The Mysterious World Under Steampunk

Thirty days after the Harvest Festival is the hunting season at Duke Ruth’s hunting ground. In previous years, hunters from all over the country and even foreign countries would rush here to participate in the annual hunting season, but this year the situation is different. A jihad recruitment order has been issued to all the surrounding church principalities. All adult males who are in good health and able to fight must go to the holy country to join the holy war army and crusade against the godless and evil country of the Otto Federation.

Under such circumstances, the hunting season at the Duke of Ruth's hunting grounds had to be suspended, because all the adult males in the Duke of Ruth had gone to the battlefield, and the rest were women and children.

Although there were only women and children left, the hunting at the Duke of Ruth’s hunting ground could not stop. With the private funding of King Russ IX, people in the surrounding towns of the Duke’s hunting ground were hired by him to hunt in the mountains, and even sent out One of the only two Duke Guards, acting as a temporary hunter, teaching and leading the people to hunt.

The reason for this is not because Ruth IX loves hunting so much, but because there is a very special kind of beast, Jerry Rat, in the Jelidos Mountain where Duke Ruth's hunting ground is located.

The jerry mouse is the main hunting prey in the annual hunting season of Duke Ruth's hunting ground. This kind of mouse is huge. An adult jerry mouse is about the size of a young pig. The fur of this beast is one of the highest-grade animal skins, and Its meat is fresh and tender, and it is also the best meat.

This kind of beast usually feeds on insects, tree roots and some fruits that fall from the trees in the mountains. Because there are no natural enemies, the population is also huge. No matter how many jerry mice were killed in the previous year, the population will definitely will return to normal.

Under normal circumstances, jerry mice will stay on the mountain and dare not go down the mountain, and go to the towns where humans live to look for food, let alone cause any damage to human plants, but the problem is that once the jerry mouse population on Jelidos mountain reaches If the carrying limit of the mountain forest is exceeded, the jerry rats will be forced to go down the mountain for food, forming a very harmful rat tide.

At that time, all the edible things in the places where the rat tide passes will be eaten by them, and for some unknown reasons, they will transform into sick rats, carrying various germs and spreading the plague.

The Duchy of Russ had experienced two rat tides after its establishment. Both rat tides caused the entire Duchy to be plagued by plague and the population withered. Forty percent of the people died of starvation, and 40 percent of the people People died of illness, and most of the survivors fled to other surrounding church principalities, and only a few people who couldn't walk would stay.

At that time, the Duke of Russ had nothing to do. At the beginning of the rat wave, he took his wealth, family and guards to other duchies to take refuge in other duchies, and let the disaster develop in his own country. Later, it was the second time. During the rat swarm, those who fled brought the germs carried by the rat swarm to other countries, and even the people of the Holy Lord were infected.

This directly led to the anger of the Pope of the Purifying Fire Church, who issued an excommunication order against the then Duke of Russ, expelled the Duke of Russ, and ordered all the affiliated countries of the Purifying Fire Church not to sell any food to the Duke of Russ. The Duke of Russ starved to death in his castle.

Afterwards, the successor remembered the lesson of the former Duke of Derus and actively searched for a solution to the rat infestation, and finally found the most primitive hunting method. During the breeding season of the Jerry rat, he held a hunting season and directly disrupted the rat population. The breeding activities of jerry rats, killing adult jerry rats, greatly reducing the population of jerry rats in the coming year, finally solved the rat tide disaster in Jelidos Mountain.

Although the Duke of Russ has never had a rat outbreak after so many years because of poor governance, the Dukes of Russ did not dare to take it lightly. It was placed in the display case of Duke Ruth's castle hall, always warning them of the danger of the rat tide.

It is precisely because of this kind of fear accumulated over the years that Ruth IX, the recognized greedy Grand Duke, had to hire people into the mountains to hunt Jerry rats at his own expense when the hunting season could not go on. The only hope is that the fur of those Jerry mice that are hunted will be intact, so that he can get back some of his money.

Penistan was one of the many people recruited by Ruth IX, but she was not the kind of ordinary townsman who knew nothing about hunting. She had been hunting in the mountains with her hunter father since she was a child. , her hunting skills are not much worse than those of the old hunters. She once spent two months alone in the mountains to hunt an adult Jota's bear, and finally killed an adult bear that was five times the size of an adult with a trap. Large Yota bear, and the plucked bear hide has only four wounds.

If she was a man, according to her record, she would have already worn a crown of purple laurel vines on her head, and she would be honored as the moon crown hunter.

It's a pity that she is a woman. In the teachings of the Purifying Fire Church, women are only accessories of men, and all the glory related to men has nothing to do with women.

She has always been dissatisfied with this, and tried every means to compete with the men in the town in all aspects. This time the recruitment order from the Holy Lord gave her a bold idea, that is, she pretended to be a man Go to join the army, make meritorious deeds on the battlefield, establish meritorious deeds, and then at the award ceremony, show your identity as a woman, and slap those who think that women are just accessories, even if you pay the price of your life for it.

However, before she could implement this idea, the recruitment order from King Russ IX was sent to her small town, and as the town's hunting skills far surpassed that of ordinary men, she naturally became the key target of recruitment. Although she was somewhat unwilling about this, the price paid by Russ IX was so generous that she had to change her original bold plan and wait until after the hunting season.

A few days before entering the mountain, Penistan hunted the Jerry rats in the forest with the hunting team headed by Ruth IX's Guards, but she found that the leader of the hunting team didn't care about it at all. She doesn't know anything about hunting, and commands randomly during hunting, resulting in very small final results. Compared with the mercenary money that Russ IX put out, she pays more attention to the bounty of extra prey. If she continues to follow the hunting team, she will Probably not even a penny of extra bounty.

