Chapter 115 Chapter 113 Escaped
On the high platform of the fort, the “muscle thing” carried the red-armored ratman warlord, walking on the high platform made of hard granite blocks. Around him, the storm rats and clan rats were searching everywhere, even though the high platform was clearly visible and seemed unnecessary to search.
But all the rat soldiers performed their duties diligently. At the very least, they had to pretend to be diligent to avoid angering the red-armored ratman warlord. The rat corpses on the ground had already been turned over four or five times, and every inch of the area had been stepped on three or four times.
The high platform was not a flat area; there were short, thick round towers built at each corner, each about two stories high. Even if they opened the door and saw it was empty inside, it did not hinder the ratmen from walking in and out to show they were doing their jobs.
The red-armored ratman warlord rode on the “muscle thing” at the location where the “rescue squad” had disappeared. The view here was excellent, allowing him to see almost the entire stone bridge, with flames shooting up from the deep abyss below, illuminating the area beneath the stone bridge.
There were so many ratmen on the stone bridge that they formed a thick black line, which eventually disappeared at the end of the bridge. From here, he could see all the ratmen, and all the ratmen could see him. It was here that they escaped right in front of everyone’s eyes.
“Fool! Fool!” The ratman on his back screamed, “They’re shitting on your face! Unforgivable, unforgivable!”
The human head asked, “Why did they specifically choose to escape here? It’s just to humiliate us.”
The red-armored ratman warlord turned his head, his gaze passing over the dense rat constructions and walls, falling beyond the city walls where the terrain was complex, with raised rocks full of caves, and being close to the city walls made it truly not a good place to build a fortress.
It was also here that the ratmen had taken the dwarven fortress.
He estimated that this distance was just right to directly enter the cavernous rocks and disappear inside.
Even if they were injured, they were still powerful superhumans, especially the long-eared ones, capable of using elemental magic to break the stone bridge. As long as they concealed their tracks and created diversions, they would be able to hide inside.
No matter how keen-nosed the wolves were or how experienced the trackers were, they wouldn’t be able to find them for a while. By the time they did locate them, they would have fully recovered, and the pursuers would have become the prey. They needed to collect their blood to divine their whereabouts, but the divination ritual could not be performed immediately.
If the defending troops had proactively attacked and not yielded the high platform so easily, would things have come to this? The head of that brave thing would have long been impaled on his back, sharing its wisdom and strength with him.
Thinking of this made the red-armored ratman warlord even more frustrated.
On the high platform, the ratmen were still busy, coming and going, gazing at the brick gaps, as if the people as big as the rescue squad could hide in those tiny brick seams.
This pretense directly angered the red-armored ratman warlord: “Go! Go! Stop searching! Come with me to settle accounts with the defenders! Cowards, cowards!”
With this order.
On the high platform, the ratmen poured out like water from a full sink, rushing out through the only exit.
Faced with the enraged red-armored ratman warlord, the defenders naturally counterattacked, accusing him of fearing battle and scaring the five thousand defenders into hiding in their fortifications to resist the “rescue squad” onslaught.
Intense arguments erupted, and even a few rat lives were lost, but nothing could quell the dispute.
Yet, no matter how much they argued or talked, the rescue squad had escaped from the high platform. The defenders had almost given up on defending the high platform, allowing the “rescue squad” to use their extraordinary abilities to escape the fortress.
Of course, the defenders absolutely would not take the blame. They firmly insisted that it was false. With the saint’s magical power, she couldn’t possibly support an escape with everyone; it must be a trick to deceive everyone.
And there certainly were no extraordinary items to support such action.
Thus, the rescue squad must be hiding somewhere in the fortress, in some corner, quietly watching their joke. But all the ratmen knew that this was merely a flimsy excuse.
However, this flimsy excuse led the leadership of the defenders to order a massive search operation, declaring that no one was allowed to sleep until it was finished!
In an instant, all the defenders were mobilized to begin the search within the fortress.
A team of clan rats, lifting their seemingly leaden feet, slowly walked up the steps toward the high platform, the weapons hanging from their waists clattering against their backs, producing a rhythmic sound that, to the weary ratmen, sounded like a lullaby, so enchanting.
One of the clan rats opened its mouth wide, revealing yellowed teeth, and let out a long yawn. The yawn quickly spread among the clan rats, causing each ratman to unconsciously yawn as well.
“It’s so late, what are we still searching for?”
This sentence resonated with the ratmen.
“Wasting time,” another ratman said lazily, “this is where those things escaped, turning into a beam of light, shining outside the city, disappearing in an instant. But the higher-ups don’t believe it.”
“What don’t they believe?” A third ratman bent down, placing his hands on the ground in a searching posture, “The higher-ups are arguing, saying they didn’t escape at all, that way they don’t take responsibility.”
“That’s not fair,” another ratman said, “all the rats saw that beam of light fall outside the city, turning into eight people who vanished in an instant, and yet they’re still here?”
“You, you weren’t on guard at the city wall, how do you know?”
