Thirty days after the Harvest Festival is the hunting season at the Duke of Russ 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. Holy Lord Kingdom

A jihad recruitment order was issued to all surrounding ecclesiastical principalities. Adult males from all ecclesiastical principalities who are in good health and capable of fighting must go to the Holy Lord Kingdom to join the Holy War Army to defeat the evil and ungodly country of the Ot Federation.

Under this situation, the hunting season at the Duke of Ruth Hunting Ground had to be suspended, because all the adult males in the Duke of Ruth had gone to the battlefield, and the only ones left were some women and children.

Although only women and children were left, the hunting at the Duke of Russ Hunting Ground could not stop. With the private investment of King Russ IX, people from the towns surrounding the Duke Hunting Ground were hired by him to hunt in the mountains, and even sent out

He became one of the only two Duke Guards to serve as temporary hunters, teaching and leading the people to hunt.

The reason for this is not because King Russ IX loves hunting so much, but because there is a very special beast called Jerry Rat growing in Mount Geridos where Duke Russ’s hunting ground is located.

The jerry rat is the main hunting prey in Duke Ruth's hunting ground every hunting season. This kind of rat is huge. An adult jerry rat is about the same size as 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 beast usually feeds on insects in the mountains, tree roots and some fruits that fall from trees. Because it has no natural enemies, the population is also huge. No matter how many jerry rats are killed in the previous year, the population will definitely be the same the next year.

will return to normal.

Under normal circumstances, jerry rats will stay in the mountains and dare not go down the mountain. They will go to towns where humans live to look for food, and will not cause any damage to human plants. But the problem is that once the jerry rat population on Jelidos Mountain reaches a

If the carrying capacity of the mountain forest reaches its limit, the Jerry rats will be forced to go down the mountain for food, forming a very harmful rat tide.

At that time, everything edible in the place 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 plague.

The Rusian Principality experienced two rat tides after its establishment. Both rat tides led to rampant plague throughout the Principality and a decline in the population. Forty percent of the people died of starvation, and another forty percent

People died of illness, and most of the remaining survivors fled to other surrounding principalities. Only a few who could not walk stayed.

At that time, the Duke of Rus had no responsibility. At the beginning of the rat tide, he took his wealth, family and guards to other ecclesiastical principalities for refuge, and allowed the disaster to develop in his country. Later, the second time

During the rat tide, people who fled brought the germs carried by the rat tide to other countries, and even people in the Holy Lord Kingdom were infected.

This directly caused the Pope of the Purifying Fire Church to become angry. He issued an excommunication order to the then Duke of Russ, expelled him from the church, and ordered all the subordinate countries of the Purifying Fire Church not to sell any food to the Duke of Russ.

At that time, the Duke of Rus starved to death in his castle.

After that, the successor remembered the lessons of the former Duke of Delus and actively looked for a solution to the rat tide. Finally, he found this most primitive hunting method. During the breeding period of Jerry rats, he held a hunting season, directly disrupting the situation.

The breeding activities of jerry rats, killing adult jerry rats, greatly reduced the jerry rat population in the coming year, and finally solved the rat tide disaster in Jelidos Mountain.

Although due to proper governance, so many years have passed, there has never been a rat tide in the Principality of Ruth. However, successive Dukes of Ruth have not dared to take it lightly. After all, the mummies made of the Dukes of Ruth who starved to death are still there today.

It was placed in a display cabinet in the castle hall of Duke Ruth, always warning them of the dangers of the rat tide.

It is precisely because of this fear accumulated over the years that King Russ IX, a recognized greedy prince, had to pay for his own money to hire people to go into the mountains to hunt jerry rats when the hunting season could not continue, and he

The only thing he hopes is that the fur of the hunted jerry rats will be intact, so that he can get some money back.

Penistan was one of the many people recruited by King Russ IX, but she was not the kind of ordinary townspeople who knew nothing about hunting. She had followed her hunter father to hunt in the mountains since she was a child. After so many years,

, her hunting skills are no worse than those of the old hunters. She once stayed alone in the forest for two months to hunt an adult Jota bear, and finally killed one five times the size of an adult with a trap.

A large Jota's bear, and there were only four wounds on the skin when it was pulled off.

If she were a man, based on her achievements, she would already have a purple laurel crown on her head, and would be honored as the Moon Crown Hunter.

It's a pity that she is a woman. In the teachings of the Church of Purifying Fire, 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 has tried every means to compete with the men in the town in all aspects. This time the recruitment order from the Holy Lord Kingdom gave her a bold idea, that is, she pretended to be a man.

Join the army, make meritorious deeds on the battlefield, and then show your female identity at the medal ceremony and slap the faces of those who think women are just accessories, even if you pay for it with your life.

However, before she could implement this idea, a recruitment order from King Russ IX was sent to her town. As her hunting skills far exceeded those of the average male in the town, she naturally became a key target for recruitment.

Although she was somewhat unwilling to do so, the price offered by Horus IX was so generous that she had to change her original bold plan and wait until after the hunting season.

In the days before entering the mountains, Penistine had been hunting Jerry rats in the forest with the hunting team headed by the Russ IX Guards. However, she found that the leader of the hunting team was not interested at all.

She knew nothing about hunting and gave random directions while hunting, resulting in very little final results. Compared with the employment money provided by Russ IX, she valued the bounty of additional prey more. If she continued to follow the hunting team, she would

You may not even get a penny of extra bounty money.

