The first thing he did was get the hell out of the area that he was in. Of course the question was whether he should move away from the grand station or if he should go closer to it and just go for a blitz tactic while they were still preparing.
“You…. You can't be serious? Like do you really think getting closer to them is ideal, or even smart?”
“Pfft! No! I just wanted to see if you would actually think I was genuinely considering heading closer to the Rat Kins main base.” Quill responded with a grin
“Whew. Thought I was going to have to talk you out of something really stupid. If you had chosen that, I would have petitioned the system to up your insanity status to extreme or something”
Quill snorted at the comment then paused. “Wait, you can talk to the system?”
“No. But I would have still tried to petition it given the sheer insanity of the idea.”
His hopes dashed as he had more than a few complaints to file towards the system himself, he started to move away when two screens flashed in front of his face, almost making him curse.
Mental focus has reached level 2
Split thinking has reached level 2
“Thats odd... Why did that pop up again” Her voice responded with a mix of confusion and contemplation as Quill dismissed the screens and offered a shrug.
“Hell if I know. My best guess is because I am trying to figure out how to get out of this mess. Don’t suppose you have any ideas.”
“Gorilla warfare?”
“I mean, kinda already doing that anyways. I am almost tempted to try and lure some of the cockroaches over and have them clash while I pick off the stragglers.” he responded.
“Sure that could work. But that would mean you would need to venture into roach territory and then somehow drag enough of them away to clash with rats.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t seem feasible.” He let out a sigh “I guess that means I am just going to have to wander around these tunnels and try to pick off as many stragglers as I can before disappearing back into the tunnels. Seems like my best bet to whittle their numbers down”
Quill took a deep breath to steal his nerves and pulled out his map looking for the best place to venture. Once he settled on a path he began to make his way forward, away from the grand station. It kind of sucked that he didn’t actually know how many of the rats were left or how strong their numbers were.
“Oh and Quill. One more thing real quickly~” Her voice became sickly sweet that left a small shudder push through his spine as her words seemed to ooze with thinly concealed rage.
“Y-yes?”
“When you find that rat that was shooting you with those crossbow bolts and had the nerve to run away before you could kill him. Be sure to kill him slowly. I wish to watch until he understands his mistake. You’ll do that for me, want you?”
Quill stumbled a little as his brain clouded over for a second and he shook his head trying to get his thoughts in order. “I… If the opportunity presents itself then okay. But I won’t be going out of my way to do it.”
“Fine, I suppose I can accept that.” she responded with some reluctance.
Quill involuntarily swallowed and decided to change subjects “So, while we try to to get ourselves ready. Do you have any stories you can tell or something? Just to help distract me from this daunting task I have ahead of me?”
“Really? That's what you are going to ask me to do to help? Be a storyteller?”
“I mean.. Can you do anything else for me right now?” he asked with genuine curiosity.
“Oh~ I can do a lot for you right now~” she responded in a tone that was way too suggestive for him.
“Uh.. Can you do anything to help with my current situation I mean.”
“... So have you heard the story of the blind fisherman and the dragon?”
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“Can’t say that I have.”
She then launched off into a tale that had terrible pacing and very nonsensical rules. When the aliens showed up in the fantasy universe he was starting to suspect that she was just making things up as it went along. But it was entertaining in a weird sort of way and he appreciated the distraction as he made his way through the tunnels.
His destination was a far off corner according to the map that had a couple of branching paths near its dead end. The hope was that even if he got found out and cornered. He would be able to escape through one of the branching paths if able.
His progress was soon significantly slowed by the amount of rat patrols that started swarming the tunnels. Several points he almost got caught by large patrols, even getting so close that one of the rats almost stepped on him but thankfully he went by unnoticed.
However, he did manage to quickly massacre a smaller patrol before rushing back into the tunnels without any of the other patrols catching him so he was already whittling them down which was nice.
Something bothered him though about all the groups of rats that were patrolling the areas below, he couldn’t quite place his finger on it. He would try to make better sense of it once he got to his destination.
It took far longer than he would have liked to get to the small corner of the tunnel that he was aiming for but he made it. Once there, well he didn’t really know where to go or what to do in terms of moving forward. He would have liked to make a barricade but he didn’t really have much of anything to make a barricade.
