Blood Shaper

Chapter Seventy-seven

They retreated from the hole and moved back into the tunnel they’d entered the room from.

“What are we going to do?” Leya asked, looking up at Kay.

Kay stared at the ground for a moment as he thought over their options. “The problem is that that hole isn’t big enough for us to go down simultaneously. I don’t want to have to drop into a fight like that one by one. We also don’t know which of the tunnels up here lead downward…”

“I could always scorch them from above and then we can go down one at a time when they’re all dead,” Claudia volunteered.

Kay glanced over at the hole. “That’s not a bad idea. At the same time though, we don’t know if there are more of them or not… And that crazy rat thing could be a lot stronger than we think…” He frowned and gestured for the other three to wait there. “I’m going to go back over and see if I can use Inspect on it.” Kay slowly made his way back over to the hole and peeked over the edge. The situation below remained the same, with the group of Rittians still asleep and the giant rat creature moving around now and again before starting to snore again. Kay concentrated on Inspecting the monster. The sensation he got back was both familiar and new. It felt a bit like when he had tried to Appraise a magical item before he had Identify, like something was rejecting the mana he put into the skill. At the same time he got back something from it. It was an odd sensation of knowledge. There was no screen or pop up with it, but he knew that the rat monster wasn’t stronger than him on an individual basis. He could guess based of that that it was either a tier two equivalent or possibly a weak tier three equivalent.

Kay army crawled away from the edge of the hole while doing his best to be quiet. Nothing stirred as he pulled back and once he felt he was far enough away he stood up and creeped back to the group. “The rat thing isn’t that powerful. It’s tier three at best.”

“I can totally take them all out with one spell then.” Claudia insisted quietly, “I have one that’s basically a fire bomb that’ll get them all.”

“Is it loud?”

“Yeah, it’s an explosion.”

“So, not the best idea if we’re trying not to alert any nearby enemies that might be lurking in the tunnels?”

She shrugged, “I’m a fucking fire mage, I burn shit and blow stuff up. I don’t have a lot of stealth options.”

“Mostly because of the screaming.” Stephen added.

Claudia nodded, “Living things scream when they’re on fire.”

Kay stared at her for a bit, trying to determine where her mental health was at. He eventually gave up after failing to get anywhere. He glanced at the other two, thinking through their abilities. “We’re not really set up for stealth as a group.” He sighed, “I really don’t want to get swept up in waves of enemies that slow us down or wear us out.”

Claudia pointed at Stephen, then herself, then Leya. “With him defending, me burning things, Leya crushing things, and you with blood, we’re pretty well set up to take on larger waves of enemies. I say we throw stealth into the heap and start killing things.”

“I can’t use a lot of my blood stuff on them, since they have that weird corruption or whatever in them.”

“How much blood do you have already?”

“A lot.”

She rolled her eyes, “Then it’s fine.”

Kay debated the options with himself some more before sighing. “Fine. Russian stealth it is.”

“What?”

“No one can report finding the bodies if there’s no one left to find any bodies.”

“Is this an Outworlder thing?”

“Sure.”

“I like the idea though.”

“I’m starting to get a grasp on your personality, and I’m not surprised.”

The stopped a few feet from the hole and Claudia started to make a sparking ball of fire between her palms.

While they waited on her to finish, Leya looked at Kay, “Can’t I just make the hole bigger?” She whispered.

Kay facepalmed gently. “Duh, of course you can. How long will it take?”

“Like thirty seconds? I’m getting faster the more I level up Earth Magic, and the spell for making holes is pretty easy.”

Kay scooched over to Claudia. “Can you hold that once it’s ready?”

“For a bit, yeah, why?”

“Leya’s going to expand the hole, then you drop it, then we all go in.”

Her face lit up with a grin, “Even better! I’m ready whenever.”

Kay pulled out his sword and nodded to Leya, who put her hands down against the edge of the hole. She technically wasn’t widening it, she was just making another hole right next to the first one, but it had the exact same effect of there being a hole big enough for all four of them to jump down thirty seconds later. He nodded at Claudia and Stephen and Stephen got in a ready position while Claudia stepped over the hole and dropped her glowing ball of fire.

A second past, then a loud thump echoed through the rooms followed by the sound of rushing air. A moment later high pitched raspy screams started coming from below them, followed by a nauseating shrieking that drowned out the other sounds.

“That sounds bad,” Stephen said as he pushed off the ground and leaped down the hole. Kay, Claudia, and Leya followed right behind him.

