Chapter 481: Charge
The next day, the clan alliance moved within range of our first target. Through the help of a variety of scouting feats, magic, and testing, we had eventually settled on a path that we would take through the territory controlled by the Universal Tree. With any luck, we would be able to reach the dimensional rift within two weeks, where our alliance’s mages could work together to seal the rift and close the gate into our world. However, while we had chosen our route based on scouting reports, this path wouldn’t be easy. There were plenty of monsters guarding the route forward, starting with our first target.
It was a group of rodent nests, guarding a rather large river that even the permanent cold of this world had never managed to freeze over. We hoped that by hugging the river, we could cut off the approach of some of the rats - after all, they still spent essence to shapeshift, and growing a new pair of wings to fly over a river would stall them and weaken them. We would also get easy access to clean water, which was essential while on the move. However, the universal tree had set up guards in this area as well.
“How many rodents are there? Do the numbers match our previous scouting reports? Are there any other anomalies that you can see?” asked the [Sound Mage] who was sitting next to me on the village-bearing beast, as we stood at the very front of my clan’s village-bearing beast. Due to my ability to see souls, as well as my dimensional sight, the other clan leaders had quickly singled me out as one of the most important scouts to consult before the fighting started. Thus, one of the experienced [Sound mages] from another clan had moved to our village-bearing beast so that she could relay information from me to the others as quickly as possible.
I activated my soul sight and dimensional sight, then narrowed my eyes.
“I see about three hundred and twenty thousand rats, I think? It’s hard to get an exact estimate because they’re moving around a lot, but it should be around there.” I said.
The [Sound Mage] relaxed. For a moment, I even thought I saw her lips quirk upwards, almost as if she were smiling. “Nothing unexpected then?”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
She exhaled, a long, loud sound that was halfway between a laugh and a cry.
“Then we can finally give these bastards some punishment for what they’ve done,” she said.
I also smiled. “They only outnumber us three to one, and they’re much weaker individually. This shouldn’t be too hard,” I said.
I didn’t want to get overconfident before the battle started, but at least so far, I thought our odds looked quite good. Of course, there were plenty of noncombatants from the clans - people with crafting classes, the young, and the old. However, the rats had just as many noncombatants - after all, plenty of the rats I could see with my soul sight looked unusually weak, as if they had just been born a few days ago. This wouldn’t be an easy fight - but it wouldn’t be a hard one, either.
The [Sound Mage] used her magic to convey my report to the other village-bearing beasts and leaders of our alliance. In the distance, I saw the other leaders, mayors, and commanders perk up at her words, before a few other [Sound Mages] send affirmations back to us. While it was hard to see that far away, I could see a few of them cheer as well. Clearly, they were buoyed by my report.
A moment later, I frowned. Right at the edge of my vision, I saw two new clumps of souls appear. They were barely in range of my best vision enhancements, so they were far away - but they were still close enough that they could become a problem. The rats had higher movement speed than we did, after all - they just lacked the stamina of a village-bearing beast, and tired out much faster. That wouldn’t be a problem if they were this close to the battlefield, though.
“Two new nests just got in range of my vision abilities. They might reinforce during the battle.”
The [Sound Mage] frowned, and relayed my words again. After she finished passing my information along, she turned back to me. “How many in those nests? How far away?”
I squinted, and did my best to find the answers to her questions. It was hard to assess exactly how many rats were in each nest, since they also had huge populations and lots of internal movement, not to mention, unlike the nearest nest, this one had a fair number of rat swarms out hunting, too. I couldn’t be sure whether a few of them had disappeared into the forest to hunt and could quickly return. Even so, what I saw didn’t make me happy.
“The two nests that are further back are a bit more populated. Perhaps it is because they’ve had more time to breed? They have a higher ratio of adults to young rats. I’m guessing they have a population of around four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand.”
The [Sound Mage] grimaced. Fighting the rights while outnumbered three to one wouldn’t be too much of an issue, since the rats were far weaker than us. However, fighting while outnumbered somewhere between ten to one and fifteen to one would be far more difficult to handle. The odds of casualties during the battle would also increase drastically - which would be terrible news for our alliance, since we still had several weeks of traveling and fighting ahead of us. We couldn’t afford to take heavy losses during our first engagement, or there would be no hope of us succeeding in our ultimate goal - to shut down the rift.
The question wasn’t whether we could win this battle - it was whether we could win this battle without losing any strength, preserving our forces for the battles to come.
“How long do you think we can fight before the other two rat nests reinforce?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes, based on the travel speeds I’ve seen rats travel at and the distance my special vision types can reach.”
“Let’s assume they’ll reinforce in ten minutes, then. Always best to have some leeway.” The woman’s face had a hard, determined edge to it now. “Do you and your friends have a good number of those explosive snowballs?”
“Yes, but we’re saving them for an emergency.” That wasn’t all the four of us were saving - we still had a giant pile of consumable items and limited use abilities we could spend as needed. Hopefully, we wouldn’t have to use any of them in our first fight, though, since we would be constantly fighting until we reached the rift.
