428.Chapter 426 425 Jackal Ferryman on the River Styx from Today

Chapter 426 425.The Jackal Ferryman on the River Styx will be renamed Hogg from this day forward
The smuggler’s woodland is flooded with undead.

This is not something that happened in the last few days. Ever since Hogg and the Plague Clan hooked up, this particular “strategic resource” has been growing at a terrifying rate in the Smuggler’s Woods.

Along with the arrival of the plague warlocks and necromancers from Plague Town, the ratio of jackals to dead souls in the Blood Claw Clan’s area has reached a staggering 40:1.

It was also the case that the Necromancers didn’t need food and rest, otherwise the logistics of this force alone would be enough to break Hogg and its clansmen.

So many mouths were enough to gnaw every piece of bark in the smuggler’s woodland from end to end.

However, even so, the days of the Bloodclaw Clan were not so good during this period of time, the gathering of a large number of undead made the concentration of death psychic energy in the vicinity soared, the power of these grim dead was a terrible oppression for the living beings, the intelligent beings could still rely on their courage to fight against it, but the beasts who had a sharper sense would not be so headstrong, so the large number of animals escaping from the woodland made it difficult for Hogg’s hunters to capture enough Meat.

Luckily, the previous deal with the Scarlet Fortress allowed Hogg to stockpile a large amount of food in a secret location, which allowed his people not to go hungry during this difficult time.

But it wouldn’t do to keep going on like this!
The threatening nature of sitting on food was unacceptable to any knowledgeable ruler, let alone a guy as smart as Hogg.

It could totally see the threat of this sort of thing dragging on any longer.

And it wasn’t just it, all the commanders of the entire Bloodclaw Clan basically saw this problem.

“Chief! Gotta get them outta here fast!”

Nash, Hogg’s most relied on adjutant, said sadly to his chief:

“Our hunters haven’t caught any fresh meat for four days in a row, even the silliest elk have fled massively into the vicinity of Lake Shulpeth in fear of the Necromantic entrenchment, and I’ve sent out men to catch fish, but we Jackals are really bad at that.

We’re going to starve to death if we keep this up.”

“Spirit energy! Filth!”

Goldtooth, the leader of the dog-headed men standing on the other side of Hogg, also leaned on his “luxurious bone staff” decorated with candles and stammered:

“The breath of the evil spirits is changing the spiritual energy! Our woodland will be corrupted and polluted, we must, we must drive them away!”

“Those damned warlocks are digging up the graves where we buried our people, Hoggle.”

The barbarian leader, Maltai Wisdom and Weakness, yelled as he too wielded a jackal’s baton:

“They also intend to turn our best barbarian soldiers into bones, this cannot be tolerated.”

“Shut up! All shut up!”

Seeing a few other chiefs jumping at the chance to make some comments, Hoggton shouted:

“All of you listen to me, you fools, bear with me a little longer, in two days at the most they’ll be gone, and I’ll personally lead them out of our precious woodlands. Nash, did you find the route I asked you to look for?”

It looked to the adjutant.

Nash immediately unfolded a roll of animal skin map he had drawn in front of his own chief’s eyes as if offering a treasure, and it pointed with its sharp claws to a few markings and the crooked route on the map, saying:

“Just go through here! Chief Hogg, from here you can bypass the Transylvanian posts on the hills, cross over two tributaries in the night to slip into the East Prussia, and up to three hourglasses east of the drop-off point is the Sealanders’ post.

There were a lot of men there, but the short-man marshal had taken all the soldiers there and sent them to Transylvania, so that had caused the number of soldiers there to drop terribly.

I sent a couple of hunters who weren’t afraid to die over there to look at it, and a portion of the jackals that had escaped from Transylvania earlier were also entrenched in a nearby ravine.

Our hunters have contacted them, they were beaten up by the recruits of the Pioneer Legion, as soon as they heard about the reinforcements coming from the Dark Mountains they immediately said that they are willing to lead the way, they know where there are plenty of goodies around there.

