Chapter 90: The Purple-Gold Rat King 1

Kent’s heart jumped when he heard Darkya’s question.

A moment later, he dropped heavily onto the ground and began complaining loudly.

“I’m exhausted!”

Then he looked up at her.

“So?”

“Didn’t I win the bet?”

Kent was not entirely pretending.

He had just swum dozens of meters underwater from downstream, and the current had been quite strong.

Of course he was tired.

He simply was not quite as exhausted as he was making himself appear.

Darkya looked at him and shook her head.

“You humans really are cunning.”

“I stood here thinking for ages and couldn’t come up with a single way to capture the Rat King.”

Kent immediately corrected her.

“Wrong.”

“Completely wrong.”

“That isn’t called cunning.”

“That’s called intelligence.”

He tapped his head.

“You need a flexible mind for this sort of thing, understand?”

Then Kent pointed toward the terrain across the river.

“Look at the position of their nest.”

“The only way to approach without being noticed was through the river.”

“Shadow Rats aren’t afraid of water, but they don’t particularly like it either.”

“So the ones near the riverbank instinctively kept some distance from the water.”

“That gave me just enough time to activate the scroll.”

“If they had been gathered right along the edge of the river, I wouldn’t have dared take the risk.”

Kent grinned slightly.

“And there was another advantage.”

“In an environment this dark, a sudden burst of intense light can instantly blind most creatures.”

“That’s why I waited for a few seconds after jumping onto the bank.”

“The longer I stood there, the more Shadow Rats turned to look at me.”

“And the more of them looked at me...”

“The more of them were blinded when the light went off.”

Darkya listened silently.

Kent continued explaining.

“One Illumination spell lasts about five minutes.”

“During those five minutes, I randomly threw out several spells in different directions.”

“That way, even the blinded Shadow Rats couldn’t determine my exact location.”

“And those five minutes were enough.”

“I found the Rat King...”

“And put enough distance between myself and the swarm to escape.”

Kent was secretly quite pleased with himself.

There had certainly been an element of luck in the entire operation.

But luck alone had not been enough.

The real reason he had succeeded was that he had reacted quickly and used the terrain properly.

There had been two critical points.

The first was the distance between the Shadow Rats and the riverbank.

If they had been standing closer to the water, Kent would not have been able to delay activating the Illumination spell.

In that case, only a small portion of the swarm might have been blinded.

And Kent would probably have been surrounded before he ever reached the Rat King.

So although the plan had been risky, his calculations had been extremely precise.

But the most important factor was something else.

Instant casting.

Kent could release Illumination without chanting.

If he had been an ordinary mage and needed to recite an incantation, the spell would have required at least two seconds of preparation.

And even finishing the chant did not guarantee that the spell would be successfully released.

Magic casting always involved a certain chance of failure.

It also required intense mental concentration.

But with hundreds of Shadow Rats rushing toward him from every direction...

who could possibly remain perfectly focused?

That was also one of the main reasons mages usually needed warriors beside them in battle.

Without someone protecting them during the casting process, even powerful mages could easily be killed before their spells were completed.

Darkya pursed her lips.

She wanted to argue.

But what Kent had said was completely reasonable.

More importantly, she had been the one who benefited most from the entire situation.

That thought suddenly made her suspicious.

No matter what kind of social magical beast it was, the ruler of the group was always exceedingly rare.

And exceedingly valuable.

A beast king could not simply be judged by its individual rank.

It was similar to a wolf pack.

An ordinary person might be able to deal with a single wolf.

But facing an entire pack was a completely different matter.

Even with a weapon in hand, it would still be extremely dangerous.

And magical beasts were far more powerful than ordinary wolves.

Within the Dark Region, rodent-type magical beasts were considered especially dangerous.

Not because each individual creature possessed overwhelming strength.

But because they understood cooperation.

They divided tasks.

They supported one another.

And their instincts for group combat were often far better than humans expected.

A Rat King capable of commanding such creatures could therefore possess value far beyond its own rank.

Darkya’s vigilance immediately increased.

In her mind, humans were creatures skilled at schemes and deception.

And Kent had just proven that he was exceptionally clever.

After hesitating briefly, she finally asked,

“Why did you give the Rat King to me?”

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“Why didn’t you make it your own magical beast?”

“You should know that for a mage like you...”

