Logging in and waking up in a dark room was a blessed changen in Marid's life, letting his eyes get accustomed to the darkness and looking around himself he had a short disorienting experience before remembering he was a rat now inside the ship walls.
Smelling something delicious he followed his nose to another chicken tasting grubs, this time he had to fight off their termite mother but she was no match to his claws and teeth and also tasted like chicken.
His hairs stood on end like an electric shock was running through the walls, something big was moving very close and he didn't want to find out what it would taste like, curling into a ball as tiny as he could imagine the sensation lasted for almost a minute before it startes vanishing behind him, much more attentive to his newfound senses he kept going down while avoiding anything that moved inside the walls.
The convenient double walls ended, he needed to find a new path and was mortified at the thought of running through open hallways, scanning his ship map he quickly noticed that he had never actually been to most of the ship as Human, it seemed odd at first until he figured most of it was just structural aditions, you had to have them to get the munitions, rations and cargo space but no one had to literaly go there to put the stuff in, it was conveniently stored in the ship's inventory and randomly generated if a Player actually bothered to go inside.
This meant two things for his ratty self, free food if he got to the rations holds and a place to hide where no one will ever come look for him, though he'd still like to get the gold left where he died last and the messages told him he was running out of time for it after half a day of scurrying in the tunnels, with a plan in mind he decided to risk it.
Pushing through a crack in the wall he started running in the open corridors, his claws scratching the wood, getting to the pit hatch a lot faster than he remembered the way to be, he scurried down the ladder and saw his old body lying half buried in the muck, looting the corpse had it despawn and he found two of his tiny three slots inventory full with the spade and a stack of fourty empty barrels, seeing his gold balance back to its meagre sum had him sigh in relief.
"Well well well", the voice coming from behind him raised his hairs, "if it isn't my lucky day I never had one", dread held him shivering in place, "apparently my trap worked far better than expected", a clawed hand grabbed Marid and turned him to stare in the face of a giant rat, "when I got an offer for a rat contract I was sure it was to spread some plague in a ship and maybe empty their rations", it snickered with such malice Marid felt himself convulse, "and then the most timid little human is offering me crackers to kill a few rats", looking around him, "and he tops it by turning himself into a rat", hard laughter that could compete with any of the crew bullies.
Dragging Marid on the ground, "dont worry little one", it opened a half filled muck barrel, "if I kill you my contract is gone", throwing him into the barrel and closing the lid, "so you are going to live for a very long time" that laugh again.
From the muck to the barrel, if things could get worse Marid didn't see how, putting his head on his paws he needed to think, for once get a grip of the situation and not allow it to control him, the other rat was obviously a NPC, the system assigned it when he fed it the biscuit and it grew larger by eating other rats, feeling bile rising at the thought the system obviously interpreted it as some sort of taboo, rats spawned when you shoveled muck, he had a spade and the system would resize it to fit his diminished size if he equipped and didnt drop it, would shoveling muck already inside the barrel spawn a rat? He needed to try.
Equipping the spade he sighed with relief when it was resized for him and he started shoveling the muck to one corner, muck had five percent to spawn a rat, so every twenty shovels should guarantee one, at the thirty second scoop he was ready to give up when he heard "who are you?" From behind him and realised all the spawned rats were NPCs but now he could talk to them, the new rat was about his size and Marid had no idea if he could actually kill it, a new plan started to form in his mind.
"My name is Marid and I need your help", recruit NPCs by either taking quests or giving missions.
"What do you want?", the creature started looking around at the barrel walls.
"Outside is an evil giant rat", he explained his plan, "I want to spawn as many more of our kind and try to kill him before he eats us"
"And how will you be doing that buddy?", the new rat wasn't the friendliest person but he didn't attack or object to the plan.
When he had six rats in the barrel Marid asked them to help shovel, soon they doubled in number and then again before hearing, "what are you doing in there ratling?" and the horde of rats froze in fear as something was opening the barrel.
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When the lid was barely lifted they swarmed out, climbing on top of each other and on the hand holding the lid, screams of pain and rage, followed by chomping teeth and the lid falling to the floor, Marid climbed the muck pile and suveyed the pit, a writhing mass of tails and nailed scattered when he recieved xp for killing a giant rat and all that was left in the pit was the fat rat's corpse.