We just need to get those damn warlocks over there and leave them alone, our compatriots over there will do the rest for us.

But now the question is, isn’t that Chief Torn Flesh not letting us expand the war?

The warlocks under its command won’t listen to us, either.”

“Ch, who needs them to be obedient?”

Hogg scoffed at that, and it sneered:
“I admit that those warlocks are very powerful, but so what? It’s their first time in Transylvania, they don’t know the way at all, and wherever I take them, they can only follow.

Most importantly, our ‘friends’ will arrange everything.

Don’t worry, I guarantee that those ‘noble’ and arrogant warlocks will end up with only this path to follow.

So, go get ready.”

Chief Bloodclaw looked at the map in front of him as it whispered:

“I will take them away tomorrow, until I come back, you need to keep a low profile, we are now friends of the Transylvanians. But those Silanians won’t recognize us so quickly, so be prepared!

If they have to play it cool with us poor local jackals and don’t dare to challenge the awesome jackals of the Dark Mountain Range, then give them a bit of a show!
Let them know that Clan Bloodclaw is not something to be messed with either.”
—
Time passed by, and soon it reached the time for the execution of Chief Torn Flesh’s order, and in the middle of the night in the Smuggler’s Woodland, Hogg rode his own Seat Wolf with a dozen or so resourceful hunters and brigands leading at the head of the pack, while following behind them was an army of three thousand Jackal Skeletons.

These skeleton armies were even tougher than the previous elites.

The Jackalese necromancers had enchanted them with thick bone armor and weapons with tainted poisons, and the most important thing was that this was an army of skeletons that was fully equipped and staffed.

From infantry to archers to skeleton mages and cavalry, there are also scavenging birds flying in the air as eyes, in addition to the eight plague warlocks and twelve necromancers in the core of the skeleton army, there is also a rather conspicuous “zombie giants” in the ranks.

Well, these guys are actually undead bone-biting barbarians.

I don’t know what went wrong, but at the same time that Hogg “booby-trapped” those bone-biting soldiers who had a strong opinion of him, there seemed to be a “mutiny” in Plague Town.

Anyway, there are no more living bone-biting barbarians there, and the warlocks of the Plague Clan have turned all of them into stronger and more loyal jackal zombies.

It’s hard to say whether there is any factor that Crippled Claw is in urgent need of “test subjects”, anyway, Hogg thinks that this matter must have something to do with himself.

It was his hand that ignited the hidden conflict between the Bone Biting Barbarians and the Plague Warlocks, but for Hogg, who will surely “do all the bad things” in the future, this is just a trivial attempt.

He was leading the way very carefully.

With this powerful army behind him, he headed towards the human arsenal and barracks in the Andromeda Hills, with orders from the Flesh Tearer Chiefs to destroy such strategic locations to slow down the enemy’s activities.

The nearly 3,000-strong skeleton army marched under the night with very, very little noise, almost like a “silent mode”, and those grim plague warlocks even used their psychic abilities to apply a moving boundary for the army to hide.

From this we can see that the Dark Mountain jackals are “full of virtue”, even if it is a “small-scale attack” in their opinion, they have to use their spiritual energy on the edge of the sword.

In comparison, the local jackals’ small fights were really a mess.

Hogg also couldn’t help but spit in his heart, it’s not for nothing that the Dark Mountain jackals look down on these “foreign jackals” from their own family.

The two sides have almost no similarity at any level.

Recently, it has been close to the crippled claw, and from the mentally unstable crippled claw, I heard that some of the jackal supervisors in the Dark Mountain Range have proposed to distinguish the glorious Dark Mountain Range tribe from the jackals outside.

Those guys had given the outlander jackals a very insulting new name.

They want to call all jackals except them “lugs” as a sign of distinction.

As for what kind of animal “lug” is, Hogg does not know yet, Transylvania does not have this kind of strange creatures, but he can think with his own bald tail to know that it is certainly not a good word.

“It’s just ahead, my lord!”