He stretched his body with a groan and dropped his backpack down at the farthest corner. It had gotten even more torn, yet still managed to hold together although barely. He was going to have to find a way to repair it. Maybe Ssevinac would be able to help. Assuming he doesn’t try to kill him for Iirilac being dead.
“Oh please, there is no way his death can be traced back to you. Pretty sure he would have gotten a notification of the contract being broken if you had attacked which you didn’t. I did. So perhaps one of his people can fix it up for you.”
“Maybe.” He dug into his bag and pulled out a single health potion and put it in his single intact pocket as the rest were now torn in some way or another. He would have liked to take more than one potion but he couldn’t without taking his backpack.
It was there that his enhanced hearing picked up movement. It was still far away since sound could travel fairly easily through the tunnels but it was getting closer. It looked like he was going to be engaging in battle faster than originally thought.
Making sure his backpack was hidden as best as he could he started off into the tunnels. Being as quiet as he could and keeping to the shadows, he slowly neared the sounds of marching and squeaking.
When Quill finally spotted the patrol he noted something a little off. These rats were smaller, had less weapons and armor. Only one of them looked like they would be any actual threat, giving off the same guard/warrior vibes as others he had fought.
Not sure what to make of this but knowing not to let such an opportunity go to waste, Quill charged them from behind, wiping out several with his Pizza Cutter and Rat Tail before they even took notice. But it didn’t really matter, the one who managed to put up even a little bit of a fight was the singular warrior but Quill quickly overwhelmed him.
The rest charged blindly at him without tactic or reason and were soon all slaughtered. The whole thing probably took a minute at most which greatly benefited him as he didn’t have to use his energy manifestation for very long.
Wiping the bit of blood off his face he asked her a question “Out of all those rats. How many had sentience?”
“Feeling bad about killing them again?”
“No. Well yes but that's not why I am asking. Do you know.”
“None. None of them had sentience. All were created from that dungeon spawner. Why?”
Quill smiled a little “Don’t want to say anything yet. Let’s try to find a couple more groups first to see if they are similar.”
“Tease” She responded but left it at that to see what he was planning.
Quill then began to make his way through the tunnels, ambushing 3 more groups of rats all with a similar group dynamic as the previous ones. Only ever stopping really to give himself a breather and to check his map for which way he was going.
After clearing the final group he felt his headache and sore body indicating he was using too much of his energy manifestation so he decided to look at his skill notifications.
You have leveled up to lvl 19
Stealth has leveled up to lvl 2
It was time to head back to where he had made his small base camp. The patrols of the rats were getting more frequent and he was going to be playing with fire if he kept going at this rate as he was already exhausting himself.
“Now can you tell me why??” She let out an incessant whine which Quill ignored as he made his way back through the tunnels. Taking a different route then he had taken when clearing the dead rat patrols. His hope was that he made the rats think he was going a specific way and that was away from where he made his little corner.
Finally making it back, he plopped down in the darkest corner and after using his enhanced hearing to see if he could hear any rats opened up a bag of chips and ate carefully/quietly.
“Hello??? No ignoring me! Tell me!” The familiar fog started to cloud his head and he let out a small sigh.
“Right, sorry. Basically I have realized that the rat king is running out of his higher level troops. Whether they are fighting the roaches, or in his other stations, or dead. The ones he has now are all lower level, which is helped by the fact I just killed a bunch of them and only grew a signal level.
“Basically they have numbers but the numbers don’t really mean much at the moment and since they are all system spawned or whatever the hell it’s called, they aren’t exactly super intelligent. Kind of like an npc who can only act and move based on its code.
“All of this helps me greatly. Now I just need to thin down their ranks and it should be a fairly clear shot to get the rat king and likewise his spawners. I don’t think he can just spam the devices, otherwise these tunnels would have WAY more rats.”
“Well then, looks like we didn’t need that rogue rat anyways. I knew things would work out. Good thing you have me looking out for you”
“Y-yeah” He responded and decided to focus on the chips he was eating. No matter what, things were going to be busy. He needed to rest and recover as much as he could before heading out again.