Rodent of Unusual Size

The rats were just regular rats, weaker than the pseudodrakes had been. But there were a lot more of them. The text at the start called out a number of enemy groups rather than single enemies, with 6 to 9 groups per clear and each group numbering about 15 rats on average of Level 1 to 2. Which had taken him several clears to figure out because they were not fighting the vermin in individual groups at all.

What they had ended up doing was less like RPG-style clearing out enemies and more like a mob farm in something like Minecraft or Terraria. The terrain in this Arena was an urban ruin sort of theme, similar to the barrier he had met Qhila in, but without the bullet holes. Instead of going looking for rats, they had found a hole in the asphalt that she deemed large enough. They had then dug a knee-deep pit, driven a pointed steel rod into the center that stuck about a hand’s width out of the hole and put a bunch of caltrops at the bottom.

All of that had taken about 20 minutes between them, thanks in no small part to Qhila bringing a pair of collapsible shovels and a bottle of “dirt softener”, which she said was likely to be in the recipe book in the Quest rewards. At that point, John was beginning to be a bit uncertain that this was the fastest way to clear out the rats, but the doubt didn’t last long.

As soon as she opened the bottle of piper’s philter, there was chittering and rustling from all directions. Hurriedly, she splashed some on a rag, closed the bottle, and used a trash picker to put the rag on the rod in the center of the pit. Then they stood back and watched as a hundred or so rats all swarmed at the rag.

They were completely heedless of the trap, and of trampling each other, which meant that the bottom rats got skewered on the caltrops. Once dead, their corpses faded away into nothing, causing new rats to be the ones on the bottom of the pile getting trampled and skewered. After a few minutes of that, the rat pile stopped shrinking as there wasn't really enough mass left to ensure that the bottom ones got impaled. At that point, John sprayed the survivors with alchemist’s fire, which was easy because in their frenzy they paid no more attention to him than they had their dying kin before.

From attracting the rats to a finished clear took less than 10 minutes, at which point they grabbed the rewards, triggered the respawn, and repeated the process. Each clear got him about 100 EXP and her about 80. It also got them about $40 and a bunch of rat tails, hides, whiskers, bones and meat. John had initially been of a mind to ditch the lot of the rat parts, but apparently the whiskers had alchemical uses, so they were keeping those.

“I’ll go set up some traps for the Boss,” Qhila said, stepping away, when John started the spawn timer for the 6th round. She had first figured that he had the farming setup covered while the 4th clear was ongoing, but he had mentioned that if the Boss spawned after a set number of clears it was probably a multiple of 5.

As she went, she put a note in the party chat that she would indicate trigger areas with yellow spray paint, followed by notes for each numeral indicating what trap corresponded to it.

Boss Encounter triggered. Boss spawns in 2 minutes.

It had taken 10 clears to get there, leaving John wondering if it was a set number of clears or a random chance that just happened to pop at that time. John was just over 300 EXP away from a Level and Qhila was a mere 22 out, meaning that they both had pretty good odds of getting it, complete with a full refill of health and mana, from taking down the Boss.

In addition to Qhila setting up traps, they had experimented a little bit with the Synergy. John spraying the rats with alchemist’s fire that Qhila had made wasn’t enough to trigger it, but her putting flammable liquid on something before John hit it with alchemist’s fire affected the whole of the alchemist’s fire burn, both increasing the damage per tick and causing it to tick faster. That still worked if she did so indirectly, say by leaving some stuff in the pit that the rats jumped into.

With that, they had made a basic strategy for the coming Boss fight. It wasn’t really detailed or specific enough to call it a plan, mainly on account of there apparently being a lot of rat related Abyssal critters that fit in the power bracket for this, and betting too hard on the assumption of one of them was a good way to waste their prep if they were wrong.

For the first minute after the spawn announcement, nothing really happened, and no indication was given of where the Boss would arrive. Another uncertainty that limited their ability to make detailed plans, that. Then, a cracking sound started coming from the center of the barrier. Where they had entered and where the reward chest had spawned between clears.

For a few moments, he wondered if that would be a consistent thing with Boss spawns. Then the pavement started to bulge upwards. Earlier, while getting the lay of the land for further traps, Qhila had found a basement stair in a ruined building and discovered that the barrier didn’t reach much further below street level than the bottom of the Pit of Rat Roasting they had made. If they were about to face something that could burrow, having that limit on downwards mobility was probably a good thing.

