The battle at the entrance of the cave had indeed begun!

Fifteen minutes ago, as Qin Lun and the Dwarves Exploration Team left, the seven Apostle, led by Mustacha, began to carefully approach the Ratman’s cave.

They were loose inside and loose outside, carrying Tyre night lanterns and carrying packages of various sizes left behind by the dwarves, disguising their troops as small business trips to the underground city.

Ever since the prehistoric days of the valley, when Dark Elves lost the Elves Crown War and moved into the shadows with God Queen Elves to become Zhuo Er Elves, they have replaced Sanata Dwarves as the new ruler of the underground world.

However, the gloomy region was no different from the surface world. There was a lack of resources here. Apart from stones, there were only stones left. Although the underground was extremely rich in minerals and there were quite a few nests for living things, compared to the surface world, it was basically a heaven and an earth.

Dark Elves, who used to live a luxurious life, and their God Empress, how could they adapt to this change? Perhaps the abnormal mental state of Zhuo Er Elves and the Spider God Empress was formed because they couldn’t stand the barrenness of the dark region.

Zhuo Er Elves and Goddess Rose, who had fallen to the Spider God Realm, had never forgotten that one day they would counterattack the surface world.

It was good to say that they missed life on the surface and were prepared to counterattack the world on the surface in the future. In short, after Zhuo Er and Elves established many underground cities, they would normally allow surface merchants to travel to and from the underground cities to trade.

If it was a caravan that had been working together for a long time, the Dungeon would send escorts to them as appropriate.

Because some of the specialties of the Dark Region were extremely rare in the surface world, such as gemstones, dark creature cores, weapons and equipment from Zhuo Er Elves, tamed ox-headed monster slaves, and so on, as long as they didn’t die in the Dark Region, the surface caravans would always have huge profits.

Therefore, even though the business travelers knew that Zhuo Er Elves was hard to trust, they still flocked to it. Every year, many small business travelers ventured into the dark regions in search of a deal with the underground city.

The biggest problem the surface caravans encountered in the dark regions was not those sinister and cunning Zhuo Er and Elves, but the unknown dangers along the way. Sometimes, a Ratman Tribe like the one in front of Wei Si and the others could bring disaster to a small caravan.

…

Although Apostle had already heard Jillim introduce the characteristics of the Screaming Grey Mushroom, they were still shocked by the chain of screams after the first time they touched the Screaming Grey Mushroom.

The scream of the howling grey mushroom sounded a little like the scream from the spout of a kettle after it was boiled. The scream of a single howling grey mushroom wasn’t that big of a deal, but when the first howling grey mushroom started to scream, the vibration of the air quickly triggered a chain reaction.

The entire gray mushroom field was boiling, shaking the faces of Apostle to the point of being pale, their footsteps frivolous, and their ears buzzing for a long time. No other sounds could be heard clearly.

At this time, even Wei Si regretted not listening to Mustacha’s advice and stuffing a piece of cotton cloth into his ear.

Even though three Ratman Sentinels had escaped from the cave, the Apostle were still unable to adapt to the screams of the Screaming Grey Mushrooms, which made them look extremely miserable when dealing with the three Ratmen.

However, the only advantage was that even without acting, the Ratman Sentinels believed that their weakness was not faked. Very quickly, a Ratman Sentinel ran back to the cave and called for reinforcements, wanting to capture them all in one go.

After the second batch of adult Ratmen appeared, their numbers had already reached more than twenty, and they had even brought along a mud monster. This mud monster wasn’t very big, about two meters tall, but the size of the mud monster was small and the radius of the chassis was almost two meters. From afar, it looked like a miniature hill.

The mud monster didn’t have long legs. It moved by wriggling its chassis forward, with two enormous arms on its side. There were three thick stone toes on the front of his arm. After clenching his fists, he was like a hammer head, and his strength was extremely powerful.

The dwarf wounded Qin Lun had seen had probably been hammered by the mud monster on his chest before he died without a cure.

Even though the second batch of Ratmen were numerous and the Mud Monsters were helping, the caravans that Apostle had disguised as had stabilized their footing. Although they hadn’t ignored the Ratman Sentinel’s harassment, they had already withdrawn from the Screaming Grey Mushroom’s sphere of influence.

