A sudden rat tide instantly pulled the Principality of Ruth and several surrounding principalities into a desperate situation. No one expected that the rat tide would appear so suddenly, sweeping across the entire Principality of Russ overnight, and

Spreading to surrounding countries, when these countries noticed it and looked for countermeasures, the rat tide had already occupied half of the land of these principalities.

It's just that their neighbors have to make decisions faster than themselves. All roads to neighboring countries are blocked, and all border lines are lit with rat repellent and rat repellent, not just temporarily recruited soldiers.

Guarded by the Purifying Fire Church and the priests stationed there and lighting the Purifying Fire, judging from the situation, it should be the decision of these countries to block the borders led by the Purifying Fire Church.

Although this was very effective in preventing the rat tide from spreading to surrounding countries, for the Principality of Rus and several surrounding principalities, it was as if they were trapped in hell, with death happening all the time, within a few days.

All the people in these countries will die.

The reason why the Church of Purifying Fire completely disregarded the safety of those principalities and the lives and deaths of the people trapped in the rat tide, and made such an inhumane blockade decision, is entirely because of the situation of this rat tide and other rat tides.

The situation is completely different.

When rat tides occurred in the past, those jerry rats would only get into granaries and other places where people store food, or get into people's homes and chew things. Although they sometimes bite people, these are only a minority. The vast majority of people.

Even a child can use a stick to drive away and kill timid jerry rats.

For the people, the real disaster is that after Jerry rats stay in human cities for a long time, they will produce plague. It is almost impossible for anyone infected with plague to be cured. The pain before death is frightening to anyone who sees it. So far, this

This fear was also recorded in the form of paintings on stone tablets in some public places in the Rusian principality.

It is precisely because of the people's fear of the rat tide that even if the adults in the family are recruited to fight on the front lines, the remaining old, weak, sick and disabled will still participate in the hunting season and do their best under the call of King Russ IX.

Go and hunt the jerry rats in the forest and mountains.

However, this rat tide is completely different from the previous rat tides, not only because this rat tide did not occur in the winter when the rats were short of food, but during the very important mating season of Jerry rats, and even more because of this

Jerry's rats during the second wave of rats are no longer as timid as they used to be. These rats seem to have turned into violent rats, frantically attacking all living creatures they see, from birds and beasts to cattle, sheep, pigs, and dogs.

Among their attacks, even humans are also attacked by them.

The rat tide broke out after nightfall, and the first ones to be affected were naturally the people hired by King Russ IX to hunt jerry rats in the forest. No one knew how many of those people there were, but in the end only one groom who was looking after the horses escaped.

He escaped back to the castle and reported the mutant rat tide to King Russ IX.

However, King Russ IX did not believe this, but locked up the groom because the groom was completely incoherent, saying that the rat tide had swallowed people, and that everyone had been chewed into bones, etc.

So Russ IX also missed the best opportunity to escape.

Later in the night, the rat tide rushed out of the forest and spread around at an extremely fast speed. Most people were still sleeping at this time. They were overwhelmed by the rat tide without any resistance.

King Russ IX's castle withstood the rat tide for a while. The soldiers guarding the city gate also discovered the situation and woke up King Russ IX and his family. However, by this time, the rat tide had surrounded the entire castle.

There was no possibility for the people inside to escape.

After that, the smaller cubs in the jerry rat tide got in through the sewer outlet of the castle, avoided the high walls of the castle, and began to spread inside the castle. The soldiers were unable to stop these ferocious jerry rats, and soon

It was quickly chewed to the bone.

Knowing that he could not escape, King Russ IX did not want to die under the bite of Jerry Rat, so he locked himself and his family in the study at the top of the castle, set fire to himself, and the members of the Purifying Fire Church stationed here

The priest relied on the purifying fire of the church to resist the rat tide for a while, and through a magical method, he notified everything that happened here to the holy fire of all the purifying fire churches.

