A Lich was stalking a dark alleyway in Agrestis. This once prosperous city had endured many disasters since the Hero was summoned to Klishay, and those on top of the mismanagement of the Idiot-King that summoned him. By now, the city could probably be wiped out by even a small monster invasion, so a Lich stalking its streets was a very real threat to its existence. Was it seeking the city’s overfilled graveyards to raise a hord of skeletons? Or perhaps it preferred zombies, and was planning to stalk Agrestis' unguarded poor district (most of the city now) snatching victims one by one to create a nightmarish hord? No, it was... killing rats. Doing a rather poor job of it too.
Aedifex cursed, quietly but bitterly. He had no smell to tip off the rats’ sensitive noses, his dark grey cloak blended well with the dirty stone walls, and he could stay perfectly still for hours without discomfort. All he’d had to do was place some moldy bread (bought for a few coppers) in an alleyway and step back 2 meters, and the rats would come right to him. He should have been a scourge to the vicious little things. Unfortunately... *swish* *squeak* another rat ran away unharmed. The Master Enchanter, who had no problem aligning dozens of runes in a perfect formation, was bewildered by the simple problem of how to align one steel spearhead with one rat.
Perhaps the problem is he was trying too hard. Aedifex had been doing his best to copy the thrusts and sweeps he had seen customers at his store use, when they were testing the balance of his spears. Belatedly, he realized there was no need to put the full force of his body behind each blow, when the target was just a rat. Granted, one of those rats had been half a meter long, not even counting its tail (Aedifex had used almost a dozen Earth Spikes shredding that particular rodent when it appeared, then spent half an hour repairing the damaged street), but most of the rats were normal sized. In fact, if it weren’t for the strengthening enchantment on the spear head, he’d likely have damaged it banging it against paving stones when he missed.
Deciding he had scared off too many rats in this spot, he went searching for another of the red marks on his map. Was the large box with a jagged line through it supposed to be that warehouse with a collapsed roof over there? There was another warehouse next to it that seemed to be still in use, so shelter with a nearby food source? That made sense. Poking around inside turned up quite a few rat droppings, confirming his guess.
The warehouse had a bright center, from light poring through the collapsed roof, surrounded by shadows cast by walls and the jagged remains of its roof. Placing the remaining bread at the edge of the sunny area, he took position just 1 meter away in the shade. He held his spear above his shoulder, angled down 45%, and froze that way. He looked like someone had dressed up a statue in real armor and weapons.
After what seemed like half an hour, but was in fact... about half an hour (his internal clock seemed much more accurate now that he no longer had instincts demanding things like food and rest) a rat carefully approached the bread, sniffing the air frequently. Finally, deciding it was safe, the rat leaped upon the bread and began eating as fast as it could. Aedifex brought his spear down, moving only his arm, in a short vicious jab. *SQuee...* Oh, that actually worked!
After cutting off the tail, Aedifex threw the body away before taking up his position again. He was somewhat worried that the smell of blood left behind would scare off other rats, but it turned out he had the opposite problem. The rats all swarmed to the body while ignoring his bread! He should have remembered, while most of a creatures mana was released in a burst upon their death, some of it remained bound within their dead bodies.
Eating monster meat was a very bad idea, as unlike the pure mana released upon death, mana locked within body parts carried the essence of the creature it had once been, and had a corrupting effect on whoever ate it. This effect could be fought off if the meat came from a much weaker creature (which was why you didn’t see wolves with bunny ears, for example) but eating weak creatures would also add little to your own power. No, if one wanted to see a noticeable growth in strength, one would need to eat a creature close to you in power, and the only way to do that without also getting strange, possibly crippling, mutations was to eat your own species. Very few humans would sink to that, but rats would.
The horrible wet crunching sounds finally came to an end, and the mob of rats dispersed. One frustrated rat, that had arrived too late to get any rat meat, noticed the smell of blood near Aedifex and began sniffing around hopefully. Disappointed, it eventually gave up and settled for bread instead. *swish* Aedifex, still a bit upset, missed again. It took two more rats before he managed a hit again, and this time he kept the body.
He soon found himself surrounded by a ring of rats. Each time they would approach the growing pile of dead rats Aedifex would strike down with his spear. The rats would scatter, then creep back, their noses in the air sniffing for any trace of a predator, their eyes alert for any movement, until their greed overcame their fear and they rushed again. It occurred to Aedifex that he was essentially copying the role of a mechanical trap. A rat would enter the target area, and his arm and spear would swing down. To pass the time, he thought of various mechanical and magical traps he could build to take his place. He didn’t plan to build any of them though. Even if he set up rat traps all over town he’d be lucky to make a silver per day, and he wasn’t planning to spend the rest of his unlife as a rat catcher either. He was here mainly for spear practice.
He killed 11 rats in this way before the survivors finally wised up. Harvesting the tails, he also took the 4 most intact bodies to serve as bait. He was at a loss about what to do with the other bodies though. The bounty was just for tails, and he was sure the other adventurers just left the bodies where they fell. He was also fairly sure that giant rat he’d found had begun its growth spurt after eating several such discarded bodies. Well it wasn’t his city, but it bothered him to do shoddy work, even if that work was just rat catching.
Aedifex had never learned fire magic, beyond a couple of basic fire starting spells, and burning them in a normal fire would spread the smell of burned flesh for hundreds of meters. Even in present day Agrestis, that had to draw guardsmen. He could bury them he supposed, but that was a lot of work for a few coppers worth of dead rats. Couldn't that wait till he had more to bury? He didn’t want to fill up his item bag with rat corpses, but if that was the only way to keep the other rats from stealing them... wait, steal?
