Our Family Has Fallen

Chapter 1401: Chapter 754: Explosive

The few of them couldn’t figure out what the Lord meant, but after a brief observation, they each picked their own target.

”I think this one’s fiercer.”

”That one’s obviously bigger.”

”What’s the use of being big? It’s clearly injured, okay...”

At first those people didn’t really care, but Lance’s one sentence stirred them up, and they started arguing over which rat they supported.

Lance just smiled without commenting, silently taking notes on the rat fight...

Once blood was drawn, the slaughter between the rats grew more frenzied, and the situation fired the crowd up even more.

Very quickly one started to show weakness, turned around trying to flee, but was chased and bitten by the other; inside that tiny dirt pit there was basically no room to run, and soon it died on the spot.

This immediately split the audience into two clear emotional camps: those who guessed right were visibly excited, those who guessed wrong were clearly upset.

And after killing its opponent, the victor went straight to dinner, gnawing away, teeth and flesh grinding together with faint sounds—sure enough, for rats, their own kind is also food.

Then Lance ran the experiment again, just switched to another pit, and fed the rats a little food before tossing them in.

This time the two rats actually didn’t fight. From these two experiments, the answer was pretty obvious.

”Looks like when they’re full they’re not that keen on attacking their own kind, but hunger pushes them over the edge and into complete madness.”

Lance mulled it over, then gestured to the people.

”So dealing with them isn’t actually hard. We just need to open a beast-fighting arena, bet on who wins, bet on the time, bet on win streaks—basically the usual gladiator arena setup, except the gladiators are big rats instead.

We’ll set the rules, provide the venue, take a cut, and have them bring in rats to fight. As long as there’s profit in it, those people will help us catch them all.”

Compared to outright exterminating the rats, Lance was more interested in using them for hype, to patch over the slump in motivation among adventurers after their ”get rich off ruins” dream shattered.

The ancestor’s legacy wasn’t just giving him a reason to wage war and reclaim the territory; it also left him a rat-based filler activity to replace ruin expeditions.

How very thoughtful.

”Before that, we’ll first study these rats’ habits thoroughly, run a few trial matches to gauge people’s reaction, then hype it up under the banner of Hamlet’s unique species. We’ll call it...” Lance thought for a moment and casually tossed out a name, ”we’ll call them Mad Mice.”

Lance had nailed down the start of a project; the rest was up to them to flesh out.

The group didn’t feel much pressure about it either—after all, these things were everywhere, it’s not like they were some rare species.

Lance also sketched out a design for a rat trap so the captured rats wouldn’t get injured and compromise the duels.

Cockfights, dogfights—and now rat fights, who’d have thought. This world really is something...

Lance wasn’t like Count Bastia, who didn’t even know how to make use of spellcasters. He’d recruited Amanda and Alhazred as two advisors precisely to solve that part of the problem.

Amanda was easy enough to figure out. She didn’t stay for any evil cult or Evil God, and it wasn’t about world destruction or saving the world.

She purely stayed to cling to a strong backer, so whether the ancestor was dead or not didn’t affect her decision to remain.

But the Mystical Scholar was different. He originally came to Hamlet to deal with that leaked evil statuette.

Considering his past experiences, there was a bit of atonement mixed in, which was why, after learning what was happening in Hamlet, he chose to stay.

Now that the evil cult has been wiped out and the Evil God taken down, has he lost his reason to remain?

When Lance had a free moment, he chose to have a talk with him.

”The war in Hamlet will be settling down soon. What are your plans after that?”

Alhazred wasn’t surprised by the Lord’s question. After seeing the state of the dungeon, anyone could tell that in the world of ordinary people there’s no power that can stand against the Lord; so-called wars are just for show.

But when it came to his own situation, he fell silent. Was he supposed to leave, or stay?

”Technically, our original agreement has been fulfilled, but my personal hope is that you’ll stay a bit longer. Once things here are wrapped up, we’ll study your condition specifically, figure out how to remove those negative side effects, and you can decide whether to leave after that.”

Lance stated it plainly. Of course he needed talent from the Supernormal Realm—especially spellcasters; where else was he going to find them?

Having a scholar was already quite good. He might be a bit unreliable here and there, but at least he didn’t go insane down in the dungeon.

”I’m not asking you to quit the Destiny Association and join Hamlet instead. You know full well that stuff doesn’t matter much to me.

What I’m worried about is what happens if something goes wrong with you. We’ve just dealt with one Evil God; we really can’t afford to attract another one right after.”

”At least here, I can help a little. Everyone thinking together is better than you shouldering it alone. One way or another, we are friends.”

Lance added, making his real purpose clear.

To put it bluntly, Alhazred was basically a bomb right now, being watched by some entity that wanted to use him as a springboard to invade reality.

Here in Hamlet, the situation was being kept under tight control. If he were sent back and suddenly broke down, what if that directly triggered an incursion from an outer entity?

Alhazred understood this perfectly. With the Lord’s help, he’d become much more stable here.

If there’s a choice, who would willingly carry such a heavy burden? It even meant he didn’t dare die, for fear his corpse would be corrupted and turned into a beacon.