Hoarding In Hell [EN]: Chapter 74

74. Nine-Headed Rat (3)

The Ratman Sorcerer was stronger than Hyun-woo, but very timid.

High intelligence often leads to a vivid imagination.

His fear stemmed from envisioning his future: captured, covered in the blood and corpses of his brethren with pierced heads. He had no choice but to submit to his captor.

“What is this place?”

Hyun-woo began the interrogation.

He had considered various tortures in case the rat didn’t cooperate, but surprisingly, the Sorcerer readily spilled the beans.

“Th-this is the Black Beak Fortress. The Empire’s last stronghold! B-but why is a human here? N-not even undead, it seems?”

Not knowing what the Black Beak Fortress was made the information useless. Besides, his questions were irrelevant.

Hyun-woo decided to focus the questioning. He widened the hole in the conscript’s corpse, spilling more blood, and the Ratman Sorcerer trembled even more.

“G-General Yanok Marx and Imperial Propaganda Minister Oergl are preparing for a final battle, risking the Empire’s last survival! If General Yanok Marx’s great plan is realized, all those with fangs will be liberated, and the superior fangs will finally rule the world!”

Now this seemed like information that would help him complete the quest.

So, Yanok Marx is the final boss, and Oergl is probably a mid-boss.

The “great plan” seems to be the ‘last stand of the fallen Empire’.

“What does Yanok Marx do?”

“Th-that is him.”

Hyun-woo looked in the direction the Sorcerer was pointing. There was a portrait of a uniquely shaped Ratman, slightly different from the others.

The moment Hyun-woo saw that face, he almost burst out laughing.

“Are you kidding me? Is that even a Ratman?”

“G-General Yanok is the greatest sorcerer and the one who declared the Ratmen as the most superior fangs, leading us. For the eternal Empire that will finally come…”

“Enough. Does that have anything to do with what’s happening in that central tower?”

Hyun-woo said, glancing at the window. It wasn’t in the direction of the central tower, but the Sorcerer knew what Hyun-woo was talking about.

“G-General Yanok said it was the last resort to end all wars.”

“What is it?”

While the Sorcerer hesitated, Hyun-woo counted to three in his head.

Three seconds later, his sword pierced the Sorcerer’s shoulder. He stuffed the conscript’s muzzle into the rat’s mouth to prevent him from screaming.

Hyun-woo counted to 30 again and asked.

“You won’t scream, will you?”

The Sorcerer nodded frantically. Compared to the monsters Hyun-woo had faced so far, this level of injury was just a scratch. There were plenty of guys who rampaged while dragging their intestines.

But the rat seemed to believe he was seriously injured.

“N-Nine-Headed Rat.”

“What?”

The Sorcerer stammered and muttered.

“P-Propaganda Minister Oergl said the Nine-Headed Rat is a god who knows our lost name. If we can summon the Nine-Headed Rat, we can regain the mighty Empire.”

He thought it would be a little helpful, but is it another mythological story?

But with the dead filling the horizon and the rats using magic to wipe everything out, there was no point in worrying about reality.

Hyun-woo concluded that if the purpose of these rat bastards was to summon the Nine-Headed Rat or whatever, then stopping it was his job.

“Where are they doing that?”

“C-Central Tower…”

“Is that related to the green beam?”

“That beam is a beacon created by the royal court sorcerers with the blood of inferior fangs. The Nine-Headed Rat will find this place by seeing that light.”

In short, he just needs to turn off that beam. Hyun-woo asked the last question, feeling like he was skipping a long quest request from an NPC [Non-Player Character; a character controlled by the game, not a player].

“How do I get there? The bridge positions keep changing, so I can’t get there.”

“Th-that is, the Central Tower…”

The Sorcerer hesitated to answer again.

Hyun-woo wondered why he was doing something that would get him tortured again and stabbed him with his sword. This time, he tried to add a little poison. He’d come to his senses if his arm fell off.

But at that moment, a group of Ratmen burst through the door.

[Fallen Empire Ratman Stormtroopers (LV 44)]

Hyun-woo quickly threw himself forward. The halberd swung by the stormtrooper grazed him.

The Sorcerer threw away the conscript’s corpse and shouted something at Hyun-woo. Instantly, Hyun-woo felt a nausea that twisted his internal organs.

[Curse: Minion Creation (Rat) has been inflicted.]

Something poured out of his throat along with the vomiting. It was a baby rat.

