"Wake up...... Wake up......" A fluttering voice swirled in his ears, slowly pulling his will back from the chaos. Ashruphat slowly opened his eyes. He felt a strange sensation, as if his body was floating in the void at this time. The whole body does not feel any touch, and there is nothingness up and down.

"What's wrong...... Who am I...... Where is this?"

Little by little, memory and reason came back to his mind. By the way, I was ...... at that time and ylang-ylang...... A duel was fought...... And then...... By the way, Ylan-ylang's body is a metal mechanical body, so it exploded......

"Carrie, where is this?" asked Ashrufat instinctively. Because I've been with Carrie for so long, it's become a subconscious thing to ask her about something.

The mind was empty, and there was no response. Then Ashruphat remembered what had happened to Elam before he died. By the way, what did Ylan say at that time? "Close"? Ashruphat already had a general idea of Carrie's existence, so he was able to understand the meaning of "close".

"Carrie!" he cried out in his head. In the past, when he yelled like this, Carrie would definitely respond, but now his mind was empty, and there was no response.

Is Carrie gone......

Ashrufat felt an inexplicable emotion surging through his heart, an indescribable emptiness and loss, an impulse mixed with anxiety and sadness. Although it was useless to know the Dao, he was still chanting Carrie's name again and again in his head. But the silence around him seemed to mock him, and Carrie didn't respond.

He had thought that Carrie would always be with him, and even Carrie herself had promised so. If you want to say that you feel like losing Carrie, it's as if a part of your soul has disappeared.

"Are you awake?" suddenly came to my mind.

"Carrie?" Ashrufat was shocked, but he immediately realized that it wasn't Carrie. It was a male voice, and it wasn't heard by his ears, it sounded directly in his head - the same as Carrie's.

"Carrie, is that your servant's name?" replied the mysterious voice. "Unfortunately I'm not. Rest assured, your servant is asleep for the time being, but only for a while, and not destroyed. ”

"Who are you, where is this?" asked Ashrufa, taking a moment's stillness.

"Where is this? Actually, there is no fixed name here...... This is the gap between the world and the world, the rift between space and time, and this is a very troublesome place for a physical creature like you. You can't move here, all your senses, your body, are dead here, and here, you can only do one thing: think. The mysterious voice seemed to be laughing. "In fact, I'm pretty sure you can't get out of here without the help of a third party. It's a good choice to think about the philosophy of life here forever. ”

Ashrufat didn't answer, he tried to act, but the facts seemed to prove that the mysterious voice was right, he was clearly conscious, but he couldn't act at all. All he could see was darkness with his eyes, nothing he could hear with his ears, nothing he could smell with his nose, nothing he could feel with his body.

By the way, he just said that Carrie was only sleeping temporarily, so Carrie would wake up?

"As for who I am......" the mysterious voice replied. "I can tell you that I am a god. ”

"A god?...... Even if it's a god, if you take the initiative to greet me so much, I'm afraid you have something to tell me, right?"

"Huh...... That's a good point. I like the way I say it, it's simple, straightforward, and doesn't need to beat around the bush. I am the Rat God. ”

"My name is Ashrufat. Ashrufat replied. He was a little puzzled, did he hear the rat god wrong? Is there such a god? What a strange name.

"I know who you are...... In fact, I know you very well, I know your name, your identity, your ethnicity, your origins, your abilities, and many, many other things. That's why I'm looking for you here. ”

"I remember, you woke me up, didn't you? You know me very well? I don't think I've ever seen you. ”

"It doesn't make sense to say that. The Rat God let out a loud laugh. "I'm here to make a deal with you. ”

"Deal? But you say you're a god. ”

"Yes. I am a god, and that is why I need your power. Because right now, my people are in a great crisis. ”

Ashrufat sensed the anxiety in the other man's voice, but he wasn't sure it wasn't something the other had deliberately revealed to him.

"What power do I have to make a god trade with me?" Ashruphat smiled inwardly. "Well, since it's a deal, at least we should know what I'm going to do and what I'm going to get. ”

His eyes suddenly lit up. Then he found himself seeing something. Wait, this is not seeing! Ashruphat realized that some images were being fused directly into his mind without passing through his eyes.

He saw dark underground caverns, not "caverns" in the ordinary human sense, but far beneath the earth's crust, miles above the surface—these concepts came to his mind in an instant.