“A Rat King could increase your combat strength by far more than just a little.”

“The main reason is simple.”

Kent grinned.

“You’re my servant now.”

“If I don’t look after you, then who am I supposed to look after?”

He waved a hand as though the matter were completely trivial.

“It’s just a Rat King.”

“If we run into another one later, I’ll simply catch another.”

Kent spoke with complete ease, paying no attention to Darkya’s suspicious expression.

In truth, he could more or less guess what she was thinking.

“You certainly make it sound easy.”

Darkya immediately felt irritated by his smug expression.

“In the thousands of years of recorded history of the underground world, there has never been a known case of anyone successfully taking a Rat King as a magical beast.”

Although she clearly wanted to argue with him, what she said was not entirely wrong.

Of course, even if someone had succeeded in contracting a Rat King before, they probably would not have announced it publicly.

“Hehe.”

Kent chuckled.

“Either way, I’ll be relying on you for my safety from now on.”

“With this many subordinates under your command, we should be able to move around the First Layer without too much trouble.”

Then his expression changed slightly.

“What I really want to know is...”

“Where around here can we find large amounts of magical metal?”

The moment those words left his mouth, Kent’s true intentions were exposed.

It was not that he had never considered contracting the Rat King himself.

But he was only a second-rank mage.

Trying to subdue and contract a Rat King with his current strength would probably have been anything but easy.

Besides, Kent already had a magical beast companion.

Niu Niu.

That creature might have been rather fierce and unruly, but Kent had never been able to see through the true extent of her strength.

After hearing Kent’s question, Darkya immediately understood everything.

So that was what he had been planning.

Still, she did not object this time.

After all, she had gained a genuine and enormous benefit from the entire affair.

Instead, she simply warned him,

“Magical metals aren’t especially common even in the underground world.”

“Most known deposits belong to powerful factions or major cities.”

“Private individuals shouldn’t even think about getting involved.”

She glanced at him.

“Didn’t you notice the inscriptions on the mithril coins and adamantine coins?”

“Those coins are minted by major powers or large cities.”

“Even Muan City itself has yet to discover a magical metal mine of its own.”

Kent was not discouraged in the slightest.

If anything, Darkya’s explanation made his imagination run even wilder.

If magical metals were easy to obtain, then they would hardly deserve to be called magical metals.

And since those metals also served as a form of currency throughout the Dark Region, their control would naturally be even stricter.

It was no different from gold mines on Earth.

What country would ever leave such resources unguarded?

Even ordinary gold miners were often inspected several times when entering or leaving a mining area.

Still, Kent firmly believed that unclaimed magical metal deposits had to exist somewhere underground.

They simply had not been discovered yet.

After all, even after ten thousand years, no one truly knew how vast the Dark Region was.

Dark elves.

Dwarves.

Gnomes.

Humans.

None of the races living underground had ever fully explored it.

Even though the combined population of these races had already reached tens of millions, they still had no idea where the true boundaries of the underground world lay.

So far, everyone knew that the Dark Region was divided into three layers.

But whether there was a Fourth Layer...

or even a Fifth Layer...

no one could say for certain.

The Third Layer alone was already home to ninth-rank magical beasts.

For most intelligent races, it was practically a forbidden zone.

Of course, a few humans had ventured down there and returned alive.

Otherwise, no one would know anything about the region at all.

Even the First Layer, according to Darkya, was already larger than the entire territory of the Alliance Empire.

Kent could not help marveling at the wonders of creation.

It reminded him of the first time he had seen a giant sinkhole back on Earth.

At the time, he had felt the same sense of awe.

A world so vast...

and yet still hiding beneath another world.

Darkya suddenly sighed.

“More than a dozen Shadow Rats died.”

“And quite a few others are seriously injured.”

She had already ordered the Rat King to gather the surviving Shadow Rats together.

After carefully inspecting the group, she spoke with obvious heartache.

As she did, she kept glancing toward Kent.

Kent immediately felt depressed.

Wasn’t she the one who had nearly fired magical arrows into the Shadow Rats just moments ago?

Now only a dozen low-rank rats had died, and she looked as though she had suffered some enormous loss.

There were still several hundred Shadow Rats left.

Did she really need to look at him like that?

But Kent wisely kept his mouth shut.

There was no point arguing.

A sensible man did not waste his time fighting with a woman.