Hyun-woo didn’t have a hobby of eating rats whole. Especially alive.

He felt a wriggling sensation in his stomach, along with the pain of his insides being eaten away.

Hyun-woo didn’t want to think much about what would happen next. Before he became unable to move, he threw himself out the window.

Before he even hit the ground, a Ratman crossbowman sniped at Hyun-woo, and his consciousness was cut off.

***

Red Butterfly and Johann wiped away sweat after killing the Ratman Sorcerer.

The Ratman Sorcerer himself wasn’t that difficult. The magic was simply throwing fireballs or curses that caused confusion, and there were no special tactics. But he knew about the ‘horn’ that Hyun-woo had mentioned.

As soon as he realized that there were many hunters, he blew the horn.

The hunters had to fight countless swarms of rats while also dodging the flying fireballs. In the end, the one who caught the Ratman Sorcerer was Johann, who stacked blessings and approached with three bullets.

While Johann was healing the hunters, Red Butterfly searched the Ratman Sorcerer’s corpse.

Red Butterfly could see wounds on the Ratman’s corpse: one shot in the head and two in the chest. What he was wearing was closer to rags than a robe.

Still, compared to the other Ratmen who were practically naked, he was wearing clothes.

“…Could this guy have been the primary target?”

Team leader of the Obsidian Team, Yoo Seong-yeon, approached Red Butterfly and asked.

“Well, it’s different from the information I heard in advance, but everyone is new to the Flood in the first place…”

Hearing Red Butterfly’s muttering, Team Leader Yoo Seong-yeon looked back at Johann with a pitiful expression. Red Butterfly also looked at the other Ratmen.

The Ratmen they faced this time were particularly difficult. They moved more agilely and intelligently.

They dodged properly, stabbed properly, and even showed clumsy teamwork.

They even seemed to be commanded by the Ratman Sorcerer’s squeaking.

The most frightening thing was the horn.

She didn’t expect so many swarms of rats to appear suddenly. If Hyun-woo hadn’t told her about the horn early on, she would have been fatally injured again.

And the Ratman who pretended to be dead and ambushed Johann earlier… something strange was happening.

“Does the dungeon difficulty suddenly increase sometimes? I mean, besides the monsters increasing due to the Flood, does the level of the monsters themselves increase?”

“It’s not that it doesn’t happen at all, but to this extent…”

Team Leader Yoo Seong-yeon was also feeling a similar sense of unease. He thought Johann was probably feeling something similar, but no one knew what he was thinking.

Red Butterfly approached him. As she approached, Johann began to heal the small wound on her cheek.

“Johann, why did you kill that Ratman Sorcerer with your own hands?”

Johann looked like he didn’t know what she was talking about.

Red Butterfly tried to use body language, tapping Johann’s pistol and pointing at the Ratman Sorcerer.

It would be nice if he could understand even a little English, but Johann couldn’t even speak English. Still, he seemed to have understood a little this time.

And instead of saying something, he pointed at Red Butterfly.

Just as she was about to ask what he meant, Johann pointed at the hunters one by one again.

Then he pointed at the Ratman Sorcerer again and made a gesture of slitting his throat.

“…You waited until we were about to die?”

That was the only way to understand it. It couldn’t mean that he waited until they were about to die.

In an instant, Red Butterfly understood Johann’s position again.

Lee Ji-tae brought Johann as an advisor. And instead of bringing the core elites of Taesung, he brought Red Butterfly’s team and the Obsidian Team, who were still learning.

It was ‘to learn’ about the Flood.

“You came to evaluate us students.”

To evaluate them and help them grow.

Because of this, Johann had only focused on healing, assisting, and protecting himself until now.

The hunters had to develop the ability to solve problems themselves. In other words, Lee Ji-tae didn’t take this Flood seriously.

He thought they would be able to clear it with this level of ability, and he also dispatched Johann to manage the situation.

But Johann unusually stepped up himself this time.

Red Butterfly looked at Johann’s back. The fact that he directly engaged in combat was not a small thing.

He had judged that the hunters no longer had the ability to resolve the situation.

‘It feels like I got an F.’

Red Butterfly bit her lip. She understood, but she wasn’t happy about it.

But to fix the situation, it was impossible without Johann taking the lead. With a death already occurring, it was no time to worry about evaluations.

At that time, Yoo Seong-yeon, who was searching the Ratman Sorcerer’s corpse, found something and called Red Butterfly.

“Yes? What is this?”

