Arriving at the outskirts of the Giant Rat den, she paused for a moment thinking of the best means in dealing with the remaining Giant Rats.

Although most of these Giant Rats weaker than the ones she had just dealt with, she knew that there was at least fifteen of them remaining, which far larger than the groups she had been dealing with.

Deciding on what the most appropriate method in dealing with such a predicament, she was about to go ahead with using a risky, but a doable method, when she heard a bunch of voices which sounded strangely familiar to her.

“Are you sure she headed this way?” Mumbled a burly looking man.

“Yes, she definitely did! I don’t know what happened but it seemed that she had vanished out of no were I swear her tracks has disappeared, all I found was some unknown beast tracks.” Said a scrawny looking man.

“Hmph. She couldn’t have gone far anyways, we need to hurry up or we’ll miss the target we’re planning on robbing, they’re carrying a good haul, it’ll be a shame if we miss out on such goods.” The leader of the group said.

“Trust me It’ll be worth it boss, a girl like her alone could make more than the combined spoils than five of our usual targets.” Assured the scrawny man.

Hearing the group chat completely unaware of her presence, she finally realised where she had recognised them from, they were definitely the rowdy bunch within ‘Thornrock Inn’.

Initially, she just thought they were a bunch of harmless hooligans who were all bark and no bite, but it turns out that they’re actually a bunch of bandits disguised as adventurers to scout the Village for potential targets who they can rob.

Judging from their conversations who knew how many they had killed, and in the manner which they are talking about it here, it is clear on what the plans they have in mind for her are.

Slavery was a concept player found recognisable in the game, but as players, they had truly not experienced it before, nor had they seen much of it.

In fact, it was a rumour that slavery was active under the cover of the black market, but the players did not see much of it, as the game had toned down this part of the game after a large amount of lodged complaints by players about it being too ‘graphic’ for them to handle.

Which was why, although she was aware of the hidden darkness of the World, reflected in the form of slavery, wars, it was the first time she actually witnessed first thing the dangers in a society were strength determines a person standing.

If she was a harmless young girl she may have even already been captured by this group of men, once again indicating a sharp reminder that this is a ‘Real World’ and no game, not only could she die, but the ‘NPCs’ which are usually prohibited from committing various acts against players are no longer controlled by such regulations.

However, with the appearance of the men she now had an idea on how to deal with the troublesome problem of the number of Giant Rats.

A devilish grin formed on her face, ‘You clearly do not have good intentions, so do not blame me for being polite.’

Of course, she didn’t realise that in her current form she fit the bill perfectly for an evil, devious monster at the moment, plotting a scheme to take down the ‘righteous humans’.

Nonetheless, none of this matters in Talia’s mind at the moment, as she already formed a plan on dealing with the Giant Rats, thus not attempting to hide at all she rushed right into the territory of the Giant Rats directly located to the entrance of the den which currently had two Giant Rats crouched outside, each of them clearly slacking on the jobs, being un alert on watching their surroundings.

Not giving them any time to react she pounced on the nearest Giant Rat which didn’t even have the time to respond before Talia was on top of the creature tearing its flesh to shreds, believing she did enough damage to finish the beast, Talia didn’t even bother to look back as she dashed back into the same direction which she had just come from.

The remaining Giant Rat screeched in rage at being provoked by an unknown creature, seeing its comrade already bleeding out to death, it shrieked noisily calling out to the remaining rats in the den to make an example of this creature who dared to provoke them on their territory.

Instantly, numerous screeches sounded from the den as multiple rats began exiting the den, each chasing in the direction that Talia had just left in.

Slowing down her pace to ensure that she remained directly in the line of vision of the Giant Rats, she continued to drag the rats with her, as they frantically followed her, eyes full of bloodlust and viciousness, as they wanted nothing more than to tear her apart.

After searching for a while Talia felt a tad of impatience wondering where those guys have gone, but that disappeared shortly after she once again heard the voices of the bandits.

‘I hope you guys enjoy my gift.’ Went across Talia mind evilly as she dragged the following rats in, the first men saw from the bandit group, was the scrawny-looking one who pointed in her direction excitedly saying something, but that all changed as he saw a large number of rats following behind her, instead his face morphed into an expression of panic.

Then the rest of the group hurriedly went out to draw their weapons, initially, they prepared themselves for the brace of dealing with her first, as she was at the lead of the Giant Rats, but instead of confronting them she moved out of the way and hopped onto a tall tree near them, quickly climbing to the top of it.

Frost Gecko were natural climbers, and she was no exception in her beast soul form, although she was a bit worried at first, seeing the ease at which her body moved up the tree, she found that her concerns were unfounded as it was an easy task for a Frost Gecko to ascend such a tree.

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Just as she hoped, the Giant Rats upon losing their target for their hatred, jumped straight at the group of the bandits straight away, Giant Rats are not a clever race anyways and are especially known for being aggressive so it was no surprise at the scene which followed.

The Giant Rats swarmed the group of bandits, who didn’t even manage to put up much of a fight, to be honest, in fact, it was honestly a pitiful display.

They didn’t stand a chance from the beginning, the rats clawed through their armour like it was paper, cutting through the bandits like nothing.

Not one of seemed a capable fighter at all, in fact only the leader was only somewhat acceptable, to Talia they had such a meagre fighting force, she wondered how they even made a living as bandits with such a low level of combat power.