Once their minds weren’t affected, Apostle would still be able to handle more than twenty rats.

However, the Apostle did not release water in the dark. After stabilizing their footing, they erupted with a wave of attacks, killing the five rats that were charging at the front. Then, they fought back and fled in the direction of the Mushroom Forest.

In Gilliam’s introduction, they already knew that Ratman was an extremely timid, cautious, and cunning intelligent creature.

Since they were intelligent creatures, Ratmen had their own ability to observe and judge. If they were discovered, Apostle would be unable to seduce the other Ratmen from the Ratmen’s cave. After all, the twenty or so Ratmen in front of them were only a small portion of the tribe.

The reason for that was because they had already completely annihilated the previous squad of Dwarves. Based on this calculation, the Ratman Tribe had at least a hundred adult warriors.

Mustacha and Wei Si’s judgement was correct. After realizing that the current forces were unable to take down the caravan and that no other enemies were found nearby, the adult warriors in the Ratman’s cave poured out in large numbers.

At this time, however, the rats finally showed their cunning.

Qin Lun and the others could see from a high altitude that the Ratmen surging out of the nest were divided into three groups. One group of more than twenty joined the previous attack group, while the other two groups began to circle around Mustacha and the others from both sides.

The total number of Ratmen had risen to more than a hundred, as well as the two Ratman Priests holding wooden sticks and a few Ratman Thieves who had disappeared from the cave. Qin Lun and the others couldn’t help but pinch cold sweat for their companions in front of them.

Fortunately, Hill used telepathy to quickly provide the information that Qin Lun had observed to Masta Xia, so that no one had to worry about the situation.

To the surprise of the spectators, the harpsichord master, after knowing that the Ratman intended to surround them, actually decided to take advantage of the situation and wait for the Ratman to successfully surround them before forcefully breaking out of the encirclement.

There were two advantages to doing so. Before the Ratmen could successfully surround them, they took large strides backwards, easily arousing suspicions among the Ratmen. At the same time, he stepped into the ambush circle prematurely and was unable to catch all of the rats in one go.

After the Ratmen surrounded them, they would forcefully break out of the encirclement. Ratman would no longer suspect that there was an ambush, so he could safely step into the Dwarves’ ambush circle.

Of course, the risks and benefits of doing so are as obvious as they are. There were too many rats in this group, and the mud monsters, priests, thieves … Attack, defense, and auxiliary guilds of the Iron Triangle were perfect. Once they failed to break through, the ambushing companions could only show up to help.

In that case, not only would the bait plan fail, but the Dwarves team would continue to waste a lot of time here. Perhaps they would still be able to destroy the Ratman Tribe in the end, but the price they paid at that time would be too great, and they didn’t know how much time Apostle would have left to stay.

What surprised Qin Lun again was that Wei Si agreed to Mastasia’s plan without hesitation. It seemed that this high-level Apostle was very confident in the strength of his team.

As for Hill and Rand, Qin Lun wasn’t worried about them at all. Hill had the bloodline of a Spirit Vampire, and the few innate abilities he obtained were the nemesis of a low-grade underground creature like the Ratman. And Rand’s large area fire skill was enough for him to support reinforcements in any critical situation.

The subsequent developments were completely under the control of Masta Xia and the others. However, the intensity of the battle had greatly opened the eyes of Qin Lun and the others who were watching the battle.

The first to show off in this small team was the shield guard of the Wei Si team. This tall human defender with a large tower shield demonstrated the true value of the team’s MT.

In battle, his two core abilities played a crucial role. One was the range control skill, War Horn, and the other was the range defense skill, Heavy Shield Attack.

War horns were the advanced skills of warriors. Every time the shield guards used war horns, they would cause the encirclement formed by the Ratman and the Mud Monster to fall into a dilemma, forcing a crack to appear.

In the end, the Ratman Priest, who was in charge of commanding them, had no choice but to split the encirclement into two layers to prevent the small caravan from taking advantage of the chaos to break out.

The Heavy Shield Strike was one of the most outstanding Range Defense Skills Qin Lun had ever seen. When this type of shield attack was activated, more than a dozen afterimages would appear on both sides of the shield. Each afterimage seemed to have a portion of the power of the main body.

