Chapter 8

“So, you understand that the city nor I are in any way responsible for any harm that may come to you. If you contract an incurable disease, then you will be placed under quarantine and in time permanently expulsed from the city?”

“Yes, you have already informed me of that on our way here, Rogger.”

He continued to complain about something. I stopped listening. I needed to focus and listening to him was not going to help.

I looked at the building. It had typical front of many usual government buildings with a couple of columns in the front along with a statue of some guy on a horse holding his sword out. The door was large and barred with thick wooden beam from the outside. The door had ornate etchings on it showing scenes of battle.

I powered up a magic projectile spell and three projectiles shot right at the beam splitting it in half. I was able to move the broken beams with moderate effort as each half of the beam probably weighed about 300 lbs.

The first room was like a foyer type of room though much bigger than most foyers that I had ever seen. A chandelier hung down from the ceiling made of crystal though it was partially broken. I knew the layout of the Town hall. Just beyond this room was a circular hallway enclosing the main forum area where I was told that most of the rats were. They had spread to the hallways as well, likely through one of the doors that opened to the forum. Above the hallways were separated enclosed balconies made for the more affluent individual to watch their specific political puppet. The hallways had multiple stairways leading to the balcony areas.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to find once I opened the door to the hallways. The screeches of the disgusting rodents were easily heard with many of them scratching at the walls. The infestation of the town hall was not without incidence or casualties. From what Rogger had mentioned, the rats had come out quick during a session from one of the rooms behind the main forum area and a few of the individuals, likely politicians had been killed.

“Are we sure we want to go in there, bruh? I mean I’m just in your mind, but I still have to live in the same body, and I would hate to have it be eaten by big rats,” said Jimmy in my mind.

“They are disgusting creatures, but I have seen and faced much worse in my life. These are likely creatures with very little intelligence and acting mostly on pure instinct. The truly disgusting creatures to me have always been the ones that can think and rationalize and still choose to do unspeakable things,” I said.

I no longer had to whisper as I was alone with my mind sharing buddy, but I felt whispering would still be in the best interest given that we wanted to not alert the rats unnecessarily.

“Well, we should try and be quiet as possible, I think. I have heard that rats have great hearing.”

“Agreed. Speaking of being quiet, I haven’t heard your voice in quite a while. And now that I think about it, you seem to only chime in occasionally.”

“Aww have you missed the sound of my voice, bud? I think this sounds like an awesome bromance in the making. I’m not saying I’m going to get you a valentine’s day gift but that seems like it may be in the forecast,” Jimmy said, causing me to shake my head and roll my eyes.

“I know you’re rolling your eyes on the obvi, but I can tell deep down you’re thinking what would be an awesome gift for my best bud, Jimmy and I just want you to know, all I need is you and your love.”

I wished I had remembered to bring a bucket at that time because I felt like I was going to hurl.

“I was just wondering why you become so quiet at times. It has nothing to do with me missing your voice, but you just don’t seem the type to stay quiet for so long,” I replied to him.

“Well, I can’t say that doesn’t hurt because it does, right in my make-believe ghost heart. Anyways, since you asked, the reason I become so quiet is not because of choice. See I have to divide my attention between you and The System. Imagine I’m like you and The System are playing a tug of rope and I’m like the little ribbon in the middle. When I’m interacting with you, it requires some focus and I’m less towards the system and vice versa. Wait, that analogy may not be right. I think I might have to explain that again. So, it’s like when...”

“It’s fine,” I interrupted, “I think I understand. You need make an effort to come forth and be able to interact with me which is not always possible as you are in the middle like a conduit between me and The System. Does that sound about right?”

“Umm yea bro, I think that explanation works actually a little better than mine so yea let’s go with that.”

This new revelation by Jimmy opened a lot of new questions for me. I had already wondered who put him and I in the same body and why. Now, it seems that Jimmy was acting like my connection to The System. What would happen if he was to not be in my body…would I lose all connection to The System? Do I have a stronger connection to The System when he’s more active with me or a weaker one. There were so many questions and no answers yet.