“Doesn’t this look like… a ciphertext that’s hard to memorize written somewhere on the body?”

Yoo Seong-yeon held out a piece of white cloth. It was the robe that the Ratman Sorcerer was wearing. Something was drawn on the corner.

It looked like a map.

***

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

After dying for the third time and facing the Sorcerer for the fourth time, Hyun-woo finally got another chance to talk.

But this time, it wasn’t as pleasant as when he threatened him last time. The location was a torture chamber, and the torturer was the Ratman Sorcerer.

The most important point was that the tortured was Hyun-woo.

After catching Hyun-woo, the Ratman Sorcerer took the trouble to choose magic instead of speaking human language. It was for a thorough interrogation.

The Ratman Sorcerer tapped Hyun-woo’s head with his staff. Then, he felt the groans coming from the torture chamber next door change into understandable words.

As soon as Hyun-woo realized that he could communicate, he said.

“Looks like you’re in the mood to talk now?”

Instead of chatting happily with Hyun-woo, the Ratman Sorcerer branded him with a heated poker.

Come to think of it, he was only tortured to death when he died the third time.

[Heat Resistance has increased.]

Even if resistance increased, he didn’t feel any different, but anyway, that’s what it said.

Hyun-woo wasn’t the type to feel that holding back screams was mature, so he screamed as much as he wanted.

And screaming loudly satisfies the torturer and makes them stop the torture quickly.

“You’re out of your mind.”

As expected, the Sorcerer took the poker away early. There was a Mickey Mouse-shaped metal attached to the end of the poker.

Thanks to that, Hyun-woo was left with a Mickey Mouse-shaped burn on his thigh.

The Sorcerer put the poker back into the brazier.

“Human, where did you come from and what are you doing here? Are you related to the Gray Army? What is your relationship with the Wailing Star?”

The Ratmen seemed to call the undead outside the Gray Army. Come to think of it, he seemed to have heard a similar story from Kirson. He said it was the Gray Army of the North.

“G-Gray Army?”

Hyun-woo asked in a hoarse voice because he had screamed too much.

“Are you going to pretend you don’t know? At this important time, there’s no way a human would appear, overcoming death several times. Only the Wailing Star, which sweeps this land with death, is possible. If Propaganda Minister Oergl hadn’t told me to interrogate you specifically…”

Hyun-woo found this interrogation interesting.

He only said one word, but the rat was spilling everything. For some reason, he seemed to be talking more now than when he was torturing him in the study.

But after hearing the Sorcerer’s words, Hyun-woo suddenly suspected that the Wailing Star was using him to capture this fortress.

‘Look at this? If you’re going to use me like that, you should at least give me a trial or increase the rewards. Are you trying to use me for free?’

[The Wailing Star, Verth, is watching you.]

It seemed like he wasn’t a gentleman; as soon as he talked about the Wailing Star, a message popped up saying he was watching. But it didn’t seem like he was giving anything.

“But it seems like the Wailing Star is out of options. To put such a weak human in because there’s no one to use… It seems like he wants to grab even a rat’s tail now.”

“I-I have nothing to do with the Wailing Star. He has nothing to do with me.”

“You expect me to believe that? The Quartermaster has spread poison fog around the area. The living cannot cross it. It’s clear that you’re being granted a reprieve from death. That’s why you come back to life every time you die.”

Ah, was that why I was getting messages that the toxicity had increased sometimes? Hyun-woo just thought the fine dust here was more severe.

Hyun-woo’s silence seemed to be understood as affirmation by the Sorcerer. He raised the poker with a satisfied smile.

“But your appearance has made me realize that the Wailing Star has run out of cards. Propaganda Minister Oergl will put you on Imperial broadcasts. The enemies will be defeated, and it will be proven that we are the truly superior fangs. Everything will be over tomorrow!”

“T-Tomorrow?”

“Yes! Then, the Nine-Headed Rat will finally stick his head out of the hole. And finally, he will shine down on us!”

Could it be a quest with a time limit?

Hyun-woo wondered what would happen if the quest failed like this, even though he doubted it. No matter how he thought about it, it didn’t seem like there would be good results.

The best thing would be for the quest to be treated as if it never happened, but in the worst case, it could become a situation where restarting is impossible.

Hyun-woo sighed.

“I wanted to talk a little more like this.”

“What?”

Hyun-woo felt the need to hurry.

A black-handed dagger popped out of his hand, which was tied behind his back, like a magic trick.