Alien world

Chapter 1867, Question 500: Weakening
"Notify the deputy corps commander and political commissar to prepare for retreat."

The lieutenant, Valentan, nodded solemnly and ran towards the portal.

Fermi looked up and saw the largest reconnaissance airship ever built—the Behemoth—floating high in the sky like a dim, lifeless star.

With it, the battlefield situation is crystal clear.

Upon receiving Fermi's order, the deputy commander and political commissar ordered the messengers to run around the trenches and relay the message to everyone. Then, using the rising light spell as a signal, they simultaneously launched a wave of shells, with the professionals covering the non-professionals as they retreated into the portal.

Visibly, a ring of light burst forth around the peaks of the three mountains one after another, as if the peaks were adorned with halos, before disappearing without a trace, leaving only the rumbling sound echoing in the valley.

Disoriented by the relentless bombardment of the rat horde, and with no light or sound, they couldn't tell which way to go. They spun around in circles for more than ten seconds before finally finding their way back up to the mountaintop.

They were met only by a portal that flickered with annihilation.

The ratmen who rushed up the mountain felt a sense of emptiness—if they even knew what emptiness was.

But they were indeed somewhat bewildered, forgetting why they had rushed forward in the first place.

The hunched-backed rats crossed the trenches and came to the open space where artillery shells and rolling stones were piled up.

The rolling stones weren't interested, but the dark cannonballs intrigued the ratmen, who fiddled with the leftover shells.

A rat-man, whether clever or foolish, picked up a torch dropped by a human soldier and leaned it against the fuse, triggering a secondary explosion.

Dozens of shells piled together were detonated, the explosion so loud it could be faintly heard even along the Great Wall in the north, and hundreds of nearby ratmen were killed by the shockwave.

After a brief, chaotic commotion, the rat-men finally learned their lesson and kept their distance from the round, black stones.

The chaotic rat-men on the mountaintop surged about, but no rat noticed a few black dots, like eagles, hanging high in the night sky.

A few minutes later, the ratmen, having scavenged the mountaintop, continued to flow southward like a tide.

The bare mountaintop reappeared, followed by the mountainside, receding back into the valley like the receding tide. At the same time, the behemoth in the night sky raised its flag.

"The ratmen have retreated from the mountaintop!"

"The Beast is preparing to land!"

The colossal beast, as massive as an ancient dragon, slowly landed on the mountaintop. The gray-haired rats hidden among the swarm hesitated, assuming it was just a passing black dragon, and did not disturb it.

But as the black dragon slowly departed and landed on the second mountain peak, a crimson hue reappeared on the mountaintop where the black dragon had just landed—the Hellfire soldiers had returned. The gray rat commander seemed to realize something and let out a sharp cry that echoed throughout the rat horde.

The rat horde surged back towards the three peaks, but it was too late—the rested Hellfire Legion had regained its strength and continued to hurl the boulders and cannonballs that the ratmen had ignored.

The gray-haired rat commander angrily ordered the rat horde to charge forward, but it was just a repeat of the previous scene, with only a group of flashing rats causing some chaos.

The blinking mouse can jump between 30 and 150 yards. The farther the distance, the less it can carry and the longer it takes to recover after blinking.

The distance between the mountaintop and the rat swarm was about 100 yards. It was difficult for the Blink Rats to reach the mountaintop silently; they would always be picked off by the muskets first, and the remaining ones would try to Blink to the top, only to be focused down as soon as they emerged. This group of Blink Rats charged forward like a suicide squad, carrying fel stones.

Although most of them were spotted and shot by soldiers because they were obvious targets, which triggered a series of fel energy explosions, a few still managed to slip through the net and teleport to the top of the mountain, where they were riddled with bullets by muskets, but the fel energy stones also fell out of their arms.

One of the blinking rats happened to jump into the trench. A soldier next to him saw the felstone roll to his comrade's feet and rushed over without thinking, trying to use his sturdy armor to block the explosion. Fel energy is not gunpowder, and the plate armor, which even bullets cannot penetrate, had no resistance to the corrosion of fel energy. It immediately devoured three soldiers, including him, leaving an oval-shaped corrosion pit in the trench.

There was no time to grieve for the sacrifice of their comrades; the soldiers tensed up and threw themselves into the battle to come.

From dusk till midnight, and from midnight till dawn, the artillery fire on the three mountain peaks never ceased.

After a night of fighting, even with the various blessings cast by the mages, the soldiers were nearing their limit.

Their objective has been achieved: through repeated back-and-forth battles, they have decimated nearly a quarter of the ratmen in the Graybeak Mountains, exceeding their target.

However, since the Skaven vanguard had already broken out of the Grey Mountain Range and approached the Northern Wall, they could no longer stay in the Three Mountains to engage in a tug-of-war with the Skaven.

After exhausting all the cannonballs and rolling stones, the Hellfire soldiers retreated into the portal, leaving the ratmen with barren mountains.

From the observation of the behemoth hovering high in the sky, the rat swarm chose to leave the elite rats on the mountaintop to prevent the despicable human creatures from returning, which was equivalent to eliminating hundreds of thousands more ratmen.

……

The Hellfire Legion, returning to the Great Wall in the north, reported their results: at the cost of four dead and seventeen wounded, the Legion had eliminated nearly ten million Skaven.

This casualty ratio is typically only seen in the eight legions of the Empire.

This is also the advantage of musketeers: as long as the enemy cannot get close, they can reap the rewards at will, but once the enemy gets close, they instantly become no different from ordinary soldiers.

However, Commissar Frank was still not satisfied with the losses—the position had not been lost, and apart from the casualties caused by unavoidable mistakes, there should have been none.

In his post-battle debriefing, he had the soldiers sit on the ground to rest and gave them a warning:

"Rushing towards the Felstone is a mistake. Fel is a corrosive curse that can instantly erode even steel plates and won't slow you down even a fraction of a step because of your obstruction. The correct thing to do is to quickly create a distance of more than five meters and shout 'Felstone' to warn your comrades."

One soldier raised his hand: "Political Commissar, can we pick it up and throw it away?"

Frank hesitated for a few seconds: "Felstones usually detonate within three seconds of impact. If you're quick enough... yes, but only if the felstone lands at your feet and you're cornered."

In any case, the total number of ratmen was reduced from 4000 million to 3000 million, and the rat horde was delayed by half a day, greatly reducing the pressure on the city walls three days later.

Over the next three days, the Hellfire Legion led the militia to harass the rat horde as much as possible, but this guerrilla warfare of fighting and retreating was more suitable for rangers than for the plate-armored Hellfire. The indiscriminate use of fire attacks, traps, and projectiles only cleared out less than two million ratmen, and this was achieved with the help of many Imperials who came to the front lines on their own initiative.

The Empire skipped the long war and went straight to the decisive battle. News had spread that the Free City and the Kingdom of Dimon were helping to defend the borders because they were vulnerable. After the initial confusion, some Imperial citizens began to spontaneously bring weapons and rations, put on the armor treasured by their fathers, and rush to the front lines.

(End of this chapter)