I got ready and slowly opened the door to the hallway while keeping a baccanial wine bottle at the ready in case I needed to throw it quickly and close the door back up. Fortunately, none of the rats jumped out as I slowly opened the door. I was glad that the age of the doors had not made the hinges rust resulting in a lot of noise when I opened the door.

I peaked in through the partially opened door and saw two different pit-bull sized rats going to town on an unknown corpse about 15 feet away. One of the rats looked up and its glowing eyes looked right at me. There was some light still coming from some of the Light stones on the ceiling and I could make out another rat behind the other two. Before they could even act, I let loose a Magic projectile spell and 3 stones whizzed towards each one of the three rats. The two rats in the front were hit straight on and collapsed. They weren’t dead but certainly close to it. The third, however, was already a little behind the first two and managed to get hidden some more making the shot miss.

The squealing of the three rats caused some more to stir up. I looked quickly at the other side and saw about 6 of them running towards me. They weren’t quite as fast as rats of smaller size would be, so I glad for that. Was it the size that made them a little slower than their smaller brethren or something else.

I cast a sleep spell and the first 4 of that group stopped right there on the ground and fell asleep. The two that were still awake, however, had not stopped and continued to come towards me. I managed to get another projectile spell off and this time the two rats collapsed and died immediately. In the meantime, on the other side the rat that had managed to hide from the projectile, was almost on top of me. I was standing partially in the door. The rat leapt towards me reaching almost to my chest but before he made contact, I slammed the door I was holding onto his face. The rat squealed and was hurt but far from dead but that was correctly quickly as 3 projectile stones were directed right to his head killing him instantly.

I moved to the ones sleeping and quickly eliminated that with a couple more spells. The ones that were still alive before now had died from bleeding.

“I’m never gonna be able to watch ratatouille the same way again” Jimmy said in my mind.

I laughed and stepped back through the door into the foyer area again to let my mana recover. It was far from empty, but I figured it was best to get filled up before going after more of those.

A short while later my mana had repleted and I repeated the process of peeking through the doors. I once against caught the attention of a group of rats and quickly dispatched them with a sleep spell followed by magic projectiles. I was able to continue this same process a few more times in the hallway stopping and going back to the foyer whenever mana was more than halfway depleted.

It ended up taking a couple of hours, but I was able to clean out the hallway for the most part and kill about 38 rats.

“Why haven’t we leveled up yet? All those rats should have def give us a few levels. Are we not getting experience points for these for some reason?” asked Jimmy.

“We can only level up when we rest and out of combat for some time.”

“Well let’s go rest and level up. Hey, we can grab some Margaritas and come back to this spot later. It’s not like the rats won’t be there tomorrow. Wait, do they have margaritas in this world cuz if they don’t, I say we patent that shit now! We can make different flavors like cucumber, Jalapeno, strawberry…”

“We can’t rest and level. It would not be a good idea for us to do that. I want to try and push through and kill as many of these as possible if not all of them before we rest.”

“Why in the world would you think it’s a good idea to wait? If we level up, we could increase our stats and health point and mana and stuff and then come back and kill them even easier.”

“Look Jimmy, you’re gonna have to trust me on this. Yea normally it would be a good idea to level up and all those things you said but if we rest and level up now, there is a good chance we will meet the level 10 threshold where we are made to select a class by the system. If we do that, we may miss out on some benefits. If we kill more than a hundred of these rats, I may be able to get a Title even. The longer we wait and the more titles we have, the greater the chance we will be given the option of a more unique or rare class by the system. Not to mention that while all these rats are around, it’s probably not a good idea to go rest anywhere near here. I had to break the beam to get inside, and I would have to worry about these things getting out and attacking innocent people.