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It then occurred to Aedifex that there was one kind of trap he could set, quickly and easily because he’d cast it countless times before. He just hadn’t thought of it, because he’d never considered trying to protect rat corpses of all things. Finding a flat slab of rock, Aedifex piled the rat corpses on it and cast his anti-theft shock enchantment, before moving on to another hunting spot.
Returning several hours later, he was shocked to discover that little trap had turned into a seething mass of live rats and mostly eaten corpses. Diving into the mass, he got a chance to try using sweeps again, and he even killed a couple of rats with them. After the surviving rats ran off, he surveyed the gruesome scene and deduced what had happened. The shocks designed to ward off humans had actually killed rats outright, and some of them must have fallen off the slab. More rats had come to devour them in turn, then emboldened and driven into a feeding frenzy, they had gone after the original corpses he had left, repeating the cycle until the enchantment ran out of mana. Sighing, he picked up the few intact rat tails he could find, before casting the anti-theft enchantment again, larger with a greater mana reserve this time. Then he hurried back to his new hunting spot to discover a similar situation was developing there.
Although Aedifex had never set out to single handedly solve Agrestis’ rat problem, somehow he found himself setting up highly effective rat traps around the city and tirelessly checking and maintaining them. His body didn’t tire of course, and the work had frequent bouts of monotony where he could rest his mind. Before he’d realized it, 4 days had passed this way. The only reason he kept up this quixotic quest so long was that the piles of dead rats had drawn out more giant rats (too big to die from one shock, but too greedy to just leave) for him to fight.
Moving past arm only jabs, Aedifex could practice putting his whole weight behind a thrust against these giant rats. It was amazing how fast you could learn a move when your body didn’t get tired and moved exactly the same way each time. Though he wouldn’t be bringing down Dire Wolves with a single thrust anytime soon, by the end of the 4 days he figured he could at least wound a normal wolf, even without using magic. Satisfied that he could pass himself off as a real Spellsword now (A Spellsword wasn’t supposed to be an expert after all) he then discovered his original problem had grown far larger. What was he supposed to do with... all... these... DEAD RATS?!
Finally, he decided to make a huge pit with earth magic, compacting its walls to keep out burrowers, and using all 3 of his item bags ferrying the hundreds upon hundred of rat corpses from various locations all back to this one pit. After covering the top with rubble and fusing it together into one giant slab, Aedifex felt confident no rat was getting in there. He then returned home, deciding that had been the only rat hunting job he would ever accept.
Unfortunately, Aedifex had underestimated the tenacity and digging skills of the common rat. Roughly 1 week later, a single rat made it through the dense rock-like dirt surrounding the pit, and began immediately to gorge itself. Quickly growing in size and strength, it fought off all other rats that tried to steal its find, and continued to eat and eat for another 3 weeks. The rat corpses had long since rotted into a putrid near liquid mass, yet the massive rat stubbornly continued to eat, eventually becoming corrupted into a rare Ghoul Rat.
Finally, 1 month after Aedifex had confidently sealed the pit and left, a horrifying Ghoul Rat burst to the surface, its body a mind-boggling 2 meters long. The only thing that saved the situation from tragedy was that the Ghoul Rat had become addicted to the taste of dead flesh, and disdained the living as a food source. Instead, after waiting for nightfall (finding the sun abhorrent now), it crept through the streets with a stealthiness one would not expect out of 200 kilos of pure horror, its still sensitive nose leading it to the city’s largest graveyard.
However, once there it discovered it had competition. 4 cowled figures were pulling a recently deceased body out of a grave. The newly enlarged, but still simple, mind of the Ghoul Rat was filled with rage. NO ONE TAKES MY FOOD!!! The horror fell upon them, the cowled figures stood no chance... but strangely, they never panicked, not even as they were being torn apart.
That was when the Ghoul Rat made a discovery, these things were delicious! It had never tasted anything so good! Ignoring the barely ripe human corpse, the Ghoul Rat eagerly followed the scent trail the delicious treats had left, eventually arriving at a dilapidated manor... and the greatest feast it could have ever imagined.
--Mortuum Ipsum POV--
The Lich, Mortuum Ipsum, stood in his now much less crowded manor. Just what had he done wrong? How could he lose so many minions, and in such an absurd manner?!
He had taken over this manor 17 years ago, after the Hero had destroyed half the nobles’ district in one of his rampages, and most of Agrestis’ surviving nobles fled the kingdom. Even if the city was too dangerous for pampered nobles, Ipsum found it safer than any crypt or tower. The Hero just loved invading those!
Since then, he had moved patiently and stealthily. Never taking more than one corpse per week, and always from the unmarked graves of those left unclaimed by relatives. Daily casting preservation spells on his zombies, keeping them fresh enough to pass as human, at first glance at least. Even keeping a few meticulously trained human slaves for the times they couldn’t avoid talking to the living. Those had been used to bribe the city’s guardsmen to ignore the “squatters” living in this manor.
Then yesterday, after 17 years of diligently avoiding trouble, he had sent 4 zombies on a completely routine harvesting mission. They never came back. Instead, that thing had come. The largest Ghoul Rat Ipsum had ever heard of, let alone seen, had come through his gates and started devouring his carefully preserved zombies! It had eaten 2/3rds of his zombies, and even smashed the Skeleton Warriors he’d sent to stop it. It was only when the stupid thing had gorged itself to the point it could barely move, that his remaining minions had been able to surround and kill it.
Really, just what had he done to deserve this?!