Elemental Cats

The exploding wagons sent shards of wood chasing after the fleeing members of the convoy. The cracked and ruptured ground made passage difficult, and the slowest runners were struck by the shards, either being seriously wounded or dying if they were unlucky.

Those who weren't struck by the shards of wood didn't need to worry about feeling left out since the Rat King had launched its own attacks. Pulling rocks out of the ground and sending them flying toward the fleeing humans with enough power to blast through their bodies. The King also manipulated the ground to trap and break their legs if they didn't get hit by the first volley of projectiles.

It didn't take long for most of the members of the convoy to die.

As the heat from the Rat King spread, the wagons and goods that hadn't been flying too far started catching fire. That was only the beginning as the corpses and any other objects nearby also started burning.

After everything was on fire, the Rat King continued on its path, no longer paying attention to what happened behind it. Not even when grey streams of smoke gathered from the burning piles and drifted in the direction of the King.

The grey smoke didn't pose a threat and was instead the essence of its victims and was absorbed by the King as soon as the smoke came into contact with its body.

Only a few moments after the Rat King left the scene of carnage, the fire it had left in its wake stopped burning. Where there should have been charcoal or charred remains of skeletons, there was nothing more than the dry and barren ground. There were no signs of anything remaining after an entire convoy had been slaughtered.

Not even the tears of the father crying over his son's pierced body had left a mark on the ground. The only thing that remained of the crushed merchant was the mark of the foot that had done the crushing.

The colossal Scorched Earth Rat King continued on his way toward human civilization, where there would be the highest concentration of food and the greatest opportunity for slaughter. The Rat King trampled on and obliterated anything that came in its way, just like it had done to the convoy led by the merchant with a son.

Not a single person who got in the King's way managed to escape.

The only ones who managed to survive were the ones who weren't in the way or moved before they even appeared in the King's eyes.

With how fast the Rat King traveled, it wouldn't take long for it to leave the wasteland, but it would still take at least a few days to reach Yellow Sparks, as long as nothing unexpected happened.

While the Rat King was crossing the wasteland and the exterminators and merchants were trying to leave it, the rest of the world didn't stop.

The fifth level manager of the Explorers' Guild had sent messages like a regretful mother as soon as he found the records about the Scorched Earth Rats. He had sent messages to Amber, so she could begin evacuating. To all the other guilds and organizations with business in First Ignition so they could also begin clearing out the plane. The manager had also sent messages as far up the ladder as he could, requesting help.

While the organizations on the plane could quickly begin preparing a retreat, the ordinary unaffiliated citizens didn't have the same ease and had to rely on either their personal connections or the help from various official institutions.

Despite belonging to a sizeable kingdom, or maybe that was the reason why help wasn't exactly viable for a single first level plane that didn't even have that large of a population or contribution to the kingdom's wealth. A couple of officials and squads of knights were sent to help manage the process, but compared to the size of the entire plane and everyone that would need somewhere to go, it was a laughable amount of reinforcements.

With the short notice, there wasn't any time to prepare a new place to send people to either. And that was when counting on people wanting to leave their homes in order to escape the approaching calamity. The residents of Yellow Sparks didn't have any special connections to their homes, and many of them had even recently fled their previous homes due to similar circumstances, so they easily agreed to begin evacuating.

But others, who were living in their ancestral home, were doubtful. The full details of the imminent catastrophe weren't disclosed. Except for a few with higher status who knew that an especially vicious and powerful Rat King was aiming for annihilation, everyone else only knew that something bad was going to happen.

Organizations like the Explorers' Guild had a significantly easier time since they frequently operated close to dangerous areas, where calamities often struck human territory. Their employees situated in those areas were often warned of the dangers and had the benefit of getting reassigned to a new location in the case of their workplace getting destroyed by natural disasters or other kinds of life-endangering catastrophes.

But while the organizations and residents of First Ignition could at least start the process of evacuating as soon as they got word of the approaching calamity, it wasn't as easy getting the message across to the higher-ups. There were several verification processes that needed to be cleared before a message would be taken seriously. And then, the message itself would have to be read, and when the message contained the obscure documents of a bunch of near-extinct beasts, those documents would also need to be verified.

The administrative process that was established in order to not unnecessarily waste resources and make sure only things of relevance were acted upon, while efficient, still delayed the fifth level manager's message from reaching its intended recipient. Even after it was received, it would take several more days until reinforcements were sent to First Ignition. And the reinforcements might not be strong enough to lend effective help even if they manage to arrive in time.