The bandit captain, Ripper, had initially intended to head directly in the direction of Blomdorf's rage shout.

He figured that whatever pissed the big guy off enough to make a sound like that was where the action was. It had nothing to do with a leader's duty to a subordinate. Nor did it have anything to do with concern over the stupid giant's wellbeing. He was just itching for a fight. He was forced to reconsider his plans, however, when it became clear the two bandits he left behind to guard the merchandise wouldn't be enough to defend their camp from the monsters that came crashing through.

Ripper got his fight.

Over the course of the next half hour, his crew faced a half-dozen giant horned beetles, a furry lizard, several bipedal armadillos with dog-like snouts, a porcupine-wolf, and several other beast-type creatures that were typically a monstrous hybrid of naturally occurring animals in the area. The creatures came in waves and in strange combinations that you wouldn't typically see fighting side by side. That could have complicated things as it meant adapting to various attack types on the fly, but that hadn't even been an issue.

He had so much fun bloodying his axe and crushing skulls he didn't much care that two of his men were killed by the motley swarm they faced. Besides, anyone on his team who got killed that easily deserved it and was one less grunt he had to pay.

The ex-adventurer-turned-bandit was keenly aware this many monsters shouldn't have been such easy prey. It was strange, but unless they were attacked, the monsters ignored him. The creatures were content to run right past in pursuit of something only they could see. Once engaged, however, the enraged beasts turned their sights on whatever caused them pain. For Ripper, that meant a free chop of his axe on his prey before they could retaliate. Where there was weakness, he was always more than happy to exploit it.

One chop was all he needed anyway.

Because of the monster's unusual behavior, only the giant horned beetles had given the bandit captain and his men any real trouble, and that was because they had been the first wave. His men had engaged the thickly armored critters all at once before they began capitalizing on their single mindedness which benefited from targeting them one at a time.

By the third wave, however, the bandits had a system whereby the stronger fighters in their group kited individual monsters into some impromptu traps and ambushes, while Ripper took his pick of the stronger monsters by himself. Even those were still low level and one-on-one didn't pose much of a threat. It was the kind of bullying he thoroughly enjoyed.

When the frequency of monsters slowed and Ripper got bored of waiting, he took a handful of men to go investigate his only lead on this weird monster behavior, feeling confident the men he left behind could handle the rest.

Ripper had a hunch he knew what was going on. His adventuring days and his experience fighting along tank-type melee job holders, including barbarians, had exposed him to techniques that could cause monsters to act this way. He had just never heard of a shout technique covering such a wide area, but that didn't mean it wasn't possible. He was fairly certain by now that the big oaf had activated another barbarian skill by accident. That didn't mean he had a clue why.

"Boss, I found something!" shouted one of the scouts Ripper sent ahead to scout.

Ripper adjusted the grip on his axe and followed his man through the trees where he directed. The scout stood by the corpse of a large dog-sized rat, or what was left of it. Its head had been crushed against the nearby trunk of a solid pine, turning into little more than mush.

"Ugh, that stinks," said Mentiroso, retying his bandana so it covered his nose. "Are these blighted rats?"

Mentiroso had insisted on being one of the bandits to follow Ripper in tracking down his brother. He had agreed but regretted it when it occurred to him this might be a good time to kill the stupid giant without his brother's knowledge. That Blommy might be stupidly strong and useful on occasion, but the way those judgey eyes looked at him were unacceptable. Not to mention, that stupid oaf had a sense of morals that made him snap once before. Paired with the budding strength he displayed after unlocking the barbarian class, it meant he was a liability.

Killing that idiot would take his brother Mentiroso a couple rungs down in the pecking order. Without his own personal muscle man, the smaller brother would become more manageable. Mentiroso might not be strong but he showed remarkable promise as a thief and infiltrator. He was lazy and had an unhealthy obsession with fire, and yet, without the big guy as a proverbial security blanket he was bound to become pliant and more easily motivated.

Ripper scratched his chin with gore crusted fingernails as he considered Mentiroso's question.

Blighted rats could be a problem. They were a hive-minded swarm of disgusting, enormous rodents whose saliva and pus-filled blood caused virulent infection. Thankfully, it wasn't contagious, but the infection tended to cause a fever that often left its victims crippled if they survived.