As a result, because it was late at night, most of the people in the church had already rested. Only a few ascetics would recite prayers around the sacred fire container, and none of these ascetics were located near the Principality of Ruth. I saw

After receiving these messages, he believed that this matter had nothing to do with his own ecclesiastical principality, and believed that the churches in the ecclesiastical principality surrounding the Rus ecclesiastical principality should have received similar news and would deal with it, so he did not pay attention to this matter.

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It wasn't until the next morning that the news spread throughout the entire Purifying Fire Parish was taken seriously by the Purifying Fire Church, and the church in the relevant principality was ordered to thoroughly investigate the matter. However, by this time, the entire territory of the Ruth Principality had been invaded by a wave of rats.

Covered, and the rat tide has also crossed the border and is spreading to the surrounding principalities at an extremely fast speed.

And when the confirmed news about the rat tide came back to the Cathedral of the Purifying Fire, several principalities around the Principality of Russ had already fallen. Facing these crazy jerry rats, even the brave soldiers could not resist them.

, not to mention that the adults of these ecclesiastical principalities with a little fighting ability have been transferred to the front line. It is almost unnecessary to think about the fall of these ecclesiastical principalities and they have become settled, and the dukes of these ecclesiastical principalities also escaped immediately.

They lost their own country, making it even more difficult for these principalities to organize resistance forces.

In the end, the Church of Purifying Fire made the decision to abandon these principalities and block the rat tide within these principalities before it spread to other principalities, because they learned from the priest who sent the message.

Knowing that the purifying fire has a strong intimidating effect on the rat tide, and drugs such as rat repellent powder can also drive away the rats, they promptly added defenses at the borders of these principalities and created a purifying fire defense line, which effectively blocked the

Further spread of the rat swarm.

However, the matter did not end there. A rumor began to appear in the countries controlled by the Church of Purifying Fire. It was said that the reason why this rat tide appeared so suddenly and strangely was entirely because of the ongoing activities of the Church of Purifying Fire.

This war was an unjust war. This war offended the gods, so the gods issued punishments and warnings.

Although such rumors will not shake the lower class people's faith in the Church of Purifying Fire, it has become the best way for those who are unwilling to participate in this religious war to escape from the war, especially those from lower class families who are forced to recruit.

It will secretly add fuel to the flames and make this rumor spread more widely.

Faced with such rumors, although the Church of Purifying Fire knew that it might be secretly created by spies of the Otter Federation lurking in various principalities, they could not find any good way to solve it. They could only announce that this mutated rat

The tide was created by the Otter Federation using evil power. The Church of Purifying Fire will participate in this battle more firmly and strive to eliminate the Otter Federation, this evil country of unbelievers.

Although this explanation does not have much effect, it at least gives the Church of Purifying Fire an excuse to reasonably suppress the dissatisfaction of the country controlled by the church against participating in the war against the Ot Federation, because as long as someone dares to use the rat tide as an excuse

Complaining about the church's decision to join the war gives the church an excuse to treat them as spies.

However, even though the church loudly announced that it would not withdraw from the coalition, the church's energy had to be diverted from the battlefield to dealing with the rat tide that had swept through several principalities. It had originally provided support such as manpower, weapons, and food and grass.

It has also stopped temporarily, and other church countries have nothing to say about it.

At the same time, in a small town outside the Jerrydos Mountains, the birthplace of this mutant rat tide, Pennistan looked desperately at the bones in her home that had been chewed beyond recognition by the Jerry rats.

The features on their clothing and stumps identified them as her family members.

Although, in the camp at the Duke's hunting ground, she saw the tragic situation of corpses strewn in the camp, and thought of Jerry Mouse's crazy state, she already felt a little uneasy in her heart, but she still had a glimmer of hope.

On the way home, he saw the bones that had been chewed by Jerry's rats, the desolate villages, etc., and his uneasiness became more intense, until he saw the bones scattered on the ground at home,

After identifying that the bones belonged to her family, the uneasiness in her heart turned into despair and enveloped her. She also sat on the ground, looking at the bones in front of her with dull eyes. Sadness filled her chest, and tears could not stop flowing out.