“I heard from other rats.”
“Yes, yes, that’s right, the big-horned rats all saw it.”
“They all ran away and we’re still looking for them here?”
“Yes! Yes! We have to find them if we don’t want to get whipped. This is where they vanished.”
As the ratmen complained, they quickly searched all the areas.
One of the clan rats, wearing rusty armor and with a yellow belt, walked to the edge of the high platform, looked down, and saw that below, about one floor down, there was the top of a round tower. Using the firelight from the abyss, half of the tower’s top was hidden in darkness.
He yawned and muttered to himself, “If they could hide, they wouldn’t be hiding up there in the tower, would they?”
But upon closer inspection, there wasn’t a single person on top; it was completely empty. If someone were hiding up there, they would have already been discovered. However, despite the tower’s rounded top, at the junction with the fortress wall, there was enough space to lie down comfortably and get a good sleep.
This clever clan rat glanced left and right, seeing no other rats paying attention to him, silently grabbed the edge with both hands, and skillfully descended, instantly disappearing into the shadows, vanishing without a trace.
The “grueling” search lasted for more than twenty minutes before finally concluding.
During the gathering for roll call, someone asked, “Who saw the neurotic rat? The one with the yellow belt.”
“Don’t wait for him; he must have found another concealed place to sleep.”
“Yes, yes, let’s go first!”
“Exactly, exactly.”
The clan rats left the high platform, yawning all the way and discussing quietly about finding a place to hide and get a good sleep.
At that moment.
A team of running rats returned to the fortress with the latest news.
“Absolutely! We found their footprints outside the city, yes, footprints. There are also traces of their blood.”
“Are you sure they’re footprints?”
“Eight pairs of footprints, disappearing into a cave in the soft soil; they escaped, they escaped!”
“That’s definitely a trick of those things; they’re hiding in the fortress and using extraordinary abilities to create footprints outside to fool us all.”
The red-armored ratman warlord became impatient; he was a little tired, yawned, and asked, “How can we confirm their tracks? The kind you acknowledge.”
“Divination! Divination, consult the great big-horned rat.”
“How long?”
“At least a day. We need to prepare the ritual and carefully select samples to confirm the samples are their blood.”
The red-armored ratman warlord couldn’t be bothered to argue with them; all of this was merely a way to shift responsibility. After a day, they would surely claim there had been an unexpected turn of events, delaying the time so that the divination results would come back only after the “rescue squad” had already escaped.
They would then claim that so much time had passed, and the rescue squad had quietly fled the fortress.
Such things were common for the high-ranking red-armored ratman warlord.
He couldn’t be bothered to bicker and left directly, instructing his subordinates to use a special line to inform his partner, Chuan Luo.
“What? They escaped!”
As the chosen one of the big-horned rat, Chuan Luo was both shocked and furious upon hearing this news.
He wore a white nightgown with a sleep cap on his head, and the nightgown was embroidered with pink strawberries. He had previously thought that strawberries were some kind of internal organ, so he took a liking to this human-made clothing, wearing it constantly. Any rat that dared to tell him the truth either ended up dead or on the way to dying.
The dimensional sorcerer Chuan Luo promptly hung up the phone, his anger hitting the roof, jumped onto the table, and let out a sharp scream, “Impossible! How could they escape from my great scheme?”
Having said that, he recalled Ji Ma’s face, so furious that he bit down hard on his tail, blood seeping from between his teeth.
What a detestable rival.
The first time in Olli City, the ratmen had already spread the plague invented by the plague clan, infecting the entire province, and Olli City was about to become the ratmen’s territory. She arrived, fabricating the tale of the Pied Piper, driving back the rat army.
The second time, in Kislif, a small city, he had originally wanted to test his skills, leading the ratmen to storm the surface. That succubus was despicable, poisoning the wine in advance…
The third time was now, when he was executing the task no big-horned rat could afford to fail. She was here again! Like his shadow, following him wherever he went. Even though he was moving at full speed, she always managed to keep right behind him.
“She must be coming to kill me, targeting me.” Chuan Luo spoke with fear in his voice, his whiskers trembling as he glanced left and right, wary of every shadow, fearing that the succubus and her companions would suddenly jump out and surprise him. “Yes, yes, I just left, and they must have come to assassinate me. The great plan of the big-horned rat must succeed, yes, succeed.”
That night, Chuan Luo could not sleep.
Ji Ma also could not sleep through the night, her face filled with rage as she looked at the people she had saved with her own hands:
“I helped you deceive all the ratmen, nesting right under their noses, and this is how you repay me? It was I who saved you.”
The ropes bound her tightly, wrapping her up like a caterpillar.
“George, what are you doing? You are my lover, how could you do this to me?”
“I’m sorry.” George held a spherical object in one hand and grabbed her horn with the other, “If you keep singing, everyone will die.”
“I just wanted to sing a lullaby—um um!”
The surviving beings around them, whether they were elves, dwarves, or humans, instinctively breathed a sigh of relief.
