Cyber Era Witch
Chapter 817 - 672 The Rat Plague

Chapter 817: Chapter 672 The Rat Plague

Sally gazed long and hard at the stamps, as the addiction that Xu Yang had cured with detoxifiers crawled out from the depths of her mind.

White Peach would buy these stamps every month; she was a stamp enthusiast. The packages from the stamps she used were often scattered on the ground, and the residual pulp powder at the bottom of those green plastic bags always made Sally feel extremely anxious.

Just one more hit, and the pressure accumulated during the live streams would disappear without a trace. Sally knew very well and reminisced about the happy times of stamp-taking; the stress was really small, life was truly...

She gasped for air, shook her head violently, crawled to the center of the small living room to divert her attention, and turned on the smart screen, quickly scanning through the news.

Among various news entries, Sally’s attention was captured by a striking headline in the lower middle section.

"Massive Ratman Attack in the Asakusa District of Shangjing"

Her heart twitched, and her body quickly shrank onto the sofa, her back spurs grating against the sofa leather, piercing it. She had been careful with this sofa for the past year, and just now, she had punctured it.

Without caring about the sofa, Sally hastily opened the news, her heartbeat accelerating slightly as she read.

"On May 30th, 151 at 3 AM, 7 bodies were discovered at Haruto Pool Shop. The bodies had rat bite wounds, suspected to be inflicted by Ratmen; the deceased were customers of the pool shop that night, the victims’ families..."

Ratmen killing people?!

The thing Sally feared most had happened.

The local rats of the Northern Archipelago were well-taught by Sally and could mostly return to a normal life.

But those "called rats" who had smuggled themselves from all over the world, day and night, were of mixed quality.

She had gathered most of them through dream orchestrations and spreading pheromones, but there were definitely other Ratmen scattered around the city, who had missed Sally’s call for various reasons.

And they inherited the previous style of acting.

Cruel, bloodthirsty, primitive, consuming humans for food.

The delicate balance that Sally had cautiously maintained for over a year was disrupted, and if this continued, conflicts between Ratmen and humans would occur again.

After reading the news, she hunched over and walked back and forth on the floor, circling in deep thought.

She had to find someone, an "official institution," that could help and was not biased against Ratmen.

Were there any suitable candidates at Nestor Corporation? Sally was extremely troubled.

Her fluffy rat ears trembled continuously as if they could fan her brain to cool down.

Xu Yang...

To bother such a good, excellent person again? If Xu Yang knew Sally’s Ratmen had started to eat people again, how disappointed would he be? Sally well knew she was just a filthy, ugly mother rat.

And Xu Yang was not here right now; he had gone to Jialong Slope, the Helis Sea System being managed by his deputy Rinne without any mishaps.

Lila Nestor?

Impossible, President Nestor was only friendly towards Xu Yang. Towards others, she was as cold as ice, like a precision machine that never responded. Her office was forbidden territory, people could only receive commands from her, no one ever managed to gain anything by pleading with Lila.

Ask Farosa for help?

Just thinking of that name made Sally feel fear from the bottom of her heart. Farosa would torture everyone impartially, making everyone suffer until they wished for death.

But what else could she do now except for begging Farosa for help?

Though Farosa was cruel to rats, she was equally cruel to humans and witches; truly the fairest person in the world, she definitely wouldn’t practice discriminatory treatments.

And Farosa was so smart, she must know what to do.

She had to visit Farosa’s ritual site and ask her subordinates how to contact Farosa. She had also helped Farosa in the past, turning her "offspring" Clares the Second into a super-giant Ocean Descendant; Farosa ought to repay her and help her investigate this troubling situation...

To gather information and formulate a plan, Sally was completely exhausted.

By 2 AM, Sally lay half-asleep on the sofa, White Peach walking into the living room after ending a night-time live stream.

"Sally?" White Peach observed her, "What are you doing here?"

"Ah—" Sally opened her eyes on the sofa, "I was just about to go into the city."

"Isn’t it good here?" White Peach said.

White Peach was afraid of Sally going to the city; as long as she dealt with Nestor Corporation, Sally would learn about "White Peach’s" true identity and find out the roots and details of her past life. Then everything would be over.

"It’s good here, just... some problems have arisen among the Ratmen; some Ratmen are eating humans." Sally sent the news to White Peach.

"Haruto Pool Shop... Isn’t that the latest underground trading station?" White Peach pondered.

"Trading what?"

"Stamps," White Peach said skillfully.

"Then it’s over, the stamps! Stamp traffickers, business in the filthy gutters... this sort of thing... this sort of thing is the most terrifying, it’s too bad. Ratmen shouldn’t conflict with people, Ratmen should turn back into humans and return to human society, the Ratman race should disappear..." Sally expressed her thoughts intermittently.

The Ratman race was born in a wrong era, their entire existence was a mistake...

"Is this fair to the Ratmen? Why must Ratmen turn into humans and not humans into rats?" White Peach countered.

"This..." Sally was puzzled; she had never heard White Peach care about the topic of Ratmen before.

Sometimes, the White Peach in her eyes was very clear, just an ordinary woman; she often doubted whether the other forms she saw were illusions. White Peach was neither a wriggling flesh mountain nor a shimmering crystal.