“Ok bruh, I trust you. All you had to say was ‘I got this homie’ and I would have been down.”

I found the stairway door leading up to the balcony close to where we had come in. I used the master key that Rogger had given me to unlock it. I slowly opened the door and cautiously went up the steps trying to make as little noise as possible.

The balcony was empty of any rats. It seemed like it had not been used in a long while from all the dust that was collected on the seats inside. I peeked over the balcony and looked down at the forum. I had already killed about 40 or so rats but down there were hundreds of rats. Part of me felt so annoyed about being told that there were only about twenty or so rats inside. I mean, you can be a little off in estimate, but this was just insane. They were so crowded that some of them were on top of each other. A few others were trying to climb up the walls but despite the size of the rats and the grips of their claws, the polished walls of the forum were making the task very difficult. Most would climb up part of the way then fall back down.

I wondered if Demira would have been able to take this mission on. Certainly, she was a much higher level than me and had a class but even then it would have been a nightmare scenario. She would have had to come here in full plate armor from head to toe and maybe then she could have. She would still have a difficult time not being overrun by them. Could the rats penetrate through steel armor in enough time? These obviously weren’t regular rats. I could see in areas where they had chewed through wood and hard stone to some extent. How could Rogger have been so off about the number of rats here?

I estimated that I was likely about 25-30 feet up from the ground. I took each of the 5 baccanial wine bottles out. The thing with baccanial wine was that it was less like wine and much more like gasoline. Nobody knew why it was called wine as it was not even made from grapes. It was used primarily by cult of Baccus during some of their rituals who was the god of wine and pretty much just wild partying. Normal folk would never drink that stuff as it tasted terrible and there was a good chance that it would cause serious harm if drank in any significant quantity. The cult would make their new recruits drink an entire bottle through the night and if at any time they vomited any of it, the vomitus was lit on fire. And then the recruit who had vomited was thrown into that fire. Some died from the fire and some survived. The ones that survived the fire were healed of their damage and made a member while the ones that died...well they were obviously just not the right fit for the cult.

The wine was kept in a leather skin bottle that kept the wine from spilling or accidentally catching on fire. Unfortunately, this was not as helpful for my purposes, so I had obtained 2 large glass bottles as well. I poured the leather skin bottle content into the glass jugs filling them both up. Then I took the remaining leather skins and cut them on the side with a flap so the contents wouldn’t immediately spill out. I then threw the leather skins one at a time onto different areas of the forum blindly without looking over the balcony. I knew after the first fell, the Rats would very likely spot me if I was to peek over the edge.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I could hear the rats squealing louder from the leather skins that were thrown over the edge. I then placed a cloth in each of the glass bottles and lit up the cloth. There were only two of these, so I had to make them count. I threw one to the left of the center and the other to the right. As soon as the bottle hit the ground, the place was on fire. The leather skins had slowly been leaking the wine from their flapped cut all over the ground and the rats.

The squealing of the rats got louder and louder. I could hear the scratches against the door of the forum as well as the walls mixed in the crackle of the flames.

I looked over the balcony and saw that the entire ground was on fire. The rats were trying to gnaw through the wall, the door and even each other to try and escape the fire but with little success. Some were climbing on top of each other trying to get onto the balcony but as soon as a few would get close, I would shoot them down with magic projectiles. I continued to use the spell sparingly at them knowing that once my mana was completely gone, it would take a little while to replenish unless I used up the mana potion and since that was my only potion, I did not want to waste it.

The fire died quickly but not before almost all the rats in the forum room were dead. The few that had survived were dispatched quickly with Magic projectile spell.

The walls made of concrete seemed to survive the fire just fine as did the main door to the forum which was likely some thick wood of some type. I could see the areas where the rats had been trying to bite and claw through. If they had a little more time, perhaps they would have. The rear doors were much weaker and collapsed after being burnt.

