Once recovered to a point of satisfaction, he hid his backpack again in the darkest area. He then started to move back through the tunnels, keeping his ears open for any possible patrols that he wanted to avoid.
He was avoiding these patrols for the simple reason that it would look pretty suspicious to have two patrols die at roughly the same area after a lapse in the killings. That said, dodging the patrols was becoming really difficult. Quill even had to scamper up the walls at one point in order to desperately cling to the ceiling as 2 patrols intersected and passed right under him.
Stealth has leveled up to lvl 3
Well that was a nice bonus he thought. He really needed to try and get more of his skills to a higher level but he just hadn’t had much time or a chance to do so. Plus he wasn’t entirely sure how he would be able level up the skills outside of combat. When he actually had time he would workshop the idea.
He finally got to a point in the tunnels where he was far enough away from his camp out spot to feel comfortable and started to hunt, making sure to avoid the area where his little resting spot was so as to not attract more patrols in that area.
It really didn’t take long to find another patrol, he was practically stumbling over them on his way here. He quickly blitzed them from behind using both his Rat Tail and pizza cutter, once again making quick work of the group as they tried to put up a defense.
He cleaned through them pretty quickly. They all seemed to have the same predictable fighting style which made him cutting through them all that easier. However he knew he made a lot of noise so he decided to try something he thought of when he hid on the ceiling to dodge those patrols.
He quickly scampered up the walls again, his enhanced strength doing wonders in allowing him to use the smallest of handholds and cracks to hoist himself to the top.
Once at the top, he made sure he was far enough away from the tiny lamps that he was encased perfectly in darkness. That was when he waited patiently until two different rat patrols came scurrying to find the dead rat kins underneath Quill.
He waited until a majority were directly underneath chattering and squeaking amongst themselves before dropping down. Instead of summoning up his Pizza Cutter though he decided to go with style and pictured two elongated chainsaw blades coming out of his elbows.
As he fell, he spun around and cleaved through most of the rats before they even knew what had happened. He quickly dissipated the blades as having something like that come out of his elbows was horrible impractical in reality and finished the rest off with his Pizza Cutter and Rat Tail.
“I can’t tell if what you just did was really stupid or really cool..” she injected as he dissipated his manifestations.
“Let’s go with cool. Maybe I can live out my middle school fantasy of being a super cool edge lord with super cool but impractical weaponry.”
“No offence but your pizza cutter is already in that category. Though calling it a pizza cutter kinda ruins the coolness factor.”
“I think it adds to it personally.” he countered
“And that’s why the system calls you insane.”
He ignored her comment and paused to take stock of his well being. He wasn’t in dangerous territory yet as taking down those two squads hadn’t cost him a lot of resources given the shortness of the whole incident. He also noted he didn’t level up either.
Better to play it safe than sorry though. He didn’t want to take down a rat squad only to get overwhelmed while fighting on low on his energy.
He began to make his way back. Ambushing one more squad by dropping on them from the ceiling using his chainsaw elbows to clean through them in the process. It was, to put it simply. Very easy.
He had to restrain himself to keep going. Caution meant survival. Survival meant living. And living meant…
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“Good?”
“Still on the fence with that. I’ll get back to you”
He could have sworn he saw her roll her eyes on that but she refrained from comment as he snuck his way back to his little hiding hole to rest.
He didn’t really know how long he rested until he felt ready to go back out there. Truth be told, time sort of started to meld together at this point. Five minutes, an hour? Heck for all he knew those times on the electrical sign with the cursed sins were completely wonky. Maybe a minute the system time was actually 47 human earth seconds. He thought back to all his guesses of how long it took to go through the tunnels or how long it took for him to rest. Just because he felt like something lasted a couple of hours didn’t mean it did. His time was getting all haywire.
“First signs of someone loosing it~” She spoke in a teasing tone “Not to worry though. I promise to keep you grounded no matter how off the deep end you try to go! You can count on me!”
