Jin-woo took ragged, deep breaths. Sweat dripped from his eyebrows to the ground from his bent form, but he refused to not stay upright. They system categorized the RatKin as sentient and passive, but even the kindest human could one day snap because of stacking traumas. He doubted this RatKin had not been through a ton of torture or evils that he saw around him from humans part of ‘Conclave’. Family, friends, and members of kin and kith.
The RatKin took a few steps towards Jin-woo. Its clawed feet clinking on the ground below. It held its hands out as if Jin-woo was a terrified dog, pacifying him. He mentally laughed even though he couldn’t physically. This situation was getting more absurd the longer he stayed.
Its whiskers were working overtime now that it was closer. Jin-woo couldn’t believe his eyes when he recognized clear facial expressions of confusion, anger, realization, and then even a smidge of understanding. It took a few more minutes before the headache cleared. With it came another system notification.
[LANGUAGE ASSIMILATION: Complete]
[-Dialect: Eastern Higher RatKin
-Translated into: Lower Common]
“You’re one of us,” It paused for a second, clicking its tongue. “Not a RatKin. But one of the Experiments.” It approached, the bars he used to keep himself up, with measured steps.
Jin-woo stood back up to full height. He towered over the short Ratkin. It fell backwards on its behind laughing nervously. He wiped the sweat off his face with his dirty hands leaving marks on his cheeks.
“Yes,” he said. The pain had mostly disappeared. He did not want to go through that again. “That is my current assumption. They had me strapped on a much higher floor–”
“Then you escaped the Dungeon Break,” The RatKin interrupted.
Dungeon Break? He was confused. What did that even mean? The dungeon seemed perfectly fine to him, maybe the break causes a mass number of Giant Rats instead of a realistic number? Or maybe it elongated the tunnels and added more deadends and empty rooms?
“Did you?” He asked, fishing for information.
“Yes,” It seemed to consider its words, tasting them. Resolve lined its features. “Yes! Big Brother Dhaz, Rat Lord of a thousand brothers and sisters, protected me. Cared for me.” It spread its hands, showing him the cage. “And this cage prevented the Dungeon Break from claiming me. Its magical energy kept the vile away. Brother Dhaz could never set me free. If only he had–”
It shook its head. “It matters not.” Whispering.
It sounded like the ‘Dungeon Break’ was an event that claimed the denizens of the hospital as its own…? Were they all free before it arrived and took them over somehow? How did that work? Was it some type of slavery? He could feel the distaste rise like bile in him.
“Had I not the sharpest of noses, I would have thought you a human torturer. Experimenter,” It hissed, spitting out its next words with more venom than anything Jin-woo had heard in either life. “A scientist.”
Jin-woo looked at the cage with more focus. He could see the marks of tremendous force. The bars were dented and scratched in a hundred spots, and yet it was still intact. Failed attempts to free the RatKin living inside of the cage. The first notification had marked it as a non-dungeon entity, that much he could trust. But whether he had the confidence to assume the RatKin wouldn’t stab him in the neck at the first opportunity was a different matter all together.
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He pulled out the two keys.
The RatKin jumped to its feet. “How did you get that? Them?” Dawning arrived on his face. “You killed Brother Dhaz.”
Jin-woo didn’t attempt to hide it. Instead he inserted the key.
The humanoid rat stood up. He could hear its knees buckle, large ears pinned to its head. “I will be obligated to get revenge!” It raised its fists to fight like a boxer from the early nineteen-nineties.
Jin-woo doubted it had much strength in its punches. Scrawny frame, tiny fists, and clearly not a warrior by design.
“I don’t think you want to know what happened to them,” he replied. The Giant Rats must have been these brothers and sisters he kept speaking about. If they had started as what it looked like, there had to be at least a hundred thousand years of changes into the past. He couldn’t imagine being the last of your entire people, tribe, or race.
“I know what happened to them! You… You lout!” It tried to puff its chest out, it did nothing to make it look impressive or intimidating. It only emphasized how tiny it was. “You wouldn’t be here unless you killed–”
Jin-woo held the two keys together and carefully turned them. The locking mechanism clicked multiple times until a loud final one echoed in the small maze. He pulled the key out and pocketed it.
The cage began opening on ancient squeaking hinges that screamed in protest. The RatKin scrambled to the back of the cage, pressing its body on the bars like it was trying to melt through them. It hissed and showed its small claws and equally small fangs in an attempt to intimidate him. He was sure it would rip him to shreds with them, but he wouldn’t allow it. It would see reason.
“You are more knowledgeable than I am about what happens to those claimed by ‘Dungeon Breaks’,” he made another assumption, hoping the RatKin would fill in the blanks he did not know. “I gave them mercy, including the Mutated Rat Lord.”
It quieted down. His plan had worked. There was no way it saw what the Rat Lord had become and not see his death as a form of mercy. It had become a monster without enough intelligence to make decisions. But enough to know it suffered in agony with no recourse for itself or those it had been sworn to protect. How many times had it squashed its own kin during the battle without even meaning to? In its rage, it had killed more Giant Rats than Jin-woo did in the boss room. And then its last words, the pain and suffering it existed in. He just hoped it didn’t ‘respawn’.
Jin-woo opened the gate until it hit the otherside of the cage, fully askew and unlikely to close again. He turned away and took a few steps, stopping to look over his shoulder. The Ratkin stared at him with cautious eyes, preparing for a pyrrhic victory if it could accomplish it. Jin-woo had no reason to kill it. There was no emotional wrath at all the suffering he had gone through because of the Giant Rats or the Rat Lord.
Not even the poison rat that had ended up cursing him with ‘Crimson Madness’. It was just business. Part of what it meant to be inside a dungeon. Maybe he could have justified some form of dislike and hatred had it been clearly conscious and free willed, people that attacked him and betrayed his ‘trust’ but they weren’t. Especially if his theory of the Dungeon basically enslaved them after whatever this ‘Conclave’ had done to them.
“You’re free to leave. I will be in the dungeon for a few more hours, scouring it for any more loot I can take with me. After that,” he paused. He mentally noted to make sure to lock his thick doors when he slept in case the RatKin ended up attempting to fulfil its revenge. “The portal out of here will close behind me. You don’t want to be caught here alone, especially with the cage gates open.”
With that said, he left. He didn’t even give the RatKin a chance to respond. There was no point for further discussion. It was meaningless. Neither one of them had any objective data that would aid them in their immediate situations. Neither one suddenly had a map of the surroundings around the hospital and closest center of civilization they could head to. Nor did they have a ‘Culture 101’ detailing what faux pas he needed to avoid when he did meet people out and about.
He had nothing to go off on. So he needed to generate enough money that people could excuse his weirdness as a quirk rather than ‘different’. Especially in a world full of levels and people that may be capable of smashing his skull in with a fist. He was still confused on what the world out there would be like. Was it more medieval with the whole witch hunt saga, a more modern society that never developed guns, or was it something in between? There was no way to tell. But he was slowly gathering data as necessary.