So after that, she started to act alone, hunting Jerry mice according to her own method, and then pulled out the skin of Jerry mice, and sent them back to the camp to record the number. In just ten days, the number of Jerry mice she hunted has already There are more than a thousand, which is the most people in the entire camp.

Later, in order to save the time of going back and forth to the camp, she hired some herbal gatherers and loggers who walked in the mountains and forests all year round. They went into the mountains with her and hunted Jerry rats, and they sent the prey back to the camp for hunting. Registration, because the employment contract was notarized in front of the public in the camp, so she was not worried that those people would embezzle the prey she hunted.

So, in just ten days, the money she earned during this hunting season has far exceeded the money she earned as a helper in the past three years.

However, Penistan was not satisfied with this. She felt that such an opportunity was rare, and it would be difficult to make so much money in such a short period of time next time. Besides, there were still many Jerry mice in the mountain, enough She catches hunting season over.

So she didn't stop there, and continued to walk deeper into the mountain forest, and because the distance into the mountain was getting farther and farther, the time it took for the people she hired to deliver the prey to and from the camp was longer and longer, and because she had already reached the forest In the depths, it is very dangerous to walk through the forest alone, so each time the prey is delivered, it has changed from one person to two people, and now it is even more necessary for three people to pass.

Just an hour ago, the three people hired by Penistan had just taken away the gift she had captured. According to the time calculation, at least until tomorrow morning, the first batch of people who delivered the prey could follow the trail she left along the way. Clue, find here.

Originally, she planned to rest here for one night, but when she set up a temporary camp, she accidentally found some traces of jerry rats nearby. Judging from the information displayed in the traces, these jerry rats should be with her The litter of jerry mice that was eliminated before was not from the same population, but based on her experience, this trace was likely to be a trail mouse sent by a large population of jerry rats to expand its territory. Where it is suitable for expansion, the large population of jerry rats will leave to attack that area. In the eyes of hunters, this kind of rat colony expansion can be said to be a mouse tide.

According to Penistan's experience, as long as the pathfinder rats find a suitable territory, the group of rats they belong to will launch a rat swarm attack that night, and the rat group capable of launching a rat swarm attack usually has at least 8,000 rats.

Although Penistan has a lot of experience in hunting jerry mice and can easily deal with a litter of jerry mice if she is prepared, she has no way to deal with more than 8,000 jerry mice.

So after discovering the situation, she immediately decided to leave overnight and leave this dangerous place. As long as she walked out of the territory of the rat group before the rat swarm, she would be safe, otherwise, she couldn't be sure whether she could Get out of the forest alive.

After making a decision, Perristan immediately gave up the prey that he hadn't had time to deal with, and also gave up the precious herbs picked along the way, and even gave up some slightly heavy traps. Direction Hurry with the fastest speed.

But soon the problem appeared. Not long after she left, it was completely dark, and as an old hunter, he knew how dangerous it would be to walk in the forest at night, and some dangerous beasts that rarely moved during the day would be there. Coming out to feed at night, without the protection of camps and traps, she would be dangerous to the onslaught of this beast.

However, even if there is danger, the attacks of other wild beasts are nothing compared to being submerged by rat swarms. Now Penistan can only forget about those possible dangers and move forward as much as possible.

But then a new problem appeared again, that is, she got lost and didn't know where she was in the forest.

Now she is in the deepest part of the forest, and she has never been here before, so in order to prevent herself from getting lost, she made various obvious marks along the way. There are so many of these marks that they can even help An ordinary person walks out of this forest.

However, since just now, after she detoured a jungle where beasts lurk, she never saw the marks she left on the book before, which means that she should have taken the wrong path when she was detouring. No, she didn't go back to the road she took before.

Getting lost in the forest is also very dangerous for an old hunter, and getting lost at night is even worse. She doesn't know if she should continue walking, because if there are no signs to indicate, she may If you get lost, go back.

Under such circumstances, Penistan became calm instead. She knew very well that it might be difficult to get rid of the current danger with her own ordinary ability, so what she thought of at the moment was to use some extraordinary human strength.

I saw that she quickly cleared an open space, took out five stone fragments with different patterns engraved from her backpack, placed the fragments in different positions, and then used a hunting knife to cut a hole in the palm of her hand, dripping blood On those stone fragments.

After getting ready, she knelt and sat in the center of the five stone fragments, then, as if praying to God, she chanted some prayers, praising an unknown existence.

If the members of the Purifying Fire Church saw this scene, they would definitely label Penistan a heretic without hesitation and purify him with the purest flame.

However, for Penistan, who was not a believer of the Purifying Fire, the method she used was just a self-help method. As for whether it would make the Church of Purifying Fire happy, these were not things she would think about now.

Soon, this ritual took effect. The five ordinary stones absorbed all the blood on the surface of the stones, and then the stones also turned blood red, and emitted bursts of light, enveloping Penistan. .

At the moment when the light enveloped Penistan, an instruction map seemed to emerge in Penistan's mind. This instruction map used the location of the environment around him as an indicator, marking danger and safety in sequence.

When Penistan saw the marked results, she couldn't help being surprised, because in the instruction map, a huge part of the places around her were dangerous, and other places were not easy to go to. Only one place was marked safe, and it was very safe.

Seeing this scene, Penistan didn't know what decision to make for a moment. According to common sense, she should immediately choose a very safe direction and walk there. Such a clear statement of safety seems a bit odd no matter how you look at it.

However, time did not allow her to think too much, the rustling sound from the jerry rat swarm had already reached her ears, and it was estimated that the rat swarm would arrive at her location in a short time.

Facing the rat swarm that was approaching every step of the way, Penistan also had to make up his mind to put the gravel that had stopped functioning on the ground back into his backpack, and then walked towards the direction that was marked as very safe.