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Sylvia walked to the body of a killed jerry rat, kicked it casually with her feet, and said: "How could these jerry rats become so manic? It feels like they were infected by the power of the abyss."

?”

"Didn't we check it before? There are no traces of the power of the abyss in these Jerry rats." Leo shook his head and said, "But the behavior of Jerry rats that is so manic that it attacks all goods is very abnormal.

There should be something wrong with Jerry Rat’s hive consciousness, such as evolution.”

"Evolution?" Sylvia was stunned and asked, "Will evolution make them crazy?"

"It is true that evolution does not happen, but hunger does." Leo thought for a while and said: "If a young creature like Jerry Rat wants to give birth to a core of consciousness from its incomplete nest consciousness, it needs an extremely strong emotion as a guide.

Let all the limited thoughts of Jerry Rats be concentrated in one emotion, and then use this emotion as the core to build the nest consciousness. Hunger is a very easy emotion to realize, and Jerry Rats are low-level creatures without much intelligence.

He also has this kind of emotion, and this kind of emotion is very strong and can be easily maintained for a long time without causing resistance from a single consciousness in the rat group."

Sylvia frowned and said in a deep voice: "In other words, this mutated rat tide will not disappear until the core of the nest consciousness of the Jerry Rat Swarm is completed."

Leo said: "If I am not wrong about the hive consciousness, it should be like this." As he said, he paused again and continued: "But the Church of the Purifying Fire should be involved in this matter, right?

After all, the rat tide has caused so much damage here, it has probably destroyed the entire Russ Cult Principality."

Sylvia shook her head, seeming to disagree with Leo's point of view, and said: "I think no matter whether the situation of the rat tide is as you guessed, the Purifying Fire Church will not make every effort to clean up the rat tide."

"Why?" Leo asked puzzled.

Sylvia raised her finger and pointed in the direction of the Otter Federation, and said: "Don't forget that they have another thing that is more important than exterminating the rat tide. I guess they will seal the border and wait for the rat tide to recede. As for

They don’t care at all about the people in the Principality of Ruth. It’s a good thing for them that all the people in the Principality are dead. They can justifiably take over everything in the Principality. Don’t forget about these Jerry rats.

Living creatures eat food, but not gold coins. All the people here are dead. Those ownerless wealth naturally belong to the Church of Purifying Fire. Not only did they not lose money, but they gained a large area of ​​land and wealth for nothing."

"It is possible, but not necessarily." Leo also did not agree with Sylvia's statement, and said: "If the Purifying Fire really uses this method to occupy the wealth of a religious principality, then what will happen to other religious principalities?

Look, they will definitely be wary of the Church of Purifying Fire to avoid becoming the second Rusian principality, so the church will do more good than harm."

Sylvia disagreed. In her opinion, the disadvantages mentioned by Leo only needed to create some public opinion, and then subtly affected those religious principalities. After a period of time, the forgetful people would soon forget about it.

As for those high-ranking dukes of the ecclesiastical principalities, they would never have any other ideas.

However, Sylvia was not prepared to continue arguing with Leo. Anyway, this kind of thing had nothing to do with them. They were just passing by.

Although it was a bit cruel, she actually felt that this rat tide was a good thing for them, because this way Pennistan would have nothing to worry about and could go on the road with them and leave the country directly without them having to stay here.

Go down, it's a waste of time.

Sylvia walked to Penistan, knelt down, handed over a handkerchief, and said, "I think you should wipe your tears now, pack up the bodies of your family, and find a place to bury them."

Pennistan looked at the handkerchief. It could be seen from the material and production that this handkerchief was very valuable. She did not dare to take it. She just raised her arm and wiped her tears with her sleeve, but she could not wipe it away no matter how hard she wiped it.

Tears kept pouring out, and she finally gave up wiping her tears, stood up, walked to the room, found a few pieces of clothing, picked up the bones of her family members one by one, and placed them in different clothes.

After collecting the bones, she silently walked to a hill behind the house, dug a big hole, buried the family members' bones in it, and made a simple tombstone from the broken door panel to insert in it.
Chapter completed!