Chapter 7

Jack decided to head back to his flat first to grab a bite to eat and also to pick up his bike. It was a relatively old well used mountain bike but still in good condition, the farm wasn’t too far from the city limits so Jack could reach it within a couple of hours on his bike. He ate a sandwich then swapped his trainers for some tough walking boots, he didn't have any armour yet or tough working clothes so he would have to make do until he could afford some. He took a rucksack and put his new first aid kit and machete in and slung it on his back. He sent a text to the contact number for Joseph to say he was coming. When he was ready he familiarised himself with the route before heading off for his first true hunt.

After an hour of riding alongside a busy main road Jack came within sight of the farm the request originated from, he had to divert onto a rough uneven trail to reach the shed which was described in the job details and meet with Joseph. As Jack rode up he saw the shed, it was rather large and looked more like a cabin, but it had a rather old and disused look with many old farming tools rusting in piles around it. It looked like something the owner hadn’t gotten around to demolishing yet. Eventually Jack spotted a man by a pile of scrap twenty yards away, his back was turned to Jack and he had one foot resting on a piece of metal and it looked like his arms were crossed. Jack wrung his bike bell.

The man turned around and saw Jack approaching.

“Hey there! You the hunter they sent over?” he enquired, he was middle aged with a short stocky build, despite his problems he didn’t appear to be too anxious.

“Hi, yep that's me, I'm Jack, you got a rat problem?” Jack tried to project confidence.

“Great! That's great, yeah, a slight issue came up when a load of them escaped.”

“Escaped? Escaped from where?” Jack asked, slightly confused.

“From here of course, this is a rat farm!” Jacob seemed somewhat amused.

“I’ve never heard of a rat farm before, didn’t know they were a thing.” Jack shrugged.

“Well they aren’t really, not yet, but with times like these opportunities abound! I’m an innovator as well as a farmer, and besides these things grow and breed incredibly fast and eat just about anything! It was all going so well at first, but it turns out I forgot that rats can dig really well and despite being massive they can still fit through tiny holes just fine. A load of them escaped the pens and have been running rampant all over the farm. I could probably handle a couple at a time but there are actually twenty four up there, so er…..go get em,” he finished sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head.

“So you're ok with me killing them all? You don’t want me to save any? Where exactly are they all anyway? I’d have thought they would have scattered into the wind by now.” Jack frowned, hesitating, he thought it was just a few rats, ten at most, now that he thought about it the job details hadn’t specified a number.

“Ah ha ha er, don’t worry about saving any, I kept the pups and a few females separate from the main pens, and I think they’re still in the area because there’s still food around. Try looking in the main house, the barn where the pens are and the three fields surrounding the house, oh and the garden too.” He looked slightly off to the side and checked off the locations with his finger.

“Right, well I’ll get to it then.” Jack looked at Joseph suspiciously wondering if he was holding anything back, but headed off anyway. The shed was located a little ways off from the main farm and Jack had to trudge along a worn path around a bend along a field before he came in sight of his main destination. It looked like a large old farm house with white plaster on the exterior and a stone chimney peeking out of a red tiled roof, the gardens appeared to be located to the left and behind the house and the large barn a hundred yards or so to the right. The property was right in the middle of the three fields.

He stopped and drew his machete before moving cautiously forward, he kept his eyes peeled. He decided to start with the farm house, as he approached he noticed the front door was open, he stepped into the house and stopped to listen. He heard rustling and faint squeaking to his right in another room, he stepped into what appeared to be a ransacked living room. Armchairs and sofas had been torn to shreds and two very large rats were rooting through the shredded upholstery. As he stepped closer one of the rats raised its snout to the air and sniffed, it then turned to face Jack, it stared at him for several seconds and Jack had a feeling he was about to find out just how aggressive these things apparently were.

The rat let out a squeal and the other rat was made aware of Jack's presence. Both creatures began moving forward slowly and Jack stood very still his heart pounding, his grip tightening on his blade. Jack very carefully and slowly took his pager out of his pocket, turned around and took a selfie with the two giant rats before putting his pager away. One of the creatures moved to sniff Jack as if he wasn’t sure what Jack was when he suddenly went from motionless to sweeping his machete through the things skull with an upward swing, he felt the blade slice through the rat with a little judder before he rapidly brought the blade downwards onto the other very surprised rat’s head. The whole thing took less than a second and Jack had surprised himself, when that fight or flight moment arrived again things just seemed to get a little clearer each time. Still though, when the bestiary said they grow to the size of large dogs Jack hadn’t appreciated that by large dog it meant something like a Great Dane or Saint Bernard, these things were friggin huge!

