I don’t think anyone needs an enlightenment on how disgusting eating a raw rat is. So I’ll spare us the details.

After struggling to not throw up for a frankly embarrassing amount of time. I was pretty set. Well. I mean I passed out after casting my first spell. But that’s not necessarily a death sentence here. The rats didn’t seem like they would actually attack me at all.

That said, I still was on edge. I don’t know how much time passes after I go out. Maybe I just blanked for a minute. Or maybe I’m winking out for days and just not noticing it. Either way its concerning to have this continue.

And I say continue obviously cause I’ve kept it up. Regardless of how risky it might be, that little nugget of hope that I can finally leave kinda had me going nuts for a bit. I kept zapping rats and passing out.

A bonus feature. Where I actually hit the rats doesn’t seem to matter. They always die if they get grazed. Granted. Its pretty hard to aim whatever flash of light I'm tossing at them. I think it's something like a lightning bolt, but I haven’t kept my eyes open to confirm.

But.. Its not like I didn’t get it. Left with plenty of time to think. I couldn’t help but remember embarrassing moments from school. Asking why a deer would die from a shot that missed its vitals.

Shock. Whatever these rats' brains were made out of isn’t tough stuff. So I wasn’t really killing them. Well. in a sense at least.

But this is important, cause it means I’m wasting energy. My very limited energy is my only tool to survive this hellhole. And smacking each and every rat as hard as I can wasn’t getting me anywhere. Trying to hold back my magic only lead to more disastrous results. It turns out no matter how weak I try and make it, I still pass out. So I might just piss off a monster and then get incapacitated…

So current project: Find the magic that takes the MINIMUM amount of energy to kill a rat.

And what is my methodology for finding something so specialized and ridiculously niche?

Well I’m mainly just messing around.

I know it sounds thoughtless. But what the hell am I supposed to do? It might sound exciting. But I've been down here a LONG time. Especially once I started eating rats, its my moral that was in the most danger of tanking. So I'm having some fun. It's MAGIC I’ve gotta screw around a bit right?

So the first big discovery. I CAN actually use magic without passing out. It's still really bad, like I’m having a heart attack or something. But if I stay still, breathe deeply. And don't focus on making it GO anywhere. I can keep awake through it, and controlling my breathing seems to help restore my ‘energy’ to max faster too.

So it turns out trying to imagine things like ‘fire’ or ‘ice’ doesn’t really change what the spell is made out of. At risk of my retinas I’ve taken glances at my magic, and its basically just some kind of pale white energy shmuz. I can change its shape if I focus, but it doesn’t seem to actually burn stuff or get cold at all. Maybe its already electric from the base version. But I can’t really test that on anything here.

But as I used it more, I really started to feel like just trying to envision aspects of what I wanted wouldn’t work. I mean if it was that easy, why did I make this white energy stuff in the first place? There has to be a trick. And considering I don't even have a solid idea of what I wanted to make. It's kinda like saying “I’ll know it when I see it” while you're blind.

So I started thinking. What do I actually want to use here? Well wouldn’t it make the most sense to not attack at all? Trying to slay a rat in a single hit definitely seemed to be a one way trip to unconsciousness. So its not really a ‘element’ I'm looking for as much as an ‘effect’. Sure the effect ultimately results in death, but the difference can be huge.

The ‘effect’ that would be the cheapest. A fundamental tool so simple and worthless you pretty much never use it in games. It's gotta be poison.

So how the hell do you make poison? Its super dependent right? I mean in games its just like you wave your hands and an enemy starts taking damage. But irl poisons are like. Everything. Just anything your body doesn’t want inside it is poison really. Even too much of some things are called poisonous. So maybe this is an even worse idea than trying to make fire or something.

That would be if I was really in the dark about this sort of thing. Maybe some little stupid kid had heard something like “I’ve built up an immunity poison” and taken it literally. Shoving all kinds of things into his mouth until he was sick. Over and over. And maybe that stupid little kid is me. I’m still sorry for my caretakers. But it's finally paying off!

So no. I have no idea how to make my magic do what I want. But I have a very acute memory of the effect I’m trying to create. And that should count for something right? My background bonus very clearly states I should have some talent in this area. So just work already!

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If I touch my mana or energy or whatever. It’s not like it resists. It's almost like water. It reacts almost viscerally to my will. Its kinda best to think of it like a puppy or something. Really excited to do whatever I say, but it doesn’t really understand what I'm saying to start with. But more.. Tactile? Its magic. Its hard to explain. And harder to get a handle on.

But If I just keep stirring it around like this I'm not getting anywhere am I? I want something poisonous. Even rotten would work! That disgusting sensation from the bottom of your stomach that makes you feel too heavy and too empty all at the same time. The constant fighting against your stomach to keep food down.

It helps to move my hands when I’m working on stuff like this. And I don't know how I would make an appropriate gesture for poison. So I'm basically just stirring the air with my hand. But hey! Its not lame if it works! Its feeling.. Thicker? More oily. Even though I can’t see if something is moving around… Well. No way to try it without just.. Trying it I guess.

“Skreee!”

After the rats battle cry I flicked my hand at it.. Okay it's a bit lame. But how else would I direct it. Usually you have to see the thing your targeting with debuff stuff right? But even with that night vision perk there's no way I can see in pitch black. I didn’t hear any kind of splash or anything. So it's hard to tell if it worked…

“S-scrr..”

