The Demon King is Unfathomable
Chapter 19: Rat Stampede! The Monsters Are Sieging!

Under Jaki’s order, all of Northpeak Shaft’s ratmen raised their weapons, ready to pounce at the intruders to tear them apart.

Meanwhile, the players farming in the mining shaft remained oblivious to their movements. (T/N: Farming: repeatedly killing monsters to level up.)

Orcknight slew a cornered ratman, sliced off its tail with a dagger, and tied it around his ribcage.

“The tenth one! 1000 hell coins secured! Kakaka!”

Minowarrior, wielding a dagger and a shield, followed him as he cackled, “Work harder. You need ten more to get 50 contribution points.”

Orcknight: “Bloody hell! There’s still so much more to go?!”

Minowarrior: “You were off for too long. The ratmen were pretty easy to hunt at the start. It didn’t take me long to gather my twenty tails.”

He had long met the quest requirement of twenty tails and was only hanging around to accompany his good brother. Otherwise, he would have been mining alongside the other lifestyle gamers.

Mining a kilogram of coal or ore would also earn him 50 contribution points.

By clearing these two daily quests, they could earn a total of 100 contribution points. At this rate, they should be able to advance to Iron-tier in ten days and leap ahead of the others.

Orcknight cursed bitterly, “That accursed… Saint Sisto.”

Minowarrior burst into laughter as he asked a redundant question, “The one who punished you is the demon king. Why are you cursing Saint Sisto?”

Orcknight rolled his eyes. “None of your business! I’ll curse whoever I want!”

“Hahaha!”

Deciding not to tease his brother anymore, Minowarrior stepped forward with his shield in search of the next unlucky ratman.

All of a sudden, the two skeletons heard loud rumbles echoing from ahead. It sounded like an army of thousand cavalrymen was charging at them.

Orcknight’s lower jaw slackened as he stared at the pitch-black tunnel ahead of him in a daze. “What’s going on?”

Minowarrior noticed the commotion ahead, and his eyes narrowed.

“Bro, something is amiss…”

Going by gaming tropes, such an anomaly should have been a prelude to the appearance of an elite monster or a boss. However, that didn’t seem like it here.

As the quakes drew closer, he knew there was no time to hesitate. Thus, he tossed aside his equipment and pulled his good brother to the side.

“What are you doing?!” Orcknight was taken aback.

“Of course it’s to feign death! What else can we do?! We are mere food to a boss monster!” Minowarrior exclaimed.

He still had no idea what this game’s death penalty was. It would be terrible if he was forced to go into observer mode for the next two or three days. Ŗ

“Feign death?! Is that possible?!”

“Why not? Isn’t that a basic maneuver of the undead?! Cut the crap and lie down!”

Those words were surprisingly convincing.

So, the two skeleton soldiers lay unmoving on the ground, looking like they had died for a long time.

Soon, the quakes reached their vicinity.

The tensed Orcknight finally saw the culprits behind the shaking.

“My gosh…”

Rats! More than ten thousand ratmen who were half the height of a human adult!

Some were properly equipped with armor and swords, whereas others were dressed in rags and brandished their claws. But all of them had a vicious look on their faces, ready to tear apart any enemy who stood in their way.

Orcknight even wondered why these ratman had chosen to settle in the mining shaft when they could have just overrun the labyrinth’s crypt spiders.

The rat swarm trampled past the two skeleton soldiers, raising a cloud of dust.

Fortunately, Minowarrior was right, and the ratmen didn’t see through their disguise.

The rumbles finally faded in the distance, though it seemed to be heading toward the demon king domain.

Minowarrior shook his skull as he stood up. He tossed away his tattered shield with a sigh before picking up his dagger.

‘I barely evolved into a skeleton knight, but now I have regressed back into a skeleton soldier. What a waste!’

“…Are those ratmen out of their mind?”

“Who knows? Maybe this is them retaliating after suffering so many casualties.”

Most players had farmed twenty tails earlier in the morning, which meant that around 700 to 800 ratmen had been killed.

Based on the situation, Minowarrior deduced that either a mage was controlling the rats, or that the rats had a boss commanding them.

“…What should we do next?” Orcknight asked.

Retreating was not an option, but the path ahead seemed fraught with dangers too.

Minowarrior scratched his head, feeling at a loss. “Should we… post this on the forum?”

“Then what?”

“Then… then we advance deeper to take a look? What if we replace a boss?”

“Huh?! You just said we can’t beat it!”

“We don’t necessarily have to beat it. There’s also a quest for discovering new places… The boss room should be considered a discovery, right?”

Orcknight shot a side glance at Minowarrior.

