Alien world

Chapter 1865, Chapter 498: The Hellfire Legion

It seems like there are ratmen everywhere, but they are just bloated, like a guy who looks strong but is actually all fat and weak.

The Ranger, with its "bad teeth," loved this kind of opponent. It picked up its fork and began to enjoy its lunch.

Elite rats' armor can stop a lot of bullets, and brute rats can withstand several shots. But against a squad of ten Rangers, they are practically sitting ducks.

"I'm going!"

Pike, who was rushing to the flank of the battlefield, greeted the captain who had brought him there, and then disappeared into the woods carrying two muskets.

The sparse but not infrequent gunfire continued for half an hour before gradually subsiding.

Jack looked up and saw the reconnaissance airship signaling the scouts to clear the battlefield. Then he opened the mission list and drew the third checkmark – indicating that the third wave of rats had been cleared.

Two thousand people fighting off a mixed swarm of ten thousand rats seems like a piece of cake.

……

[Commander Fermi:]

The Empire drew away 90 percent of the Chaos forces' attention, and the remaining 10 percent was also drawn away by the Kingdom of Dimon, leaving only 1 percent.

But even that remaining 1% is still an unbearable weight for us.

But we must shoulder our responsibilities, for Annam, for Free City, and for ourselves.

Your first mission is to hold back the rat horde outside the Greybeam Mountains and prevent them from crossing the Northern Wall, by any means necessary.

Other legions are on their way. The longer you hold out, the more reinforcements will arrive, and the more frantic the ratmen will become.

The world's eyes are on you.

The winds of the North swept over the towering Great Wall of the North, lifting the parchment in Fermi's hand.

“There are too many ratmen. We can’t stop them with just the Great Wall in the north,” said Deputy Commander Kirian.

The Hellfire Legion has 5000 men, but the Great Wall in the north is 50 kilometers long, meaning each man has to guard an average of 50 meters—something even the Imperial Army couldn't do.

The good news is that there are still some Imperial troops at the Northern Great Wall. They are not as good as the Eighth Legion, but they are still considered elite.

"Still the same as before?" asked the deputy legion commander, Kirian.

"The old ways" refers to the tactics commonly used in positional warfare, such as digging trenches and setting traps to extend the defensive line and wear down the rat swarm.

Fermi didn't answer, but instead asked, "What did Frank say?"

"The political commissar is boosting morale, I'll go and call him over."

Kirlian approached with the clanging of armor, and soon returned with Commissar Frank.

“I agree with setting traps first, but it’s not time to make a plan yet.” Frank pointed to the reconnaissance airship flying slowly overhead and said, “The reconnaissance knights have no news about the situation in the north. We need to get intelligence before we can take any action.”

A few hours later, the reconnaissance airship transmitted its first intelligence report from the front.

Scattered ratmen begin to appear at the 70th mile, a small wave at the 90th mile, a large wave at the 130th mile, and a swarm of rats covering the ground like a tide at the 150th mile. This means that within three days at most, the rat swarm will appear outside the Great Wall in the north.

It is known that the distance from the Northern Wall to the Gray Mountain Range is less than 100 li... which means that the ratmen are everywhere in the Gray Mountain Range. Frank opened the map and drew a large ellipse around the Gray Mountain Range according to the intelligence, with only a few peaks on the edge not included.

The three people present looked at the mountains that were not included in the list and exchanged glances.

Half a day after arriving at the Northern Wall, the Hellfire Legion began its operation.

A reconnaissance airship with anchor points flew towards the Graybeard Mountains. Its purpose was to set up teleportation anchor points on the mountains not covered by the ratmen, allowing them to establish teleportation portals.

Then, a portal to Free City was opened on the Great Wall, and magical cannons were moved out of the warehouse for free and set up at intervals of three meters, covering a kilometer.

Many people have the misconception that the rat swarm will come like an endless sea.

That's certainly true in the later stages of the war. The ratmen always wage a war of attrition. If your warrior can fight a hundred, then I'll make your warrior face a hundred and fifty, two hundred, or three hundred ratmen. But in the early stages, because of the different movement speeds and the extended rat swarm, the real rat swarm will rush in like an arrow.

If you clear it quickly enough, this long arrow will be continuously consumed, maintaining a certain balance until the gray rat takes command.

But if your cleanup speed can't keep up with the swarm of rats... it'll be like a ship taking on water; the more water in, the faster it sinks.

This is also an opportunity for Hellfire. After all, if such a large swarm of rats were spread across the 50-kilometer-long Great Wall in the north, the so-called "preventing the ratmen from leaping over the Great Wall" would be nothing but empty words.

Commissar Frank contacted the Imperial Army, asking them to help recruit militia to build fortifications outside the Great Wall—the Imperial soldiers were all at the front lines, and there were no soldiers left to defend the border, but that didn't mean they couldn't recruit militia to help.

On the other side, the Hellfire Legion began to deploy defenses, choosing three interlocking mountain peaks as a defensive line to block and weaken the rat horde.

In addition to magical cannons, they also prepared a large number of rolling stones. Free City was building a railway, and there were plenty of these stones available. They could be delivered after a little trimming of the edges.

On gentle slopes, the damage caused by rolling stones is not much less than that caused by magical cannons.

Even a champion rat would be shattered into pieces if hit by a hundred-pound boulder with the force of gravity.

And most importantly, there's the fel energy detector—Annan made the request, and Lilith provided the finished product. It will sound an alarm once the fel energy in the air exceeds a certain threshold. This ensures all soldiers can evacuate via the portal before the anti-magic field appears.

However, the anti-magic field comes at a high price for the ratmen, and they may not be willing to devote even one percent of their energy to it.

The reconnaissance airship continued deeper into the Greybeard Mountains and discovered traces of the Kingdom of Dimon to the west: they were heading towards Old Val Town.

And there was good news—the rat swarm in the Greybeard Mountains split up, with most of them turning back towards Old Val Town, seemingly drawn to the attention of the Kingdom of Dimon.

The remaining "one percent" continued to rush towards the Great Wall in the north, numbering over 4000 million.

If you don't think that's a lot, consider that on average each Hellfire soldier has to kill 10,000 Skaven.

Even if pulling the trigger once kills one ratman, it would take pulling the trigger ten thousand times.

After this battle, the entire Hellfire Legion is stained with black blood—if they achieve final victory.

And these are true rat swarms—meaning that in addition to these 4000 million rat-men, there are hundreds of millions of rats. They are small, one shot can take them down or even two at a time, but the resulting rat swarms are far more devastating than any rat swarm.

Frank estimated that the three peaks should be able to delay the ratmen for an afternoon, consuming 300 to 500 million ratmen and tens of millions of rats.

Even with a three-and-a-half-day preparation period, defensive fortifications can still consume approximately two million ratmen... Even so, more than 3000 million ratmen will still reach the Northern Wall.

This means each soldier also has to kill 6000 ratmen.

(End of this chapter)