The cylindrical metal pillars descending around Wecha were like open floodgates for the rats to swarm out from. And unlike the Demons from Metropolis, these Demon Rats were armed to the teeth (literally).
Hundreds of these monstrous steampunk infused machinery rats were dangerously strong just from the looks of it. From heavy armoured steampunk suits to large cannons on their backs, a majority of the Demon rats were upgraded at least once more for this particular assault to remove the last few bastions of humanity.
Even Silver believed that standard swords and shields would be indefinitely useless against them. However, the rats hadn’t yet realised that their enemy was also quite the unconventional bunch of soldiers.
Similar to the Orcs’ arsenal, the militia had infused inscription charm weaponry that allowed them to change their swords into rifles. Unfortunately, there was a drawback to the militia’s weaponry.
In order to prevent the rat from taking away the weapons after defeating their owner, the System and Jin had decided that those weapons needed to be imprinted on their users.
In essence, this meant that they had to sacrifice a portion of their lifeline to activate the inscription charms for the weapons to change into modern rifles capable of fighting evenly with the steampunk rats. In short, sacrificing their blood and body to activate the charms for a shot at fighting against the rats.
It was harsh and cruel but because barely any humans in the Farming World were trained in the ways of magic, resorting to this type of blood magic had been deemed the easiest implementation. Initially there was resistance in getting them to use those until Gold had convinced them with a demonstration of their firepower. Able to easily pierce into the cast iron used by Demon Rats’ steampunk armour, the townsfolk realised they finally had a fighting chance against them.
The inscription charms were also numbered and indexed by the system, enabling it to track the citizens on a grand scale and deactivating those weapons upon their death. In addition, there was a surprise waiting for the rats who thought it would be a good idea to pick up the militia’s weapon for their own use.
Upon illegal usage of the weapons, the System was able to self detonate the weapons, causing damage to the rats who held onto them. Meanwhile, Ayse had devised an even more sinister way of exploiting this looting issue. She had proposed to place an additional inscription which would possess such a rat and brainwash it to fight for Jin momentarily. Unfortunately, the project could not be completed in time because of this unexpected invasion.
There was, however, a sort of saving grace from the blood magic. By sacrificing a portion of their life, the System had added their identities into its database in case some of them were not able to sign a contract with the System in time. This meant that the militia would not die in vain as the System had acquired their DNAs and souls through the weapons.
This was actually in lieu with Jin and his monsters plans for a full-on offence against the rats once they discovered all of their many hiding areas with the help of Peppers’ legendary Scan magic. Regrettably, he had never expected that the rats would have the first blood by attacking Wechat so quickly despite what they had deemed sufficient surveillance through the help of his monsters.
The citizens who had collected their weaponry and basic armour from the various provisional armoury camps quickly mounted the nearest defensive walls. Usually, chaos would ensue with this kind of sortie, but all the officers in command were the Jacks who had been the ones to train them.
With the aid of the System, it was easier to coordinate the sortie, and the militias were able to get deployed in time.
Meanwhile, the Demon Rats began banging themselves against the energy shield until they realised that each touch of the shield would result in a minute explosion, blasting them away from the shield. Demon Rats who being mechanised to have battering rams tried their luck too but to their surprise, those battering rams broke down from the knock back explosion. Ranged projectiles also proved to be rather futile as well but some officers knowing that no shield is perfect, commanded its warriors to keep the pressure up.
Just as anyone might expect from Peppers, even her shield had an explosive blowback feature, and all those previous bursts of high intensity magic in the various wars allowed her to better control the mana output to the shield. She had dubbed it the Living Barrier of Explosions as she could instantly detect the coordinates where the contact read and release an explosion accordingly.
Nevertheless, her body was still itching to blast that big fat juicy target dangling above her despite knowing it would be detrimental for the entire town. “Arghhh why do I have to be stuck with guard duty!” Peppers grumbled since offence was always the best defence in her books.
It seemed as if Wecha was not the only target the Rats had in mind as guards from Wecha’s watchtowers reported that a sizeable force of rats was assembling towards the direction of the remaining seaport where the bulk of the Northern Bulwark Army was stationed at.
“We will definitely incur some losses, but at least we should have time to shore up the defences at the seaport. Admiral Focalor, I hope we can count on your expertise in handling a harbour defence.” Jin said through the System Channel and the Tiefling noble immediately obliged.
“Less than a month and we have our debut fight? Master, I am already liking you!” Focalor replied with excitement ringing in his heart.
“Unfortunately, I do not have any ships to spare at the moment. Wolte, can you lend a hand for this?” Jin questioned, but to his surprise, the slug had already taken the initiative to be on his way to the Northern Seas.
“On it, although I might not be as powerful as I was in Pandapolis since I am currently not connected to Shadow Dagen,” Wolte answered after he transformed into Stalingrad while sounding his horn as an arriving signal to the seaport.
“I could possibly get a ship or two from Northern Bulwark General Matt, but they are definitely not as well equipped as Leviathan or her counterparts.” Due to the advance warning, Gold had also teleported to the harbour town to inform General Matt Umiterus about the incoming attack. With the information on hand, General Matt immediately began evacuating the elderly into a ship so that they could be shipped out.
“No problem, we are pirates at heart. Any ship in our possession will become a beast.” Captain Kenway boasted with pride as he rallied his demon sailors with him.
“Can we hurry it up? My men are dying to try out your weapons after experiencing their fearsome firepower first hand.” Captain Edwards asked with equally pounding enthusiasm.
“Boss, am I going to be left out again?” Mr Derpy asked despite getting involved in the previous raid yet he never truly got a chance to shine.
“You kidding me? Right now, I think you are the best candidate for an assault against the floating fortress! Pepper’s shield won’t last forever, and since they are desperate to clear us off the Northern Region, we shall entertain them as much.” Jin replied as he was worried that the rats might try to crash into it as a desperate attempt to finish the rebels.
“You mean you want me to assault the fortress?” Mr Derpy was finally elated that he had an important job to do.
“Not only that, but I might also want you to carry an important individual or two for them to invade their flying capital,” Jin added and Derpy was all pumped out.
“Boss, now might be a good time to inform you that my team and I have refitted a couple of the C130s as part of a research project for our own homegrown spaceships. They should be good enough to get used as attack crafts for artillery support, but I’ll need to have One Orc Artillery Company to fill the numbers and man the equipment.” Rei suddenly spoke out, and Jin was delighted to hear that.
The dungeon supplier could have used the Clay Dragon again, but apparently, the rune stone powers had dried up from the constant use, and Jespa had yet to refill the runestone since she was ensuring Pandjilla, the first clay statue to become sentient, continued to work perfectly fine.
“That’s great to hear, Rei. I will get back to you if I need to use them. Qiu Yue, how’s the preparation of the ground troops?” Jin asked as he opened several interfaces and noted the possible choke points that could be created to block the rats once the energy shield was down.
“Waiting for your command.” Qiu Yue reported as she too was anticipating to be teleported.