Commands, orders, and discussion started flying back and forth between [Sound Mages]. I wasn’t allowed to listen in - after all, I wasn’t considered that important of a figure to the other clans travelling with us. I had already relayed my information to the commanders of this battle. What they did with that information was up to them.
Eventually, the [Sound Mage] sighed. “We’re going to attack anyway. Our plan is to try to hit the rats hard and fast. With any luck, we can wipe them out before their reinforcements arrive. Based on your descriptions both reinforcement waves will hit at around the same time, so we need to be prepared for a far more dangerous second wave of monsters. Keep me updated on their movements. Feel free to heal people when they’re dying, but keep at least half of your mana ready for an emergency if one occurs.”
“Got it.”
The village bearing beasts continued to make their way through the snow, until we arrived at the rat colony. It looked very different from the early rat nests I had seen during our flight away from the rift. Instead of a small base carved into one of the massive trees of the jungle, it now looked like a giant wooden pyramid. It was far taller than the early ones I had seen - it was nearly ten times the height of an average adult, and perhaps one thousand meters wide. I was more than a little bit baffled by the sight - the rats were better architects than many humans were.
The rats sensed our presence immediately, and began to rush out of their colony. A wave of rippling, screeching flesh with teeth leapt out of their breeding base and sprinted towards us like a tidal wave.
Our mages and archers started to rain spells and arrows down on the rats, killing them by the thousands before they even entered melee range. Felix also hurled a few snowballs at the approaching swarm, sending another few hundred rats to the netherworld, even though he kept the majority of his reserves ready for an emergency.
Perhaps five percent of the swarm died before they finally reached us.
The horde of rats took to the air, just like the first time we had encountered a rat swarm. However, not all of the rats took to the air - several of them surged towards the legs of the village bearing beasts, as if they wanted to gnaw through the sturdy hides of our mounts and injure them. I didn’t think that would go much better than the first few times they had tried this tactic, but I was glad to see the rats mess up.
While the first airborne rats crashed into the front lines of the melee warriors and died, our village bearing beasts started to stomp on the rats that were swarming their legs. That was when I realized something was wrong. The rats on the ground weren’t trying to gnaw at the village-bearing beasts, unlike the first few battles we’d had with them. Instead, many of them had grouped up with several other rats, and shapeshifted into giant, fleshy spikes that tore into the legs of our village-bearing beasts. Our village-bearing beasts still killed hundreds of rats with each stomp, but it was clear they were getting hurt - and at a much faster rate than they were depleting the rat swarm.
Several [Tamers] and other similar Sparks started to urge the village-bearing beasts away from the rat swarm, but that created flaws and gaps in our united charge, creating holes in the defensive line before the bulk of the enemy horde even reached us. I grimaced, and then slammed some healing magic into the injured village-beasts. Due to their ridiculously high life force, my healing magic was like trying to put out a forest fire with a cup of water - but at the very least, I managed to close the injuries on the most wounded village-bearing beasts. The [Tamers] of those beasts seemed to realize the danger of our disunited front line and moved to correct things, even though the village-bearing beasts let out occasional cries of pain.
This was when the first casualties started to appear. On an individual level, our combatants were much stronger than the rats. We weren’t even outnumbered that badly. Given our combat prowess, there shouldn’t have been any huge issues with fighting off the first rat swarm.
However, the alliance of clans wasn’t used to fighting together. The rats had a level of coordination befitting a hive mind, while each clan mostly fought with other members of the same clan. Due to the uneven front lines created by the giant flesh spike, there were now major gaps in our front line. The rats quickly surged into those gaps and started to surround and gnaw away at the warriors in more exposed positions. The commanders of those village-bearing beasts quickly responded by swapping to more defensive formations, while the other allied clans worked to plug the gaps in our lines - but several dozen warriors died in the time our alliance took to fix our broken coordination. I frowned. This wasn’t catastrophic yet - the front line warriors were still annihilating the rat swarm at an incredible pace, and the advantages our side had in this fight were numerous. However, I was worried about losing more strength than we needed to.
Fortunately, the rat swarm simply lacked the numbers needed to really capitalize on the advantage its tactics had created. After only three minutes of fighting, the rat swarm’s population dwindled to nearly nothing. We had lost perhaps a hundred people during the battle, which was bad for what should have been an easy fight - but it wasn’t a crippling loss that would end our plans prematurely. I checked the two nearby rat bases with my dimensional sight, and grimaced.
The first round of rat attacks had clearly highlighted a major problem we needed to fix, and the rat swarm was going to be here in about ten minutes. I saw the [Sound Mage] in front of me start transmitting orders and messages back and forth with other clans, and resisted the desire to urge her to transmit the problems I had noticed to the other clans. The leaders weren’t fools, and if I could notice such a critical problem, they probably could too. I just hoped we could get our coordination problems fixed before the next wave arrived.