That night, as usual, I sneaked out of the village and headed directly to the entrance of the tombs. I had Levi carefully examined our surroundings to make sure I was not being followed. The few opportunists of the previous night seemed to have learned their lessons as I did not see any lit torches in the middle of the canyon.
“Squeak squeak!”
As I crawled through the narrow tunnel to enter the tombs, a familiar and dreaded sound came from the room ahead. I froze and carefully took out my dagger from my storage belt. I could not use my spear in such a narrow space, but my dagger could still protect me.
“Levi? How many giant rats?”
The fairy, who was floating in front of me frowned lightly. “None. There were two giant rats in the room, but they ran away after sensing our presence. They may have gone to alert the other giant rats.”
“They ran away? I doubt they are going to alert the other giant rats. While the giant rats live together, they do not really help each other. Everyone is left to fend for themselves, find their own food and survive by all means.” I grunted as I moved my body forward. Eventually, I reached the chamber where I could stand up properly.
The chamber was empty aside from the dim firestone in the centre. Out of the three doors, the leftmost one was open. When I left this place on the previous night, I was unable to close the doors behind me. I did not spend much time trying to do so either as I did not want to risk having to solve all the puzzles all over again.
“Can you go and scout ahead?”
“You are really starting to abuse our agreement!” Levi grumbled but nevertheless flew toward the opened door.
I took out my spear from my storage belt and followed behind the fairy. Wearing my new silk robe and the armguards, I was confident in dealing with the giant rats.
As I expected, I found two giant rats waiting for me on the other side of the corridor. They squeaked threateningly.
“There’s one more rat in the side room ahead.” Levi warned in a low voice.
I nodded and carefully stepped forward with my spear drawn. The giant rats hissed. They worked together, one attacking me from the front while the other aimed for me side.
I was already prepared for their attacks. I let the giant rat jump at me and raised my arm, positioning the armguard right where the giant rat was about to bite. Its mouth closed onto my arm, but its teeth were unable to pierce through the armguard. Instead, it was the giant rat who was suffering. The Thorn enchantment activated itself, it sucked a small portion of my mana, sending an invisible wave of energy inside the giant rat’s mouth.
The giant rat squeaked in pain but it did not last long as I quickly smashed its body against the wall. Meanwhile, I was keeping the other giant rat at a reasonable distance with my spear. When it saw its companion suffer, it lunged forward, only to be met by my spear covered with barely visible sparks.
The two giant rats died before long. I checked my armguard and confirmed that it was still in good shape. As long as I could protect my body against the giant rat’s infected teeth, it was extremely easy to deal with these rodents. I took out a torch from my storage pouch and lit it up. Holding onto it with my left hand and my spear with my right hand, I started my second night of exploration.
A few moments later, I once again entered the larger room at the end of the tombs’ slave section. I now had five giant rat corpses in my storage pouch and was actively looking for more. Unfortunately, the room was completely empty this time. There was only another large door and yet another puzzle waiting to be solved.
However, this time, the puzzle was different. It was no longer about moving the dyed block out of the maze of blocks. There were several small stone tiles neatly arranged on the floor. The stone stele once again depicted a large square with several lines dividing it into smaller squares which just happened to be the size of a tile. I understood that I needed to fill in the gaps with the tiles on the floor.
The square already contained two tiles: one with a yellow dot and one with a white dot. Judging by the patterns on the stone tiles, I could roughly guess the concept of this puzzle. I needed to connect these two points using the stone tiles. The patterns on the stone tiles were either a straight line, a corner or a T-shape crossroad.
‘This looks very familiar. Like a puzzle about building a road to connect buildings. These stone tiles should indicate the shape of the road and what I should do is simply arrange the patterns to connect the yellow dot to the white dot.’
I explained my hypothesis to Levi and started arranging the stone tiles. Like before, I was extremely careful when handling potentially harmful objects. Fortunately, everything went as planned. The familiar rumble of the door resonated across the room and I now had access to the Worker’s section of the tombs.
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This new section did not look very different from the slave section. Time had already worn out the decorations, leaving only cold dull stone walls. As for the piles of bones, when dead, everyone looked the same. The only positive point was that these workers were slightly wealthier than the slaves. Most skeletons held on to one or two Nazlock coins, some even had five Nazlock coins which all ended up in my storage belt.
I came across a few giant rats who all perished under my spear. As I went deeper into the worker’s section, the number of giant rats slowly increased. With Levi’s help, I was able to effectively plan my path through the new section.
We were very happy with our harvest, totalling four hundred coins after plundering five different rooms. Just like yesterday, we lost the majority of our time solving the puzzles. They progressively got harder and more frustrating. There were now black dots that I needed to not connect to the path connecting the yellow and white dots. The stone tiles’ pattern and shape also changed. Levi was unable to help much in this matter; it was evident that neither of us had puzzle solving skills. Opening the doors was mostly a matter of luck and trial and error.
