So the first thing he did was actually scrounge up the bolts from the crossbow. Or at least the ones that appeared like they would still fly. A few of his missed shots had broken the bolts and he was pretty sure he lost several somehow. They were like nerf darts. You could shoot them, see where they had landed, and somehow they still disappeared.
Once he was ready, or at least as ready as he was ever going to be, he loaded up his crossbow and moved towards the trap door. Making sure his energy manifestation would be at the ready in case he was surrounded, he slowly cracked open the door and peeked outside. Ready to run as quickly as possible should the need arise which it likely would.
To his surprise though he didn’t see any rats. There was nothing from what little he could see from the crack. He also didn’t hear any motion, nor could he smell any of the rats, at least nearby.
He slowly lifted the trap door until he was fully looking through the halls and was pretty surprised. While the rest of the stations would be considered somewhat shoddy and kind of minimal. Very much similar to any small metro station before this system took over that wasn’t expecting much in the way of traffic.
This, however, was completely different and certainly living up to its name, making Quills mouth drop as he took in his surroundings. A brightly lit majestic hall stood before him. Towering marble pillars held up a grand hall that arched above his head. The walls themselves weren’t the usual stone grey that had the occasional blank ad poster but instead were finely designed with intricate patterns that were perfectly symmetrical, without a blemish or imperfection among them. The floor was also without fault. A checkerboard pattern that shined so nicely he could actually see his reflection.
And that said nothing about the ceiling. The whole thing looked similar to the Sistine chapel. There were painted angels flying everywhere, with depictions of some of them even going slaughtering a whole bunch of demons and monsters too. He wouldn’t even really call it a war, the artist clearly favored showing the angels as absolutely dominating the monsters.
He almost let out a whistle he was so impressed but thankfully didn’t. The last thing he wanted was to casually announce his position to the world. Or the station in this case. But that all begged the question. Why the hell had the system gone and skimped out on everything else but made this look like a freaking masterpiece. What, did it blow its load on making this station and then just did the bare minimum with everything else, including copy and paste??
Minor gripes aside, he was pretty impressed with how beautiful the whole station looked and if he were to hazard a guess. The area he popped his head out of would be the opening/welcoming area to the actual station itself. At least that was his guess based on the multiple glass doors at one end of the hall that seemed to lead into nothingness.
With great care he slowly slid out of the trap door and carefully stepped through the halls. It was likely his Stealth skill helping him out but he was incredibly thankful there weren't any echoing foot falls from him scurrying across the ground. It was only when things were absolutely quiet did you really start to notice how loud you were.
Though it wasn’t like it was total silence. His enhanced hearing was picking up sound towards the opposite end of the hall where the metro pay gates were. It was here he also took note of a giant screen above the pay gates that listed the station names and when the “Train” would be arriving in each station.
He counted 6…. There were 6 stations in total in this grand station which meant that there were likely 6 different cursed sins he needed to worry about. He took in a deep breath, just needed to take things one step at time. That was all. Deal with the rat king and spawners first. Worry about the cursed sins later.
He quietly moved towards the doors that lead to nothing but a black void and tried to open them
Can not leave the tutorial dungeon until the time limit is finished.
“Okay, so even if you could leave. Why would you? If you don’t kill those cursed sins you’ll be dropped in a D grade monster's nest when the tutorial is finished which is basically a death sentence for you.”
“I just wanted to see. More options the better.” He muttered back before turning his way back towards the rest of the hall and began to make his way towards the pay gate. There was a Kiosk as well except instead of its rinky-dink little building. It was much more ornate and was attached to the wall instead of being in the middle of the floor plus it was also just larger, being the size of a double decker bus.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
He briefly looked in through one of its windows but didn’t see anything that might have been useful to him in the immediate future but did note a door inside the kiosk attached to the wall. However he didn’t see a way to get inside without breaking the glass windows so moved on towards the pay gate.
Jumping over it, he looked onwards towards the stairs that lead upwards. Still no sign of any rats which could either be a good sign or a bad sign. Knowing just speculation wasn’t going to get him anywhere he started to climb up the stairs.
Even the stairs were fancy, golden gilded rails, an almost silvery shine to the stairs themselves. It actually kind of hurt his eyes to look at all the brightness since he had been operating in such low light for so long.
