Five hours later, Nick decided that unless he was able to find somewhere safe to sleep, he had received all the benefits from taking a break that he was going to get.
Going by his internal clock, it was sometime in the early morning back on the Searing Isle. While he felt a bit groggy, it wasn’t as bad as pulling an all-nighter had been in his old life, thanks to his Survivor trait. Although he sensed that sleep deprivation would hit him hard if he stayed up for another night. He sat up and took a long swig from his canteen, stretched out his body despite the protests of his aching muscles, then took a long look at his new dagger.
Nick had never practiced fighting with a knife before. He needed to familiarize himself with the weapon before he tried wielding it against a live opponent. At least to the extent that he wouldn’t fumble the blade or wind up stabbing himself in the process. While his digital escapades were no replacement for hands-on experience, his background was able to provide him with a few basic pointers.
This dagger is a bad matchup against a longer blade, but it has penetrative power far superior to my shitty spear. He tried out a few basic slashes as he pondered his new weapon, his movements following his train of thought. The edge won’t do much against proper armor, but it can inflict painful wounds by slicing the skin. Severing nerves or tendons can cause crippling injuries. To finish the fight, thrusting with the tip can inflict lethal damage if I hit a vital point like the eyes, heart, or throat.
Nick continued maneuvering the dagger around his body, focusing his attention on the position of the blade so that he didn’t accidentally cut himself. Too bad the weighting is wrong for throwing. Not that I’m inclined to toss my only real weapon at anything.
Over the next hour of trial-and-error training, he discovered that holding the knife in a forward grip offered him better control and a longer reach. A reverse grip allowed for more powerful stabs, and the blade could be used to parry a weapon, though it was too short to block a blow except as a last resort.
Before Nick set out, he used his new whetstone to sharpen his dagger and his dagger to carve his spearhead into a proper point. He decided that the wooden weapon was sturdy enough to penetrate flesh at least once before it broke, although it still wouldn’t be effective against the ratman’s padded armor.
While he walked back across the level, on guard against newly arrived threats, he considered the layout of the dungeon overall. As there had been only one path to follow thus far, he couldn’t shake the feeling of being placed on rails. There was only one route that led to the floor below. No matter how he had proceeded, there was no way that he could have avoided fighting the ratman.
Well, he could have attacked it while it was sleeping. But passing by hundreds of identical piles of junk had conditioned Nick to disregard their presence. Or quietly slipped past, but that could have easily led to an even worse situation where his path of retreat was blocked and he became trapped between enemies on both sides.
When he made it back to the room where he had killed the ratman, he was surprised to discover that its corpse was nowhere to be found. Before he headed down the ramp, he tried to remove the grate in the floor to see if he could retrieve the dagger that had fallen through during the fight. But the grill was either heavier than it looked or had been welded in place. Unless the hole led to somewhere that he could access from the sewer below, he would have to accept that the weapon was beyond his ability to recover.
Nick tried using Size Up on the section of ramp visible from this angle. But he couldn’t sense anything overtly dangerous about the passage. While he could feel electric tension riding the air, it was likely a byproduct of nervous anticipation rather than anything provided by the skill.
Before heading down, he went through a final set of preparations. He slid his dagger back into its sheath, where it sat within easy reach of his right hand. Then he raised his spear before him, ready to counter an attack from the front. He moved all his rocks into the pocket of his bathrobe, in case he wanted to throw some as a distraction.
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After listening to make sure that there was nothing moving around below, he walked down the ramp, turned the corner, and took a long look around. The moment that Nick set foot into the sewers, the stench hit him like a swift kick to the face. He pinched his nose to keep himself from vomiting on the spot. The air was so foul that he could taste it gliding past his tongue.
The first detail that leapt out at him was the underground spillway, a broad channel running along the center of the passageway ahead. Instead of being a series of interconnected chambers like the floor above, this area was a single long tunnel. It featured a high ceiling and concrete walkways running along both sides of the waterway, with an occasional bridge spanning the flow.
All along the ceiling, rivers of garbage poured in from vast pipes, so contaminated that the falling fluid formed opaque streams of gray and brown. Judging from the piles of debris scattered along the walkway, it appeared that the ratmen were salvaging the slop for bits of wood, cloth, and metal. They’re eating it too, if their breath is anything to go by.
Although the stench was awful, it didn’t actually smell like shit—at least any shit that Nick was familiar with. It was more like this channel was the runoff from a gigantic garbage dump than a sewage waste collection system. Which made sense, as the civilization on the surface had been destroyed and there was no one left to flush excrement through the pipes.
He eventually decided that the ruins over his head must have degraded over time and begun clogging the city’s drainage system, leading to the transformation of what had originally been a proper sewer.
Nick was interested in learning more about the rats’ civilization, and he intended to keep an eye out for any artifacts that were intact enough to inspect. But other than a few battered stools and a pair of unadorned ceramic bowls that he fished out of the flowing filth, he found nothing to satisfy his curiosity.
Ready to move on, he began the arduous process of scanning each section of walkway for traps, ratmen, or beasts, before moving up and scouting the next. He kept one eye on the ceiling above, although he was mostly worried about enemies emerging from the channel on his right. At least there were more of the recessed lights lining the walls, as he lacked the proper materials to make a torch.
His brain gradually began tuning out the ever-present stench. At least to the extent that he could breathe without having to hold his nose or risk vomiting. As he made his way forward, Nick spotted several passageways that had been covered by bricks, barred beyond his ability to bypass. For now, there was only one clear path to follow. Which pretty much guaranteed that he would run into something nasty sooner or later.
Not long after, he discovered his first true fork in the tunnel network. One branch veered off at an angle, while the other continued in a straight line. The main channel of garbage was separate from the one running along the branch, and the water in the side passage was much cleaner. The lack of filth made him want to follow it instead, but the layout made him suspicious. He stopped to carefully inspect the tunnel before deciding on his course. He was soon glad that he had decided to think it through before heading in there.
The longer he looked, the more certain he became that the side passage would lead him to lethal danger, although Size Up wasn’t providing him with anything useful. But Nick had already been warned not to rely on the skill over his brain and eyes. His skills wouldn’t be able to help him against challenges that surpassed their level, and his were only a few points above zero.
Not long after, his gaze ran across deep claw marks scored across the concrete. Piles of bones scattered along the walkways. Dense barricades extending below the waterline that the rats had placed to bar access to the tunnel. Taken together, it was clear that a powerful beast was laired somewhere ahead. Something large and aquatic, based on the evidence he had to go on.
He had absolutely no intention of facing off against a powerful predator with his crude weapons. Even less so when the beast could ambush him from the water at any time without warning. He was just glad that it was cordoned off from the main dungeon. If this was a game, he would have been willing to bet that this side area was an optional challenge, featuring some sort of reward if he could defeat or bypass a creature far above his level.
If Nick were better geared or had a class featuring combat skills, he might have gone for it. However, as matters stood, his instincts were screaming that proceeding down that path was a veritable deathtrap. Not that the main dungeon seemed all that much safer.