Chapter 2203 Destructive Attack
Soul Casket? Just as I was pondering how to break through the sea of rats before me, a terrifying suction force emanated from behind. This aura was precisely that of the Soul Casket. To be honest, I couldn’t think of any other solution in the current situation.
However, I wonder if the people from the Research Society were too flustered by the rat tide and activated the Soul Casket to its maximum setting. The suction force generated was like a black hole, instantly reminding me of Despair Double Sound.
The biggest problem was that I was still in front of the defense line, and all four of us girls were within the Soul Casket’s absorption range! Were they so panicked by the rat tide that they disregarded us?
“Quick, let’s go!” Giselle scooped me up and used Shadow Step to leap into the nearby shadows, jumping out of the Soul Casket’s suction range. Her speed and reaction were as quick as ever; at least when she listened to me, she was a very reliable guard.
Via and Cherise didn’t have such quick reflexes. They lost quite a bit of their Magic Power before they could barely escape the Soul Casket’s absorption range, their movements even appearing somewhat clumsy.
Fortunately, both of them possessed immense Magic Power, so losing a little was insignificant. However, the large group of Ratmen in front of them didn’t have such good luck.
The first to suffer were naturally the rats that swarmed in like a tidal wave. Despite their imposing momentum, the vitality of a single rat was very fragile, and they could be easily killed.
The Soul Casket didn’t care how many enemies were in front of it; it absorbed all the energy within its range. These rats were over half dried up within a second, and after three seconds, the rat tide had become a sea of corpses.
However, due to the summoning of too many rats and the force of inertia, these rats, even after death, pushed forward for quite a distance, drowning many of the Ratmen.
Next to suffer were the Ratmen themselves; in fact, they were the primary targets and had their Magic Power absorbed from the very beginning.
Even though they could last longer than the rats summoned by the Witch, they couldn’t survive for long. The vitality of these Ratmen was inherently lower than that of normal Humans, and they soon fell, convulsing.
Even the Mutated Rat Trolls, whose vitality was much greater than that of the Ratmen, couldn’t withstand the full power of the Soul Casket when it was fully opened and eventually fell.
The Soul Casket’s absorption range continued to expand, quickly reaching the other side of the hall. The Witches, hidden within the sea of rats, watched as their thorns and rose flowers rapidly withered with the collective death of a large number of rats.
“Withdraw quickly!” the Witches cried out and disappeared from their original positions. However, even in a suspended time state, they dared not enter the Soul Casket’s absorption range. They could only abandon about a dozen Witches who had been caught in the attack range, their Magic Power completely drained, lying motionless on the ground, while the others fled.
“Close it quickly!” the Master shouted. As the Soul Casket was closed, the terrifying suction force instantly vanished, leaving behind a ground full of corpses, most of them rats.
I couldn’t be bothered to count how many rats there were – tens of thousands? Millions? They were spread across the ground, densely packed, covering half of the hall. The corpses had even raised the ground level considerably.
“Phew! Are you all right?” The Master’s first action after closing the Soul Casket was to check on us. “I apologize. The situation was urgent. If we hadn’t opened the Soul Casket, we all would have been bitten to death by the rat tide, so I couldn’t manage everything at once.”
“We’re fine. Your judgment was perfectly correct; there’s no need to blame yourself,” I said. Initially, I thought he intended to sacrifice us, but seeing his sincere apology after the fact, I realized I had overthought it.
The most unfortunate ones were the Ratmen summoned this time. They were precisely between the camp and the rat tide and were completely caught in the crossfire, resulting in their total annihilation, not a single one surviving.
With no surviving Ratmen, naturally, no one came to collect their debt from me. This meant I had once again “freely obtained” a summon of Ratmen, and this time it was a large number of high-level troops. They suffered a huge loss.
I’ve always wondered if I carried some strange curse, as my Ratmen summons always met their doom due to various unforeseen circumstances.
The only time a transaction was completed properly was when I used a designated summon to request a Ratman expert from the Corrupted Clan to teach me transplant surgery. Even then, a significant number of Ratmen were sacrificed as my test subjects, but at least that was a mutually agreed-upon transaction.
If I keep messing things up like this, will I be blacklisted by the Ratmen? What if, the next time I blow my flute, no Ratmen respond to my summons? Then this Magic Apparatus would be largely useless.
However, I reconsidered, realizing it was likely an unnecessary worry. Ratmen generally have poor memories, and with so many clans, it’s impossible to ascertain if it was me who summoned them. Next time I summon, I’ll choose a different clan.
Furthermore, if a summoning artifact is effective, it means a certain contractual relationship has been established between the summoned and the summoner. The next time the artifact is activated, they still have no right to refuse and must respond to the summon.
Sometimes, after many summons, the summoned and the summoner become familiar with each other, even forming friendships or more.
At this point, seeing that we were unharmed, the Master ordered his subordinates: “Go and bring those Witches over. They should still be alive, and perhaps we can extract some intelligence from them.”
Unlike us, who ate heads and drank blood and possessed a lot of intelligence, the Research Society was actually still in the dark. They had no idea why these Witches were attacking them, which made them feel perplexed.
Retrieving the dozen or so Witches lying in the pile of rats was a bit difficult. The difficulty stemmed from the fact that they were all buried within the rat swarm, and to recover them, one had to wade through a sea of rats, which was physically unsettling.
Fortunately, the Research Society wasn’t without a solution. One Researcher produced a puppet. As the puppet moved, several steel wires descended from the sky, lifting these Witches out of the rat sea.
As the Master had said, they were still alive. The Soul Casket had been closed just in time, not long enough to completely drain them of life, but they were all on the verge of death.
Also, looking at the withered vines on their bodies, I mused that this situation seemed very similar to those Mutants affected by Origin Stone Erosion.
They actively underwent Origin Stone Erosion to use Origin Stone Magic, and then used the Soul Casket to preferentially absorb high-energy substances to purify themselves.
This was strikingly similar to how the Witches implanted seeds, were eroded by vines, and thus gained the ability to use magic. This suggests that these unknown plants also shared the burden of the Soul Casket’s absorption, thereby narrowly saving their lives.