When he approached the top, he noted there weren't any places for him to hide so he decided to just peek over the top of the stairs and if he was spotted he would simply run back down and into the tunnels.
As he peeked over the edge he saw another grandiose hall with brightly lit chandeliers. The hall itself quickly had two branching paths towards the left and the right as you crested over the stairs but also continued further down though he couldn’t really see that much further as something obstructed his vision.
A small group of no more than 15 or so rats were itching and scurrying around the hall and they all just looked… Pathetically weak. No armor, no weapons, they were all small and had no presence or power to their stances that he had come to expect from the more menacing ones.
All except 2 that is. A rat kin with a crossbow stood with the rest, looking more beefed up then he had previously with a much bigger crossbow and more heavily armored. Just past him sat a giant rat on a golden throne with a decorated crown fitted awkwardly on his head, holding a scepter in its hand glaring towards the stairs.
“We see you human! Come out and die with dignity!” The king spoke with authority and he almost felt the need to comply. His legs threatened to move on their own but he managed to keep them rooted on the stairs.
“I said Come Out Human! You Will Come Out And Die With Dignity!” The King ordered again and he once again felt the compulsion to follow it but it was actually pretty easy to ignore. However standing around felt pretty rude when a king was ordering you around so he decided to give his reply.
He raised his crossbow and opened fire. He would have aimed but he was pretty sure it wouldn’t have mattered so just shot the crossbow in the general direction.
He was pleasantly surprised that he actually managed to hit the king's throne, didn’t hit any rats but scratching the nice pretty over decorated chair was a nice consolation prize.
The king looked at the area where the bolt hit seemingly flabbergasted before snapping his head back towards where Quill was and stood up jutting his scepter towards him with a scream “Kill him! Kill him and bring me his head!!”
That was his cue to run. He quickly bolted down the stairs while reloading the crossbow. Blindly firing behind him as he reached the bottom of the stairs and ran towards the trap door. It was only now did he realize it would have been a great idea to set a trap in case of this exact situation. Something to keep in mind for later.
He felt his body scream at him in some kind of warning and quickly zigzagged. Barely dodging the crossbow bolt that shattered as it hit the floor.
He dove into the trap door, thankful he forgot to close it when he left and rolled as he hit the ground before backing up and getting himself ready for the rats that would inevitably come pouring down into the tunnels. He didn’t activate his energy manifestation though as that would likely just cause his entire body to fail him and instead grabbed a discarded sword and club that were left by the previous rats who were guarding the entrance.
The first rat that dropped down into the hole was a small dire rat which was easily dispatched with a swing of his club, the next was a rat kin, also quickly dispatched.
Soon more rats started falling down into the hole and all were quickly killed with either a swing from his sword or a swing from his club. He was pretty thankful that all of these rats seemed to have been system spawns. None of them seemed to possess much intelligence outside of jumping in the hole and dying.
It didn’t last long until the last one had dropped in and was quickly killed by quill. Going over his kill notifications showed that none were above the level of 8. They had clearly run out of rats to fight him and were likely just throwing out fresh summoned rats at him in some vein hope to tire him out.
“To be fair. It has kinda been working. You are pretty tired already. I’m pretty sure if you rested like you wanted to, any forces the rat king is able to muster up won’t do much to you in the time given.”
“True, but there is that crossbowman I need to worry about. And just because they haven’t really used many tactics on me doesn’t mean they don’t have them. I still have no idea how they made a trap explode back at the end of the tunnel. What if my resting allows them to bolster their defenses to a point where it wouldn’t matter if I fully healed and felt better. Plus I’ll just feel better mentally having gotten this whole thing done.”
He felt like she shrugged her shoulders before speaking again. “Hey, I certainly won’t complain about you killing that crossbow rat sooner rather than later. Speaking of. They haven’t come down which means they are waiting for you to show your face.”
Quill looked up at the exit with some concern before heading over to one of the dead rats and sliced their head off. Then, after impaling it on his swords tip. He lifted it up and out of the trap door only to instantly get impaled in the eye by a crossbow bolt and Quill quickly pulled the head back down. Yeah, that was going to be a problem.