Alien world

Chapter 1672, Section 305: Landing on the Island
"The demons are determined to turn the far north into an impregnable fortress. Under these circumstances, it's impossible to send your entire clan in all at once."

"However, I think sending only high-ranking troops will be enough for you to gain a foothold in the far north."

The rat-man elder of the rodent clan continued, "Without slaves, what will we eat?"

Like low-ranking demons, slave rats are both part of the rat swarm that weakens the enemy and a source of food for the rat pack.

Annan thought to himself, "This is exactly the effect I wanted. If there were plenty of food, why would you all beg me for help?"
Corrupting a ratman is like seducing a woman; you can't reveal your intentions. You have to let her vaguely guess your feelings, keep her at arm's length, and maintain a sense of unrequited love. Naturally, she will fall for you.

The Rodent Clan's dissatisfaction with Annan's attitude clearly stemmed from their failure to understand their own position—Annan needed to undermine their confidence first before Little Smo could implement his plan.

The rodent clan elder stared at the ratman elder and Maria, seemingly suggesting they negotiate.

Annan suddenly grabbed Maria's hand, his tone turning cold: "You're not thinking of threatening Maria to make her work for you, are you?"

“I advise you not to do this. The Stunn clan should cherish the hard-won friendship with me.”

Faced with this blatant threat, the elder of the Rodent Clan hissed sharply, "You human thing..."

“Cockroaches, the Annamese are helping us,” the rat-man elder said, standing on the Annamese side.

It had long since figured out that the Annamese were more responsive to reason than to force, and that reason was more effective than brute force in dealing with them.

The good thing is that Maria is more important to the Annamese than they imagined; the bad thing is that she's somewhat out of their control...

The elder of the Rodent Clan had barely opened his mouth when Annan interrupted him again: "How do you know that the Hellfire Legion wiped out the Red-Eyed Clan in the far north?"

"I don't know..." It really didn't know what was happening in the far north.

Just as Annan had previously suspected, the ratman elders tightly controlled their cooperation with Annan, prohibiting other clans among the Stoun ratmen from contacting them; it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say they were hogging the spoils.

Therefore, they had no idea what exactly Free City had done. When they brought in the Rodent Clan, it was because they refused to let the clan take any risks, holding the mindset of "I'll take the benefits, you go and die."

"So now you know that the Hellfire Legion wiped out the Red-Eyed Clan in the far north."

The elder of the Rodent Clan was unsure of the human creature's strength, so he remained silent.

With no dissenting voices and the rat-man elders siding with Annam, the fate of the rodent clan was quickly decided.

However, the portal cannot be placed at the border. Do you think the principality is a public toilet, where the ratmen can come and go as they please?

Girardi probably wouldn't care, but Claire, the regent who was in charge of the principality's affairs, couldn't possibly be indifferent.

The final decision was to place the portal outside the Great Wall in the north of the duchy, and then the Rodent Clan gathered its elites.

Annan first withdrew the ranger legion from the front lines to avoid accidentally injuring his own rats.

Then, the ratman elders and the rodent clans selected a landing site.

The Demon's Claw Peninsula sank, but the seabed there was raised by tens of meters. The first option was to rebuild on the original site—right next to the mountains, where the ratmen could fully utilize their digging and burrowing skills to create another peninsula.

The second option is to find a new vacant lot further north.

The Rodent Clan chose this.

...On the other side, Little Smo was assigned to go to the outpost ahead of time.

"The island is a little small."

This isolated island is only about a hundred meters in diameter, more than enough to serve as an outpost, but clearly not enough to fulfill other responsibilities.

When they first landed on the island, they did consider filling it in. However, as the island grew larger, the chances of it being discovered would also increase.

"Once the Skaven land, the demons will also discover us. We can't just run away when they arrive, can we?"

"Then let's fill in the island!" the garrisoned disciplinary legion squad echoed. "Before the anti-magic field reaches this area, let's expand our territory first."

The ocean is the devil's weakness; if the outpost is too big, the devil can't bite it off.

He commissioned the sea creatures to find out the extent of the demons' patrols: after the Demon's Claw Peninsula sank, the gargoyles' patrol range increased considerably, but they were still just going through the motions along the coastline.

After the landing plan from Liberty City arrived, Little Smo quickly determined that the demons would almost certainly not be able to detect it immediately.
The outpost's island-building and the Rodent Clan's landing on the island occurred almost simultaneously.

The island served as a transit point for the ratmen, and soon the first group of ratmen to land filled the cabins and decks.

In order to break the deadlock as quickly as possible, the Rat King, along with the Rat Priests and high-ranking Rat Soldiers, personally boarded the first batch of warships—the Rat Elders' persuasion led the Rodent Clan to choose to trust human beings once again.

Since the Rat King couldn't fit through the portal, it used Polymorph to shrink its size. The shrunken Rat King actually looked quite adorable, at least that's what Annan thought.

The crew member at the helm felt like he was in a dream, never imagining that he would one day be "fighting side by side" with the ratmen.

……

The fleet takes a day and a half to make a round trip. To maximize the number of people transported each time, even small wooden boats that can only carry two people were used, with three ratmen crammed on them—the ratmen would have done this long ago if they hadn't dared to sink the boat if they hadn't tried to put a fourth one on it.

Even so, the waterline of a sailboat is dangerous. A three-masted sailboat with a capacity of less than 300 people was carrying 700 rats, a five-masted sailboat with a capacity of 500 people was carrying 1200 rats, and the Titanic, which could carry 1000 athletes, was carrying 5000 rats. If it had sunk earlier, Annan's "Titanic" would never have been made!

The sea creatures underwater exerted all their strength, almost carrying the boat forward.

The long fleet sailed out to sea, carrying 60,000 ratmen, all of them elite.

It's clear that the Skaven are in a real hurry.

If the entire North were a city-state, then the Skaven would be the wealthy merchants who had been operating in the region for centuries. However, the Skaven, representing bandits, colluded with the city-state's forces, allowing bandits to enter the city, plunder the merchants' wealth, and even working with cultists represented by demons.

The merchant had his wealth stolen by bandits, was expelled from the city-state, and not only did the bandits spend his money, take advantage of his women, and mock his weakness, the merchant dreamt of reclaiming the city-state.

Annam is like a deus ex machina, a third-party force that helps merchants return to the city-state and reclaim everything they have lost.

However, the third-party forces also have their own plans: that the businessmen, bandits, and cultists can fight each other to the death.

Ultimately, this city-state truly belongs to the people who live here.

By the time the demon patrol discovered a horde of ratmen emerging from the west coast, the fleet had already made three round trips.

The demons were neither lucky nor unlucky—they neither reacted when the first group of ratmen landed on the island, nor did they discover them before the ratmen had swarmed together.

(End of this chapter)