53: Chapter 53 Reorganization of the Ratmen Laborers and Logistics in the Mines

In the rear of the Divine Domain.

Here, there were no deafening roars from the front lines, no acrid smells of gunpowder smoke or psionic energy explosions.

In their place was a dead silence, solidified by order and high pressure.

The sky was shrouded by a layer of psionic energy light curtain, emitting a dim light. Beneath this light, tens of thousands of shivering Ratmen were driven and crowded into a massive 'biological enclosure,' a dense, dark mass.

These Ratmen were byproducts of war, coming from tribes crushed by the Zerg Swarm or remnant troops scattered from under the God of Shadows.

At this moment, in those small eyes that were used to flickering with cunning and greed in the darkness, only one emotion remained: fear.

Su Chen's avatar of will hovered high in the sky; in his field of vision, there was no life, only data. He looked down at this group of trembling creatures like a cold eye of the firmament.

'For the Zerg Swarm, there is no waste, only unused resources.'

A thought devoid of any emotion exploded directly in the mind of the Gray Dwarves leader, Okale.

Okale's sturdy body jolted violently. This former Gray Dwarves blacksmith, now a Zerg Swarm overseer, had already undergone a transformation. A ferocious set of 'exoskeleton power armor' encased his entire body, and the black chitinous shell reflected an eerie luster under the psionic energy light, a combination of metal and biological tissue.

His left arm had been replaced by a heavy tower shield, with undried bloodstains still remaining on it. His right arm was a 'biological electric whip' with electric arcs constantly jumping across it.

'As you command, great Swarm Overlord!' Okale responded in a deep voice, then turned around abruptly. Facing that black tide of rats composed of despair and panic, the electric whip on his right arm traced a cruel arc in the air.

'Crack!!!' The ear-piercing explosion tore through the silence. Blue electric sparks burst forth, and the air was filled with a burnt smell of ozone. The hundreds of Ratmen in the front row were so frightened by this intimidation that they collapsed to the ground, losing control of their bowels and bladders.

'Listen! You lowly rats who only know how to dig holes!' Okale's voice, processed through the exoskeleton's amplifier, was magnified dozens of times, turning into a distorted, non-human metallic roar that rolled across the entire area.

'Thank the great Swarm Overlord for sparing your lives!'

'From today on, you are no longer warriors, nor are you prisoners!'

'You are the glorious 'Divine Domain 101st to 200th Excavation Brigades'!'

The Ratmen looked around in terror, exchanging glances. They did not understand what an 'Excavation Brigade' was, but the undisguised killing intent radiating from Okale made them cautious even in their breathing.

'Here, there is no gain without labor!' Okale extended his thick, shell-encased finger, pointing toward several massive, slightly wriggling 'biochemical storage bladders' not far away.

Those translucent bladders were several meters high, filled with an unsettling green viscous liquid, and occasionally bubbles could be seen churning up from the bottom.

'This is 'Primary Nutrient Solution'!' 'Drinking one mouthful is enough to sustain your high-intensity labor for an entire day!'

A sinister laugh came from Okale's amplifier as he began to announce that set of extremely cruel rules. 'We are implementing a 'Work Point System'!' 'Every person, every day, must hand in one hundred jin of high-quality ore!' 'Only those who complete this can exchange it for a bottle of nutrient solution!'

He paused, letting these cold rules seep into the bone marrow of every Ratman. 'Those who don't dig enough...' 'Hmph!'

Okale waved his hand abruptly, issuing a silent command. At the edge of the crowd, a few clever-acting Ratmen were trying to use their companions' bodies as cover to sneak away.

The next instant, several black shadows shot out from the shadows like lightning! They were a few large Zerglings, their speed reaching the extreme, their sharp limbs carving ear-piercing friction sounds into the ground.

Squelch! There were no screams. The sharp claws precisely sliced open the bodies of those few Ratmen; before the blood even had time to spray, the Zerglings greedily leaned in and licked it clean with their barbed tongues.

A few seconds later, only a few inconspicuous dark stains remained on the ground. Okale's voice sounded again, providing the final annotation for this bloody scene.

'Those who don't dig enough will be used as raw material for 'Secondary Nutrient Solution' and fed to the Larvae!'

Dead silence. A dead silence even deeper and more desperate than before. Every Ratman's body froze; they watched those few Zerglings that had finished licking the blood and were once again lurking back into the shadows, and every cell in their bodies was screaming.

One second. Two seconds. The next second, the instinct for survival completely overwhelmed everything else. 'Ahhh!' Don't know who roared first, but immediately after, tens of thousands of Ratmen erupted with the greatest potential of their lives.

They lunged like madmen toward the mountain of pickaxes and shovels piled on the ground nearby, biting and trampling each other to scramble for tools. 'Ore! Dig ore!' 'For the nutrient solution!' 'To survive!'

The chaos lasted only a dozen seconds, and the Ratmen who grabbed tools rushed headlong toward the massive mountain ahead that had just been discovered and was exuding a metallic scent. Their running figures converged into a black flood that had breached a dam, pouring into the dark mine tunnels.

High in the sky, Su Chen's avatar of will watched this scene quietly, without a ripple of emotion. Mercy? That is a luxury that can only be brought to the table when resources are abundant and there is no threat to survival. In this perilous World of Gods, in this cruel universe where the weak are prey to the strong, efficiency is the only truth.

'With this batch of free and tireless labor, plus the exploration and smelting technology of the Gray Dwarves...' Su Chen's gaze shifted from the rushing Ratmen and landed on the virtual data panel before him.

The numbers in the resource collection rate column were jumping upward frantically at an astonishing rate. A slight arc curled up at the corner of his avatar's mouth.

'The mining speed of the Mithril Vein can be increased by at least ten times.' 'The foundation for my 'Silver Wing Plan' is secure.'