The bandit bent down to inspect the rat corpse. He hadn't really noticed the smell as his own nose was full of the scent of blood and gore covering his own body. That, and his sense of smell had never been worth a damn anyway. It wasn't hard to agree with the other man's assessment, though. The rat in question was clearly not in good health before it died. Its fur was patchy and the skin it showed an unpleasant green tinge. If that didn’t give it away, the horrible irregularly shaped tumors all over its body were a dead giveaway.

"If we fight any, don't get bit," Ripper realized his words were stupidly obvious but he said them anyway. "And don't let any of their bodily fluids touch any open wounds."

The rest of the bandits followed Mentiroso's example and tied bandanas, scarves and any manner of strips of cloth over their faces in an attempt to ward off the stench. Since it didn't bother Ripper, he didn't bother. Besides, his clothes were so covered in blood already he didn't have a clean garment to use anyway.

"There's more of them that way," the scout pointed to a trail of corpses that led back up the hill but way from camp. There were an impressive amount of them.

Ripper grinned maliciously. Maybe the blighted rats did him a favor and killed that imbecile for him.

Now that there was a clear trail to follow, he led his team at a light trot through the trees.

***

Blomdorf had fought his way through the trees with a seemingly interminable swarm of blighted rats biting at his heels. His only weapon was a misshapen hunk of metal that had once been a bucket. Through slamming it into dozens of the rats, the crumpled metal had molded itself around one of his fists and was now serving as both a buckler and improvised gauntlet.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Fists, kicks and stomps were effective weapons for a two-and-a-half meter-tall human, who turned rats into paste whenever he struck them. No matter how effective, however, there were too many for him to deal with alone. And as many as he had killed, a fair number had taken a piece of him as well. He was covered in blood and gore, but plenty of the blood was his own, mixing with the vile substance of his current nemeses. Plenty had scratched or bitten him, some even leaving their teeth lodged in his flesh as souvenirs.

He had done everything in his power to lead them away from the child he was trying to save.

The notions that this child had probably killed his beloved Mr. Blinky, and that the child inexplicably looked like Mr. Blinky, were two unreconciled thoughts buried deep under his remarkably benign compulsion to protect children.

Despite being exhausted and bearing countless scratches and bites all over his body, he prevailed in his blind, lumbering crusade through the woods. He didn't know why the rats had chosen to follow him. He had just one thought in his mind. If he could just create enough distance between the swarm and the child, then the child would be safe. That might have been a bit more sophisticated way of putting it than 'I have to get away', but it amounted to the same idea.

Therefore, he was more than a little surprised to discover the very child he was trying to save had followed him.

A rat leaped onto Blomdorf's back and dug its fangs into the meat just beneath his shoulder blades. Barely an instant later, a cat-eared cambion who was barely larger than said rat, leaped lightly onto its back. Hooking his claws under the monster's neck, he used the rat's own body for leverage and yanked. Claws tore through the offending rat's throat and neck muscles causing the creature to let go of its target. The cambion, now falling backward with the rat on top of him, twisted nimbly in the air and kicked the dying creature away while managing to land on all fours... on top of yet another giant rat.

"Why... are you... here?!" shouted Blomdorf through gritted teeth.

His words were growls between panting breaths, but they were clearly filled with anger.

"Who knows?" replied the cambion, hopping from one rat to the next, but not before tearing out its throat. "Why are any of us here? Isn't that one of life's precious... Ooh, that one must have hurt... little mysteries?"

"You should not have followed!"

Blomdorf's attacks gained a brief shot of renewed vigor with the appearance of the cambion, but this shot of adrenaline was fleeting. His body was already at its limit.

"Focus on staying on your feet, Blom-Blom! If you fall they'll pile up on you and you're dead!"

This was something easier said than done. Several rats had managed to latch on to his left side and were beginning to make a ladder of each other as they worked their way up. Blomdorf tried to throw them off but his feet caught on something beneath the tall grass and he stumbled.

No sooner had he hit the ground than he was buried under a mountain of the moldy furred, tumor-ridden rodents.

The cambion leaped on the pile and started tearing out throats and kicking off the corpses. He received a few bites and more scratches, but earlier he had managed to activate barkskin which helped mitigate the damage. The rats weren't interested in him unless he failed to kill them on his first try, something he had learned when he tried thinning the monster's numbers while trying to reach Blom. He took full advantage of this, desperately trying to carve his way through the writhing rat abominations.

"Blom! Blom! Blom!" the cambion shouted over and over, ignoring the sting of his own wounds.

