Chapter 1300: Rats Rats And More Rats
"As soon as possible your ass. You are the one who knows best that our preparations are not even half done and you want me to go in and attack them?" Jin said as he yawned a little upon looking at the multiple screens where the System showed the updated numbers.
It was not wrong though. Even if Jin could mount an offensive, the number of rats had already outmatched his army from 1 to 500 to nearly 1 to 10,000. Jin wanted to assume so badly that it was an exaggeration from the System, perhaps an overestimation but deep down in his heart, he knew that it was not the case.
His current mini instance where he kept the Demon Rats as prisoners and used them as a way to entice new cultivators to earn stuff had shown similar results to the System's new estimation. Some of the Demon Rats managed to contact each other and a few of them even mated on sight. It was as if that was their primal instinct to breed when they are in danger. And to make things worse, the female Demon Rat was surprisingly able to give birth rather quickly too.
All it took her was a day to breed a dozen of those rats befitting their names as Demon Rats. The only redeeming factor was that the baby rats took some time to grow due to the lack of food within the dungeon but they were hardy enough to survive. The System and Jin took this opportunity to observe the physiology of the rats and pushed the boundaries of the systematic gathering of evidence further by rearranging the sewers instance so that the Demon Rats were separated. Cruel but a necessary step to see how long those baby rats could survive without food, water and perhaps their mother.
To their disgust, those Demon Rats were still growing even in isolation and their growth was only delayed with time as shown by other rats who were fed with food. (In fact, there was this lucky Demon Rat that had been fed with lots of chi infused food that it became a boss of its within the sewers instance.) When Jin captured them, he thought that the sewers instance would be a temporary instance once all the Demon Rats were killed but he had no idea that they could reproduce this quickly even without much help.
However, the most important discovery was that even when killed, the Demon Rats still dropped a random material upon their death. Initially, both the System and Jin thought that they would drop specific items based on what they grow from but the Farming World's Scholars of the East and West, Gold and Weslie had deduced based on the experiment that they had been crossbred so much that such a trait would appear.
Yet, another theory was formed once more when a group of cultivators managed to kill the 'boss' of the sewers instance and found material that had never been seen or documented in the Farming World. Although the System had eventually referenced the item via the Cross Worlds Markets as Adamantium, the dream metal of blacksmiths, it was said to only be found in either Heaven's plane or Hell's plane. The System tried to replicate the same method and yet the new boss did not produce the very same thing, thus allowing the scholars to conclude that the Demon Rats might actually be some sort of random item generator based on the innate powers of the Farming World.
And that was a game changer for everyone. If the Demon Rats could produce any sort of item, even something that was out of their world's scope, it could justify their speed of production but it also means that the person controlling them had found out about their potential way earlier than them and thus exploited the Demon Rats.
In short, the North and South Scholars, if they were still in control, had made the Demon Rats not only their army but their resource production too. It could be possible that they manipulated the Demon Rats' genes and created this Demon Rat Empire on their own. Even so, Gold and Weslie could not help but be impressed by their efforts too.
They might not have a shortage of items but it was because of that, the Farming World had become too complacent with their basic fulfilment of life. There was no innovation and everything was rather stagnant. The only thing that gave them trouble was the central oceans where natural phenomena such as heavy rain and thunder destroyed their trading ships.
However, the only so called danger they had was that their scholarly predecessors had predicted a great famine that might potentially wipe out the entire Farming World. Yet most living Scholars did not take this at heart and thought it was just a myth to warn people not to waste the blessing of their lands.
Thus, Gold and Weslie could only conclude that with this new cutting edge 'technology', the Demon Rats might actually be the answer for their salvation should such a great famine occur. Still, the means doesn't justify what the North and South Scholars had done.
With all this information, Jin could only deduce that the new numbers that the System had produced is that they are indeed preparing an invasion of some sort. Either the East or West region. "Possibly both at the same time." The System said and Jin felt defeated just from the System's estimation.
"Even if we start our offensive now, those Demon Rats were just going to dig deeper and faster to reach their destination and from the look of the scan magic, they're not just building one large tunnel. And also, if we warn the other two kingdoms again, they would not be well equipped to handle the rats at all, it would be a massacre." Jin said as if he had no chance of winning this particular war.
"User, you cannot win everything." the System said.
"The only good thing is that we have scan magic so we will know that we can definitely secure the North with a guarantee that they would be eradicated. But the problem will be East and West where we have to hunt them down." Jin said and the System once again tell Jin to focus on the situation at hand.
"One step at a time."
"No, you are not helping with such remarks. But yes I do understand that I am overthinking like how I did with the Prime Minister thing." Jin took a deep breath to calm himself and see what can be done or how much he could to slow the predicament of such a disaster.
But Jin knows that once he starts this, it will be a heavy burden on his army and shop. Therefore, half baked preparations were not allowed and he would proceed as planned to start his war on the first day of PandaVerse festival.
"If any outsiders decide to interrupt our Festival, I will be sure to kick them into that world and left them to rot there," Jin said while the System chuckled stating that that would be a good plan to throw additional bodies to fight against the Demon Rats.