John moved to put the bulging pavement at fairly close to the maximum range of his squirt gun, while more cracking sounds saw the bulge grow. Then the pavement burst in earnest, and a giant rat crawled out. Covered in messy, black fur, the beast came up to John’s waist on all fours. It had incisors as long as his fingers, and its beady eyes shone with malice.

The creature did not immediately rush towards the Pit of Rat Roasting, though it did sniff the air in that direction. He hadn’t expected it to be drawn there. Even if the newest rag hadn’t been half-burned by alchemist’s fire and Qhila hadn’t warned him that the effect was sharply reduced against anything other than mundane rats and awakened ones too weak to be a Boss, he would still have expected the Developer to step in enough that they would, at the very least, have to come up with a new trick if they were to cheese this fight.

That didn’t stop him from taking advantage of the short distraction it did offer though, spraying the rat in the face with bleach. While the liquid was still in the air, he turned on his heel and ran. A moment later, a notification in the chat box told him that the debuff was applied. The damage from the bleach would likely mean little to nothing, but the main idea was to screw with its vision. Even with Enhance Muscle improving his mobility via leg strength, he expected it to be physically superior to him in pretty much every way except for opposable thumbs. This would be the first step towards evening the scales.

The giant rat screeched and gave pursuit, its angry vocalizations soon revealing that it was gaining on him. Not quite fast enough to be a problem, though, as John threw himself sideways down a narrow alley between two dilapidated buildings. The turn was sharp enough that he needed to push off one of the walls with his arms to make it, shunting the squirt gun into his inventory to free up his hands.

While it was there, he used mental commands to reload it with alchemist’s fire. A small part of his mind marveled at his ability to seamlessly do so at this time. In his past fights, the serious ones with the rat ogres or the boar, anyway, keeping his head while the adrenalin was pumping had taken some mental effort. Enough that he could do a maximum of one of trying to think ahead, executing physical maneuvers more complicated than running in a straight line, and pulling mental triggers at his powers at a time.

Right now, however, he was as much in the zone as gaming had ever brought him, doing all three at once without breaking a figurative sweat. A yellow line and the number 2 warned him to make a short leap, while an addition to the combat log showed Qhila making her first mark.

The notification declared the poison in the dart to be “Not Very Effective”, but that was expected. Rat-like Abyssal creatures often had some measure of magical resistance to poison and disease even if that was their only magical ability, non-greater rat ogres being a notable exception.

But the idea wasn’t really the damage anyway, that part was just gravy. The idea was the impairment, and while that was probably reduced as well, layering debuffs should still get in the way. For a primarily physical threat, which the giant rat definitely was, the plan was a set of venoms that screwed with motor function. Paralytics, cramp inducers, numbing agents and other stuff he was glad not to be on the receiving end of.

Shattering glass told him that the oversized rodent had triggered the tripwire he had lept over. It was connected to bottles rigged to be smashed, showering the beast with sticky oil. Not the kind of sticky that made moving harder, but the oil was flammable. While turning to face it, he used a mental command to call the squirt gun back to his hands. With little room to dodge to either side, John hitting was guaranteed.

Turning to fire and then resuming the run would’ve cost John enough of his lead to bring the beast in pouncing distance, but being set on fire made it flinch, making it ultimately a wash on that account. Meanwhile, the beast was now eating fire damage that ticked both harder and faster thanks to Qhila’s trap and Party Synergy.

Emerging from the alley, John quickly scanned the narrow street he emerged on. Unlike the last Arena, this one didn’t follow the layout of the real world where it was opened at all. Otherwise, the warehouse and the factory that Qhila’s nest was sandwiched between would take up most of it. Instead, the ruined buildings were much smaller, separated by alleys, narrow streets and two wider roads that crossed next to the larger ruin Qhila was perched on top of.

Though narrow, the street was still a bit wider than the alley, and Qhila had taken advantage of that but putting up an old boar-bashing friend: the hobbler, numbered 7. Per the notes in chat, it was without the poison and the trigger mechanism was different. So, running past it he kicked the rod that had had the boar lure attached. That set a 1 second timer before the actual trigger, based on vibrations in the ground, activated.

