them.
The heated wind whistled in her ears as the lava river drew nearer, its fiery surface scattered with charred mouse corpses. Soon, Ji Ma would join them.
On the other side.
Behind George, the red-armored mouse warlord led a group of rat-troll riders, touching down with a thud.
The red-armored mouse warlord, his helmet glowing with red light from his eyes, looked at George:
“Did I scare you? Human warrior, you’re at your weakest now, aren’t you?”
With that, the red-armored mouse warlord poked the head of the mouse-man mounted on his back with his rune serrated knife and said: “Brothers, thank you for your suggestion.”
Then his calm voice shifted, becoming strangely excited: “No need to thank me, good brothers! Quickly, quickly chop off the head of that warrior up ahead; his head is smarter than your human head.”
“I need your head.” The red-armored mouse warlord pointed at George, “You’ll give it to me, right?”
George gritted his teeth, no longer looking at Ji Ma’s descending figure, leaping to stand at the bridge’s edge, shouting: “Go! I’ll hold them off.”
The rat-trolls behind the red-armored mouse warlord had their hind legs tensed and ready to spring. He said: “I’m coming, human warrior.”
George shouted: “You’re not getting through here!”
The red-armored mouse warlord waved his rune serrated knife. On the walls, a dozen guns fired simultaneously at George, and then he commanded the rat-troll beneath him to charge, a full rush ahead.