Working through his bile, Marid closed his eyes and started by eating the smaller rats that died in the attack, every part of his body ached and shivered with disgust when he found himself almost at the same size of the original NPC, eating that one as well made him only slightly bigger but it was enough for him, the next hours were used to hunt rats in the pits and grow to almost a human child's size, when finding more of them became difficult he shoveled to spawn new ones and eat them as quicly as possible.
Noticing his hands held the spade more easily over time he tried to swing it around like an axe but kept falling on his hind legs so he decided to practice walking on them before trying to do anything with the spade.
An hour later he could stand without support like a baby learning to walk, spawning another rat he used the spade to kill it and didn't fall this time, eating them wasn't as disgusting as before too and he wasn't growing much anymore.
Then he remembered other uses for NPCs, the next spawned rat found itself caught alive, "I need you to deliver something for me", Marid looked at the pile of filled barrels, "I know you have three inventory slots", pityably so did he, "so not to overburden you", carrying it to the barrels, "you will take two and deliver them to the muck furnace and when you bring back the gold coins and a stack of five more barrels I will reward you"
Fifteen minutes later the rat was on its second route and Marid had a second little ferrier to make the delivery even faster, the new problem was that he filled the barrels too slow, at ten helpers he was stuck without any more barrels to send but a lot richer in his gold account, he could enjoy this life if he had some way to fill the barrels faster, the next rat to spawn was fed to one of his minions and so were the next dozen, two barrels were full and this time he sent the horrified shivering messenger to bring five shovels instead of barrels.
The fattend rat was forced to stand and use a spade to barrel muck and the spawning rate doubled so another fatty got the honors soon enough, having eight fatty spaderats Marid took a nap while they continued to barrel muck and eat the spawnlings with a few 'lucky' ones kept small to do the deliveries.
Waking up to a commotion he found some of his spaderats were fighting using crude knives and a fire hatchet with about twenty shoveling muck and barrels filling faster than he could imagine they were almost at the bottom of the pit, an unheard of feat outside a drydock in full maintenance repairs.
Voices drifted from the hatch and though he knew they were words he couldn't make them out, recognizing one of the voices he tried harder, breaking each syllabel and voul to their components and reshaping them to make some sense, he had to know what was happening to Nariza, "I don't know where he is hiding", he finally pieced the words together.
[System: Notice Marid, for using your peripheral senses and visualising the words a Player language
"He is obviously still around the pits and delivering muck barrels", a gruff voice replied, "but we can't catch him at it any more" frustration was dominating the last words, "so you are going to get him to come to us"
"Don't you think you abused him enough Yemoch?", a slap, "this won't make me more cooperative you know"
"Oh you will cooperate bitch", Yemoch threatened, "or what we did to mucky mouse will look like heaven compared to your fate", Nariza gasped and then screamed in pain.
Marid couldn't move, they'll just kill him again and all his hard work will be for nothing, shivering with fear he fealt the other ratlings come to comfort him, sharing their body warmth in a cold and cruel world.
Nariza cried again but he couldn't help her, they were big and strong and armed and there was only one of him, before, none of the crew Players or NPCs helped him, before, they all just laughed at him, before, squinting his eyes he was in the eye of the storm, thoughts swirling as he stood up, "I am right here yemoch", he sqeaked, "why don't you come down here and get me?", waving his spade at the light from the hatch and scattering his minions to hide behide the barrels and muck piles.
"I knew this will work muckey", Yemoch shouted down, "be right back to deal with you sweetheart", and he jumped down into the darkness.
Everyone on the main deck were surprised to see Yemoch respawn and scream in rage before running into the holds and respawning again after less than five minutes, following him they saw him jump into the muck pits and his scream silenced the moment he hit the floor, on his fourth repeat the man was red with rage but they caught him and called the captain to arrange an extermination squad.
Light spell flooded the pits, bright as day and revealing nothing but a stack of muck barrels and piles of muck, slowly climbing down under the watchful eyes of wizards and archers, the exterminators reached the floor before the nearest muckpile exploded, obscuring sight and too fast to understand what happened the squad found themselves respawned on the main deck, making the right decision, the captain shut the muck pit hatch and left it for higher command to deal with whatever shitfuckary Yemoch got himself stuck with this time.
The half naked and beaten crewoman didn't explain anything that could slaughter an extermination squad in less time than it took for some dust to clear, it just told him something went terribly wrong in what was supposed to be a victory cruise.
Marid laid back on his growing pile of treasure as more rats were spawned to loot the ship's cargo and crew.