I reached out around me but failed to find the blanket that I must have lost track of through the night. It was a much colder temperature than I usually prefer to wake up to, so I tried to curl up for warmth.
That was pushed down the priority list a few places when I felt something stabbing my chest and forcing me to wake up fully. I scrambled up in a panic, Charging Lightning in either palm, before I remembered what I was doing before I fell asleep and that feeling slowly faded.
My arms sagged to my sides and I collapsed to my knees. I’d managed to kill every enemy with only one hit each, less than that if you count the two I got at once, but I was still nearly killed by something that had already died. This was not worth the money, and now I had to figure out a way to get out of these sewers as well.
I took a deep breath and felt a little better, in fact, it didn’t hurt my ribs as I thought it should have.
Hang on a second.
General Skills [3/5] Walking 6 Condense Mana 4 Breathing 5*
Dang it.
I’d been thinking about that skill a lot, especially after I got Condense Mana, and I realised that it just isn’t nearly as good. It doesn’t have as much of an effect overall, and it doesn’t even let me do anything new, so of course it wouldn’t be as useful.
I thought it would have been fine if I just didn’t get another similar one, but apparently being rammed by a 10 kilo rat impaired my decision making somewhat.
Dang it.
As far as I was aware, there wasn’t really a way to change General Skills. Admittedly, I wasn’t exactly an expert on the System, and most useful information outside of skill progressions for a few of the more common paths was nearly impossible to find.
Basically, I was stuck with a general skill that wasn’t really all that useful and no real way to do anything about it.
I audibly sighed. Whatever, at least it might have helped me to avoid doing some permanent damage. I don’t think breathing heavily with broken ribs is a good idea.
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The most valuable part of a rat is its tail, since for some reason they tended to only use it for their Skills so that’s where most of its Affinity gathers. Thinking back on the fight, I couldn’t remember any of the rats using a skill besides the Shadow General. Did that mean that the rest of them were useless? Probably not, but I wasn’t going to harvest a dozen rat tails.
Besides, I didn’t bring my knife with me, so I didn’t know how I would go about harvesting them. Well, I had an idea but it felt kinda… gross, I guess. I looked around and found a brick in the wall that looked fragile and shot at it with a lightning bolt. A few shards were knocked loose and clattered noisily to the floor. I picked one up and studied it for a few seconds, before nodding and going back to the large rat.
Now for the gross part.
I lifted the shard and swung it down at the tail a few times. It cut deeper than I expected, feeling almost like cloth instead of flesh and bone, so in just a few swings I severed the tail and it was bleeding all over the floor.
Eugh.
The blood was worse than I thought it would be, so I was forced to hold the tail out in front of me and wait for it all to drain out fully before I could tuck it in a pocket. Whilst I was standing there, doing anything to distract myself from what I was doing, I took a close look at my Mana Pool.
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In doing so, I noticed something was different about it. My Mana was already nearly full despite the lightning bolt depleting nearly a tenth of it, which should normally take at least a few more minutes, though I have noticed it recovering somewhat erratically.
There was something strange about this, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. I shot off a lightning bolt at a wall absentmindedly, never once taking my metaphorical eyes off of my Pool. It was increasing much faster than usual, but there didn’t appear to be anything that might be causing it.
I was paying so close attention that at some point my breath stilled, and my recovery immediately declined. Not entirely, but it was noticeably slower.
No way. Breathing increases Mana recovery? Since when?
This must be one of those things that I could have probably found out about if my research amounted to more than the odd merchant that came to sell books, and pestering adults whenever they would let me.
I felt a wave of relief wash over me, I hadn’t chosen a bad skill, in fact this was probably one of the most useful skills I could have gotten. A mage’s biggest limitation is their Mana Pool, and for me that became just a little bit less restrictive.
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The blood had finished draining from the tail ages ago, but I was too lost in thought to notice. I put it away in one of my pockets and then started walking through the tunnels in a random direction, all the way focusing on my Breathing and trying to figure out how I could improve it.
Of course, I didn’t actually consciously make any improvements, but eventually I noticed that I’d fallen into a bit of a habit that I couldn’t remember forming. Checking my Skills proved that something I’d done had worked.
General Skills [3/5] Walking 7* Condense Mana 4 Breathing 6*
Even walking had levelled, maybe because I was trying to multitask? That did make it a little harder, which could make levelling easier. That gave me the idea to also try training Condense Mana at the same time, which made each task noticeably more difficult.
I basically ended up randomly stumbling about and breathing erratically whilst lightning began to form into a bead in my palm and had to stop before I hurt myself or, even worse, fell into the ever present river of sewage.
Still, grinding Walking and Breathing together continued to produce results. Whilst I didn’t get any actual levels, I could still tell that I was improving in both skills and must have been getting close to the next level.
I was focusing so much on the growth of my skills that, embarrassingly, I completely forgot about trying to find the way out of the sewers. I didn’t have anything more to do down here now that I’d taken care of the Shadow General, which was probably the cause of the rats’ odd behaviour.
The only problem was that I didn’t know where the entrance actually was, so all I could do was wander randomly until I managed to find something that I recognised. If I would be able to recognise anything, the tunnels were still dark after all.
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Around an hour of aimless wandering resulted in no good news. In fact, there was only bad news. Not only was I still hopelessly lost, but none of my skills had managed to level up and, to top it all off, I had found another weird rat cult.
These ones were also watching a rat eat some of the same herbs that were on display in Pill’s Alchemy Supplies, so either there was something weird in that crate, or there was something in these sewers that was driving rats to sentience.
I looked around the alcove and found that there were far fewer rats here than last time, it looked like around 7, and there didn’t appear to be any particularly large rats here.
The one in the centre had yet to start eating this time around, but I decided not to give it the courtesy of a final meal and started blasting whilst they were still distracted. Even a default Lightning Bolt was enough to finish off the weaker rats, and the ones that were able to survive were left stunned with their muscles locked in place.
As I was going around, doing the grisly work of finishing them off, one of them recovered and immediately jumped at me. It was faster than expected, and as it neared the peak of its arc (not nearly high enough to reach me) its tail exploded in flame and it was launched right at my centre of mass.
Coincidentally, that was exactly where the Shadow General had rammed me just an hour ago, and I heard a horrific crack as the rodent knocked me off my feet.
This is feeling annoyingly familiar.
I Generated Lightning in my hands and, instead of using Lightning Bolt, simply grabbed the rat and slammed it into the ground. I heard another crack, though this time it was a lot less horrific, and the rat stopped moving.
Not willing to take any chances, I shot the remaining survivors with a lightning bolt each and was rewarded with the Combat Notification.
Combat Cleared
1 Small Alchemical Rat Horde [Levels 4-6]
1 Rat Fire General [Level 7]
Path Skills Lightning Generator 8 Lightning Bolt 6 General Skills [3/5] Walking 7 Condense Mana 5* Breathing 6
Two Generals, two Hordes, both of them doing strange rituals. Don’t tell me there’s an actual Rat Cult down here.
Unfortunately the facts were unavoidable. One time is a strange event, two times is what I’d usually call a coincidence, but for something like this I sincerely doubt it.
Something, or someone, was down here creating Hordes of alchemically treated rats, and I had no illusions about my ability to get out of here without being attacked by some kind of patrol, or from a hunting party specifically formed to kill me.
At least I’ll get some levels out of it.