After five hours of marching, Hogg sat down on his wolf and drank a sip of water with honey, then took out the animal skin map and pretended to look at it under the torchlight, then said very flatteringly to the warlock leader “Plague Tooth” beside him:

“Once we cross the small hill in front of us, we will officially enter the territory of Andromeda Hills, which will be the last section of the smuggler’s woodland. The Transylvanian arsenal is near there, and the Silanian barracks my cubs found are a bit farther away, and it will take a day’s further march to get there.”

“Hmm.”

Plague Tooth nodded indifferently.

It didn’t bother to say anything more to Hogg, partly because it was arrogant enough, and partly because the guy had accidentally burned off his tongue while learning the Plague Poison spell. It couldn’t say anything even if it wanted to.

However, after twenty minutes of continued marching, Plague Tooth’s expression suddenly changed.

This warlock leader riding on a tall seated wolf raised the eerie bone staff in his own hand as if giving a command, causing the three thousand skeleton army to stop at the same time, a scene that made Hogg shrink his head.

The other warlocks flew over to join Plague Tooth.

They realized that something had gone wrong, and after communicating with each other with the resonance of their psychic energy, another blinded warlock took Plague Tooth’s place and picked up a whip and lashed it hard towards Hogg, chiding again:

“You bastard! Why didn’t you report a vampire mage tower ten kilometers directly ahead?”

“Huh?”

A dumbfounded Hogg asked rhetorically:

“What do you mean ‘mage tower’? My cubs told me there was a strange building there, they thought it looked like an abandoned barn or a human windmill mill, that damn thing doesn’t even resemble Lord Torn Flesh’s Warlock Tower!”

“Fuck!”

The Blood Claw Chief’s pain-in-the-ass answer perfectly fit the “lapdog stupid” persona he had created for himself, and made the Jackal Warlock who had asked the question look despairing.

To be honest, it was very difficult to see despair on a face that had been exposed to toxins for so long that it had paralyzed the facial nerves, but the truth was right in front of us.

Through the scavenging of the scavenging birds, the jackal warlocks had realized the severity of the problem.

A small mage tower was standing in front of them!

If there were vampire psychics stationed there, it meant that an army of their size couldn’t cross over without alerting the other side in any case.

There was a mage tower with or without a psychic master that was a different concept, now even the knowledgeable Plague Warlocks didn’t dare to act rashly.

Being discovered is a small matter, but not being able to fulfill the orders of the chief of the flesh torn is a big matter, the most crazy corpse puppet constructor under the chief’s command, Crippled Claw, where there are never enough experiments.

In the plague clan where internal competition is fierce to a horrifying degree, the best thing that can happen to a worthless guy is to become a necromancer.

The plague warlocks could no longer care about drinking in Hogg’s stupidity this time, they gathered together and whispered, and finally came to an agreement, the warlock who had asked before twisted his head to viciously glare at Hogg with his own one-eye, it said:
“Detour! Take a detour at once, bypass that mage tower and attack the arsenal and barracks from the other direction!
You!
You accomplished fool!
If you tell me again that you didn’t even reserve an alternate path, I will pull your tongue out!”

“There is! This one is definitely there, I have two paths prepared for Lord Torn Flesh.”

Hogg handed over the animal skin map in his hand with a scowl as it whispered:

“The second path is farther and more circuitous, but it is not surrounded by sentries, but this path will have to go from the woodlands into East Prussia before walking half a day along the border line to circle back to the Andromeda Hills, but Lord Torn Flesh has expressly forbidden us to expand the war.

It forbids us to set foot on East Preussian soil.”

“It has all the good words and all the bad words, the cunning old undead!”

The warlock reading the map cursed in a low voice.

It was ample proof that in the Plague Clan, Lord Torn Flesh’s reputation wasn’t really all that good, but it had a big enough fist and a spirit that could be ferocious, and that was enough to squash any disobedience.

“Go around!”

