Chapter 380: Succession and the Promotion of War

At the end of the day.

The gray Rat Sansi left the simple platform. He had a good harvest today. He had a bag of dried cave mushrooms in his hand. This was the reward for carrying goods that day, and it was also the reason why the Big Claw Priests were willing to hire these free ratmen as labor.

The situation of the ratmen free people became increasingly worse during this period. The decline of various small workshops left them with nothing to do, but their population swelled like a balloon over the years.

All kinds of resources are monopolized by the rat priests. This is not the worst thing. The worst thing is that while all kinds of resources are monopolized by the rat bigwigs, they do not need these rat free people to participate in the exploitation of resources.

But even so, their situation is still better than that of the wild rats who are generally regarded as beasts throughout the Rat Empire.

At least these guys are relatively gentle and can generally accept being commanded, and some Big Claw priests are willing to hire them.

Especially when these ratmen freemen have repeatedly lowered their stance and demanded lower and lower rewards.

The most intuitive one is the rat train. The train priests specially arranged a group of slave rats to follow the train up and down to carry goods. Not to mention the occupation of train space, the losses caused by the highly toxic black smoke alone may not be acceptable to these train priests.

No matter how many slave rats there are, they cannot withstand such consumption. You have to know that the slave rats are their own assets, and the death of each slave rat is a loss.

At this time, what could be more cost-effective than hiring a group of extremely cheap ratmen freemen?

After all, there is no need to give even blood mushrooms. Just giving some extremely cheap cave mushrooms is enough. It is really too affordable.

What makes Shu Sansi happy is not only the bag of cave mushrooms in his hand, but also the birth of his offspring.

As a normal intelligent creature, ratmen certainly have normal reproductive abilities.

However, this method of breeding has always been suppressed by the overdeveloped rat-man breeding rooms. Until this change, all the rat-man breeding rooms, big and small, were destroyed in the flood.

As a result, natural reproduction, which does not rely on the breeding behavior of the highly specialized rat-man mother, has also begun to slowly rise.

Especially among these free ratmen who are not valued but not completely at the bottom of society, they will also form families. However, after experiencing the distortion of the breeding house, the ratmen's families are quite different from those of conventional intelligent races.

Of course there will also be warmth, which comes from the afterimage engraved in the genes, and there will also be expectations, dedication, and encouragement.

However, there will also be cruel selection. In a rat family, over a long period of time, until the family becomes infertile, the number of offspring that can be born is limited, often only two.

These ratmen freemen born from the breeding house inherited that cold screening mechanism, examining their children just as the Big Claw Priests once examined themselves.

Only children who are good enough and loved enough by them can become their true successors.

Some of the more paranoid ones would even raise several rounds of ratmen cubs, and finally choose the most beloved or the most powerful child as the heir. Those who were not chosen would be expelled without hesitation. These too young guys would often become new city wanderers, or die in obscurity in the cold underground tunnels.

This can be considered as an attitude of over-valuing one's own children.

A more common practice is to either choose one as an heir and raise him after a new litter of ratmen is born, or abandon all of the newborn cubs as they are unqualified.

The ratmen free people, a group of guys who claim to be free, are actually influenced by all kinds of guys in all aspects.

For example, their concept of inheritance is greatly influenced by the rat priests. They care a lot about the inheritance of something.

That's the name.

When Shu Er's child is young, he will be called Shu Er. When Shu Er dies, he will officially inherit this name.

This is equivalent to a kind of inheritance. Most of the ratmen freemen cannot leave any legacy. Being able to leave behind this name is already the limit. It may also be that they are too deeply influenced by the ratmen priests and their overall short lifespan.

The rats, who were born and died like mayflies, felt that as long as their names could be preserved, they felt as if they were still alive.

This is a very simple reliance, and there is even a common understanding throughout the Ratman Empire that the Ratman's family concept and inheritance system have been impacted too greatly and for too long by the Ratman breeding houses.

Overall, it has become crooked.

Shu Sansi passed by the bustling and noisy ruins, and the smell of cheap and pungent alcohol coming from inside made him swallow his saliva.

The situation of all the ratmen free people was not very good, but the overabundance of various cheap resources did not bring any benefits. While the ratmen priests were indulging in all kinds of new things, the inferior mushroom wine appeared in every noisy ruin.

Even the rats are addicted to these cheap alcohols. They only need to grab a handful of mushrooms and take out a handful of dried cave mushrooms from their pockets, and they can drink a glass of low-quality mushroom wine mixed with water.

This is one of the few pastimes for these low-level rat people.

It’s nothing. After all, he has worked for a whole day and doesn’t have to worry about not having enough money. He also got another good thing today.

Shu Sansi stood at the door of the noisy ruins for a long time, but in the end, he suppressed the surging desire. No! Someone was waiting for him!
He shook his head and walked away quickly, as if he was escaping.

Shu Sansi was very lucky today. Standing in front of a dark abandoned tunnel, Shu Sansi slowly opened his claws, and a bright golden spot appeared in his palms.

This was something he picked up from the ground when he was moving those expensive and gorgeous blood-gold creations. It was a piece of golden fragment. No one knew what it had rolled from, and it was even hard to say whether it was left behind by this train. It was lying quietly in a very corner, deeper in the dark tunnel.

This is also one of the reasons why he looks so gray today.

