Chapter 379, The Rat Empire's Great Stride Forward
Railways run through cities one after another, and steam locomotives puffing out black smoke advance in tunnels with harsh sounds.
A new power source can bring many changes.
The rats are rapidly exploring the potential of these magical steam engines.
All this comes from the urging of the war.
War and desire are indeed rapidly pushing the rats forward.
More ore, more steel, control of larger areas, making themselves more luxurious, all of this is pushing the rats forward.
Huge war machines, fortresses on the battlefield, weapons, steel pillars in the city, huge warships advancing on the ocean.
Better decorations, more exquisite robes, more sacrifices during sacrifice, and even the canes in their hands are inlaid with a few more faint blue eyes.
Demand, war, desire, these are intertwined, and the rats usher in their own golden age.
Magic leads to lightning, and complex pathways tame this dangerous and unruly power.
The artificial light finally lit up in the underground city of the rats, and began to spread rapidly to the entire rat empire.
In the rat empire, on the border, near the lush forest, there is an unknown underground city.
Today, the humming sound rang again.
This is the deepest part of the underground city, a place similar to a platform, where many rats are looking forward to it.
The steam train has indeed greatly connected the cities of the rats, such as here.
The cities in the rat empire, where a large number of rats gathered, can actually be regarded as independent kingdoms.
Each rat city has its own breeding room and planting room. There may not be a complete industrial zone, but there are still some scattered artisan workshops.
The gathering of these things makes each rat city naturally have a certain degree of independence. Even if they do not communicate with other rat cities and the rat parliament for a long time, they can still operate independently.
It is simply impossible to completely connect these rat cities by relying on those rat caravans.
Before, it was the faith that truly connected the rat empire.
Now, the situation has changed a little. Those heavy machines that run with harsh sounds and constantly swallow and exhale pungent black smoke have given all the rats a surprise.
That is a terrifying transportation volume.
The shaking bell made a dull sound, and the harsh and sharp friction sound came from the depths of the tunnel, echoing in the ears of all the rats present.
It is called a platform, but in fact, this is just an underground tunnel that has been hastily widened.
At this time, the rats standing on this simple platform raised their heads and looked forward to it.
The terrifying monster began to slow down.
The pungent black smoke first diffused from the passage.
These exhaust gases released by the incomplete combustion of the large magic steam furnace are terribly toxic, especially when they accumulate in the closed underground tunnel.
But at this time, the rats who are wandering and waiting here don’t care about these.
Almost impatiently, they moved towards the dark and deep track in front of them.
When the huge steam train stopped, these ratmen also started their own actions. Regardless of the scorching temperature, they climbed straight up the dark steel monster in front of them.
While climbing, they also began to shout loudly.
"Me! Me! Let me do it! Let me do it!"
The scene suddenly became chaotic.
But what greeted them was the ruthless swinging of the big stick. On the narrow carriage carrying various goods, the tall ratmen wearing various equipment began to swing the short iron sticks in their hands mercilessly.
They wore the fully wrapped leather helmet on their heads. The helmet looked weird, and only the protruding cylinder and the two glass windows at the position of the eyes were the most conspicuous.
There were ratmen who were beaten and fell down continuously, wailing in pain, but these guys waving sticks showed no mercy.
However, in the chaos, there were inevitably accidents. A ratman quietly bypassed these fully armed train guards and snatched something from the carriage. It was a small bell with dazzling gold, which should be a small pendant for the ratman priests to hang on their waists.
The ratman's face showed an indescribable ecstasy. He flexibly bypassed the iron bars waving at him by the train guards and was about to escape into the chaotic ratman and disappear.
At this time, the ratman guard standing at the front of the train slowly took off the short-barreled rifle on his back. This was a cannon fodder type I magic rifle. The unstable energy storage pattern made it produce particularly violent noises when it was fired.
It was a piercing and huge sound.
The thief was pierced by the magic beam coming from behind at the moment he was about to escape, and fell heavily to the ground. The scene suddenly became quiet.
Under the gaze of the rat people, the rat guard came to the fallen rat thief, picked up the small golden bell that had rolled on the ground, and slowly wiped it on the body of the fallen rat thief.
At this time, the front of the steam train slowly opened with the burst of boiling steam, and a big claw priest with various complicated pendants on his body appeared on the scene.
He did not linger on the dead ratman, but set his sights on the ratmen who gathered around the train.
At this moment, these ratmen gathered together, raised their heads, and had a bit of desire on their faces.
To be fair, these guys are really not good, short, thin, and some of them still exude a foul smell, but they are indeed cheap enough.
He gestured casually.
Circled some ratmen.
"Okay, it's you, work quickly! Work quickly!"
The selected ratmen showed indescribable ecstasy at this moment, while those who were not selected had obvious disappointment on their faces.
One by one, the train guards jumped off the dark steel train, holding a handful of short-barreled magic guns in their hands, and they stopped any inappropriate thoughts.
Soon, the selected ratmen began to work today.
They began to unload things from the metal train one by one.