However, what Talia failed to realise that Giant Rats were seen as a genuine threat at Thornrock Village to even the most experienced adventurer, although fairly weak alone even a group of four, which Talia had dealt with would be seen as troublesome, it was just that her set of skills completely suited in dealing with such an opponent.

One of the Giant Rats strengths were their agility, and as a result of being smaller than their opponents, it meant that almost always they had higher mobility which made them an irritation to deal with, especially in groups, as each Giant Rat had surprising strength for their size, and if allowed to get in close range could inflict serious harm.

Although Talia was right in one regard, that the Bandits were a shoddy group, they were still of average strength among the Villagers, which is not to the point of being as weak as Talia is implying.

But, they still served their purpose in the end in lowering the rats' numbers, although not lasting long with the rats, a few of the bandits managed to take out two rats and the leader actually managed to kill three before he was torn to shreds by the remaining group of rats, who immediately began feasting on his carcass.

Talia saw that there were around ten Giant Rats remaining so now it was time to play her second card, that was Magic!

For some reason, she started off with a spell, which she was actually fairly familiar with, although low levelled it was an effective one for this stage, and can continually grow stronger as she grew her mastery over the skill.

And that was ‘Essence Bolt’, in the game it was a spell a Mage can usually learn by Lvl 5, from a low levelled Mage found in the Village. But she had somehow achieved the skill beforehand, which she discovered was likely due to the Princess, who must have been training to become a Mage before the incident, which did explain the reason behind her above-average intelligence.

She had found that skill the Princess must have picked up was very similar to the one in-game, which meant she knew it effects perfectly.

Although draining to her current self, she knew it would perfectly on foes like a Giant Rat, who are weaker individually, yet are pack animals which fight in groups.

As she had the knowledge to perfectly perform the skill, she found that a spell was slowly performing in her mind, wondering how it works currently within her beast form, she slowly found that she felt energy leaving her body to form the spell, appearing before was a condensed ball of the essence, knowing what to do from here she willed the ball to be flung at the Giant Rats below.

The unaware Giant Rats at the moment had already completely forgotten about the earlier intruder, and they were now enjoying a feast, munching greedily on the bodies of the bandits they had just killed a moment ago.

However, that was soon interrupted as the projectile Talia flung out the tree landed directly on a group of Giant Rats consuming a corpse.

*Bang!*

The head of a Giant Rat who was directly hit exploded sending pieces of brain matter splattering over the bodies of the other two Giant Rats, who were also sent tumbling after the explosion.

Instantly, realising that they had been attacked by an unknown the enemy, the Giant Rats began squeaking in a frenzy as they went about to search for were the strange attack came from, but before they could retrieve, another missile of energy was flung ending the life of another Giant Rat causing them to once again descend into confusion.

Again attempting to find the culprit by walking in the direction, the Giant Rats once again lost another one of their members as the strange ball of energy struck again, causing the death of yet another Giant Rat, this time however they had lost their fearlessness, and they began to feel fear.

For the Giant Rats, as long as they had a target, they would endlessly swarm that creature until it died, but until now three of their number had just died, without them being to even come close to identifying the strange enemy, causing them to feel frightened about the unknown.

The Giant Rats decided to scatter and return home after all underground was their territory where they were at their strongest, they do not believe they can be sneak attacked if they are deep under the earth.

Nevertheless, how can the Giant Rats know that are instead falling into Talia’s scheme. It was perfectly detailed by players on Giant Rats instincts, that if they feel threatened they would always instinctively head underground as it was where they feel most protected, it was why many tragedies even involved poisoning the Giant Rats in the den or slaughtering them whilst forming a permitter around the entrance as they forced them out of the den.

None of these was her idea, instead, she was just hoping that they would split up, which they ended up doing in the end, climbing back down the tree, she chased after the Giant Rats who had split up into different directions, after a lot of back and forth, she had managed to kill another five Giant Rats.

Returning back to their den, she had found the remaining Giant Rats and a few more which should have been the ones who had remained within the den.

Finishing them off proved to take a bit more effort, as the Giant Rats came at her frantically in an attempt to take her down, it was because at this point they were the only ones remaining of the pack of Giant Rats, with them gone, the den of Giant Rats would finally be destroyed.

But, because only two of these Giant Rats were of similar strength to the ones before, whereas the few others were weaker, Talia still managed to take them down with only minor injuries.

Upon their demise, once again she felt a ray of light shining upon her as she the familiar feeling of levelling up occurred.

Feeling the sensation of growing stronger, the light also had some sort of rejuvenation effect additionally on Talia as she suddenly felt refreshed.

‘I should retrieve the bottle of wine now.’ Thought Talia, as she entered deeper into the den, finding the spot where she knew the wine was buried, she began digging in her lizard form as she eventually came across the bottle of wine she had come for.

Feeling a fairly strong concentration essence emanating from the wine, she knew right away that it was good stuff.

Quickly transforming into her human form she packed the bottle of wine appear into her storage pouch, which is what every player in the game would usually start with, something not uncommon in the Kingdom it was a small spatial pouch used to store items with a bigger storage space than it appeared to be, and then exited the den.

Knowing it was time to go to the location of the Dire Wolves, she knew that it was time to finally accomplish the Priestesses quest.