Chapter 239, Ratman Fleet Arrives at the New World
When Sheng Qi climbed down from the bathtub battleship and touched the earth again.
Calm, indescribable peace and tranquility.
On a coast where reefs are piled up, a small piece of land is left in the cracks between the rocks.
Sheng Qi fell from the metal bathtub while struggling.
Half of her body is still in the sea, and half of her body is leaning on the beach.
Too calm, even a bit sluggish.
The rat men on land could still light torches to illuminate the darkness where there was no light, but the conditions on the sea did not allow Sheng Qi to do this.
The utter darkness was driving him crazy.
When he set out, he brought thirty warships, but after seven days of darkness, there were only thirteen warships left around him.
In other words, fortunately, thirteen ships were left for him.
The huge bell on the bow of the ship had an effect. The noisy bell helped the rat people to unite at sea, so that the Western Expeditionary Force led by Sheng Qi would not be completely wiped out in this unreasonable disaster.
It's just that he doesn't know where he is now.
Sheng Qi didn't know where he was. He just wanted to lie here quietly for a while, just lie down for a while.
I want to take a breath away from those painful memories.
But sometimes, the more you want peace, the more you will be disturbed.
On the distant sea, a little light suddenly hit the sky.
Light up the area.
Practical spells have brought a lot of convenience to humans.
With only one mage, two or three dark visions, and an illumination spell, the human warships can sail into the sea just after this lightless day.
If it weren't for the fact that dark vision, like the ratman's night vision, is essentially low-light vision rather than dark vision, human battleships would still be able to set sail even in the darkest moments.
The human navigator who had acquired dark vision discovered the rat fleet gathering here.
After a little illumination, a human fleet sailed towards the location where the rat fleet was docked.
From a distance, a fireball was thrown out. The human side chose to attack these strange-looking rat-man warships directly.
Sheng Qi was alarmed by such movement.
His claws tightly grasped the gravel on the beach. He really didn't want to board this damn thing again, let alone continue to float on the sea.
It's just obvious that he doesn't have any other options.
This ocean journey left a great psychological shadow on him, a trauma that would remain unhealed until his death.
But Shengqi suppressed such trauma forcefully. The thin guy climbed up from the peaceful beach and climbed onto the battleship that frightened him again.
No matter how afraid he is, no matter how reluctant he is, he will never let go of the army in his hands, his only support.
The flag was erected on this bathing battleship in this dim night.
Amidst the noisy and harsh bells, Sheng Qi, with an extremely ferocious expression, gave the marching order to the rat-man fleet.
Sheng Qi also has something that he will never give up even if he dies.
In order to become a real big shot, Sheng Qi is willing to do anything.
Amidst the beatings and curses, the slave rats who were also dying unleashed their last strength, and the rat fleet without sails began to accelerate.
The two sides approached each other on the sea, and as they got closer, the appearance of the human battleship also truly appeared in front of the rat people.
Compared with these bathtubs driven by the rat people, these human ships are more in line with the concept of battleship.
It has a fusiform hull and three masts placed on the hull. Driven by the wind, the speed is much faster than that of the Ratman's bathtub battleship.
Not only that, under the influence of the lighting technique, you can see the human warriors gradually gathering on the upper decks of these battleships.
Most of them held various machetes and hand axes in their hands, and gathered on the upper deck to make preparations.
At the very end of the warship, on a tower that was much higher than the upper deck, shadowy figures began to appear. They were archers, not just archers, but also some mages in robes mixed in among them.
The human side is rapidly preparing for war.
Their strategy is also very simple. In other words, before the emergence of artillery, the battle mode on the sea was not very complicated, and boarding battle was an important part.
Human sea battles also continue this pattern, getting close to each other, contacting each other, and then fighting each other on the deck.
Of course, there are some differences, such as the human mages who stand on the towers and mingle with the archers.
Artillery has not been used by the Youyan people for a long time. A large part of the reason is probably attributed to these mages.