“Stupid puzzle. It reminds me of the games I often played on the throne. They start up easy to give you a taste and then suddenly ramp up the difficulty to make you spend money on things like hints or extra attempts. At the very least, there are no annoying ads to watch if I fail here.” I grumbled as I tried to connect the yellow and white dots.
“You are not as smart as you claim to be.” Levi chuckled happily.
“I never said I was.”
“Tsssk. So you were a king in your world before coming to the tower? No wonder you knew so much about the tower and the rooms from the start.” Levi commented with a thoughtful expression.
“What? What do you mean? I was never a king.” I said, confused by Levi’s words.
“Did you not say that you sit on the throne to play games?”
“Oh. Well, in my world, most people have a throne at home. But the function of that throne is a little bit different from the ones in the tower.”
“Explain yourself?”
“…”
At that very moment, I put down the last stone tile and miraculously connected the white and yellow dots. The door shook loudly as it slid open. Our conversation was cut short, but I was not going to complain.
We quickly headed to the new room where we were greeted by the loud squeaks of the giant rats. The room was dimly lit by firestones but thanks to my torch, I was able to see about ten pairs of red pupils focusing their attention on the newly opened door.
‘A small nest? Looks like we just disturbed a small group. How annoying. This must be their home; there is no choice but to fight.’
I frowned lightly as I knew the next battle was not going to be easy. The giant rats were not happy that an enemy came to their nest. They hissed loudly before rushing toward me from all directions.
I did not retreat, knowing that the best position to face them was the doorway. I lightly bit my lips, lowering my torch to use it as a weapon.
The first giant rat jumped and aimed for my face, only to have its head smashed by the burning torch in mid-air. Unfortunately, while the giant rat’s fur was flammable, the torch did not stay in contact with it long enough for it to catch fire.
The second giant rat came soon after. I thrust my spear, but it easily dodged my attack. It jumped and aimed for my shoulder.
Meanwhile, two more giant rats had reached my legs and dug their teeth through the leather pants. Another aimed for my waist, but the silk robe was able to stop it from sinking its teeth into my flesh. I was quickly overwhelmed.
I grunted in pain from the two giant rats munching on my legs.
‘Annoying!’
Heal!
My spell had negligible effects on the injuries. It was not instantaneous and was more suited for post-battle treatments. Fortunately, the virus transmitted by the giant rats’ bite also had a delayed effect. I would be fine as long as I consumed the antidote in the next few hours. In the corner of my eyes, I could see more giant rats rushing in my direction.
The only silver lining in this situation was that I now had two easy targets to aim for: the two giant rats biting my legs. Once they sunk their teeth in my flesh, they stopped moving and simply focused on digging their teeth as deeply as possible. The giant rats were simple-minded creature; now that they had injured their target, they simply waited for it to die.
I pierced the defenceless head of the rodent with my spear, but they were quickly replaced by the other giant rats. Each one bit a different area of my legs. It was painful but also the only way I could deal with those rats.
‘There are so many. It is annoying and painful to use my body like this but there is no other choice. As long as they don’t reach my head, I should be fine. No pain no gain.’
Heal! Heal! Heal!
I constantly used the Heal spell, overlapping their effect and focusing each one on a different area of my body.
‘I should have bought a suitable pair of pants and boots too…’
I ignored the pain in my legs and continued to kill the giant rats one my one. Compared to what I endured in my past life, this amount of pain was nothing. I stabbed with my spear, blocked their bites aiming for my upper body with the armguards while swinging the burning torch around.
Very soon, a pile of corpses had accumulated at my feet, but it came at a heavy cost. My legs had been ravaged by these rodents. Without the Heal element, it would take me days or even weeks to recovered from these injuries.
There were only two giant rats still alive. They squeaked and carefully retreated. They had been angry that their home was suddenly attacked but after witnessing the death of so many companions, they knew they did not stand a chance and chose to run away.
“You did it. All the monsters in this room are either dead or have run away.” Levi commented after a quick scan of the room.
“D*mn.” I cursed and sat down on the floor. My legs were shaking.
Heal! Heal! Heal!
“You really have some guts. With such a weak body, you endured the bite of more than ten giant rats.”
“If I was not confident in my Heal spell, I would not have done so. Since I am alone and you are unable to fight the monsters, using my body like this was the only solution. There were just too many rats.” I replied after casting Heal a few more times. Thankfully, my mana pool had grown significantly over the past few days and I was able to cast Heal as many times as I needed.
All that was left to do now was to wait for the wounds to close themselves. I took out one of the antidotes I bought at the merchant tower and drank it without hesitation.
I was exhausted and unwilling to put any additional stress on my legs for the next few minutes. “You can go and collect the valuables. It looks like we have reached the end of the Worker’s section. There should be some good stuff in there.”