Victor lifted the gun he had picked up and fired. He didn’t even need to aim. There were so many of the rats, he just fired, and kept on firing. Numerous lasers blasted through the swarm and the rats immediately understood the danger Victor posed. They attacked. Victor did not retreat. He planted his feet, drawing the giant rats to him, shooting at the attacking rats, and punching any that came within reach. He was not alone.

Several of his men saw what he was doing and gathered around him. Together, they formed a circle against the swarm and began picking them off. Then, something changed. The rats stopped their suicidal charge against the villains and gathered in one big mass. They piled on top of each other, and the pile of rats soon reach the height of four meters. It was so strange and sudden no one knew what to do about it. Victor was wondering if he should continue shooting when he felt it.

An aura. A connection. A core.

Victor knew the rats were cultivation monsters, but they were small pests compares to the Ape Monster. They only had numbers, but the connection he felt now was no small thing. It was like a pike that had been smashed into his heart. Before his eyes, the pile of rats seems to expand and a moment later, a wave of black gas was released. Victor saw the discharged gas and immediately knew not to get near.

“Retreat!”

Victor and his men ran from the gas and the gas slowly dispersed into the air. Victor and his men waited, everyone on edge to see what the rats were doing.

They did not need to wait for long.

From the black gas came a roar. A roar so loud, it shook the ground. A form dashed out of the dispersing gas. It went straight to his men, but Victor was at the forefront of the group, and he was ready.

He burst into action. Bear Charge got him in front of monster, and he took the attack meant for his men with his Bark Armour and Iron Body. Victor saw the monster for the first time.

It was a giant rat.

A giant rat that was four metre tall, with long teeth and claws, and three tails that had sharp ends to them. A giant rat made out of the bodies of hundreds of rats. A giant rat that had the accumulation of the monster cores of hundreds of rats. A Rat King!

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Victor threw a punch that the Rat King easily dodge, and the monster’s three tails slashed at Victor like a trio of swords. Victor’s Bark Armour held, but it did not escape anyone’s notice that some of the mystical armour were chipped off by the attack. The Rat King gave Victor a vicious smile and swung its tails back. Victor raised his arms to defend, but the Rat King surprised him.

Using its speed, the Rat King danced around Victor and attacked a group of villains behind him. Its tails whipped at them and several of the villains were thrown into the air by the sheer force of the attacks. Victor growled and counterattacked. However, the confrontation Victor wanted did not materialized. The Rat King danced away from Victor, frustrating his efforts to engage. Instead, it attacked another group of his men, sending several of them to the ground, their blood wetting the soil beneath them.

As some fighters would tell you; sometimes the best way to win a fight is to not engage in one. The Rat King obviously had this idea, and Victor’s instincts screamed at him. The Rat King was taking out his men one after another. Bear Charge only got Victor close to it, but he wasn’t fast enough to get it to fight. Victor knew that the fight was quickly become unfavourable.

“Someone hold it still.”

Victor shouted, hoping that someone had a power to slow or stop the Rat King’s movement. The Rat King rushed to another group of his men, its tails flashing once again, but this time one of the villains did something unexpected. He reached out and grabbed one of it’s tails!

For a moment, Victor’s mind refused to accept it but he knew the brave villain who did this; Victor knew him very well.

He was Crimson Fighter.

“No.”

Victor whispered as he saw the Rat King’s eyes widened in anger at the audacity of his villain support. It was as if the Rat King could not believe someone had dared to grab its tail. The monster hissed and immediately used its other two tails to stab Crimson Fighter. Crimson Fighter could not defend, and Victor’s mouth dropped as he saw the tails went straight through his body. That should have been it, but Crimson Fighter surprised Victor by holding on. He refused to let go!

Angered beyond reason, the Rat King pulled back its tails once more, looking to stab Crimson Fighter again. Before it could do so, someone landed on it. A villain appeared out of mid-air in a puff of smoke and landed on the Rat King’s head. The villain raised a dagger high above him and spoke a word, a word in a unknown language that caused Victor’s heckles to rise. The villain strike down, and the Rat King found the dagger digging into its brain from above. The Rat King screamed, clawed at its head and the villain immediately jumped away in a puff of black smoke. Victor released a breath he didn’t know he was holding. The villain who attacked had escaped.

He was Groovy Dagger.

Victor forgot about his son’s magic, and not for the first time, wondered if his mother had been a little hard on him. However, the Rat King’s screams turned Victor’s attention back to the monster. Incredibly, Groovy Dagger’s attack had not killed it. Victor could see the dagger on the monster’s head, and it was deep, but the Rat King was still moving.