To be honest, he was also curious to know what the boss looked like, so he decided to go along with the latter.

As for the threat of death… so be it.

It was just a game anyway. One couldn’t say one had played a game without at least dying a couple of times.

“Fine, I’ll accompany you.”

“Give me a sec. I’ll make a quick trip to the forum.”

Minowarrior lay down against the wall, turning into a carcass once more as he reported his discovery on the forum.

…

In the demon king domain, near the entrance of the labyrinth’s first floor, several adventurers shuddered in their respective cells.

‘That evil mage… No, that evil demon king is more cunning than we expected. He gave us food, only to use his evil spells to siphon our vitality right away.’

The feeling of having one’s vitality siphoned was terrible, as if their bodies had been emptied out by an illness.

“This won’t do… I’m already at my limit… Please, anyone, save me!”

The muscular Amu kneeled on the floor, on the verge of a mental breakdown. This highest-leveled, study berserker was surprisingly the first one to cave in to despair.

But Chris didn’t mock him because she was also at her limit.

“What do you think that fellow is planning?” the shivering Hugo asked with a pale face.

“I don’t know…” Lakeson shook his head, the eyes hidden beneath his damp fringe reflecting his bitter regret.

Had they known that man was such a dangerous figure, they wouldn’t have ventured all the way into this mining shaft before making a move.

“…I’ve never dealt with a necromancer before.”

“Are there no necromancers in the underground street?” Hugo gulped.

Unlike his veteran party members, he was a village bumpkin who had just joined the trade not long ago. He had chosen to join Silver Scimitar in hopes that he could become rich overnight, as well as for a certain woman.

Chris glanced at Hugo with vacuous eyes.

“The underground street… is just a place where lowly thieves and hopeless blokes gather. Necromancers, on the other hand, are opponents whom even fief lords are wary of.”

Necromancers was one of the evilest jobs in the world. Only the depraved netherworld would accept the likes of them. These people had not only turned their backs on Saint Sisto, but they had also abandoned any virtues they had as a human being.

There were sayings that Silver-tier necromancers could raise disasters that troubled not just Gold-tier but even Platinum-tier knights too.

Chris had only indirectly heard about this rare existence.

All of a sudden, Lakeson opened his eyes and murmured, “Something’s coming.”

Chris quickly lay down and pressed her ear against the floor to listen.

Thieves like her were skilled at scouting. Their deductions weren’t always reliable, but the commotion this time was so loud that she couldn’t possibly get it wrong.

“It’s a rat stampede!”

Chris’ face turned pale.

She leaped to her feet, lurched against the resilient stone prison, and struck the nigh indestructible stone pillars with all her strength.

“Oi! Is anyone there? If you can hear me, let us out!”

No response.

A few skeletons did turn to look at her, but it was obvious from their dazed expressions that they didn’t understand her words.

‘That fellow abandoned us!’

Seeing how her little fists dealt zero damage to the granite prison, Chris descended into despair. She howled hoarsely, “That… Ch-Chin Seewang! You’re here, aren’t you?! Please, I’m begging you…”

“Enough!”

A thunderous voice cut her pleading short.

A pitch-black figure appeared at the center of the mining shaft. It was a black-haired man wielding a wand, his arrogant face twisted with impatience. He didn’t seem to think the rat stampede was a threat at all.

Chris stared at the necromancer.

Lakeson did the same too with eyes of disbelief.

‘Is this fellow out of his mind, or… Has he spent too much time dealing with corpses that he doesn’t know what a rat stampede signifies?’

“A couple of rats got you scared soulless… Watch your attitudes. You are my prisoners. Or do you think we are playing house around here?”

Roan’s sharp glare made Chris’ complexion turn even paler. She quickly stepped away from the stone pillars and fell onto her bum.

Roan finally turned away from the prisoners. He raised his wand as he murmured a chant, “Awaken, my servants!”

A rotting corpse lying in the corner shakily rose to its feet. Bits of flesh fell from its skeleton rack. Not the slightest emotion could be seen on its dazed face.

This blasphemous sight had the prisoners gulp down their saliva, not daring to utter a word.

That was their friend, Bant.

As Roan assessed the corpse, his eyebrows shot up in surprise.

‘He was a mortal devoid of transcendent powers, but his soul tier is Copper? Well, this works with me.’

This meant that Bant’s power ceiling was higher than his other summons.

He ordered Bant to pick up the greatsword that none of the players could carry and protect the area around the Demon God’s sculpture.

Then, he issued an order, “Youyou, gather the players under the pretext of a monster invasion! As long as they fend off this wave of monsters, they will receive 10,000 hell coins and 100 contribution points on top of quest rewards! If they fail… they can wait for the next closed beta!”