She will definitely like this golden piece.

Thinking of this, Shu Sansi quickened his pace.

In the corner of this abandoned tunnel, crawling into an inconspicuous hole, the gray Rat Sansi saw the girl he wanted to see.

He put the bag of cave mushrooms on the table, displayed the golden fragments in his hand as if he were offering a treasure, and happily jumped up and down in the narrow cave like a monkey.

This golden fragment was enough for Shu Sansi to drink mushroom wine for many days, but he brought it back without hesitation.

Soon, a piece of golden fragment hung on the tall rat man's figure.

In Shu Sansi's eyes, this was simply beautiful.

But today, not everything was so happy. Among the newborn cubs, not many were qualified, and they were all too thin and small.

At night, Shu Sansi hurriedly left home, carrying a bag of still squirming stuff, and walked around to a smelly ditch.

Here, he threw down what he was holding without hesitation.

After he left, a faint howling sound appeared in the dirty ditch.

Several figures emitting a foul odor appeared from the darkness and frantically salvaged the creatures from the ditch. Soon after, several wet little creatures were carefully embraced by these dirty rats.

………….

On the battlefield of the main continent.

Three more years have passed since the start of this holy war, and the rats have been fighting this holy war for six years.

The progress is encouraging.

Almost half of the main continent has been swallowed up by the rat people.

Although countless ratmen died during this period, it was not a serious problem.

The issues that annoyed the ratmen who led the war the most were the increasingly severe consumption of soul stones, the battlefield that was gradually heading towards a stalemate, and humans' tentative exploration of the sky.

The consumption of soul stones is not difficult to understand.

Whether it was magical firearms, various types of lightning cannons, or even those steam tanks, they were all rapidly consuming those precious blue gems.

The gifts that fall from the sky are no longer enough.

The rats once again returned to the path of exploiting the flesh and blood, but this kind of exploitation was not endless.

It's not that there is no good news. In the center of the scarlet grassland, next to the bone temple, another living flesh and blood was discovered. This greatly relieved the pressure on the rat people.

But it also made them doubtful.

Where exactly this wriggling flesh and blood came from? This question seems not difficult to determine, because an event similar to that in the dark abyss of the underground rat city occurred at the place where this second piece of wriggling flesh and blood was discovered.

A large amount of flesh and blood that had been used for sacrifices was piled up.

Here in the Temple of Bones, a grand sacrifice was once successfully held, a victory sacrifice for the final battle on the grassland.

All of a sudden, things became clear.

Some things were vaguely confirmed.

Some of the more active ratmen priests even wanted to give it a try on the spot, trying to create a piece of living flesh and blood again.

However, this attempt was stopped by the temple guards.

But even the temple guards knew clearly that the attempt must be carried out. When the light falling from the sky was becoming increasingly insufficient, the living flesh and blood and the green stone produced from the living flesh and blood were too important to the rat people.

A proposal for a grand sacrificial ceremony was put forward.

The bigwigs in the Ratman Council reached a consensus on this proposal, but now, what was lacking was enough sacrifices.

A war plan was proposed, which would be carried out by the four ratmen armies in the northern battlefield for a grand sacrificial ceremony.

If successful, the rat people's urgent need for energy should be greatly alleviated.

But the energy gap and pressure are not the only headaches for the rat people.

During the long war, the Human Empire became more and more militaristic. With more and more golems and various unmanned war weapons being deployed on the battlefield, the ratmen's advance was forced to slow down.

These damn humans are as tenacious as those bugs in the mud, so annoying!

But this alone is not enough, far from enough. This is just the last struggle of these abominable heretics.

It has to be admitted that even if more fancy weapons were pushed onto the battlefield, they would not be able to completely overwhelm the ratmen in a short period of time.

If the ratmen cannot be completely overwhelmed, then no matter how many victories are won in the regional wars, there will still be a steady stream of ratmen reappearing on the battlefield at night the next day, loudly making those shrill howls in the long dark night.

It is simply impossible to change the overall situation; it is a powerless struggle.

But how should I put it, this kind of struggle is really annoying.

And it's not just annoying, those humans have also begun exploring the starry sky. According to the information given by the rat assassin, in the capital of the Ghost Eye people, several strange things have been launched into the sky, and they did so when the Eye of God passed through the sky.

The motives of this group of guys are easy to understand even without guessing, but precisely because they are so easy to understand, it makes the rats even more angry.

Damn it, damn it, that is the gift and revelation given to us, the rat people, by God!
Damn heretics! Kill you! Kill you! Send you all to the great God! Blasphemer! Damn blasphemer!
At a rat meeting held in an underground rat city, the rat councillors shouted loudly in anger.

It’s a pity that no matter how loudly the rats shouted, there was really nothing the rats could do about it.

The rats are not qualified to explore the sky for the time being. It's not that they don't want to, but they haven't figured out how to explore the sky. After all, no matter how fast the steam wheels turn and how much the magic furnace spews out black smoke, they cannot go to the sky.

The war resolution that would bring together all the troops on the Western Front, that dangerous war plan, was proposed at this meeting, amid the humiliation and anger of those ratmen councillors.

The Dark-Eyed People's attempt to touch the sky and the dark blue comet that streaked across the sky made these high-ranking guys a little anxious.

(End of this chapter)