Jack bent down to the first rat and reached out his hand, he was anxious to try cultivating again, hoping desperately that the first time wasn’t a fluke. He pushed out his energy into the rat, it seemed to twitch slightly before he then pulled back the energy. With a slight rush Jack felt himself gained a small net increase in lighting elemental energy as the rat’s corpse stiffened and twitched, he could feel the energy flowing into his core. He took a deep breath and stood up before moving onto the next one. Afterwards he stood up again and smiled. Two down, twenty two to go.

Jack moved from room to room, clearing out three rats from the downstairs kitchen and another five from the bedrooms upstairs. He was able to surprise most of the rats and they went down easily with a single strike but one rat did manage to ambush him upstairs by leaping out from a doorway as he passed by and biting his leg.

“AH SHIT!” Jack frantically shook his leg to dislodge the rodent but that seemed to make the rat bite down harder, so ignoring the pain for a moment he carefully positioned his blade point and thrust it down into the rat’s neck. It let out a gurgle and struggled weakly before flopping still, its jaws still clamped down on Jack’s lower leg. He dropped his machete and grabbed the rat’s mouth and pulled it apart to free his leg. He looked down and rolled up his trousers, there was a fair amount of blood and the flesh had several puncture wounds but didn’t look to be bleeding heavily for now. He got out his new first aid kit and opened it up, he wiped up the wounds hissing in pain before taking a small bottle of alcohol and poured it liberally over his leg, the stinging pain grew more intense but he gritted his teeth. Afterwards he wrapped his leg in bandages before standing up, he put his weight on his injured leg, not too much pain, the wounds probably weren’t too bad, infection would be the real issue here. Hopefully further cultivation would fix that issue.

Once Jack had finished clearing the house he gathered all the giant rat corpses into the living room and proceeded to use them for cultivation, things were going well until he reached the eighth corpse. After cultivating from seven giant rats he was beginning to feel full, he felt like he’d eaten a massive meal and drunk his fill at the same time but instead of that feeling being confined to his stomach he felt like that all over his body. He felt bloated, his muscles were beginning to feel sore and every so often a muscle would involuntarily twitch slightly, he decided that he’d reached his limit. He sat down for a few minutes and focussed inward, he concentrated on pulling the diffused lightning energy into his core and trying to make it more concentrated. That seemed to help with the bloated feeling but his muscles still felt sore, he had a slight headache too, it seemed Jack had approached that dangerous threshold when a cultivator takes in too much too fast and begins to suffer some ill effects.

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He got up and ignored the last three rats, he stretched a little and went into the kitchen for a glass of water, next time he thought to himself, he’d bring a bottle of water as he wiped his forehead that was slightly damp with sweat. As he drank some water and looked outside the kitchen window he noticed a giant rat amble along in front of the house towards the gardens, not a care in the world. Break over, Jack decided to get back to work.

In the end there were only three giant rats in the gardens, Jack surprised the first one and killed the second one swiftly afterwards but the third let out a loud squeal in alarm before backing off into a corner. He approached it cautiously but heard a loud rustling from the side and turned to see two huge rats leap over a wall from a field and gallop over to the garden, they took up positions behind him and Jack found himself surrounded. He turned and tried to keep all three in his peripheral vision and waited for the first one to make a move, the one he’d cornered bared its teeth and leapt at him with its claws splayed out. It might have been Jack’s imagination but time seemed to slow very slightly, he turned and thrust out his blade and caught the rat through the gullet. He quickly grabbed its still twitching corpse struggled to lift it to use as a shield when the other two attacked, he was able to avoid the teeth and claws briefly and used the opportunity to stab around his makeshift shield, one of the attacking rats fell back before collapsing to the ground with deep wounds to its side. He dropped the rat corpse onto the last remaining rat which struggled to rise, Jack paused for a second and watched it, strange he thought, things really did seem to be moving very slightly slower at the moment. He raised his blade and brought it down on the rat's skull.

With that done he looked around the area to make certain there were no more enemies, finding none he started towards the other side of the house where the barn was. All of a sudden however he felt an extremely sharp, excruciating, stabbing headache come out of nowhere and he staggered to his knees, he grasped his head and for several seconds could only ride out the pain until it gradually subsided to a dull almost imperceptible throbbing. What the fuck was that? He wondered. Jack let out a gasp and drew a shuddering breath as he staggered to his feet. He heard a voice from a distance call out.

“Hey! You OK?” It was Joseph, he’d taken up a position in a nearby treeline on a gentle slope about two hundred yards away and seemed to be peeking out from behind a tree.

“Uh yeah, YEAH I’m ok!” Jack held a thumb up, he felt a little nauseous. “That's fifteen down and nine more to go! Be done soon! The main house is safe! I’m heading to the barn now!” Jack called back.

“Great! Good work! That was amazing by the way! I’ll wait for you in the house!” Although Joseph didn’t move from his hiding spot.

