Jin returned to the Dungeon Maker not to check on the squads’ details nor the data he received from the improved Half Mask visors. He was there to analyse the Demon Rats and their abilities.
With a cup of Blue Mountain coffee by his side, Jin started to compare the replay of the earlier fight to the notes and reports that his minions had given him. With today being the first time he had actively met the Demon Rats, they still continued to be something of a mystery to Jin.
Unlike Gold’s initial description, there appeared to be many variants that Jin did not know how to categorise, and the reports he received were even messier especially as they seemed to show biases based on his minions’ attack power.
The Goblins were able to annihilate and obliterate the town guards with ease, but when it came to the incoming army that marched to take back the towns, the Dark Templars’ group portrayed a different picture. (Yet, the Dark Templars did report that killing the Town Guards was much easier than handling the army.)
While there could be outside factors such as equipment, experience and sheer numbers, there ought to be a baseline to measure the Demon Rats strength. Fortunately, with the creation of the temporary dimensional instance by Yun, the System had been able to measure each and every one of them systematically and group them based on their characteristics.
The most apparent evidence was that the army had each and every Demon Rat equipped with a steam tech weapon regardless of rank, making them more dangerous than the Town Guards who did not have the same loadout. Jin could only conclude that the North and South Scholars ensured that their armies were at least equipped with the basic weaponry.
By retrieving the steam tech as well as the materials the Demon Rats turned to, it had notified Jin that both weapons and armour were way superior to the previous iteration. Even the materials gained seemed to be of a higher quality than the town guards.
However, what surprised the System the most was their numbers. Within the Dimensional Instance itself, the System tabulated that there had been at least 5000 within the region.
If not for the cultivators’ constant use of weapon arts and techniques, they would have been quickly overwhelmed by the sheer number. Yet, what was most concerning was that even though Demon Rat vermintide had the advantage to pin its numbers against the cultivators, they chose not to do so.
Rather, the Demon Rats had been cautious enough to first learn about the new type of enemies that had suddenly appeared in the region. This proved that they were at least intelligent enough to know that these particular new enemies were a menace to them.
However, given the System’s analysis, as soon as they had realised that they could defeat the cultivators, they had pressed their attacks relentlessly. The replay video on Yang Ling demonstrated this very well.
As soon as they noticed her attack weakening, and her power mostly stemming from her Gearbox, they had utilised their superior fighters to take her down.
Despite their numbers, one might think they had low levels of constitution until the System found out that the advanced Steam Tech armour they wore had some sort of healing capability for them. While, the armour they wore may have been incomplete, for example just the helmets or the pair of boots, many of the rats who were mildly injured had the ability to recover themselves.
As for the officers, they were better equipped and those with a complete set of armour, their healing capabilities were off the charts which lead to believe that the amount of armour and the quality of it, increased their healing factor by at least two folds. Since some of the officers were killed, the armour was also placed into the Laboratory instance for sorting and reverse engineering.
When the System queried the creator of Steam Tech, Weslie noted that most of the items she saw had been the improvements of what she had previously designed. There were some of the Steam Tech items that she had not seen before and iterated that the North and South Scholars had never given her any feedback on the performance of those items.
Weslie could only deduce that the North and South Scholars must have had their own research team improving the technology that she had invented. Still, with the resources System had provided her (including the whole new level of knowledge in Engineering from Jin’s world), the Scholar believed she could reverse engineering the Steam Tech and learn how to counter them.
The only thing that she required was more Litoride. Pure ones that were freshly mined from the Earth for research purposes. Thus, Jin had tasked the Mousefolks (many who had been miners before) via Gold to search for Litoride veins. As for the rest of the Mousefolks, they were continuing their assaults on towns with Meomi.
Also, what was worth noting were the variants and types of Demon Rats that the System was able to encounter from the battle skirmish it had hosted. While Xiong Da and Luo Bo mainly fought with rank and file Demon Rats, Yang Ling had the bad luck of encountering several Specialists (like the Demon Rat Brawler.)
But instead of finishing her off at once, the specialist took the opportunity to test their abilities on her.
It wasn’t until Jin came that those who were watching quickly ran away to learn more about the dungeon supplier on his black sludge mounts. Jin was concerned with how incredibly sneaky these Demon Rats were and that they were more than troublesome than the Orcs.
“It’s as if I am fighting a human army. They are retreating when necessary to observe and learn more about us… I know that we are doing basically the same, but it sucks when it’s used against one.” Jin complained, fully aware of his hypocrisy, as he examined the various kinds of Demon Rats that the System had categorised.
“User had been lucky that the Orcs had been more objective oriented and willing to sacrifice everything and anything for victory in one sweep. The Demon Rats are not invading, as they have already taken root in the Farming World, and can, therefore, take their time with retaliation. It pains System to see that they are more cunning and shrewd despite the fact that they could have been ideal workers.”
“Sigh, and they have yet to come out the big guns. Remember how the scouting party reported tanks and other heavy pieces of machinery? None of those appeared in the skirmish. Only foot soldiers and human slaves. Even their transports are non existential.” Jin said as he noticed that the human slaves were used to drag their cargo and supplies.
“I can only infer that this is just the cheapest subjugation battalion that the Demon Rats are willing to afford to retake those towns. They have yet to show us any more of their trump cards.” Jin looked at how large their armies were with a holographic map that the System had created. With reports of caves and mountains that hid their training facilities, it painted a gloomier picture for Jin to win against them.
The only thing he could do was to possibly kill off the head of the snake (North and South Scholars) and slowly handle the rest of the body later. However, that would make the common townsfolk suffer since their food and trade would be significantly affected by the protracted war.
“So is User going ahead to create another Raid instance to delay the attacks on the subjugation army?” The System asked as it predicted that the invading army would take another week or so by foot to reach the nearest town that was liberated.
“Not sure, we do not have any leaders at the moment for the resistance movement. Unless Gold or Weslie personally reveals themselves to the public, and entice the townsfolk to move out of their homes, there is not much we can do.” Jin contemplated for a while before he decided to collect all the data, store them safely in the System’s database and return back to his home for dinner.
If he could not think up a good solution right now, this didn’t mean that others would be in the same predicament. After all, that was one of the reasons he had insisted on the whole mandatory group dinner, and it had been days since Jin got his fill of Lynn’s cooking.