"Rest, you’re overthinking it," White Peach approached Sally.

"I must take responsibility for them, for all the conflicts," Sally emphasized.

"No, security services are Nestor Corporation’s responsibility. With such a large scale and thriving business, they should solve all the problems. Go to sleep, you need to prepare for tomorrow’s live stream. Do you want to miss it?"

"What if it gets out of hand..."

"If it gets out of hand, Nestor Corporation will contact you."

"True..."

White Peach checked the supplies Sally had brought in, taking out two packs of green stamps from the bottom and placing them on the table.

"Use them when you feel uncomfortable," White Peach said.

"I don’t like them."

"Sally... we’ve been collaborating underground for a long time without drawing outsiders’ attention. Our venture is very successful, our lives very peaceful and happy. I don’t want you to cause trouble. The audience in the live stream is waiting for you," White Peach emphasized.

White Peach, who had read far more books than Sally, born among the Ratman Race, was quite culturally uninformed.

Now, under White Peach’s persuasive talk, Sally slowly drifted into confusion and closed her eyes.

White Peach turned off the lights and let Sally rest on the sofa in silence, the only sound being Sally’s slight breathing.

In the dark, watching Sally, after confirming she was asleep, White Peach grabbed her wrist and returned to check the account earnings at the live streaming terminal.

The skin trade was highly profitable, and with Sally’s perfect cooperation, the image of "Saint Sally" had already generated 44.05 million in funds, enough for White Peach to escape far away.

She transferred much of the funds to her cash card, looking at the surging amount on it without saying a word.

Silently, White Peach left the entire studio, continuously sending psychological suggestions to the puppets she controlled, then moving herself to other parts of the sewer for setup.

Since the Crystal People’s major event, White Peach had vanished until now, avoiding surveillance and attention.

It was a dangerous game, but it would have a good ending.

...

The news of rats harming people, through fermentation, gradually climbed the social media trend lists.

Some citizens, whose relatives died from the rat plague, now came forward to write warnings to be cautious of all rodent-humanoids.

Temporal context also contributed to the spread of ghost stories and conspiracy theories, that this apocalyptic cold wave was also driven by Ratmen from behind. They could survive the harsh winter, and according to some sensational reports from institutions, the lower the temperature and lesser the human population, the more Ratmen could survive due to their superior environmental resilience.

That is to say, Ratmen would only become more numerous.

Until they outnumbered humans.

The virtual broadcaster Saint Sally, themed around rats, also gained increasing fame, but mostly positively, as debates and disputes surrounding Saint Sally significantly enhanced her popularity.

Accordingly, because the Ratmen belonged to urban legends, investigating these incidents fell on the shoulders of the Bureau of Secrets.

As A40 had previously dealt with the Rat Tide, A40 was specifically dispatched to investigate the situation.

"Wow, cutting down rats, back to basics," A40 reviewed the mission brief.

"Oh, ’A Soldier,’ we’ve been grouped together, and Ziyang Kui too," a colleague from Strategy Section Seven, Saiguchi Ryuuken, who was tagged in A40’s file as overly familiar and had christened A40 with the nickname ’A Soldier,’ waved at him.

"I alone am enough to deal with the rats," A40 told him, not wanting teammates to interfere with his rat-slaying endeavor.

"Sorry, it’s the director’s arrangement, the brothers from Strategy Section Seven move together. Plus, do you even drive?" Saiguchi Ryuuken was unperturbed by A40’s attitude.

"I can take a ride to the Asakusa District," A40 explained.

"Pardon me. Have you all seen the mission brief? We need to thoroughly investigate the situation at Haruto Pool Shop," the third member of the operation, Ziyang Kui, stood a step away at the door frame, loudly knocking on the door panel to assert his presence.

"Right, didn’t A Soldier partake in the Giant Rat disaster in Aizu City back in the days?" Saiguchi Ryuuken looked at A40.

"No matter how big, I’ve seen all kinds of rats," A40 seriously said, "the biggest one could reach up to 12 meters in length, standing as tall as a four-story building."

"That can’t be, Aizu City is an underground city, how could there be such huge rats," Ziyang Kui laughed.

"Measurements by Synthetic Humans are never wrong," A40 told them.

"I’ve heard plenty of accidents arising due to errors by Synthetic Humans," Ziyang Kui was skeptical.

"You guys know too little. Now, let’s get moving," A40 shook his head and didn’t budge until Saiguchi Ryuuken and Ziyang Kui started moving.

"Ratmen on the island are becoming more numerous, like there’s a huge magnet messing with the magnetic lines in their brains," Saiguchi Ryuuken drove a blue-painted "Shen-Jun" class quasi-military shuttle machine, with seating for 12 passengers and equipped with two small-caliber rapid-fire energy cannons.

"No matter, we have to figure it out," Ziyang Kui nodded.

A40 focused on analyzing what he could chop.

Sources of Ratmen, one of many, Rat King, Super Rat Warrior, Ultimate Giant Rat, Rat Troll, Storm Rat Troll...

Whatever it was, let there be a bloody and thrilling great battle.