Nerd in Shining Armor

As soon as the window faded into the background, John noticed that the lighting had changed from one moment to the next as well. More specifically, things had gone from a mostly clear sky to overcast with dark, heavy clouds in a matter of a second or so. That was pretty obviously magical, but hopefully it was some sort of scenery thing, like when an older JRPG changed from exploration mode to battle mode, and not indicative of the power of the ‘hostiles’, since the latter meant John was well and truly screwed.

The second thing John noticed was the apparent absence of anything hostile, despite what the window had said. Just to be on the safe side, he tried to will himself to return to normal or exit encounter mode, to no effect. Since that failed, it seemed most likely that there were hostiles somewhere out of sight, but still close enough to count as the ‘vicinity’. Hopefully, they were unaware of him, rather than hiding and waiting to ambush him.

In any case, he needed a weapon. His thoughts went briefly to the Alchemist’s Fire in his Inventory, but he only had three and no idea what kind of opposition he faced. Plus, the message had said ‘defeat’, not ‘kill’. If the ‘hostiles’ were people, hopefully there was a way out of this that didn’t involve killing. And the Alchemist’s Fire definitely belonged in the ‘lethal ****’ category.

A quick check of his Skill List and Inventory yielded nothing. The closest he had to a relevant skill was Alter Body. If he could’ve piled on more casts for bigger deviation from the base, he might’ve been able to form claws out of his nails or something. Sure, the skill said ‘cosmetic’ changes, but when he used it on his dick, it hadn’t just looked bigger, so clearly the skill wasn’t on the most stringent interpretation possible. Where exactly the limit for the skill was, he would have to find out later. It being possible or not aside, he had neither the Skill Level nor the Mana to do it anyway.

Theft could also prove useful, but he’d need a good target. Doing random grabs on the various trash containers was practically guaranteed to be a waste of Mana, and the odds of something useful coming up on the list option didn’t seem high either. Better to save the Mana for now and see if the hostiles happened to carry sidearms. As for getting a weapon right now, his best bet was probably among the scrap metal. With a bit of luck, there was a metal pipe with a decent length and thickness. So, he snuck along as best he could as he headed for the scrap metal container.

John crept up between two containers, but when he rounded the corner he completely forgot about stealth, as he figuratively dropped his jaw on the ground. In between the containers as he had been, he hadn’t really been able to see much besides the containers. Now, he had a view of a good bit more, and the cloud cover wasn’t the only thing that had changed in a matter of seconds. The other people who had been at the recycling center were all gone, along with their cars. The administrative building that housed whatever paperwork center employees did looked dilapidated and abandoned, with faded paint, more windows broken than intact, and the door left half-open. The warehouse across the street looked even worse, with part of it collapsed and the rest scored with burn marks and riddled with bullet holes. All in all, it looked like he had somehow ended up on a movie set for a war film or a post apocalypse story.

Before he had time to ponder the implications of that, a creature rounded the corner of the recycling center building. The beast was about 2 meters tall, despite being hunched over, and more muscular than Frank’s stereotypical football player build. It had short, dark brown fur on most of its body, save for a bare chest and stomach, and was naked save for a loincloth. The head was shaped like that of a rat, with yellowed rodent teeth and red, beady eyes. A long, naked tail trailing after it on the ground completed the rat resemblance. Above its head floated the text “Lesser Rat Ogre, Lvl 10”.

John scrambled back behind the trash container in a half-panic, almost falling on his ass in the process, then peered around the corner carefully. The rat ogre didn’t seem to have noticed him, at least it wasn’t heading in his direction. Instead, it moved its head side to side and sniffed the air, as if searching for a scent. There was nothing John could do to prevent it from catching his scent, but after what felt like hours, but was probably less than a minute, it hadn’t moved towards him or even turned in his direction. Hopefully, that meant it either couldn’t smell him from where it was or it was searching for a different scent.

When it started prowling towards the door into the building, John thought it might be the latter. That was good news, because at least he had time to think about how to deal with a creature that looked like it could tie Frank into a pretzel without breaking a sweat. Maybe, if it was also proportionally dumber than the jock, he could outsmart it somehow.

Actually, that was probably exactly what he was supposed to do. When a game threw an overleveled enemy like that at you, it was usually indicative of either a segment where the goal was survival, an enemy that you should evade for now and, sometimes optionally, circle back to later or an enemy you were supposed to defeat by using terrain features, baiting it into fighting other enemies, or both. Since the window earlier had told him to defeat hostiles, rather than anything about avoiding things, reaching a goal, or staying alive for a certain amount of time, beating it with terrain or baiting it up against other enemies was probably the answer.