These guys are really useful and versatile.
Various auxiliary spells, plus not weak attack spells.
A fireball streaked across the sky without deflecting the target, accurately hitting a rat-man warship. This fireball technique was too powerful for early naval battles.
The fireball with the terrifying high temperature is enough to ignite most wooden battleships. As long as there are enough mages, after a close salvo, no matter how powerful the fleet is, it will be destroyed in the rising flames.
Very good luck, but it has also become a constraint. The navigation level of the Youyan people has not improved for many years. Instead, more mages have been arranged to board the warships.
More mages with fireball skills were arranged to board the warship.
This is certainly another route, and the magic battleships may not be much inferior to the giant ships and cannons, but in these long years, the Youyan people have not really taken the most critical step towards magic civilization.
Fireball is not so useful against strange-looking battleships like the Skaven Western Expeditionary Force.
Although the Skaven battleships have many flaws, weird designs, and cost the Skaven a lot of time, the material they are made of determines one thing.
This all-metal cast bathtub is much sturdier than a wooden battleship, and it is not so afraid of flames. After all, it is a true all-metal cast, a strange product that is both advanced and backward.
When a fireball the size of a head falls on this all-metal battleship, it still has considerable terrifying power. Wherever it is hit, the metal hull will still be melted, but it is only limited to the place where it is hit.
No matter how unreliable the Skaven warship is, it will not sink on the spot just because of a hole the size of a head.
Unless this fireball falls towards the bottom of the Skaven warship at an extremely tricky angle.
The Ratman's warship has no partitions, only a spiral staircase downwards. In other words, the Ratman's warship is a single layer, and the damage to the bottom is a very serious problem.
To be honest, relying on such a thing, Sheng Qi led the Western Expeditionary Force all the way across the sea, and even forcefully floated from the half-elf hills to the main continent. Along the way, a fleet of thirty ships could still give him There are only thirteen ships left, which is also a miracle.
Starting from this fireball, the mages on the human fleet began an all-out attack.
Fireballs were thrown one after another by them, streaking across the sky.
There were even many fireballs that fell towards the bottom of the bathtub battleship after crossing the sky at a tricky angle.
This is a dangerous situation. As long as it hits successfully, a head-sized fireball is enough to sink the ship and a shipload of ratmen into the sea for swimming.
But the problem is not big. For this situation, the rat people also have a unique solution.
They had unique protection. Who said that a boat full of ratmen couldn't be a kind of defense? The fireball hit the cabin of the ratman warship and raised a ball of terrifying flames.
The rat warriors howled in the flames, but the fireball falling towards the bottom of the ship was also intercepted.
The Rat People began to fight back, and finally the ballistae installed on the battleships took effect. The Rat People once again proved their unique industrial capabilities.
In various unreliable situations, flying across the harsh sea and using a lot of gears, these huge ballistae vehicles with worrying safety did not lose their chain at this moment.
It's even easy to complete the turning move to aim the huge ballista and fire the first round.
Under the command of Sheng Qi, facing the human warships rushing towards them, the rat fleet chose to defend.
Thirteen rat-man warships grouped together to form a circular defensive formation.
Turning the gears, the dying slave rats no longer provided kinetic energy for the rat-man battleship, but began to exert force for the rotation of the weapons on the battleship.
A heavy metal column was raised high, and the center of gravity and stability of the bathtub battleship became increasingly worrying. This was the special energy storage device that the Big Claw Priests used to supply it smoothly with a group of slave rats. Something tinkered with from two sets of devices on the ship.
Raising the iron pillar high and then blocking it with gears is a process of storing energy, whether it is the movement of weapons on the ship or the rotation of the propeller on the bottom of the ship.
They are able to rely on the iron pillars that are raised high to complete energy storage, and if they want to release the accumulated energy, let the heavy iron pillars slowly fall under the action of gravity and drive the rotation of the gears. , so that the stored energy can be released.
A strange and exquisite structure.
A primitive and not-so-primitive battleship.