Soon, a batch of wood produced from the nearby forest will be reloaded on the train.
The arrival of these steam trains almost destroyed this border city, the breeding houses, planting rooms, and those scattered rat workshops in this inconspicuous rat city.
How can these backward workshops in this city match the output of those super-large industrial areas in the main rat cities?
Weapons, war equipment and steel from the Desolate Mountains, young ratmen from the Waste City, cave mushrooms and various exotic commodities, and various metal ingots from the Furnace City.
After the appearance of this steam train, these things were dumped in the entire rat empire.
Those inconspicuous rat cities, those rat cities in the border areas, and their various industries were completely destroyed in such a flood.
During this period, many rat cities were destroyed, and those that were not destroyed were mostly transformed into a type of resource city.
For example, this rat city on the edge of the lush forest, its current role is to provide logs to those increasingly large and prosperous cities, which is also its only role.
The trains coming and going bring all kinds of things every day, and then take away a large amount of logs from this city regularly.
Such a process almost destroyed the future of this city, but of course, these steam trains that arrived with a humming sound did not bring other benefits.
Some miniatures of the prosperity of those huge cities were brought to this city.
The rat priests who dominated the city also wore various gorgeous robes during this period, and they moved their residences to the top of this rat city.
Bright magic lamps were lit in this dim underground.
A large number of blood mushrooms flowed into their pockets.
After all, it is too easy to get blood mushrooms. As long as you organize slave rats, cut down the dead trees on the ground one by one, and then drag them into the rat city, everything will be fine.
Just wait for the steam trains to take away the wood, and then a batch of blood mushrooms will come to their hands.
Of course, it is not that no one wants to resist. It can't be like this anymore, but the resistance has no effect at all.
After all, as long as the steam train exists, all kinds of extremely cheap goods will arrive continuously.
And if those guys who resist look more carefully and resist the railways and underground railways that have been laid, then more terrible things will happen.
There is no need for the rat lords who hold high the freedom of commerce to take action. The rat parliament itself, those loyal rat priests will not hesitate to hit you hard.
After all, they tinker with this railway to prevent rebellion, and if you resist, do you want to rebel?
A ratman city with a large workshop built near a large mineral vein was hit hard without hesitation in such suspicion. In just one day, a ratman army that broke into the city hanged all the ratman priests and the ratman lord in the city.
And the ratman lord who was hanged did not even cause any decent disputes.
After all, the ratman councilor who protected him was a guy who stood on the side of the waste city and advocated free trade.
Railroad tracks run through ratman cities one by one.
Those messy cities and the ratman empire are connected together as a whole, which also led to the decline of the originally independent ratman cities. For a certain period of time, the overall strength of the ratman has declined.
But it has provided another super city and a super-large city that is on the way to becoming a super city.
After the Underground Rat City, Slag City was officially promoted to a new super city in the Rat Empire. The Furnace City, which was originally declining, reaped the biggest benefits from the Rat Fleet's terrifying demand for steel and the Rat Train's penetration of the entire territory.
In the process of the continuous decline of rat cities and their transformation into resource cities, the biggest beneficiary is the Furnace City. A large amount of various minerals are transported to the Furnace City by rat trains. After being simply smelted, they are turned into pieces of metal ingots and flow to all parties in the Rat Empire again.
The huge demand generated by this really made those truly huge rat industrial zones run at high speed for the first time, and they felt the effort.
These rat industrial zones almost all chose the same solution, expanding and expanding again. Steam engines and magic energy technology were introduced into the operation of the industrial zones, and excess production capacity was dumped into those rat cities.
After defeating their counterparts in cities one by one, several truly terrifying super industrial zones that were completely different from the previous ones that relied on piling up slave rats to build high towers were born.
I don’t know if such an exchange is a good thing.
But the Rat Empire was really ignited in such a transformation.
The overly bloated structure has been optimized.
Several super cities serve as the center, heart, and greedy stomach of the empire, while the resource cities are the greedy giant mouths.
The rise and fall of cities have a fixed template.
The ratmen discovered a resource, a sentry tower was built, and soon a town was established, a city took shape, and then the ratmen train ran through this inconspicuous city.
The frenzy of prosperity began, countless ratmen came here, excavated the resources here, exchanged those endless blood mushrooms, exchanged those cheap commodities, and the city prospered rapidly until the resources were exhausted, until the dark trains no longer came here.
Without blood mushrooms and various cheap commodities, the city quickly weakened, or began to breed goblins, or based on the geographical location, as a less conspicuous transit station, and so on.
Everything was concentrated, and more things were able to burst out in those super cities.
Magic lamps, steam mining equipment, god scrolls derived from totem patterns, a concert praising gods, the first high-power telescope for stargazing of the rat people, and the star map of the rat people.
Of course, it's not just these.
In the dim light.
Goblin tanning factories, corpse soap factories, heretic leather shops, and high-end lizardman boots.
These strange things were also born in such prosperity, leading the fashion trend of the rat priests.
The rat people have indeed begun to stride forward in various aspects.