Jack nodded and began making his way to the barn, his stomach began to settle and the pain in his head faded completely. He walked around the rear of the farm house and saw the barn, he headed for the side of the barn and looked for a hole or gap in the wooden walls he could peer through. He found one and took a peek, he couldn’t see much as it was slightly dim inside but he did occasionally spot movement and he definitely heard squeaking and rustling, there were a lot of them inside.

Jack pondered the best way to go about this, just taking three at once was difficult enough, nine would probably swarm him. He walked around the barn a couple of times before spotting a hatch further up towards the roof level, he used a nearby ladder to get up to it and clambered through. Jack wanted to get to high ground to better survey the area rather than just waltzing in through the front door.

Jack emerged into a dusty old loft, he crawled towards the edge and looked down, the area seemed to be full of large cages that were all most definitely empty. Outside the cages though were the remaining escaped rats, Jack did a quick count and saw all nine were present in close proximity with one another. He didn’t really know what to do now he was up here, he knew what not to do, going down there would be a colossal mistake. Eaten by giant rats on his first hunt, if he wouldn’t be dead he’d be mortified, he wasn’t exactly in it for the glory but even he had limits, or a lower limit anyway. He looked around for something he could use or some inspiration at least, all he spotted was a large collection of chains and ropes hanging up or stacked in piles. He also saw that the only way to access the loft from the ground was by way of a ladder or a wooden chute, Jack decided the best way to deal with the rats was to make sure they didn’t surround him again so he quietly lifted the ladder up and placed it out of reach of the rats in the loft. The only way they could reach him now was one at a time by way of the narrow wooden chute that descended to the ground at a steep forty five degree angle.

Jack made his way over to the chains and ropes and gathered as many of them as he could and put them in a pile next to the chute making sure they weren’t tangled. Then he looked around for stones or just pieces of detritus to throw at the ground level area where the chute came down. He found a few things and began to throw, at first the rats didn’t notice or care but eventually they seemed to pay attention and a few came wandering over. One particular specimen came snuffling over with its snout stuck to the ground until Jack threw a stone at it and it looked up and spotted him. It let out a loud squeal and began scrambling up the wooden chute, Jack drew his machete and hacked at it, the creature took a few blows before it fell to the ground and didn’t get up again.

While Jack was dealing with the first rat the others had shown up and were now squabbling with each other to be the first to get up the chute. It was then that Jack began throwing down the chains and ropes at the mass of rats below him, immediately the creatures started getting tangled up with each other, they rolled around and strained to get free, gnashing and clawing at each other but only got even more tangled until eventually it resembled some sort of horrific gordian knot or rat king. He didn’t want to give any of them a chance to get free so he slid down the chute and hopped off, careful not to get too close. Then it was simply a matter aiming and stabbing carefully and making certain he’d got them all. When he was finally done he stepped back and looked at the gruesome scene in front of him, now the adrenaline was wearing off he could almost feel sorry for these creatures. At the same time however he knew it was kill or be killed....and then be eaten. He wondered whether he should tell Joseph about this little incident before or after he confirmed Jack’s pay.

Jack left the barn and walked slowly to the farm house, the sun was still shining and the gentle breeze was nice on Jack’s face. He enjoyed the quiet tranquillity of the moment after a desperate and bloody fight and took in a deep breath, revelling in his feeling of accomplishment. His first hunt was complete.

“HEEEY!!” Jack heard Joseph scream. “IS IT DONE YET?!”

Jack sighed before looking over to the farm house and spotting Joseph with a cup of tea waving at him. Jack held up a fist in triumph before marching over to Joseph.

“Yep, it's done alright, twenty four dead giant rats as ordered, did you see the ones in the living room?” Jack replied smugly as he reached the house.

“Oh yes indeed, top notch work, definitely, and you got the ones in the barn right? I already saw the garden.”

“Yeah er, yeah, the barn is all…..clear, I left them all in a pile for you,” Jack said awkwardly, he decided not to tell Joseph exactly what he was about to find in there. “Erm anyway, what exactly do you farm these rats for?” he asked, eager to change the subject.

“Why for the meat of course, these things grow big and they grow fast! And not only that but for the fur too, giant rat fur is surprisingly soft and luxurious!” He rushed inside the house and soon came out dragging a giant rat carcass. “Go ahead, touch it!” He nodded eagerly to Jack.

“Er I’m good thanks.” Jack tried to back away.

“Seriously it won’t bite, anymore, it’s dead.” He gave Jack an encouraging grin.

“No no I’m good, now if we can just-”

“JUST TOUCH THE DAMN RAT!”

“OK! Jesus, I’m touching it” Jack bent down and put his hand on a bit of fur that wasn’t covered in blood. “Ooh, hey that is soft!”