The rest of the team scattered to their designated targets. They'd done their part in the staged battle. Now the operation's success depended largely on Nida, alone in enemy custody.
Gustav's group moved swiftly toward the supply depots that fed resources to the front lines. Benny and Kael intercepted supply escorts, killing the guards and destroying the wagons. To be honest, it was almost too easy. The rat kingdom's attention was completely focused on the massive army at their gates. Their rear security had been stripped to the bone.
They made sure not to leave any enemy alive to report what had happened. As the saying went, dead men tell no tales. Or in this case, dead rats.
The principle was simple: the enemy of our enemy is our friend. At least temporarily. If it came down to it, they would fight the Four-on-Four monsters too. But for now, the chaos those creatures created was the perfect cover for human sabotage.
---
Nida had been dragged to the lower dungeons, her hands bound and chained to the wall. The rat men handled her roughly, shoving her into the cell with deliberate violence to demonstrate their contempt for the human invader.
They left her there in the darkness, waiting for Captain Vrek to arrive for a personal interrogation.
Nida had already cataloged everything she needed. Three escape routes, assuming she could get through the locked door. Guard rotation schedules based on the sounds of footsteps and shift changes. Weak points in the cell's construction. The location of the keys hanging on the far wall, just barely visible through the iron bars.
The plan wasn't sophisticated, but it didn't need to be. Benny and the rest would create enough chaos topside to draw attention away from the dungeons. Once the guard presence thinned, she would make her move. Escape the cell. Find whoever was leading this rat kingdom. And kill them, or at least incapacitate them enough to throw the entire command structure into disarray.
Simple. Direct. Suicidal if anything went wrong.
But that's what made it perfect.
---
Back on the surface, the rat kingdom burned.
The Four-on-Four monsters, the creatures Benny's team had dubbed with that crude name, pressed their assault with terrifying ferocity. Buildings collapsed under siege weapons. Defensive walls crumbled. Rat men died by the dozens, their elite training barely enough to slow the onslaught.
And in the shadows, Benny's team made the situation worse.
They struck supply lines. Ambushed reinforcement columns. Set fires in strategic locations that forced the rats to divert resources from the main battle. Every action was calculated to divide the rat kingdom's attention, to spread their forces so thin they couldn't respond effectively to any single threat.
There was visible panic in the rat kingdom's leadership. The chaos on the command front was palpable. With the Rusttails commanders arrested and under investigation, there was no proper chain of command. No experienced rat men to coordinate the defense. Junior officers tried to fill the gap, but they lacked the authority and experience to make decisive choices.
In desperation, Queen Vermina Skittera herself sent her own offspring to command the battles happening across the kingdom. Princes and princesses of the House of Scourge, thrust into military leadership roles they weren't prepared for, trying desperately to impose some form of order on the chaos.
It was a mistake born of necessity. The royal family was gambling everything on inexperienced commanders because they had no other choice.
---
Meanwhile, on the Four-on-Four's side, or more accurately the Grombulgorks as they called themselves, the assault continued with savage determination.
They were fiercely attacking their bitter rivals in this Sub-Space, driven by grudges that stretched back hundreds of years. It had all started when the glory of the invasion into the human kingdom, what was now the labyrinth, was supposed to be shared between the two forces.
But the rats had betrayed them.
The Grombulgorks had never forgotten. Never forgiven. They'd spent centuries preparing for this moment, building their strength, waiting for the perfect opportunity to reclaim what they believed was rightfully theirs.
Now they were out for blood. It was time to seize the dimensional crack that connected to the labyrinth. It was their turn to invade the human world. Their time to claim the glory that the rats had stolen.
The Grombulgorks fought with the fury of the betrayed, every strike carrying centuries of accumulated hatred. They didn't just want to win. They wanted to annihilate.
---
On another part of the battlefield, Gustav and his group continued their relentless assault. They killed both Grombulgorks and rat men without discrimination, careful to leave no witnesses. The corpses were hidden or disposed of in ways that would delay discovery.