Huge crossbow arrows as thick as an arm were continuously thrown out. The lethality of these crossbow arrows was not low, and they could even break the hull of a human warship.
During the ejection, a crossbow arrow hit the mast of a human warship that was cruising quickly towards the rat warship. In an instant, the thick mast made an overwhelming sound and was broken by a single blow. With a harsh sound, The tall mast fell down along with the sails mounted on it.
The hull of the ship shook violently.
The broken mast swept across the upper deck, and the human warship completely lost its movement after gliding on the sea for a while.
The other human warships dexterously completed the avoidance and continued to rush towards the rat people.
Fireballs continued to fall, and the soldiers gathered on the upper deck were ready to move. Thick metal crossbow arrows flew overhead.
In this era when the human empire is on the verge of disintegration, you cannot ask for more professionalism and formality from its military.
Most of the fleets also have an additional job as pirates. The real controllers behind this fleet are the nobles who maintain these fleets for a living.
Looting was what they would have done, even if what appeared in front of them at this moment was not rat men, but something else.
They will still pounce brazenly.
The Rat Man's crossbow hit a human warship just below the waterline, and the thick crossbow tore through the wooden planks that were not strong enough.
Seawater began to pour in, but the human battleships were much more reasonable than the weird-looking bathtubs of the rat men.
The entry cabin was closed, and the crew began to rescue the battleship. The speed of the battleship slowed down, but there was no risk of sinking.
On the other hand, on the Skaven side, in the continuous falling fireball attack, two fireballs luckily hit the same area. Due to the gap in the reactive armor, a Skaven warship on the periphery of the defense formation unfortunately leaked. The Rat People were helpless in this situation.
A Skaven warship began to sink slowly.
The rat people jumped into the sea one after another, and the bathtub battleship was sinking at an extremely fast speed.
The human fleet was about to come into contact with the rat people, but as the rat warship sank, a huge black patch suddenly appeared on the sea.
But it was ignored by the humans. The large number of rat men struggling on the sea really did not stand out in this dim environment.
The carrying capacity of the Skaven warships may exceed human imagination. After all, there is no standard for the Skaven. It is the first time to sail a ship, and many things are extremely confusing, including every ship. The number of Skaven carried in the battleship.
Anyway.
It was based on the largest number. When it set sail, there was no room for ratmen to fit into the bathtub battleship. And the battleship did not sink under the weight and could still run, so there was no problem at all.
It may not be a very wise decision to engage in a battle with the Skaven. Every Skaven battleship is filled with Skaven that are full of battleships.
But humans have obviously never encountered such a battle.
When a human warship approached, under the mage's tailwind technique, the two ships approached each other. Each hook was thrown at the rat warship, and both sides anchored.
The human warriors who had been waiting for a long time on the deck began to cheer. The more experienced warriors took the lead in stepping on the rope, and behind them, a long wooden board was lifted up.
Soon, the first head-on battle between the two sides officially began.
The rat warships actually don't have many advantages when facing human warships. Although these sail warships are far less sturdy than the rat men's cast metal warships, their speed and flexibility are much higher.
Planks were laid across the gap between the two ships, leaving a path.
This is the first time that the Western Expeditionary Force has encountered humans, and it is also the first battle that the Western Expeditionary Force has encountered on this continent.
It broke out in a very sudden situation.
The Skaven had no experience dealing with such a situation.
A human warrior with a hatchet on his waist stepped onto the rat-man's bathtub warship, with excitement that couldn't be wiped off his face until he saw this scene.
On the dark and strange round ship, countless rat men raised their heads at this moment, and pairs of scarlet eyes that were too numerous to count appeared in front of them at this moment.
The excitement on his face suddenly froze for a moment.
The Western expeditionary forces, who have never fought a serious naval battle and have no formal contact with humans, will be a little confused.
What are these guys?
Why do these sacrifices dare to charge towards them?
The rat people of the Western Expeditionary Force had such doubts.