Why the hell do I care this much? I should leave now before this shit storm turns on me and then there's no way out. It's probably too late now. It's not like I even have a plan. What the hell can I possibly do?

"Get the hell out of the way, kid!" a voice shouted nearby.

The cambion turned to look in that direction when he saw a blur of movement and heard the sound of glass breaking.

A sudden burst of hot air hit the cambion and he recoiled from the flames that from his point of view spontaneously erupted from the swarm. Again, there was a sound like glass breaking and two more mushroom clouds of flames erupted to either side of him. Several drops of the fluid that was responsible for the flames splashed onto his right leg and he cried out in pain and surprise as his calf caught fire. Fortunately, the flame was extinguished after vigorously slapping it with his blood-soaked hands.

The harbinger of the flames was none other than Mentiroso, whose quick thinking had worked out a plan to get his brother out from under the swarm.

Ripper's party had come upon the strange scene just as the cambion was attempting to claw his way through. They had no idea how a naked beast-kin boy had gotten involved, but the sight of him shouting Blomdorf's name over the growing mountain of rats answered at least one relevant question.

Mentiroso was one of the bandits in Ripper's crew who had unlocked the rogue class. It was one of the reasons the bandit captain could appreciate his potential, as he had done so at a young age long before he joined the gang.

As far as traditional rogue tools, in addition to what you might expect like the throwing knives and throwing darts on the bandolier he wore, he had a penchant for keeping an assortment of tricks up his sleeve, such as the smoke bombs and incendiary grenades he kept on his person, the latter of which he had been forbidden to use in the forest until now.

Ripper thought Mentiroso's gambit was dubious at best. After all, it ran the risk of setting the man's own brother on fire along with the mysterious brat they had encountered. He let him do it anyway because, after all, if things went bad it saved him the trouble of killing the dumber brother himself.

The plan proved effective, however, somewhat to the bandit captain's chagrin.

The blighted rats were both nocturnal and sensitive to fire as it was their bane. Given that the swarm was a sort of hive-mind, when enough of the creatures were lit on fire, their enraged status dissipated, replaced with both the fear of the flames and their instinct to return underground. A minute after the fires started, the scorched and undulating horde was nowhere to be seen. At least, that was the case for the living. There were plenty of corpses to go around.

Mentiroso ignored the grimy beast-kin who sat nursing his singed leg, alternating wide-eyed stares between the patches of fire and his bandana-wearing saviors.

Blomdorf was a wreck. Another few seconds with the rats and he wouldn't have survived. The only reason he wasn't dead now was thanks to the giant's formidable bulk and having instinctively curled into a ball. Between his ham hands and ruined bucket covering vital areas of the neck and face, he had cheated death by a slim margin.

Mentiroso tilted his brother's head back and poured his strongest health potion down his throat. It wasn't a potion of greater healing or a rejuvenation potion. Those could regrow lost limbs and heal all but death itself, but were also prohibitively expensive and not something a low-level bandit could get ahold of. No, this potion wouldn't restore Blomdorf to pristine health in an instant, but it would immediately stop the bleeding and close his worst wounds, healing the rest to a reasonable degree over the course of the next hour. It wouldn't do anything for the infection that was bound to set-in from the blighted rats toxins, but they could worry about that next.

"You gonna be ok, Blom-Blom?" asked Mentiroso when some of the color returned to his cheeks and he opened his eyes.

"Hey Roro," came Blomdorf's weak reply. "I am sorry but... I couldn't get the water."

He lifted the crumpled metal that was still wrapped around his fist then let it fall. The brothers exchanged a grin.

"We should probably get out of here in case this fire spreads," Mentiroso said, and he awkwardly helped his bigger brother to his feet, which amounted to Blomdorf getting up on his own while his brother got in his way, given that the smaller man wasn't strong enough to be of use in that capacity.

The bandits then gathered round the beast-kin anomaly who had relocated to a fallen log without any rats or fire nearby. He looked out of place, a pre-teen boy sitting there covered in blood and grime, with his legs crossed and a carefree smile on his face.

"Sooooooo," said the cambion when he realized they were all paying attention to him. "Are you lot the good guys?"

The bandits exchanged confused glances. Most of them were still covered in monster blood and wore a face covering which, ironically, made them look like precisely what they were.

"Oh, and before you answer that, do you think one of you could maybe help me find some pants?"