Chapter 862: Fending off Rats at Port Bulwark

Everyone at the seaport walls was worried when Gold told them a hovering castle dropped a massive amount of rats to Wecha. As many of the soldiers were veteran survivors, they knew how terrifying the Rat Horde could be.

Thus, when the first wave of rats reached towards the defences of the seaport, renamed Port Bulwark as a sign of appreciation for the Northern Army’s contribution, the defenders were befuddled by the number of rats running towards them.

The numbers were underwhelmingly less than expected.

Nevertheless, trained with the very same weapons used by Wecha’s Militia, the Northern Bulwark Soldiers started to fire at the rats without discrimination. The small number of rats had also allowed the soldiers to adjust their formation further since it was the first live firing ‘exercise’ in which they used these weapons.

Even the Western Skies and Southern Stars who had been stationed in Port Bulwark had only received the chance to use these weapons under strict supervision. Obviously, the System had placed tracking inscriptions on them in case they would attempt to smuggle them out of the Northern Region. While it should be absolutely impossible to replicate them with the world’s magic and technology, the same could not be said about possibly creating an alternate version following the designs via reserve engineering.

Ayse who had managed to recreate certain Steam Tech was living proof that it was definitely possible for great geniuses in other worlds to do the same as well.

“This is too weird. Why are the rats having such a frantic expression on themselves?” General Umiterus questioned Gold once the second wave of rats came through with even lesser numbers. All scattered before coming in the range of their weapons.

“They usually pride themselves on attacking with large numbers and if not stick together to show their ferocity of a horde in order to scare the defenders… Yet, they are defying all standard fighting protocols.”

“Did you hear distant booming sounds minutes ago?” Gold smirked when he saw the actual results right at their measly stone wall.

“You mean the one behind us or the one above us?” General Umiterus pointed at his back and later at the skies.

“Hahaha, both. They are actually doing their job to reduce the horde size. I have received reports that my comrades managed to block the source of the horde at Town Wecha, so the numbers coming in are smaller than we might have expected and most importantly finite.” Gold replied as he oversaw the current defensive battle at Port Bulwark.

That’s right, Moloch was coordinating the attacks between Stalingrad’s ship artillery bombardment and the ones from the skies. With Rei’s brand new modified C-130 Artillery Planes, they were able to severely reduce the numbers from the skies and sea. (Well, Moloch was supposed to only do coordination since Kraft ‘promised’ to look after the counter assault demon forces at the castle. Needless to say, the Kraft teleported to Jin’s side after learning he would have more fun there and told Cotton Butt to postpone the favour.)

The route from Town Wecha to Port Bulwark was mostly wide rolling plains with a few hills and a small desolated ruined village. This made it easy for the C-130 Artillery Planes to track the rats from high above. Of course with the help of the radar technology which Rei had installed based on the blueprints from himself and using the ones they received from Hou Fei as a guideline, they were able to predict the rats’ movement.

The System would then set the projectile course for each and every artillery weapon on deck (or on the plane), so all the minions had to do was to press the fire button. The Demon Rats were massacred without putting up a fight without even knowing how.

Some of them had managed to spot the planes, but all the Rats could do was to scatter as much as possible rather than follow their instincts and keep moving in a group. And when Demon Rats thought that the artillery attacks were not able to have sufficient impact against the scattered groups, the big guns came in as if to prove that they were not out in the danger zone. Stalingrad’s bombardments caused massive hurt to the Demon Rat groups when Lord Wolte and his new Demon Crew used scattered explosive shells against the rats.

While they were not able to witness it first hand, the camera footage from the C-130 Artillery Planes transmitted to the televisions on the ship was sufficient entertainment to keep them excited.

They had dreaded the power Wolte held when the Demons were on the opposing side, yet now when it was their turn to control the oversized ‘toy’ it was a completely new experience for them. Also, they hoped this would be the first but not the last opportunity to be on Wolte’s deck. (Jin did say that he would be creating ships for them in the near future now that Demon Metropolis is under his control.)

Moloch’s task was more or less complete after another hour or so. Still, there was a number of surviving Demon Rats who had scurried off to other far sides of the plains, escaping from the defensive chokepoints and Gold was not going to let them off.

He got the aid of the Dark Templars on standby to ride on Hover Bikes and chase after their prey. After all, most of them knew the plains well enough to chase after the surviving rats. Some of them even brought the Southern Stars Assassins with them which Gold allowed since they had better surveillance ability than most on the search and kill missions.

All in all, Port Bulwark was safe from the attacks, and it seemed Jin once again had over prepared on a few matters when he clearly had the upper hand. (Or maybe he was getting used to defending.)

As soon as Moloch was free from his responsibility in Port Bulwark, he refocused his efforts on the remaining forces at the crashed fortress site. Even without Peppers’ legendary Scan, the System and Jin’s minions had also detected an increasing large energy signal emanating from the castle within.

It could not be the laser cannon since Peppers had made sure to destroy it thoroughly without much of an effort. There was no way they prepared the same two laser cannons when Weslie deduced the engine systems would be terribly burdened by one, let alone two of it.

Hence, everyone was deducing it was either some large mechanical rat or a self destruct mechanism which would destroy every single lifeform in the area. However, given the nature of the latter, it should have already blown to pieces by now, and the System also detected that the energy was spread out in a large area compared to a concentrated area.

“No way! It cannot be! They completed it?! That’s impossible! How did they find a way to connect the steam engine and the neuro interfaces together?!” Suddenly Weslie realised where this surge of energy was becoming after seeing traces of the spike from System’s basic scan.

“Wait, so it really is a large mechanical steampunk rat?” Moloch asked, but Weslie shook her head when she appeared in the Dungeon Maker.

“No…It’s the castle itself.”