I glanced back at Reid and Caro behind me, and it dawned on me. Reid became a representative for a healer. Probably, or at least that’s how he explained it, how was he going to fight? With a groan I pulled my bow and arrows out of my inventory and handed them to Reid, he needed some way to defend himself.
“What? No, I can''t take this. You need it.” He said as he tried to push it back into my hands.
“I don’t need it, I’m an awful shot and I have a dragon so I think I’ll live.” I quipped with a small roll of my eyes.
“Yeah but you’re injured…” he deflated as he tried to protest but gave up quickly.
We could hear Noel in the distance, he was shouting something unintelligible. As he got closer, I could finally barely make it out. “... better … -ay the piper. Y’all better pay the pi-AH! The piper!”
“The piper is supposed to take the rats OUT of town!” Caroline yelled behind me.
Is he alright? He screamed a moment ago.
Yeah he just lost his footing for a moment, he still has a good lead on his pursuers.
Okay good just head straight back here we need to create a funnel, if there really are too many of them we need to limit their approach so we don’t get overwhelmed.
Got it, earth funnel?
Earth funnel.
A few seconds passed before the ground began to shake, Caroline and Reid both grabbed one of my arms and started hauling me back up the stairs before I could stop them.
“Wait! It’s just Aureus!” I exclaimed as a dome constructed itself over us and connected to the entrance. It was about 15 feet in diameter. From the exit of the dome I could see two huge walls that made up the funnel into our refuge. We were basically in a strange shaped earth igloo.
“Oh. Okay, still stay a couple steps up, you''re not well yet.” Reid was fussy as always.
“Don’t worry about her, she can handle herself. You’re the one I’m worried about.” Caro said as she ruffled my hair earning her a half-hearted glare from me. “You probably don’t have much mana right now right? Plus you are a healer, so you stay back too and use those arrows. Don’t shoot anyone this time.”
“That was an accident!”
“That’s almost worse! If it was on purpose at least I’d be confident in your aim!”
“It wasn’t even a bow and arrow, and you shot me back anyways! Can’t you just get over it?”
“No I can’t just get over it, you-”
“Okay enough they’ll be here soon, so shut up and focus!” I interjected.
Is Noel almost back yet?
He’s coming but I can’t see him yet.
How far out are the rats?
Before he could answer I could see them, a black wave crashing over the rocky landscape. Our eyes went wide, how had he managed to create a rat stampede of this size? There had to be hundreds. Or more, it was hard to guess with our narrow view out of the structure Aureus created.
I stood up from my seat on the stairs too quickly and lost my footing, Reid grabbed my shoulder to steady me. I could tell he wanted to tell me to sit and wait, but he held his tongue as we waited for what could be our friend leading death to our doorstep.
A fluid shadow materialized from the stairs next to me, as it took shape Noel’s familiar excited eyes were staring back at me. But this time that same familiar excitement was blending with anxiety, a small triumphant smile bloomed on my face. Finally, he was taking this seriously. It was immensely satisfying, but also insanely annoying; this never would have happened in the first place if he had been careful. He could have died before he even made it back.
“You really made sure I’d have to carry you huh? Even though I’ve got this bum leg?” I asked, not even trying to hide the anger and annoyance in my voice.
“It’s healed… kinda? Right?” he asked, he seemed to be getting more uncertain as the wave of rats grew on the horizon.
Reid turned around to glare at him in response, but Noel literally jumped backwards when he made eye contact. Which in turn caused Reid’s expression to soften to a more concerned and confused one as Noel blurted out, “Dude what happened to your eyes?!”
“Came with my contract.” he said casually, Noel seemed more confused than he was before but didn’t want to ask anymore questions.
Master, should I light the path on fire?
No, we should do that as a last resort, I’m worried that if we make the path we chose for them dangerous they’ll find another way to us. Like climbing over or digging or something.
Understood.
Actually, if you notice any rats trying to climb, light the outside of the structure you made on fire or freeze it so they can’t climb. We don’t need them digging through and falling on our heads.