As far as other enemies went, the most obvious places to look for them were the administrative building and the half-collapsed warehouse. It was also possible that there were enemies inside the trash containers, and part of the challenge was pulling multiple groups together first and then onto the rat ogre without getting cornered. If it was about using terrain against the beast, the best bet was the warehouse. Tricking a dumb brute enemy into breaking supports and collapsing a structure, or part of a structure, onto themself was a boss fight classic. What John needed right now was more information in order to figure out where to lure the monster, and to get that he would need to avoid being noticed for a while.

John didn’t get any further with planning as his attention was commandeered by someone knocking out one of the few intact windows on the second story and jumping out. The someone looked to be some reptilian variety of monster girl with copper scaled extremities, including her tail. Under better circumstances, John would have been beyond ecstatic to have discovered that monster girls were real. Under these circumstances, even he wasn’t enough of a horn dog to do more than send a thankful thought at the universe before refocusing.

Qhila
Lvl 13, Kobold Alchemist
Runaway

The girl landed in a roll and immediately tried to get back on her feet and away from the rat ogre, which she had almost jumped down on top of. Unfortunately, she wasn’t fast enough to get away before the beast grabbed her tail and lifted her into the air by it. She flailed her arms and legs in a failed attempt to escape the creature’s grasp as it held her up and gave her a good sniff. She took the opportunity to kick its snout, but clearly kicking wasn’t a part of her core skill set, since the rat ogre just huffed and shook her by the tail until she stopped flailing.

Just then, a corpse fell out of the window and onto the rat ogre. Or so John thought for a moment before realizing that it wasn’t just a corpse. Partially because it was moving and partially because he noticed the text above its head that read “Zombie, Lvl 2”. The rat ogre had barely been affected by the zombie falling onto it, it hadn’t even been surprised enough to drop Qhila. Instead, it just stepped on the zombie’s head, crushing the skull with a sickening crunch. John was surprised that he managed to keep his cool enough while that happened to notice that the floating text above the zombie’s head had vanished. Meanwhile, the kobold girl still had hers, showing that even though she wasn’t moving much, she was probably still alive.

Another six zombies ranging from Level 2 to 4 dropped out of the window over the course of the next short while. They fell as if they hadn’t realized that crawling out the window led to a drop. If they matched with common zombie portrayals in games, they probably did, indeed, not realize that. Whatever their mental faculties, the beastial ratman dispatched the rest of the zombies as easily as the first, by stomping on heads or smashing them against the wall.

While the rat ogre was distracted by the zombies, Qhila took the opportunity to try to get something from her belt. Unfortunately, the rat ogre was waving her back and forth a lot as it demolished the undead pests, and she lost her grip on the vial she had taken out. The vial sailed a meter or so through the air, away from its intended target, then unleashed a blue flash as it shattered against the ground.

The rat ogre returned its attention to its captive prize, whether because of the blue flash or for lack of more zombies to crush, held her up in the air again and bit. John watched in a moment of horror as he thought the girl was getting eaten alive before the beast pulled back and revealed her to be mostly unharmed. Rather than biting the girl, the beast had used its teeth to tear her clothes off, as well as to shreds. John’s relief, and confusion, lasted all of a fraction of a second before the rat ogre shifted its loincloth to the side and thus revealed both its intention and its hardening shaft, which was bigger than the kobold girl’s arm.

Suddenly, figuring out what was the clever thing to do or the best time to do it didn’t matter to John anymore, nor did the risk to himself that came with interfering. She had already almost died because of his indecision, would have died if the monster had been hungrier than it was horny, and with what it clearly intended to do to her, she wasn’t going to survive unless someone stopped it. And the only one around to do something was John.

John stepped out from behind cover, pulled the sack of wood scrap out of his inventory and grabbed one of the bigger wood chunks and tossed it at the rat ogre. He missed, but followed it up with, “Hey! Mangy fuckface! Try picking on someone closer to your own size” before tossing another. The monster stopped what it was doing and looked in John’s direction, but seemed more confused than anything.

1 damage

It took 3 more insults and 4 throws before he hit it. Until then, the beast had apparently not known what to make of John, but getting struck in the snout with a chunk of wood evidently categorized The Gamer as an enemy. The rat ogre roared angrily and charged at John. Without letting go of Qhila.