Ah! Fuck! Something bumped into me! The rat isn’t dead! I swung my leg to kick it as hard as I could. But honestly, there wasn’t much point. I was barely holding onto consciousness after casting a spell. It was more of a nudge then a kick

||Rot casting skill acquired!||

Thankfully. The rat wasn’t really moving anymore. Though it was a bit of a hollow victory. I definitely didn’t want to eat something that was hit with ‘Rot’... Why did I get Rot casting anyways? I was definitely going for poison… Well whatever. As soon as I stopped gasping for air I could start celebrating!

I mean. Even if its a bit slower than ideal. I blindly killed a rat with a spell I literally invented out of nothing. That's pretty amazing right? Making spells is always at the upper echelon of spellcasting in video games. So I had to be some kind of genius to work it out so quickly! Please ignore my mysterious ‘Potential’ skill that probably did the heavy lifting. I need this win.

||Level up! Please direct your experience||

“Huh.. Well that’s a good sign…”

Just in case I pulled open my status window… Emaciated? Are things really that bad?! Well. I was hoping there would be some UI elements to pick up. But it seems that its more flailing around in the dark.. Speaking of…

||Intent confirmed. Perception will be improved.||

||Skills, Echo magnet, Nighteye, and Raptorsight have Been acquired!||

||Nighteye proficiency added, Nighteye Skill up! 1->2||

Dark! Beautiful darkness! Oh how I missed you! If the angels could only sing the praises in my heart!

Let me be clear. I don’t mean the bitter, absolute darkness that I had become so unfortunately accustomed to. But normal. Barely see your hand in front of your face gloom. I could SEE! Not much. But I actually had a vague idea of what was around me! I could make out a shape on the ground near where I was standing. The oppressive walls of mostly empty barrels stacked onto those weird horizontal shelves. And If I looked back towards the safe corner of the entrance, I could make out vaguely more detail about the musky depths of this place.

God damn there are so many fucking rats. I could catch glimpses of their beady eyes, but mostly just the shifting forms in the darkness. This is one hell of a starting quest. Well. Only one thing to do. Never thought I’d be an exterminator in another world.

So long story short. Magic is really fucking useful. The moment I got something close to eyesight down here I realized just how terrifyingly effective the poison spell I thought up is. I dont think it's totally unavoidable. But I can’t figure out any connection between me casting it and the rat getting hit. And apparently. Neither can the rats.

As soon as I recover enough energy to cast again. I just start all over again and target the first thing I see move. And they don’t even get a chance to attack me as they slump over in a few seconds. It takes longer for some of them. But I’m pretty sure I haven’t failed to kill one yet.

I'd worry about chasing them all down. But that's another benefit of my limited vision! Without getting too close to aggro some fat rodents, I can tell they all go and come back to their nest or whatever. My current theory is that is where their food source is. So all I have to do is hang out, cast spells until I get too tired to do anymore. Walk back to my safe space near the entrance where I can see clearly. And sleep to reset.

I still haven't risked eating the rats I've poisoned. But with how disgusting the raw unbutchered rat meat is, I haven’t worked the stomach up to work through my existing of white energy killed prey yet. So food is kinda okay. And with a better sense of where exactly the risk areas are, there's a few untouched barrels of bread water to drink.

The only real issue is just how many rats there are. I don’t have any clue how you’d get through this with just a sword. Got that back by the way. It's basically just a too short walking stick for now. But noticed it on the ground one day so grabbed it all the same.

But yeah, there's like a HUGE number of rats here. I wouldn’t say infinite. They're definitely sparcing out over time. But its at least in the triple digits. I don’t know if I’ll run out of supplies before I finish killing them all honestly… I have the sword in case I need to get an unpoisoned one to eat. But there's really only so far I can go without something to drink. Especially when I’m casting spells all the time.

At least on that front, things have gotten better. My rot casting went to the next number, which I can only assume is an improvement. And I even got a new skill called ‘Venomancer’ and you know that's gotta be helpful for my work here.

I'd really like to get some kind of area of effect spell to try and work through more rats at a time. But there's a few problems there. I’ve gotten a vague sense that how passing out-y my spells are is based on some nebulous raw power requirement. So I might start going out again if I try and use something stronger, or potentially worse. And second, my current poison spell didn’t really leave any traces back to me, but I cant imagine the same would be true for some kind of poison mist or splash of fluid. So I’m gonna stick to going 1 by 1 until things get REALLY desperate.

Thankfully, things didn’t get there. I even had a whole leg of a rat left over when I finally noticed the rats numbers starting to take a nosedive. Soon there wasn’t a single rat that skittered far from their little nest. Which meant it was finally time to finish this.

Now. I wasn’t super confident going into this fight. So I had a pretty clear strategy in mind. Save my spell for whatever chased me when I Inevitably ran away. Now that I could see and had a weapon, I could at least take care of a few without relying on magic. And I could use it to cover an escape when I got overwhelmed.

So I walked up, sword in hand, with careful. Slow breaths. And approached the rat nest only to make a discovery.

Of course, swords are pretty long, three feet is a lot of metal to swing around, even smaller ones like mine could give you a pretty substantial reach advantage. So imagine you use that to its maximum, spreading out your legs wide and grabbing your sword by the very end of the pommel to swipe it down like some caveman with a club.

When I got within a few feet of the rats and found out that they still hadn’t attacked me. I did just that. Over and over again. There were maybe a dozen left and they died without a single chance to retaliate.

And after that, well a single big rat came out. A giant rat one could even say. But regardless of its place in the rodent pecking order. I was too busy freaking out about a rat nearly shoulder high with my waist and just tossed my spell at it and booked it immediately.

||Quest complete! Bonus rewards distributed||