So after that, she started to act alone, hunting jerry rats according to her own method. Then she pulled off the jerry rats' skin and sent them back to the camp to record the number. In just ten days, she had hunted jerry rats.

There are more than a thousand, which is the largest number of people in the entire camp.

Later, in order to save time traveling back and forth to the camp, she hired some herb collectors and lumberjacks in the camp who walked in the mountains and forests all year round. They went into the mountains with her and hunted Jerry rats. They then brought the prey back to the camp for processing.

Registration, because the employment contract was notarized in front of the public in the camp, so she didn't worry about those people taking advantage of the prey she hunted.

As a result, in just a few days, the money she earned during this hunting season has far exceeded the money she made working as a helper in the past three years.

However, Pennenstein is not satisfied with this. She feels that such an opportunity is rare. It will be difficult to make so much money in such a short period of time next time. Moreover, there are still many Jerry rats in the mountain, which is enough.

She caught the hunting season ending.

So she didn't stop there and continued walking deeper into the mountain forest. Also because the journey 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 also getting longer and longer, and because she had already reached the forest.

In the depths, it is very dangerous for a person to walk through the forest alone, so each time he delivers prey, he has changed from one person to two people, and now it requires three people to pass.

Just an hour ago, the three people hired by Pennistan had just taken away the gifts she had captured. Calculating the time, it would be at least tomorrow morning before the first group of people who sent the prey could follow the directions she left along the way.

Clues, find them here.

Originally, she was going to rest here for a night, but when she was setting up a temporary camp, she accidentally discovered some traces of Jerry rats nearby. Judging from the information displayed in the traces, these Jerry rats should be the same as her.

The nest of jerry rats that was solved before was not of the same population, and based on her experience, this kind of trace is likely to be the explorer rats sent by a large group of jerry rats that intends to expand their territory. Once the explorer rats find it,

Where appropriate for expansion, the large Jerry rat population will leave and attack that area. In the eyes of hunters, this expansion of rat territory can be said to be a mouse tide.

Based on Penistine's experience, generally as long as the pathfinding rats find a suitable territory, the rat group they are in will launch a rat tide attack that night, and a rat group capable of launching a rat tide attack usually has at least 8,000 rats.

Although Pennistan has a lot of experience in hunting Jerry rats and can easily kill a nest of Jerry rats if she is prepared, she has no way to deal with more than 8,000 Jerry rats.

So after discovering the situation, she immediately decided to leave this dangerous place overnight. As long as she got out of the rat territory before the rat tide, she would be safe. Otherwise, she was not sure whether she could

Make it out of the forest alive.

After making the decision, Peristan immediately gave up the prey that he had not yet had time to deal with, the precious herbs he picked along the way, and even some slightly heavier traps. He traveled completely lightly and headed out of the forest.

Drive as fast as you can in the direction.

But a problem soon arose. Not long after she left, it became completely dark. As an old hunter, she knew very well how dangerous it would be to walk in the dark forest. Some dangerous beasts that rarely move during the day would be there.

She appears in search of food at night, and without the protection of a camp or trap, she will be in great danger when faced with an attack by such a wild beast.

However, even if there is danger, attacks from other wild beasts are nothing compared to being overwhelmed by a tide of rats. Penisten can only forget about those possible dangers and move forward as much as possible.

But then a new problem appeared again, that is, she was lost and no longer knew where she was in the forest.

The place she is now is in the deepest part of the forest. She has never been here before, so in order to prevent herself from getting lost, she made various obvious marks along the way. The number of these marks is so large that it can even help

An ordinary person walked out of this forest.

However, since just now, after she detoured through a jungle where ferocious beasts lurked, she no longer saw the marks she had left on the book before, which meant that she must have taken the wrong path while detouring.

Now, she has not returned to the path 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 is not sure whether she should continue walking, because if there are no markings, she may

Will go back if I get lost.

Under this situation, Pennistan became calmer. She knew very well that it would be difficult for her, an ordinary person, to escape the current danger, so what she thought of at the moment was to use some extraordinary human power.

She quickly cleared an open space, took out five stone fragments with different patterns engraved on them from her backpack, placed the fragments in different positions, then used a hunting knife to make a cut on her palm, and drained the blood.

On those stone fragments.

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

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

However, for Penistine, who was not a believer in the Purifying Fire, the method she used was just a way to save herself. 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. Then the stones turned blood red and emitted bursts of light, wrapping Penistan.

.

The moment the light enveloped Penistine, an instruction map seemed to appear in Penistine's mind. This instruction map used the location of his surrounding environment as an indicator, marking danger and safety in sequence.

When Penistine saw the results of the markings, she couldn't help but be shocked, because in the map, most of the places around her were dangerous, and other places were not easy to get to. Only one place was marked safe, and it was very safe.

Seeing this scene, Penistine didn't know what decision to make. According to common sense, she should immediately choose the very safe direction and walk there. But in such an environment surrounded by dangers and it is not easy to go to the marked direction, one direction

Such a clear indication of safety makes people feel a little weird no matter how you look at it.

However, time did not allow her to think too much. The rustling sound from Jerry's swarm of rats had already reached her ears. It was estimated that the swarm of rats would arrive at her location in a short time.
Chapter completed!