The trio made their way to the first house at the edge of the park. Paint was coming off all over the outside of the house but the yard was landscaped almost to perfection. In the windows Cade could see several tiny glass figures looking out towards the park. He had seen these figures before in various displays in the houses of older folks, and assumed this house was probably the same. As they approached it they could see through the large window facing the park, a large multi faceted gold star hung up against the far wall, and under it was a cross depicting Jesus. “Well, I doubt the owner is still inside based on that cross. But they may have had cats or dogs, let alone if someone else is inside.” King said as he looked inside. “I don’t see anything or anyone as of now, but let's proceed with caution. I’ll go first.”
“King, hold up. First…” Cade paused as he sent out a party invite to King. “Just sent you an invite, and you need to tell us what you can do first. We need to have a game plan in case we find a fight in there.”
“Good thinking. Just accepted the invite. Thanks for that. Okay… I have a Bladed Kite Shield, it’s super good for defence but it's also decent for attacking, it's just limited in close quarters and nothing as quick as using a sword or blade. I hit rank E last night and got the ability Dash Defend. It allows me to cover distance quickly to shield someone, so I’ll be able to provide some extra help in a fight. How about you guys?” King looked pleased with himself as he finished, obviously excited to show them what he could do and to talk about his shield.
“Crow is basically an assassin, you saw his ability to hit stealth and sneak up on a target, and he can paralyze someone with a strike. I got something a little different. I have a gladius one handed sword and a shield, and my ability is called Chain Flare. I can separate my sword into linked pieces and it turns it into a bladed whip.” Cade was equally excited to share his rare ability, but felt he probably didn’t need to include that it was upgraded.
“Well damn, that sounds pretty cool. Also explains why Crow is so light hearted and lovely.” King added with a sarcastic tone and a cheeky smile. “I’ll go first, shield kinda helps with that.”
King kicked in the front door and pushed inside, his shield coming out as he crossed the threshold, head and eyes flicking back and forth, checking for danger. “Nothing yet, let's clear through this hallway together.” Cade and Brandon nodded, both holding their weapons at the ready. Cade moved through last, shield facing behind them with Brandon in the middle of them. They moved through the house, King opening doors shield first to peek in, but they were unable to find anything. It was dark, but they assumed that if they came across a turned animal that an instance would pull them somewhere rather than something attacking them outright. The exception to that would have been people, and they knew that.
As they finished clearing the hallway and kitchen near the front door, they moved towards the great room, the one with the large window facing the park. It was nearly pitch black now, and because there were no lights, they were virtually blind as they walked into the room, the only light being sparse moonlight coming through the window. “I guess we should barricade the front door and probably clear out some usable items.” King dropped down into a couch and leaned back, kicking his feet up.
“AH FUCK - !“ The world flashed and they appeared within a massively distorted version of the house, the ceiling stretched up many times further than it had before, and King, Cade, and Brandon appeared to have been teleported to the center of the room. “King, what did you see, what was it?” Cade barked out, searching the darkness above them.
“I dunno man, I saw red eyes and the flash of movement. It looked like it was something massive though.” King had raised his shield, eyes also searching upwards.
“We should back up to a wall, Cade… your way. Check the wall as we get close. King, keep your eyes upwards, I’m going to watch our sides and make sure we don’t lose anyone in this darkness.” Brandon reached out a hand to them both, grasping a shoulder of each after putting his weapons away. “Okay, move.”
They crept slowly towards the wall, the room having become an odd shape when they were pulled into the instance. It had rounded out for the most part, and it was pitch black. There was no light coming through the window, just void black darkness. They were about a dozen feet from the wall when something let out a terrifyingly loud screech. They heard a whistling noise in front of them, and all three of them almost fell over as something hit the ground in front of them, shrouded in the darkness. King had managed to slam his shield down in time to give them something to grab instead of falling.
Red eyes peered at them in the darkness. Cade felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as they stared back, another deafeningly loud screech echoing out at them. Cade heard a striking noise coming from right next to him. He turned without breaking eye contact with the monstrous eyes, and out of the corner of his eyes he saw Brandon bent down, sparks coming from what Cade had guessed was his flint camping set. Through the light of the sparks he noticed that Brandon had laid down several bits of clothing from his inventory, poured some of the alcohol from the liquor store on them, and was intending to light them. One of them lit, the light casting shadows around their legs as Cade bent down, careful to not touch the wet cloth, before balling the end of one up. He tossed the burning cloth as far as he could. The sight in front of him made his blood chill; a massively overgrown rat was sitting thirty feet from them. It was dark black, except for its taloned limbs, and it had to be 15 feet long, not counting its tail. The worst part to Cade was its head - spikes protruded from seemingly random spots on its head, and inside of the spikes near its forehead was a grotesquely brutalized body, or what was left of a body. Cade guessed it was the remains of a woman that had lived here, killed by this monstrosity.