The first ten or so rats spilled into the funnel we created, they already started trying to climb over each other to get to us. Now that they were close I wasn’t surprised to see that they were at least two feet long.
An arrow soared over us and disappeared into the horde of rats, I sighed knowing I’d likely never see that arrow again. Noel was resting on the stairs, and I was there next to him while Reid walked forward to stand with his sister.
Since we don’t know how strong these rats are, can you just make sure they don’t have to fight more than 5 at a time at first?
Can I kill them?
Yes, please do.
The first rat to make it within the dome leapt forward and landed squarely between the Gallaghers, it was quickly dispatched with a flick of Caro’s wrist as a void string cut through it. The next several weren’t long after, each one dashing towards their nearest foe and being killed quite easily.
Despite the speed and ease that we were currently killing these creatures, I was anxious. If we had gotten caught out there with them surrounding us we would have been eaten alive. The concern that the structure might collapse on us was consuming me. Quickly there were more and more rats flooding into our haven.
Reid quickly threw the bow back to me as it had been completely ineffective at this range and took to stomping on the rats that entered his radius. Caroline wasn’t struggling in the least as she cleanly deleted portions of them with the void. There was always another rat to fight, but after only a couple seconds they needed to kill two or three at once. They didn’t seem too overwhelmed since Aureus was performing his duty as crowd control as best as he could.
I smiled as I watched him swoop down and cut several rats into ribbons with his claws. He even ate a few of them whole. A minute or so slipped by as the three of them continued to fight. Caroline got a few scratches on her legs. Reid wasn’t as lucky, he ended up with a large bite on his arm when a rat jumped at him while he was stomping another.
A few minutes passed and the siblings started to slow down, I figured they were getting a little tired. The corpses at their feet began to pile up, and increasingly more rats were squeezing through the funnel. At that point ten or so rats would be filtering into the dome at a time some of which were gathering around the edges of the dome, waiting for a good time to strike.
I carefully got up and approached the rat corpses further from the entrance of the dome, pulling them back and butchering them. Surprisingly the rats ignored me, they were completely focused on Aureus, Caroline, and Reid. I continued to do this and put the spoils in my inventory to avoid us filling our space with the dead.
Caroline started to blend physical and magic attacks – likely because she was running out of mana. I wasn’t sure of the details of her skills but I knew that a powerful one like that would have to eat away at her reserves. I was about to join in their fight when Noel appeared in the midst of the tunnel. He was virtually floating as he slashed at several rats and vanished back into the shadows again.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Wait, where did he get a knife? I wondered as I watched him join the other two in attacking the rats spilling towards them. Reid stepped on a rat running towards Noel, pinning its tail to the ground. Noel, taking advantage of the rat’s plight, plunged a kitchen knife through its neck. Ohh yeah, the house, that tracks.
Aureus had only been using physical attacks since the onslaught started, however the funnel was filling up and the amount of rats entering had started to increase rapidly. The pressure of rats behind them propelling them forwards into our space. Soon over 20 rats were attacking us, I had to get up leaving the corpses behind and helping them fight this new wave.
Aureus, can you drown the rats on the bottom layer?
It might take up a good bit of mana since I’d need to maintain the shape of it, but of course I can.
Actually no, make the path they’re taking in an incline. We can limit their entrance that way.
Understood.
When the ground began to shake again, the only ones who seemed concerned were the rats and Noel this time. He glanced back at me and seeing my calm demeanor quickly returned to the fight. It was surreal seeing his normally animated face, serious and dripping with sweat. The ground beneath the rats shifted upwards, reducing the stream of them to just a trickle.
About half an hour passed and noticeably the amount of rats entering decreased yet again, so I commanded, “Noel, you go out and check what is going on. We have killed a lot of them but I don’t think that was nearly enough to be most of them.” I glanced around, I had only butchered about 70 so far. Although there were significantly more that had been kicked to the edges of the dome.
Noel nodded and disappeared into the shadows yet again. Reid looked moderately alright since he’d had a level up a few minutes ago, but Caroline who already reached level 2 was starting to look really exhausted. Aureus was the same as ever, which wasn’t surprising in the least considering these were just mobile snacks for him.