After a few minutes, the Plague Warlocks came to an agreement, and they tossed the map back to Hogg, saying:

“Going the extra mile is also a better bet than facing a prepared mage tower head-on, but all this delay and danger is due to your stupid intelligence failures, Hogg! You’re on your own when we get back to Plague Town.

You wretch!”

Hogg had a face of awe and despair on the surface, but he was actually happy in his heart.

Are you guys fucking thinking too far ahead, even at this point, you actually still fantasize that you can go back to Plague Town alive?
Hey, do you guys have any misunderstandings about the Transylvanian barbarians’ style of behavior?

If they let you go back in one piece, I’ll write my name upside down!

At the same time, on the top floor of the “Vampire Mage Tower”, Miss Phineas, who had been transferred here by Murphy’s secret order, was holding a magical book and reading it.

The walls of the “Mage Tower” around her were covered with the characteristic roughness of freshly dried cement, and its interior was completely devoid of any decoration.

It was a rough room, and there was not even time to put on the spiritual energy imprint.

This tower was only built last night by the workers of the Brotherhood of Stonemasons in a hurry, although it was originally in the plan of Transylvania’s 100 days of great construction, and it was specially for Countess Andromeda, Ms. Phoebus, to build a place of magic in her own territory, but the problem is that this thing is just a “look-alike” right now.

The fluctuation of spiritual energy it can emit is all stimulated by Fimis herself, in other words, the detection result of the hunters of the Blood Claw Clan is correct.

In other words, the hunters of the Bloodclaw Clan were correct in their detection. This thing was a “windmill mill”!
It’s just that the Plague Clan’s warlocks were too cautious.

“What kind of strange names did Murphy give me?”

Phemis, who was alone in the tower and was tasked with “tactical intimidation”, flipped through the notes in her hand, and said harshly in her heart:
“What I need is a proper organization name that can attract the curiosity of the warriors, not these middle-of-the-road names.

That asshole is definitely too profoundly influenced by the off-key style of his warriors.

I’m not going to call myself the ‘Supreme Mage’ of some Kamatage, a title that I’m afraid even Tris wouldn’t dare to use, and if I did, I’d be waiting for the Spiritualists from all over the continent to take turns kicking the door.

Huh~ this name is good ah!”

Femis flipped over a page and suddenly brightened up.

She flapped her wings and flew up by the window, mobilizing her scouting technique to observe the changes at the border of the smuggler’s woodland in the distance while thinking in her mind:

“Red Magic House tsk tsk, both literally and semantically it suits me quite well, ha, those guys can be reliable once in a while.

Huh?
They turned around? Are they that cautious?”

Missy, because of the blood and the Seed of Life in her body, gave her one more point than the other vampires in terms of her psychic ability to sense the natural psychic energy of forests and trees.

She quickly sensed a change in the situation in the smuggler’s woodland, which made Femis snort.

That said, she hadn’t really been involved in a battle after achieving the Silver rank, and she had planned to move her muscles tonight but didn’t realize that these jackals from the Dark Mountains were actually so timid.

Is this the actual case of the so-called “the older the jianghu, the smaller the guts” that the warriors often talk about?
Thinking so, she activated the Operational Pearl and said to Murphy, who was waiting for the news:
“The jackals have set out on the path you prepared for them.”

“Say the code word! Wasn’t that emphasized before?”

“What’s wrong with you! You have to prepare a crappy code word for something like this okay okay, ‘The eagle has returned to its nest, the hunter may draw his bow’.”

Femis returned with an egg on his face, only then was Murphy over there satisfied as he said:

“Just please stay on over there for another 48 hours to monitor the next operation, besides, Tris and I got you a code name.

From now on, you are the Test Group’s newcomer customer service ‘Fifi’ .”

“I hate that name, Murphy! Change it for me!”

“Alright, you can call yourself ‘Faye’.”

“. Then it’s better to call Faye, and besides, I hate you! Murph!”

“Please call titles at work, my dear Fifi, and now, please call me His Excellency, the Alpha Administrator.”

(End of chapter)