Once all the rats in the forum seemed to have died off, I sat down and let my mana build back up. I knew it was far from over, so I got up and used the wand of telekinesis to open the bottom stairway door leading back to the hall. I had expected that there would be more rats in the hallway now and I was not wrong. As soon as the door was opened slightly, rats started rushing in. As soon as three of them entered the stairway, however, I would shoot them down with projectiles.

I continued this process for a while and my mana started running extremely low, so I closed the top stairway door blocking them from coming onto the balcony. Once my mana had filled back up, I got to the very edge of the balcony and opened the door again using my wand. The rats started coming up onto the balcony from the stairway. because of all the rat corpses and their individual sizes, they weren’t all able to come in at the same time which I was glad for.

I continued the slaughter of the rats with the projectiles, but my mana was once again getting desperately low, and the rats were still coming in. I looked at the other balcony and it was about ten feet or so away. I got on top of the rail and made a jump to the other balcony rail. I don’t know if I would have made it had it not been for the high dexterity. Even now I had just barely caught the edge.

Once I pulled myself over onto the other balcony, I noted that the balcony I left behind had already been overrun by about 15 or so large rats. My mana was climbing back up, but it was not quite enough where I would be able to cast another projectile spell and I didn’t want to drain myself completely either because then I would suffer from a severe headache as a side effect, making the situation I was in even worse.

I picked up a long thick decorative table made from some light metal and started to swing at any of the rats that attempted to jump onto my current balcony. I managed to throw off 9 rats to the ground with my improvised bat and thanked once again for my increased physical stats that allowed me to handle this metal table so easily. The rest of the rats gave up pursuit once they realized that it was not possible to get onto the balcony, but I was not letting them get go so easily. When my mana had replenished enough, I was able to fire off a few more of the spells downing all the other ones left on that balcony. After that, I picked off the ones that just barely survived the 30 feet fall to the ground.

I had been at this for hours now, but the work was far from done. I let my mana replenish again and unlocked the top door and then the bottom stair door. I went back up the stairs to the top and used the wand again to open the door just enough and the rats once again started coming in.

I kept up with this same process repeatedly until I was exhausted and thankfully there were no more left in the hallway nor the forum hall below.

My stamina was repleting slowly now due to exhaustion. Normally when a person waited, their stamina would start to fill back up over time. but this was slowed down over the course of time as more and more body exhaustion creeped in.

I went down the hallway again and made sure it was cleared and then went into the forum room. None of them had survived but I still walked through the hundreds of bodies cautiously. After a bit of looking around, I could see that the rats had been entering the main forum room through a door on the far back side.

I looked through the door and it was a stairway leading down but I couldn’t make out beyond the first several steps as there were no light coming into or from the bottom. I took out the light stone and by infusing some mana into the object, lit it up. The mana stone was made to be able to attach to various textures including clothing and even walls. I placed the stone on my forearm so I could point it up and down as needed like a flashlight.

“Do you really wanna go down there? I mean I’m pretty sure that this is the part where the bad guy comes and kills all the side characters in the movie,” Said Jimmy in my mind.

I chuckled softly, “Too late to back out now. We already made a commitment to get this done and we don’t want to look like we can’t back what we say. Besides don’t you know, we are not side characters in any movie.”

“Oh, then what are we? Heroes?” Jimmy said.

“No. We are the monsters that the bad guys should be afraid of!”