Soon Noel returned with news, “It looks like a significant portion of the rats have left. I dunno why, maybe they didn’t think they’d be able to get in or they got bored.”
He seemed disappointed but Reid and Caroline were ecstatic, soon they would be able to rest. I clicked my tongue at Noel’s reaction, unfortunately he hadn’t seemed to learn much from this encounter. I suppose my shelter might have caused him to be unaware of the significant dangers he almost caused. Noel was the type of person who felt all''s well that ends well, and the type of person that you have to drill things into. I wasn’t willing to drill things into his head, if he wanted to get himself killed that was fine by me. I decided to let the three of them completely handle the remaining enemies and sat with Aureus as I fed him some of the meat I’d collected.
“Are you really going to let us take care of the rest of this?” Caro whined as a rat’s head exploded under her heel.
“Yes, you guys wanted to level up right? I’ve given you a safe place to do so.” I responded while carving the meat out of a rat.
“Still…”
“You’re doing great! Oh yeah we forgot to join a party earlier. Or befriend each other.” I had nearly forgotten about it so I mentioned it aloud once I remembered.
“Not much point in doing that right now though.” Reid added.
“True.”
The next hour or so the three of them lazily killed the few rats that had made their way into the structure. I eventually got tired of dealing with the corpses as my knife was dulling significantly. Instead I decided to check out the social tab.
I had already input my screen name earlier and promptly selected no on the prompt asking if I wanted to be displayed to nearby users. Once I clicked the social tab now I was greeted with what looked like a phone UI with a few apps. The first was simply called ‘Celes’, followed by a friends list app, a party app, and an events app. Each had a simple graphic, Celes was a light blue flowy abstract ‘c’ on a white background, while the rest were basic graphics with a background color and the first letter in white and lowercase. The friends app was green, the party app yellow and events red.
Indulging in my curiosity I clicked on the Celes app, as it loaded I was given the option to add a profile photo and bio. It never prompted for a screen name unsurprisingly. I neglected to add either a photo or a bio and explored the app, it was a typical social media app. I could scroll through the feed and see people posing with their kills, animals and other humans alike. Many were making typical IG posts, but were using that to get clout for their god rather than themselves. Others were just starting problems or declaring territories or attempting to start guilds.
The fact that people were trying to build guilds and start territories didn’t surprise me, but at least people were trying to create a new civilization with how wrecked things had become. I scrolled for a while trying to find out if other cities had as much damage or if we were just unlucky.
I couldn’t really get a handle on it, the vast majority of posts were in the Underhollow, or were done by people who were wrecking the surface. I added a filter so it would show posts near me and was pleasantly surprised to find there was a girl who was regularly posting in our area. “Dauntless Hammer”, she looked small but held a huge hammer as her name suggested. Judging by her photos, there’s no way she was getting any usable materials out of her kills; the monsters she killed were virtually pulp. I struggled to make out what monsters they had been fighting, there wasn’t much to go off of with how brutally mangled the corpses were.
There must have been a few other people in her group, since there were traces of footprints in the blood that clearly weren’t her own. None of her posts included them though, I wondered if they didn’t want to be shown or if she just didn’t include them. Also from what it looked like she should have been in the same area of the Underhollow as we were, the hazy red light and the awful jagged dark rocks were the backdrops of every picture she posted. Though for all I knew the majority of the Underhollow could look that way.
Being the antisocial lurker I was, I continued to stalk her profile for a few minutes looking for any clues. When I never found any I returned to the main page in search of other people near us. Unfortunately I did find some, I found the posts of that asshole nazi that had attacked me and Caro this morning. I snorted, of course he’d choose “Pinnacle of Man” as his screen name that jackass.
A little digging on his page found an archived livestream of when his group saw our car turning onto ‘their’ road and subsequently backed out and left. It continued as they followed us, cornered us, and confronted us. It only cut off when Caroline shot him.