There are creatures walking through underground caverns. It was almost a lightless environment, but Ashrufat immediately realized what these creatures were—they were nezumi! He had seen them on a captured dark elven ship when he was on his expedition as an elven prince. Of course, by the time he saw the nezumen, they were all dead. Later, he also saw Nezumi slaves driven by the Dark Elves in the conquered Dark Elf towns - there were not many of them, and the Warrior Elves soon executed them all.

In fact, just from the name given to them by the elf "Nezumi", one can understand the general appearance of these creatures. As the name suggests, they resemble a combination of a human and a mouse. The rat people are a bipedal rodent race, slightly shorter than humans, covered in thick fuzz, and have long, curly tails. Their little eyes sparkle and they are well adapted to living in the dark.

The Rat God poured more stuff into Ashrufat's mind. It was as if a voice was flowing quietly in his heart, telling him everything he needed to know. He saw the ancestor of the nezumi - a large rat that was accustomed to roaming the underworld. However, under the guidance of the rat god, these rats began to come into contact with the underground dimensional stone veins, which eventually led to the mutation of the rats. As they grew in size, the rats used their feet to stand and tried to communicate with other rats in a simple way. Over time, generation after generation evolved, and they eventually evolved into the rat people they are today. Under the influence of the Dimension Stone radiation, this creature eventually possessed a high level of intelligence that was not inferior to any race, and formed a unique and well-organized society in the Underground World, far away from other races.

Ashruphat saw the rats digging through the Dimension Stones to develop their civilization and technology. He saw how the nezumi could use all sorts of unheard-of methods to harness the energy contained in the Dimension Stone. He saw that the rats called the Dimension Stone the Magic Stone, and regarded it as the most precious mineral. He also saw how the rat people engaged in a ruthless civil war, weeding out the weaker ones among them and reducing them to slavery. All this is happening in the name of the Rat God.

Sometimes, the rats also leave the Underworld and come to the surface. But their evil and selfish nature (half from the nature of their ancestors and half from their acquired social education) caused them to quickly come into conflict with other races. This also includes elves. Ashruphat saw a battle between nezumi and elves - a trivial event for nezumi, but one that made them "enemies" by the elves.

He saw the faith of the rat people, the altars and icons of the rat gods they made, and the priests who were dedicated to them. Known as the Grey Prophets, these nezumi were born with gray fur and were blessed with the favor of the Rat God. It is their existence that has kept the rat-people society affected by the hatred of the civil war from dividing. Despite the contradictions between the various tribes in the nezumi society, the gray prophets who swore allegiance to the rat god were like glues, using religion, faith (and of course, the necessary force) to bind the nezumi together, so that all civil war damage was manageable.

He saw the ruling body of the nezumi, the Abyss Council, made up of twelve nezumi leaders known as the "Abyssal Lords". All major matters of the nezumi society are decided by the Abyss Council.

All of a sudden, the images vanished, and Ashruphat felt a little surprised and a little curious.

"They are my people, they are my creation, and they are my favorites. The voice of the rat god sounded in his head. "Therefore, I must not abandon them at this critical moment. ”

"What the hell is the crisis?" Ashrufat asked in his mind. Indeed, at least in the information provided by the rat god, the rat people's society, while strange (compared to the Anthropocene), is quite stable. There is nothing that puts the whole race in jeopardy. Because the underground realm excavated by the rat people is indeed large enough, even natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes cannot pose any threat to the entire race. Not to mention war, disease, and the like.

New information flowed into his mind, and suddenly, he realized what the crisis the rat god was referring to. The civilization of the rat people is based on the magic stone (that is, the dimensional stone), whether it is the evolution of their race, or the civilization they build, their weapons, their tools, their lives, in short, everything is inseparable from the magic stone. Magic stones form the basis of the Nezumi society. But a magic stone is a mineral after all, something that will be consumed. The danger of the depletion of the magic stone mine has appeared, and if it continues to be consumed at the current rate, the magic stone mine of the rat people will be exhausted in the foreseeable time.

The Rat God described to Ashruphat a scene of depletion of demonic ore minerals. It's not just a social regression, in fact, too much or too little radiation from the magic stone is a disaster for the nezumi. If there are more magic stones, the rat people will be poisoned by the power of radiation just like humans, and if there are fewer magic stones, the rat people themselves will begin to degrade due to the lack of magic stone radiation, and eventually return to the appearance of their ancestors, that is, they will turn back into ordinary rats with no intelligence.