The stairs led to a basement level area. The first room was open but filled with foul odor of rat feces and death. I wasn’t bothered by the smell, so I continued through the room which led to another hallway. I couldn’t see the end. I had the stones ready to be cast and I also took out the short sword from the sheath. I hoped I wouldn’t need to use it since I lacked proficiency in it. Maybe it was silly to carry it like I knew I how to use it which I didn’t but then again, I was able use a table as an improvised bat and I didn’t have proficiency in that either. So, hey what the hell…

There was a room to the right side as well as left which still had some light in. I looked in and it was filled with dozens and dozens of rat babies that seemed like they were born recently. I continued through the hallway and there were a few other rooms similarly filled with numerous rat babies. Some looked as if they were born just a few hours ago, other looked as if they were close to maturity. I was likely going to have to come back and kill all these babies. I didn’t like the thought of killing all these rat babies. But I knew they were vicious creatures that would likely attack anything moving once they had grown and none of the people in the town would be safe. Was there a way to take these creatures out of town into the wilderness somehow? These creatures also seemed to be growing at a much faster rate than most normal animals. There was magic involved somehow. I had been using my Mana sight whenever possible and I could see faint echoes of magic all over.

I didn’t like the thought, but I knew I would have to commit the act none the less. These creatures’ growth was affected by magic somehow and had been accelerated and if left unchecked, they would have overrun the town in days if not less. I still needed to figure out where all these critters were coming from as well. Did the rats have a mother here somewhere?

I walked through the hallways and saw a light at the very end. The hallways ended in a bigger room and as I entered, I readied myself for anything I might be facing. I was not above making a hasty strategic retreat if I had to depending on what was there.

The far room was just slightly lit and in the right corner stood a thin figure about 9 feet tall. It wore no clothes, and its arms were much longer than they should have been with hands ending in long claws. It had dark fur on it in certain areas and other areas were completely without any hair. Its head was covered in thin long greasy black hair with areas of empty patches.

It had not seen me and as it turned, I stood against the wall just outside the room where it would not have a clear sight. It was carrying something and placed it in the middle of the ground. I moved my head just a tad to look at what it was. It was the torso of a man with the entire bottom half missing and clearly dead for a while. One of the arms was still attached but the other appeared to have been pulled off. As it put the torso down, little rat babies came forth from various corners and started on it like it was time for free buffet at sizzlers.

I stared a little too long because when I tried to slowly move back to my hiding spot, I saw the creature looking back at me. Its dark eyes were huge and bulging with his mouth ending in a rat-like snout with short, pointed teeth. It was a female as the front had multiple nipples along with enormously huge belly with visible moving small creatures inside. There was also a faint glow coming out of its protruding moving belly.

I let loose the first projectile spell right to its head and 3 stones flew towards it and connected. It was hurt but it didn’t seem fazed in the least. It lurched forward and let out a loud scream that was something between human and rat like. It continued the scream as I shot off another spell. This time however, she was ready and as the stones got close, she swiped one of her arms to deflect the projectiles and the other to cover her face. The projectiles connected to the back of her thick hairy forearm but did not seem to do any visible damage at all.

The scream was a volatile screech. Its dirty sharp teeth became more prominent with the mouth staying open as it was. I could hear other squeals coming forth from some unknown areas in the back of the room. And from the side where there was a dark tunnel, I could see moving forms. More rats were pouring out.

I turned and started running with all the rats behind me. I was not stupid enough to think that I was going to be able to take down the Ratchet Mama AND also the psycho rats pouring out of the tunnel. As I turned, however, to make a dash, another slash of the half-rat removed a chunk out of my back. I felt the excruciating pain but continued to run forward. As I was going up the stairs, I quickly downed one of the healing potions and felt the wound close back up part of the way. These weak potions did not heal a person completely, so it was not worth waiting too long to take it. I got up the steps and started casting spells, one after the other. I would alternate between sleep and Magic projectile whenever the cooldown was not completed. I was out of breath and nearly out of mana but thankfully I had slain all the rats. The rat mama was, however, still down there wanting to claw my eyes out like a bad ex.

I quickly downed the mana potion and my mana filled back up to the top. I had done damage to that creature, and I didn’t need to be waiting and letting that thing heal back up.

I walked down the hall but this time the creature was standing at the end giving me the ‘you have been a bad kid and I’m about to whoop your ass’ parent stare.