A small smirk formed on my face when I noticed the video only had a handful of views. I was thankful that only a small group of people saw us but even more so that he was unpopular. It was petty and childish, but I hoped he wouldn’t ever get a following on this new and maybe eventually the only social media app.
Deciding that was enough brain rot for the day I closed the Celes app and opened the friends list, sending requests to both ‘Call of the Void’ and ‘Radiating Golden Light’. I was slightly shocked when Reid’s screen name came back as nonexistent.
“Hey Reid, what’s the name you ended up using on this social tab?” I asked, glancing up to see him smacking down a rat that was headed towards Caroline.
“Oh I agreed to change it a bit at the request of my patron god. It''s ‘Priest of Golden Light’ now.” he replied breathily.
“Mine is ‘Monarch of the Shadows’. You should add me too!” Noel said, materializing in front of my system window.
“O-okay…” I replied, startled by his sudden appearance.
Glancing over at the fight that was slowing down, I noticed that Caroline was sluggish. I groaned as I stood and took her place, she didn’t hesitate to walk back to the stairs and rest. Only four or five rats were appearing at a time, and though my knife was dull it was still moderately effective at killing my foes.
Aureus stood next to me, blocking or throwing rats that might injure me as I helped kill the mischief of rats. I only tried to stomp a rat once because pain shot up my still healing leg when I attempted putting my full weight on it. As a result I barely stepped on my prey, doing very little damage. I crouched over it and plunged my knife through its throat. It died swiftly. I was pretty happy that most of them died swiftly. I wasn’t looking forward to watching anything struggling in vain to live, not again.
Eventually the trickle of rats came to a halt. Our group all laid on the wet blood soaked rocks beneath us to rest before harvesting the materials. I wanted a shower, but I wasn’t about to take one before we got rid of these corpses and moved to an area that wasn’t littered with organs and blood.
“Hey Caro, can you make me a bone knife? It doesn’t have to be rat bone, I still have some rabbit bones.” I asked from my uncomfortably pointy and sticky seat on the stairs. How blood even got all the way back there I’ll never understand.
Noel jumped up in my peripheral vision, and Caro said, “No. I will absolutely not be making you one, Noel.” before he could get a word out.
“What?! Why not?” He whined.
“Because you brought an extremely ridiculous amount of rats back with you and if Mia wasn’t here we would have died. That’s why.”
He groaned mumbling about how he didn''t do it on purpose as he flopped back onto the rock. Reid cursed as small splatters of blood got on him because of it.
“What if we just leave the rest of these rats, I think we have enough of their materials and it’d probably be a waste to butcher them right?” I asked hopefully, truthfully, I was the only decent butcher. A badge I earned from trial and error with both the horned rabbits and under rats, so I hoped they wouldn’t ask me to stay here while Aureus took them hunting later.
“That’s a great idea. Let’s just leave after we rest up.” Caroline slurred sleepily.
“Alright, well I’m gonna take a shower.” I replied.
“Yeah… You do that… Wait, what?!” She sat up, the sleep vanishing with the appearance of her shock.
“I’m gonna… shower? I told you about that right? My camper reward item?” I said uncomfortably while the three of them stared at me through narrowed eyes.
They looked at each other, each sizing the others up before Reid and Caro took up a classic rock, paper, scissors stance. They both threw rock twice, followed by Reid throwing rock yet again and Caro throwing scissors. She groaned, leaning back on her arms as he looked at me with a huge grin, “I’ve got next.”
Noel lightly smacked his arms, protesting, “Wait you didn’t give me a chance!”
“People who bring a horde of rats to eat us alive get the last of everything. No way you get a shower earlier than Caro.”
“But-” Noel tried.
Reid shook his head, ”She’ll kick both of our asses if I try to take your side on that.”
“I think the two of you are overlooking a very important factor.”
“What?” Noel looked from me to Caro to Reid and back to me. Reid lowered his eyebrows looking at his friend in pity.
“The one who controls the shower is me. And I’m not sure if I want to let the Piper in.” I said with a smug smirk, disappearing into my item for a much deserved shower.