Lanek was worried. Most sane creatures would have broken after his attacks, especially considering what shrapnel could do to a body. The area in a wide arc in front of him was covered in corpses of the strange ratmen, their blood soaking into the earth. However, these monsters seemed to have no concept of self-preservation as the tide of enemies continued to squeeze out of their tunnels and scramble across the corpses of their kin.
Even targeting the holes they were emerging from didn’t seem to stem the tide, it simply seemed to route the monsters to exit the tunnels elsewhere. Thankfully, the System had long since stopped giving him kill notifications since he no longer received experience. I guess that’s one bonus, that’s a lot of experience being shared to the furballs and the Order.
Despite his worry and the dire nature of the situation, he had to resist the urge to laugh at the image flashing in his mind, an image of Khurzag being drowned in kill notifications out of nowhere. Hopefully, his companions would consider the irritation to be a small price to pay for the free experience. Huh, I don’t even know if they get notifications. They never mentioned it even though they’ve been getting free experience from me for a while now.
Lanek! We can’t hold against this many. It’s only a matter of time before they overwhelm us. Isaac’s voice rang out in Lanek’s mind.
Which way? We can’t lead them back to everyone else. Lanek responded as he launched several of his thorn projectiles, hoping that the gruesome attack would give the monsters pause. Instead of horror or fear, the ratmen responded with indifference to the screams of agony as the thorns tore the unlucky creatures that had been struck apart from the inside. The tide just swept over the dying rats, trampling them to death.
Don’t worry, the ratmen abhor being above ground, they don’t venture far from their warrens. Go! Isaac shouted into Lanek’s mind, causing the dranrid to wince at the unpleasant sensation.
With a curse, Lanek called up three of his spheres and launched them to his front and sides, letting the spheres activate on impact. An instant later, rats in all directions were flung back, causing confusion as they landed amid the crowd behind them. Not wasting any time to admire the effects of his shockwave, he wheeled Maximilian to the south, silently ordering the demigryph to crash through the rats between them and the forest.
To his shock, their weren’t as many enemies behind them as he expected. There were quite a few of them, but he could now see the results of Isaac’s handiwork for the first time, and it was terrifying. Bodies were piled behind him, many with a single wound striking a vital spot. As they rode away, Lanek could just make out the areas where Isaac had been forced to dispense with finesse and resort to something much more barbaric.
In those areas, limbs were separated from their owners and Isaac had settled for simply knocking the enemy out of the fight. Rather than killing them in a single blow, he had gone for savage strikes that he could deliver in quick succession against a crowd, leaving many ratmen whining piteously into the ground as they bled out or tried to crawl away.
Tearing his eyes away from the carnage, Lanek began firing his shockwave-inscribed spheres straight ahead to clear the path for their retreat. He needn’t have bothered as Maximilian was thrilled to finally get a chance to fight since Isaac and Lanek had ensured that no enemy had gotten within the demigryph’s range.
Maximilian’s claws and beak ripped apart anything that stood in his path, spraying Lanek with no small amount of blood and gore. However, Max didn’t lose himself in the fighting, as much as he wanted to. The demigryph never let the enemies slow him down, resorting to using his speed and bulk to crash through the surprisingly feeble creatures.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
If Max hadn’t been able to hear and sense the rumbling beneath the ground that heralded more of the rats coming for them, he would want to stay and fight. As satisfying as it would be to slaughter the ratmen, he wasn’t willing to put Lanek at risk with so many enemies around. He liked the weird human-dranrid too much.
Rumbling deep in his chest, Maximilian resolved to return and get his revenge for the indignity of having to run, and he would be bringing friends. Max imagined hunting down the rats alongside Sanguineus and Kazuma, reveling in the panic that he was certain would overtake the weaklings. Lanek, paused a moment from firing off projectiles to look down at his mount in confusion. Anticipation and glee were radiating from the demigryph in waves.
However, Lanek didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on it as the rats were relentless. He was grateful when Max finally broke free of the rats and was able to utilize his speed. A few moments later, Lanek craned his head around to see how close the rats were, but saw nothing. Shit, they travel underground.
Calm down, Lanek. Isaac said. They stopped chasing us as soon as they realized they couldn’t keep up with Max, which took all of a second or two once your friend broke through their lines. Still, I wouldn’t slow down until we’re in the woods.
What if they’re following us underground? Couldn’t we be running into another ambush? Lanek asked.
That’s unlikely. If they had tunnels out here, they would have been emerging from them during the fight to overwhelm us. We can talk more once you’re safe, I need to keep watch behind us, just in case. Isaac explained before cutting off the connection.
Lanek wanted to relax, but knew that he had to pay attention as well. He was exhausted, not just from the casting that really hadn’t drained his mana all that much, but it seemed that there was still a mental toll from using so much mana so quickly. On top of that, he was trembling and dizzy, likely from the adrenaline rush wearing off.
He had fought some horrible things since coming to this world, but the ratmen had really freaked him out. It wasn’t just the total lack of self-preservation instinct, although that was disturbing enough. It also wasn’t fact that they didn’t care in the slightest about one another. No, the aspect that bothered him the most was the look in their eyes.
Most of the monsters he had fought reacted with rage and hostility at first sight. With other foes, they had attacked him with a sort of clinical detachment that felt like they didn’t care at all about him, he was just a thing that needed to be removed. The problem with the ratmen was that their eyes had looked human, right down to the emotions they could convey.
Unfortunately, the main emotion being conveyed was what he could only refer to as madness. However, over the course of the fight, he had caught glimpses of another emotion in those too-familiar eyes. Desperation.
It had hit him hard as it was a look that he had seen before back on Earth. Hell, he knew that he had gone through some times in his life where he likely had a similar look in his eyes. It had affected him strongly enough that he had almost stopped attacking, but he had forced himself to set the sympathy aside to survive.
Now that he was no long actively fighting for his life, Lanek couldn’t help but remember that look. As his body came down from the high and there were no longer any threats looming in his immediate vicinity, he wondered if he had just massacred a crowd of piteous sentients in a horrible situation.
Lanek didn’t regret his actions, just because someone or something was in an unfortunate situation or down on their luck did not mean that he would just let them harm him. However, there was a hell of a big difference between killing something that was driven to attack you out of desperation and something malicious that wanted to kill you simply for existing.
I need to talk to Isaac. I need to know more about the ratmen, if only to deal with my conscience. Although, depending on the answers, it might not help.
It was with no small amount of relief that Lanek finally reached the forest, but rather than stop to rest, he urged Maximilian to continue. As they rode, he had the demigryph veer southwest through the trees until nightfall. While he desperately needed a rest, he also needed to keep his companions at the river safe, so he deliberately left a trail leading away from the river in case the rats did enter the forest.
He trusted Isaac’s knowledge, but he also had to face the very real possibility that it was quite out of date. The former king had been in hibernation for centuries, so anything could have changed. Maybe the gaunts had triggered a change in the ratmen behavior or maybe they had adapted to the surface out of necessity since Isaac died.
With these questions swirling around in his mind, Lanek finally slipped from Maximilian’s saddle an hour or so after sunset. He fully intended to speak with Isaac, but before he could begin speaking, he felt weariness overtake him and fell into a fitful slumber.