After the heavy shield strike, all the rats in front of the shield guards would be sent flying, and even the mud monsters would be paralyzed for a long time before they could return to battle. It could be said that if the Shield Guards did not possess these two skills, it would be difficult to say how long this small team’s defensive formation would be able to endure the Ratman Warrior’s attacks.

Under the efforts of the shield guards, including Mastasia and other Apostle, they had properly displayed their strength.

Wei Si, the daughter of the Apostle team, finally revealed her Apostle profession. She was a Holy Light Priest who looked more like a priest than Hill. Every time she healed, her healing light was perfect, allowing the shield guards who were under the greatest pressure to relieve their fatigue in time and quickly recover their combat strength.

With the existence of the Holy Priest of Light, Hill no longer used half-recovered magic. Instead, he displayed the offensive power of a Chaos Priest. His hands continuously emitted purple and black rays of light.

Every Ratman touched by purple or black rays rolled painfully all over the ground, completely losing its fighting strength, or fell silently to the ground, directly stiffening to death.

Priests of Primal Chaos were advanced professions of prayer priests. When they were First Grade prayer priests, Hill had mastered most of the divine spells that were used to increase the level of magic and low-grade laws. When he advanced to Second Grade Priest, the terrifying abilities of this profession would begin to show.

Hill’s purple rays were [Dark Words: Pain], while the black rays were high-grade [True Words: Vanishing].

[Dark Word Technique: Pain] is a judgment of the will. Creatures that cannot pass through will feel unparalleled pain within a certain period of time.

[True Word Technique: Vanishing] was even more terrifying. This was a direct judgment of a creature’s physique. If one could not pass the judgment, they would die directly.

Of course, these two Chaos prayers consumed a lot of energy, and the upper limit was related to Hill’s willpower and constitution. If it was in front of a creature of the same level, it wouldn’t be as effective as it was against a low-level rat-man.

Apart from Hill, the performance of the other two ranged professions in the team could only be said to be moderate. Mastassa’s archery skills were not executed to the maximum extent. She also needed to observe the battle situation and control the overall situation.

The black-robed mage Romon threw a few fireballs from time to time, paying attention to the Ratman Priest’s actions. He had to interrupt the two Ratman Priests’ recovery spells from time to time.

One was to prevent them from paying attention and observing their surroundings, and the other was to suppress the results of the Ratman Priest’s treatment of the seriously injured Ratman, so as to relieve the pressure for the battle that followed.

In comparison, Rand and the Thieves had a special role to play. They basically didn’t cooperate with the others. The two of them were grouped together to deal with several Thief professions in the Ratman Tribe.

Rand purposefully blasted the small lava ball. The rain of fire from the small lava ball did not cause much damage, but it covered a large area and could break through the stealth of thieves. Once the Ratman Thief revealed his body, the monkey would immediately wrap around him and fight for a wave of explosions to repel and even injure the Ratman Thief.

The two of them basically guaranteed that the squad would not be destroyed by the Ratman Thieves, allowing them to persevere for a long time.

The only one who didn’t perform his combat duties was Wei Si, the strongest member of the team. At this time, high-ranking Apostle played the role of an impatient and cowardly businessman.

He mumbled dirty words that no one could understand, scolded his companions who pretended to be mercenaries in the caravan, and danced and commanded randomly, but everyone cooperatively ignored him.

Wei Si succeeded in reassuring the rats further and gathering all the troops to surround them. At this time, with the passage of time, more than 130 rats joined the encirclement. Qin Lun and the others even saw a few clearly underage rats at the edge of the encirclement.

The Ratman Tribe had finally been slowly squeezed out of their strength by Mastasia and the others. Qin Lun believed that if he encircled and annihilated this group of Ratmen, the tribe would not be able to recover its vitality for a very long time, and naturally would not be able to interfere with the Dwarves exploration team.

Despite the intense fighting, Mustacha noted that the situation was moving in the direction they had expected. She decisively cancelled her plan to break out of the encirclement and retreated like this, luring the surrounding Ratmen to slowly move towards the Dwarves’ ambush circle …