The "Chosen One" of the Dark Lord, His Excellency Blackservant Sen, current leader of the Blackservant Clan, had already given up hope.
After the God of the North Wind crashed into the earth and froze most of the Blackservant Clan to death within minutes, this ratman, who had been granted "dark wisdom," had promptly turned tail and run. Generally speaking, ratmen weren't the sort of creatures to display such astonishing wisdom and make a quick getaway at the first sign of trouble. But individuals whose intelligence had been boosted by the Dark Lord were another matter.
He could read the course of the battle, and his talent for burrowing let him move freely across the battlefield. He had even witnessed Maxim and Hugsgen's final confrontation with his own eyes, along with Hugsgen admitting defeat.
The ratman hadn't seen much of the world, but he was certain this battle couldn't be won. As for this "assassination" of Murphy, that had been nothing but a blind cat stumbling onto a dead mouse.
Who knew that Mannis would toss them over his shoulder and land them right in the direction Blackservant Sen was fleeing? Actually, rather than chalking it up to a slip of the hand, Murphy suspected that Pipi Snake had done it on purpose. That fellow had surely known where the ratman was all along.
The reason was probably just Pipi Snake's nasty nature. It wanted the Dark Lord's "Chosen One" to complete the mission bestowed by a god, so it could pull off a prank that would amuse it for a few seconds.
And as it turned out, the jailbird singing prison blues in the Astral Realm really did have an eye for choosing Chosen Ones. Perhaps it was the nature of a joke god that drew in goofballs. At