When he landed Kay saw the charred bodies of several Ritiians lying still, with three remaining live enemies trying to beat out the fire in their fur. On the opposite side of the chamber was the massive rat monster, which was making the sickening shrieking noise from the multiple mouths covering it’s body. There were even more than Kay had seen initially, with mouths open and screaming on it’s torso, back, limbs, and even it’s tail. The creature noticed the group as they landed, and it snarled from the many mouths as it came at them with rage in it’s two beady eyes.

Stephen stepped forward with his shield raised to intercept the charge, and he knocked it upwards with a bash when it went to bite him with it’s regular rat mouth. The other mouths gnashed and bit at his armor and shield, those that had the angle to attack. The rest just snarled and shrieked in anger and pain.

Kay focused on backing up Stephen with the creature while Leya and Claudia mopped up the few remaining Rittians. He stepped forward and slashed out once, twice, three times in to the creature’s bulk. Instead of bleeding wounds, more mouths formed where Kay had struck. He stepped back and cursed as one of them tried to close around his sword. “Alright, take two.” Kay spread blood over the sword blade and formed it into a thick baton. He slammed down on the monster, focusing on crushing it instead of making more mouths for it. Kay’s attacks slammed into the beast with meaty thuds and it roared in pain from it’s many mouths.

The monster pushed off and away from Stephen's shield and flicked it’s tail at Kay. The mouths on it snapped around his arm and chest, but the teeth weren’t sharp enough to pierce his armor.

Stephen charged in and slammed his shield into it’s body, pushing it back against the wall. Kay pulled back the blood casing form the edge of the blade and slashed downward, cutting off the tail. He grabbed the bit stuck on him and ripped it free, the mouths on it no longer moving. He noticed that where he had sliced, there was no a lamprey like mouth at the end of the giant rat things docked tail.

“Right. Claudia!”

“What!?”

“Switch! We need to burn this thing!”

He whirled and dove towards where Leya and Claudia had been holding off an incoming wave of attackers from one of the tunnels. He extended the blade of his sword forward as he lunged and pierced two of the enemy through. He dropped the extended blade and slashed through the head of another Rittian that had been harrowing Leya. With his help they drove back the incoming attackers enough for Claudia to split off.

Again, the Rittians were weirdly weak. They continued to flood forward in twos and threes, the most that could fit through the tunnel entrance at any time, and Kay cut them back with Leya’s help. Each of them was at best a tier two opponent, and none of them tried to use Skills against them as far as he could tell. They all attacked physically, with crude stone weapons or their claws.

Kay heard more nauseating screeching as a whoosh like a flamethrower came from behind them. The screams of the burning monster grew louder and louder until they suddenly quieted. The noise of Claudia’s fire spell continued for a few moments longer, then it cut off.

Only a few more enemies came out of the tunnel as the flow of attackers started to slow to a trickle. Eventually, as Kay and Leya worked together to hold them off, there was only one Rittian left.

“Food!” It threw itself forward, directly on the blade of Kay’s sword, not even bothering to dodge. As it died in his face, Kay watched the unceasing madness in it’s eyes fade into nothing.

He drew the blade out and let the body drop to the floor. “There’s something really wrong here.”

“Yeah.” Stephen stepped forward and started dragging the bodies off to the side. He gestured with his head at the half cremated body of the strange mouth covered rat monster, “Whatever the hell that thing was, its fucked up.” He dropped the dead Rittian body on top of the monster’s corpse and went back for another. “I am not looking forward to fighting whatever made it.”

“You think something made it?”

“Shit like that doesn’t pop up naturally.” Claudia insisted as she pulled out a canteen and took a drink of water. She handed it over to Leya who also took a swig. “Or if it does, I’m a lot less happy with existence. Shit covered in mouths that grows more mouths instead of bleeding usually comes from something else fucking around with magic or something.”

With Kay’s help they managed to clear enough of the bodies out of the way to get past the blockade of dead covering the tunnel.

Kay nodded at the group once everyone was ready and gestured for Stephen to lead again. “I’m actually scared of what might be down here. So let’s go kill it and burn the body into tiny ashes.”

“That’s my kind of plan,” Claudia agreed. “It’s why I love being a Fire Mage. I get to burn away all the terrible fucking shit I run into.”

Stephen hefted his shield and headed into the tunnel with the other three following, headed south and down as the approached what was hopefully the site of their enemies location.