Captain Blood had been trapped in the valley without managing to break out, but that didn't mean he was just sitting on his hands. He and his vampire pirates had already figured out the pattern behind these strange ratmen's attacks and prepared accordingly. Besides, the layers of war fog that had built up throughout the valley blocked out the sunlight, so the vampire pirates' fighting strength hadn't diminished with time.
They looked like they were getting beaten to a pulp, but since they were generally quite cunning and their greed had yet to be satisfied, their actual losses weren't all that high.
As another dusk drew near, the lazy bastards jumped into the reinforced trenches ahead of time. Murphy noticed that they were placing strange holy symbols at regular intervals inside the trenches. Those things definitely weren't harmless!
They gave off a deeply foul aura, and up close, they even smelled like rotten fish.
Murphy had no idea where the pirates had gotten those filthy holy symbols, but their "fighting poison with poison" tactic was undoubtedly working. With the symbols buried in the trenches, the many ratmen tunneling underground seemed to be struck by some strange force, unable to get close. Naturally, they couldn't launch their vicious underground attacks, either.
They could only surface a few hundred meters from the trench line, then charge forward in a disorderly, headlong rush—like a noisy black tide crashing against an unyielding reef woven from gunfire.
The vampire pirates hurled filthy seafarers' curses at them, calling them landlubbers and bilge rats. Some, drunk as skunks, yelled that they were going to have their way with the ratmen's female relatives. Their obscenities were so vivid that Murphy couldn't help thinking the pirates' tastes were seriously fucked up.
Still, they were excellent shots.
That wasn't an