Brandon was faster than Cade, having activated his stealth as he ran towards the rat thing. Cade watched as he moved to flank it, a health bar and title appearing over the rat, Oblivion Rat.
“King, we are going to distract it. Crow is moving behind it. Let’s go.” Cade ran forward towards the rat, shouting at the top of his lungs as he approached it. King moved to his right, angling towards the left side of the monstrous creature in front of them. Cade swung his sword over his head, but was knocked over as the rat spun in place, its 30+ long tail catching his legs, sweeping them out from under him. It continued its spin to fix its gaze back onto him. Cade heard King shout as the tail shoved him to the ground well. He started to get up as the rat started to make a whirring noise, completely different from the screech it had made before. It angled its head upwards, Cade starting to realize they could barely see it in the dying light of the burning clothes. He pulled out another bottle of liquor and threw it towards the pile of clothes, instantly illuminating the room once again. Covering his face and head with his shield as the heat beat at him, he turned towards the monster again. It was almost sitting like a dog, shaking slightly as the whirring built. Cade hadn’t been able to see it before, but he watched as a portion light seemed to vanish from above the rat, like it was being sucked into a black hole. That does not look good, Cade thought to himself.
The Oblivian Rat shook faster and faster, almost vibrating as the mass above it grew bigger, nearly the size of a basketball now. Cade was trying to think of what to do when the whirring gave way to a much more high pitched and many times louder scream. The rat had stopped moving, stuck in place as it appeared to be reaching for its own back. Cade remembered Brandon’s ability, Paralyzing Strike, and exhaled as he was able to regain his composure. “Jump it, now!” Cade shouted, activating Chain Flare as he saw Brandon stabbing it in the back. King had moved to its rear as well, smartly cleaving the tail of the beast in one downward motion of his bladed shield. A squeal escaped the rat's mouth as it lost its tail, but it was still unable to move. Its health bar had dropped below half as Cade hit it with his segmented blade, the blade wrapping around the neck of the creature, cutting into its skin before getting caught on the spikes protruding from it. With no warning, Cade was knocked back with such force that he hadn’t even had time to realize what had happened before he was slammed into the wall behind him. It must have been 40 feet to the wall from where he was, and he hit hard, tasting blood in his mouth. He fell down from the wall, his sword clattering to the ground as he tried to catch himself. His health had dropped precipitously, nearly down to a third. He realized he had several broken ribs and his shield arm was numb. Blood had started running down the back of his head, and the headache came quickly. He had definitely rung his bell hard enough to concuss, but he had to get up - his friends were likely hurt as well.
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“Brand… - Crow! King! Answer me!” Cade shouted into the darkness in front of him. He pulled one of the Filtered Regen Elixirs, and drank it down. He knew these things acted fast, but was it fast enough to get back into the fight? He didn’t care. Shakily standing, he picked up his sword and tried to raise his shield to no avail. His shield arm was probably broken, so he stowed his shield with a thought and looked at Brandon and King’s health bars. King had managed to weather whatever had happened a little better than Brandon had; his health had only dropped a quarter, but Brandon’s had been lower than Cade’s, likely due to his being nearly touching the monster.
“Crow, drink an elixir, now! King, cover him.” Cade tried to shout commands but knew his voice was lower than he intended, likely having lost a couple teeth and had at the very least bit his tongue nearly through in that blast. He spat out blood as he felt the tingly healing feeling enter his mouth. It was insanely strange and reminded him of something crawling beneath his skin, not a fun feeling.
The Oblivian Rat screeched again, albeit less loudly, probably because it was down to a quarter of its health. It turned from Cade and started moving towards Brandon, who had barely started to move, a hand reaching up to his mouth, likely to drink down an elixir. That’s not going to be good enough, I have to get over there. Cade shouted to himself to get moving, slowly making his way over to his friend. “Hey, rat bastard, I’m over here, come get me!” But it didn’t turn towards him - it didn’t even acknowledge him. Cade activated his Chain Flare again and swung the blade towards the rat, but it fell short by a long way. “Brandon, get out of there! Activate stealth… MOVE!” Cade was panicking, unsure of what to do as it approached the barely moving Brandon. The rat reared its head backwards as it opened its jaws above Brandon, spikes gleaming red and ivory white in the dying flames.
