Defeated in an Instant!

Rat King Aubrey fled the city walls with his palace guards, vanishing into the labyrinth of palaces in the blink of an eye. The high-ranking officials of the Rat Kingdom were also making a hasty retreat. If the king himself had given the order for a full retreat, what reason did they have to stay? To defend the honor of the ratmen and fight to the death against the enemy? Don't be ridiculous! Rats had no need for honor.

The ratmen were among the lowest intelligent species on the Holy Continent, living at the very bottom. The common ratmen had no idea that King Aubrey and the kingdom's top officials had already fled. They were petrified by the rapidly approaching Royal Gryphon Knight army.

The sky was filled with golden gryphons, exuding a terrifying aura that had the million ratmen of the kingdom trembling in fear. As the gryphons closed in on the city walls, the terrified and panicked ratmen warriors finally snapped, launching an attack on the advancing gryphon army.

At first, scattered arrows were fired, then waves of dense arrow rain followed. Like a chain reaction, countless ratmen warriors began their assault. Their primary means of attack was archery, hoping to shoot down some of the golden gryphons and demoralize the enemy forces. However, their efforts were in vain.

The storm of arrows shot into the ranks of the Royal Gryphon Knights, but they couldn't even breach the basic defensive aura of the army. The golden light enveloping the Royal Gryphon Knights was a magic-induced protective shield, far from invincible, but more than sufficient to deflect the ratmen's arrows. The arrows bounced off or shattered upon hitting the shield, rendering the ratmen's attack utterly ineffective.

The two sides' disparity in military strength was too great.

"Attack!" With the command given, over twenty thousand Royal Gryphon Knights swiftly dispersed, resembling a swarm of bees as they surged into the Rat Kingdom's capital from all directions.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

A series of explosions rang out as the knights attacked. They wielded long lances, several meters in length, slashing and thrusting to unleash powerful spear beams that instantly destroyed numerous arrow towers and fortresses within and around the city walls.

The defenses stood no chance!

The knights' casual attacks obliterated the Rat Kingdom's defensive structures with the ease of slicing through tofu. Their destructive power was bolstered by the immense magic power shared with their golden gryphons. The synergy between knight and gryphon allowed the knights to unleash significantly enhanced combat techniques, a major advantage of having such formidable mounts. 

If the mounts were dragons, the power would be even more terrifying. In fact, even an ordinary warrior could exhibit saint-level combat prowess if they became a knight of a saint-level dragon.

This was why the black-robed mage was desperate to contract with the dark dragon Charles. By leveraging Charles's power, the mage, though at the extraordinary level, could cast spells with saint-level potency.

In mere moments, the Royal Gryphon Knights had razed the Rat Kingdom's countless arrow towers and fortresses. They didn't bother with the city walls, as there was no need. Unlike some powerful factions that erected extensive magical defense shields around their strongholds, the Rat Kingdom lacked the resources and technology for such defenses.

Thus, the Royal Gryphon Knights drove straight in from above. The walls and moats were mere decorations in the face of their might. With the arrow towers and fortresses destroyed, the entire Rat Kingdom was at the mercy of the Royal Gryphon Knights.

"Caw! Caw! Caw!" The air was filled with the piercing screeches of golden gryphons. They spread their enormous wings and, with a single mighty flap, launched countless feathers like arrows at the ratmen below. These were no ordinary feathers but magically condensed projectiles covering dozens to hundreds of meters.

Individually, such an attack by a single gryphon was not overly threatening. But when over twenty thousand golden gryphons unleashed their assault simultaneously, the effect was devastating. A deluge of magical golden feathers rained down, covering nearly half of the Rat Kingdom.

Buildings were shattered, and countless ratmen were impaled by the magical feathers. In an instant, half the kingdom was reduced to rubble, with innumerable ratmen slain. Blood stained the ground, and bodies lay everywhere.

With just one move, the million-strong rat army assembled by Rat King Aubrey crumbled. The few ratmen who survived the magical feather barrage were fleeing in panic. This was the outcome of an utterly unequal war. If the forces were evenly matched, the gryphons' wide-area attacks wouldn't have had such a dramatic effect. But the Rat Kingdom was too weak, especially the poorly equipped ratmen who were no match for the gryphons' overwhelming assault. Only a handful of elite ratmen managed to survive the onslaught, but even they had no will to continue fighting.

At this moment, every rat in the kingdom was scared out of their wits, all desperately trying to escape. Some fled to the royal palace, others out of the city, and some even started digging holes on the spot…

Meanwhile, the Royal Gryphon Knights descended from the skies, spreading throughout the Rat Kingdom to methodically hunt down the fleeing ratmen.

...

Elsewhere, Rat King Aubrey, unaware that his million-strong army had been defeated, arrived at his underground treasure vault with his palace guards. As he reached the door, a sudden realization hit him—he didn't have the key!

With no time to return to his quarters for it, he ordered his guards to force the vault door open. When it finally swung open, he was stunned.

The vast vault was empty.

It was as if it had been looted by rats, completely bare. All his treasures, along with the accumulated wealth of previous rat kings, were gone.

"Damn it! Who stole my treasures?" 

"This is outrageous!"

"If only they had left me a few gold coins!"

Overcome with rage, Rat King Aubrey fainted on the spot.