This would add even more fuel to the chaos. Both sides would suspect the other of atrocities and ambushes that were actually committed by humans. Paranoia would spread. Trust would erode. The fog of war would become so thick that neither side would know who was killing whom.
The symphony of chaos was a sweet tune to some of them. Rippler, in particular, seemed to revel in the bloodshed. He fought with savage joy, marveling at the carnage he created. Each enemy that fell under his blade or burned under his magic brought a grin to his face.
Then there was Kael, the vengeful soldier who relished every death. His hatred for the monsters that had killed his teammates burned hotter with each kill. Every rat man he cut down, every Grombulgork he slaughtered, brought him one step closer to the vengeance he craved.
The rest of the team didn't share their enthusiasm, but they understood it. They'd all lost people. They'd all suffered. If Ripler and Kael needed to channel their trauma into violence, that was their business. As long as they stayed effective and didn't compromise the mission, no one would judge them.
To be honest, they all wanted to destroy this damn place. Burn the rat kingdom to the ground. Collapse the Sub-Space entirely if possible. But how to achieve that remained a mystery.
Maybe if they could find records about how this dimensional crack had formed in the first place, there would be clues. If they understood how the rift between spaces was created, maybe they could figure out how to destroy it. Or at least close it permanently, cutting off the monster invasions into the labyrinth.
It was a long shot, but it was the only path to truly conquering the labyrinth they could see. Kill the source, end the spawning, claim victory.
---
Meanwhile, Benny moved independently toward a different objective.
Their operation inside the rat kingdom was actually twofold. Nida would infiltrate the command structure and assassinate whoever was leading the kingdom. Benny would search for historical records, magical texts, anything that explained the dimensional crack's origins and mechanics.
The rest of the team would act as a massive distraction, keeping both armies and the rat kingdom's internal security so occupied that neither Benny nor Nida would face significant interference.
It was a high-risk strategy that required perfect execution from multiple independent operators. If any piece failed, the entire operation could collapse.
But they'd come too far to turn back now.
Benny moved through the burning kingdom like a shadow. He'd learned to navigate the rat men's architecture over his previous "secretive nightly" visits. The buildings were constructed differently from human structures, with lower ceilings and narrower corridors designed for creatures that moved on all fours as often as upright.
He avoided the main thoroughfares where panicked rat men civilians fled the fighting. He stuck to back alleys and service passages, places where a lone human might go unnoticed in the chaos.
His goal was simple: find the royal archives or whatever passed for a library in this nightmare kingdom. Somewhere, there had to be records. The rats were sophisticated enough to have writing, which meant they kept chronicles of their history.
And that history should include information about the dimensional crack that connected their Sub-Space to the labyrinth.
Benny moved quickly but carefully, his new sword drawn and ready. He'd already killed three rat men who'd spotted him, their bodies hidden in abandoned buildings. He couldn't afford to be discovered. Not yet.
The sounds of battle echoed through the streets. Screams of the dying. Roar of flames. Crash of collapsing structures. The rat kingdom was tearing itself apart under the combined pressure of external invasion and internal sabotage.
Benny felt a grim satisfaction. This was what they deserved for invading the labyrinth. For killing countless humans over the centuries. For being part of the system that had trapped him and his companions in this hellhole.
He would find the information he needed. Nida would kill the leadership. The team would escape in the chaos.
And maybe, just maybe, they would find a way to end this nightmare once and for all.
---
It would take time. It would cost blood. Some of them might not make it out alive.
But they would achieve their goals no matter the cost.
Because the alternative was dying slowly in the darkness of the labyrinth, waiting for the next monster wave to finish what this expedition had started.
They'd chosen to fight. To take control of their fate rather than waiting for it to crush them.
And now, in the burning heart of the rat kingdom, surrounded by enemies on all sides, they were finally making progress.
The invasion continued. The chaos spread. And in the shadows, twelve desperate humans worked to bring down an entire monster civilization.
It was insane. It was impossible.
But it might actually work, maybe.