A moment later, a loud smack had John take a look over his shoulder. The trap was angled a bit too high to wreck the rat’s legs, but would’ve taken a rat ogre right in the knee. It was still a rib-cracking hit to the flank of the thing, taking out a chunk of HP and breaking its stride. Which in return made for a long enough moment of moving relatively slowly that another poison dart found its mark, adding another debuff icon and another “Not Very Effective” DoT.

Up ahead he could go either right or left into more alleys, marked respectively 1 and 4. 1 was another delivery method for the sticky oil, and those flames didn’t look like they were prone to going out in the immediate future, so he went with the 4, for a flashier trick.

Another tripwire, because setting those up was apparently quick and easy and so had been used for three quarters of the traps. A handful of steps past the wire, the rapid succession of shattering glass, the ‘fwoosh’ of rapidly burning gas, a hot gust from behind and the rat screeching in anger and pain told him that it tripped this wire too. If Mystic Echoes could learn, it was going to start getting wary of yellow lines soon.

The alley led back to the wide street, leaving the closest place to take a turn into another with too much of an open stretch for comfort. Most likely, the giant rat would catch up to him if he just tried to run. Time to make like a Mario Kart and drop something behind him. Like a molotov cocktail.

That saw the sound of the rat’s footfalls behind him change significantly, prompting him to chance a look over the shoulder. The molotov had caused a burning puddle in the mouth of the alleyway, reaching from wall to wall. Rather than run through the fire and add to the mess already scorching it, the beast was trying to circumnavigate the puddle by climbing partway up the wall. It looked like it was going to work too, but it was going to cost some time. Meaning that rather than going for ‘closest’, John could go for the best alley nearby.

Scanning his options quickly, he noted that one was blocked by a wire fence with an ajar wire fence door, which gave him an idea. Dashing there, he made it in time to close the door and give it a firm tug to test it. Some give, but it should hold up for a bit.

The bolts that anchored the fence into the walls groaned moments later when the rat smacked into it at full speed. But the fence and door both held, and there was little risk of the rodent opening the door since the right way to do so was towards the beast.

Whether there was an element of realizing this to it or the creature just didn’t default to that type of brute **** much, the giant rat’s next approach was to climb the fence. It would’ve done so in short order, much faster than the wall earlier, if John wasn’t there to frustrate the attempts.

The spike that allowed the Alchemfist to convert his punches to piercing damage was narrow enough to pass through the wire fence. After a few hits aimed at load bearing paws, the rat dropped those attempts and went for another approach that couldn’t really have its progress stolen: chewing through the fence instead.

It did so with disconcerting ease, yellowed incisors severing steel wire as though it was made of silly string. Fortunately, chewing a large enough hole for it to pass through would still take a second or two, and the delay had by and large already served its purpose. Trying to get through the fence had kept it close enough to stationary for Qhila to get in multiple shots, taking the number of green-framed poison debuffs on its name plate up to 6.

This alley was closed off with a partially crumbled wall at the end, and he wasn’t particularly optimistic about his ability to get over that faster than the rat. There was, however, a door opening in one of the walls. The door that fit in there lay as if fallen off its hinges into the alleyway, with enough dirt on top of the door that it had definitely been that way when the barrier was opened. The doorway also came with a knee-height yellow arrow and the number 10.

Running inside, he quickly turned to kneel by the door for a moment and knock on top of another kobold modular trap unit. This activated the directional motion detector trigger, preparing it to fire a barbed steel spike at whatever moved through the door next. Then he looked around for the exit.

The only other intentional one was a closed steel gate leading to the larger street that he didn’t expect much luck with. A corner of the single room that made up the building had collapsed, however, such that a hole large enough for him at the top of a chin high stretch of intact wall had formed.

Climbing that would’ve been too slow, if not for a cluster of boxes by that corner, conspicuously arranged with small ones in the front and progressively larger ones behind in a manner that effectively created a makeshift stair.

Running over and jumping on made for an unpleasant surprise as the small crate crumbled completely underfoot. Not only that, but his momentum led him to crash into the rest of the crates, which proved similarly fragile. At least they cushioned the impact enough for him not to hit the wall behind particularly hard, and the wood was rotted enough for the resulting splinters to be harmless. Evidently, the kiting was at an end.

He got back on his feet and turned around just in time to see the giant rat enter and get shot in the shoulder, bringing it down to 99 HP left. And it was still stuck with 6 poison debuffs and on fire.