He felt her comfortable presence slowly descend on his psyche. It felt good. Comfortable even to know he could always count on her.…. He quickly cleared his throat as he pinched his arm before speaking “Well that is nice of you. Will be relying on you in that case.”
Mental focus has leve-
He dismissed the level up notification and continued to speak “I’ll be relying on you. But for now it is best we keep killing these rats. Ambushing them from the ceiling seems to have really paid off so I think it is best we keep doing that. Sounds good?”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll be cheering you on the whole way!” she responded in her chipper tone and Quill felt himself relax a tad before deciding to add.
“You know. I could use some battle music. Help set the mood. Think you can do that for me?”
“With pleasure honey buns!” She then started doing a bunch of songs that he could only assume were originals that seemed to mix metal, classic rock, and jazz. He wasn’t entirely sure how appropriate some of her music was to stealthily killing humanoid rats but he wasn’t going to complain.
He made his way through the tunnels, making sure to dodge the rats until he was far enough away and began his ceiling ambushes once again. Rinse, repeat.
It was stressful, sure, as any screw up could possibly lead to all of the rats' forces bearing down on him but in some ways it was also pretty monotonous. He just ambushed till he felt like he was about to strain with energy manifestation and then go back to his little corner to recover.
It was his 6th excursion out when he noticed the patrols weren’t happening as frequently. After the 11th excursion he had to actively hunt them down. It was very quickly becoming apparent that the rat king's forces were running low. Or he was playing turtle and was hoarding the rest in the Grand Station he was in. Either way he felt like things were progressing to a point where he would soon be making an attack on the grand station.
Throughout this he had actually managed to level up twice more putting him at level 21, his stealth skill had leveled up to 4 and, to his surprise, dirty fighting and enhanced reflexes had leveled up to level 2.
He assumed dirty fighting was due to all the ambushes but again, he still wasn’t sure how the skill actually helped him in any way. At least with dodging the effects were pretty clear on what they did.
It was on his 13th outing that he couldn’t find any rats at all and decided that he was probably putting off his attack on the grand station so he headed back to his little corner where he kept his bag.
As he got there he walked towards his bag but then stopped about five feet away. Something didn’t quite feel right. Since he had a skill called survival instincts, he decided to heed to that feeling and slowly took a step back, only for every fiber of his being to suddenly scream at him to duck and in doing so just barely avoided a large knife trying to decapitate him.
Quill slammed his elbow behind him and hit the Rat Kin in the chest causing them to stumble backwards by two steps before it recovered and charged him again. Quill managed to side step, gripping their arm and flung them forward towards the tunnel's dead end.
It was there he heard a small *click* and acting on instinct summoned up a giant shield to duck his body behind as a loud explosion ruptured through the tunnel and knocked him flat on his ass several feet away.
Survival instincts has leveled up to lvl 3
He winced as he slowly sat up, his ears were ringing and his vision was blurred but he was pretty sure he was okay… HIS BACKPACK!
He tried to stand up only to stumble back down to the ground. He was certainly discombobulated from that. How the hell did rats have access to explosive devices! It was obviously some kind of trap and when he didn’t fall for it the assassin tried to take him out instead.
He crawled his way through the remains of the explosion. The walls and ceiling were totally scorched and he was pretty sure he saw bits of what was left of the Rat Kin. As for his backpack? Completely and utterly destroyed. All of the potions he had in it were destroyed. All of his food was gone.
He groaned as he placed his back against the wall, wincing a little as he picked up a piece of fabric that seemed to be all that was left from his dirty old backpack.
“Why were you so attached to that thing anyways? It obviously meant more to you than just a really good accessory.”
He didn’t bother answering her as he stuffed the piece of cloth into his only intact pocket along with the singular health potion and watched the tunnel waiting.
Sure enough, shortly after the explosion he saw multiple figures move their way through the smoke and slowly a group of Rat Kins came out with a very big and heavily armored Rat Kin leading them.
Figures.