“DASH DEFEND!” The words rang out as Cade heard a blast and a whoosh of air emanated from his right, a flash shooting past him faster than he could see. Cade watched as King appeared kneeling over Brandon, his bladed shield angled upwards towards the Oblivian Rat, pointed lower half raised as it bit down towards its prey. The rat's head stopped, cleaved in two as it ran itself into the end of the shield, upper and lower jaws separated on either side of it. King shouted in pain and the world flashed as they defeated their foe. King dropped to the ground beside Brandon, Cade stumbling his way over as the world returned them to the great room from before. Moonlight once again lit up their surroundings.
“King, put your shield away, I can’t get to you under it.” Cade reached them, unsure of what had happened when King had killed the monster. King released his shield into his inventory, arm dropping to his side, Cade taking a sharp breath as he saw what had happened. One of the spikes from the rat had pierced King’s abdomen, just below his ribcage. Cade pulled out an elixir, “Alright man, I’m going to pull that out on the count of three, but you need to drink this first, okay? I’m worried if we pull it out too soon you might bleed out. You ready?” King nodded, his face tightened up in pain. Brandon reached over and handed him a rolled up piece of cloth. “Bite down on this man, it’ll help.” He put the rolled up cloth into his mouth after drinking the potion.
“One, Two… Three!” Cade yanked on the spike, pulling it from much deeper than he had thought it had penetrated. He immediately pulled some more clothing from his inventory and held it to the wound. King had passed out as it was removed, succumbing to the pain. Cade didn’t blame him one bit, that shit had to hurt, he thought to himself.
“Brandon, I’m sorry. That was a lot of missing health. I couldn’t get to you, the bastard broke my arm and knocked me to the opposite wall.” Cade felt his eyes well up in frustration, once again knowing he had been useless at a time his friends needed him.
Brandon stretched out a hand, resting it on his arm, “It’s not your fault, I think unfortunately we just need to get used to this. I’m good, the elixir is kicking in nicely. It threw me into something between me and the wall, it hurt like a bitch, but it slowed me enough to not kill me outright. I owe King. He saved my life.” Brandon stood up, not fully healed, and picked King up off the floor like he weighed nothing, “I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to these stat increases. I got another durability improvement with that fight. This system really likes to reward us for getting the shit beat out of us.” He gently placed King on a couch nearby, moving to sit in an armchair next to it. “He did good, I’m in for having him in the party. Not saying I fully trust him, but I think he’s earned a spot on the team.” He said as he closed his eyes and reclined backwards, letting out a loud breath.
Cade saw Brandon’s eyes flash open as he looked at his screens. “Damn, I forgot about this.” As he said so, Safe Zone illuminated in gold underneath their names and healthbars in his vision. Motes of light dissipated from Brandon, Cade remembering the last time this had happened, at Kaia’s house, after they had killed the void cat. “Nice, makes me feel better. Seems like maybe it only establishes after an area is clear?” Brandon shrugged in response.
“I’ll take the first watch this time, since I know you just won’t wake me up.” Brandon told Cade.
“I’m not going to argue with that logic. Thanks. Wake me up if King wakes up?” Cade yawned as Brandon grunted a response back to him.
Cade laid down on another of the couches, opting to stay close to his companions rather than search out a room. He took out a ration of water and a nutrient bar and ate his boring dinner as he reflected on what his life had become. He finished his food and remembered to check his notifications from the battle.
Rank: E
Strength: E
Dexterity: E
Intelligence: E
Durability: D (Upgraded)
Mana Generation: F
Cade knew a stat increase was a good thing, but man it would be nice to have increased something else besides his durability in that insane fight. A slow progression I guess, but at least I’m progressing.
He was more pleased with the rewards he had received from the fight. He had gained another 400 Void Coins, as well as several items. Oblivion Rat Hide looked to be a wearable item that he could equip to his torso. It appeared to be much like a vest worn by a police officer, or the garb of an ancient soldier. Brown, thick; but still fairly easy to move in, it provided protection to his abdomen and chest, as well as his mid and lower back. It also gave him a bonus to his durability as well, which was a massive plus. It would help him tank and should help with keeping some of the damage from King in the future. It also had another line of text,
This item will regenerate and return to its original form so long as a piece of it is kept outside of an inventory space. Time to regenerate and regeneration speed will be affected by total damage sustained to the item.
Cade took that to mean the higher the damage to it, the longer it would take to grow back. Pretty neat, he thought. The last item was another of the Void Hearts. Remembering he had also stowed the spike he had pulled from King’s side after the battle, he pulled it out and momentarily inspected it, curious how he was able to retain that item, but the rest of the rat's body had been removed from the world. As he thought this, he found himself drifting off to sleep, the exhaustion of the day and the memory of his friend's death bringing soundless tears to his eyes as he fell asleep.