I was completely focused on the creature. The creature had managed to block my projectiles with the back of its hand and had no injury from it, meaning that she was using the forearms almost like a shield and they were strong enough where they did not feel the effects of the projectiles. And the thing was fast enough with those arms that it could easily and effectively block my shots to its head.

I thought of a new plan and shot out another spell but this time, instead of firing 3 of the stones to her face, I fired the first towards her protruding pregnant belly.

The creature saw the projectile and as it whizzed towards it, it did the same maneuver with the hands and put one up to block its face and the other to try and swipe at it. But this one was aimed for its belly and when it hit, the creature let out a loud scream. Yellowish fluid was leaking out of it, and I could see little unborn rats inside moving around.

The next shot did the same but this time I sent two to the face and one to the belly. It put both its hands down this time to protect its belly and was able to block the one aimed for it. The Other two hit it in its eye and the side of its face. During the cooldown, it let out another scream and started moving towards me, while holding the contents of its belly in. I was able to let loose another shot with one going to the head, one to the belly, another to the leg. Aside from the one aimed at its head, the other two hit their mark.

It slowed down but was still coming towards me. I backed up and started climbing up the steps. As soon as the cooldown period ended, another projectile was shot and had the same effect. It had nearly reached the top where I was but before it could, I stepped out and shut the door. The thing hit its fist at the door, and I could tell that it would break through soon. Perhaps within seconds. I hid behind a thick table that had survived the fire by turning it on its side. I got another spell ready along with getting the wand out. I hoped that with its hurt eye, it would not find me so easily. I used the telekinesis wand to move an object on the other side which made the creature turn and go towards it and when it was turned, I shot off another projectile spell. This one was aimed right at the back of the head and all three stones hit. It had visibly slowed down now and I remained behind the table. As it got closer, it felt another shot and this one made it fall to its knees. At this point there was no fight left in the creature and after a few more rounds, it had died.

“Oh man I am so so so glad this didn’t turn into us being eaten alive or kept in a cage and fed a giant milk bottle or something!” said Jimmy.

“You and me both, Jimmy! You and me both!”

“Yea, on second thought, milk out of rat titties would have been far worse.”

I was not going to argue with that statement. Nor did I want to respond to it and make this cringeworthy conversation keep happening.

I was exhausted. I must have had many notifications but due to my strange connection with The System, I was not seeing them. Exhausted as I was, I was not done. It was time now for the really hard part. I went back down to the basement and eliminated all the remaining rats and rat babies. I was covered in blood and gore despite not even being a melee fighter.

I went to the end room where the supermodel Rat woman originally was to look for loot. Though this wasn’t a game, the big bosses somehow still had loot near where they were. My exhaustion was at a whole new level now. My stamina was recovering at a snail’s rate at this point even though I was out of combat. Typically, in combat people didn’t recover their health points and the Mana points and stamina recovered very slowly. Out of combat, however, their recovery was much quicker except if a body had not had enough nutrition, sleep, or rest. I was three for three there. I had been going through these fights for many hours now and my body was feeling it. I just hoped there weren’t any more critters left hidden somewhere.

I went through the rooms systematically, collecting anything that seemed interesting or could potentially be magical. I tried to use my Mana Sight as much as possible but that was proving difficult too from the exhaustion. I collected all the coins that I could find. In the end I had found a few trinkets, likely obtained by the rats from the dead humans. I would have considered returning them, but in this world, the old adage of ‘finders keepers, losers weepers’ stood even concretely.

In the end despite my progressing exhaustion, I was able to go through all the individual room and collect some things. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any amazing and rare artifact like I wanted but it was still not bad for a day’s work. In the end I had found 119 gold, 72 silver, 38 copper. I also had found 3 daggers, Two longswords, one shortsword, 6 rings of some value, 2 necklaces. I had also found some leather armor, but I felt he could leave those as I already had plenty to carry.

I brought all his things to the foyer area and sat down. Before I knew it, I had fallen asleep.