Hot Sauce

((Author's Note: I'm providing a reminder that my branch is taking a summer break following this chapter, as I will be focused on spending time with the family. Chapters will resume on 6th of August.))

Fighting the giant rat in melee came with one problem of his own making: John was quite likely to get some of the sticky, burning oil on himself. Sure, the Alchemfist protected his right arm, but that still left the rest of him. Fortunately, as a problem of his own making, it was also a foreseen one, and thus one he had a solution to. Admittedly, both foresight and solution had come from Qhila.

So when the oversized rodent charged him, he pointed his gauntlet at the beast and discharged the quick release reservoir, dousing the creature in winter’s breath. The ice blue liquid was basically the opposite of alchemist’s fire, freezing things instead of burning them.

The pale spray engulfed the rat, putting out the fire and leaving it with a dusting of rime in its fur. It also left a few small patches of ice on the ground where droplets had missed the creature. The cold did a pittance of damage and failed to inflict any stacks of frostbite, an AGI reducing debuff, the brunt of the alchemical power evidently expended putting out the fire.

Unfortunately, the beast kept coming. He had expected that the surprise of the sudden cold would make it at least flinch, if not outright falter in this offense. Instead, it emerged from the spray in a leap, knocking John over and going for his throat.

He managed to twist enough, going down, that it sunk its teeth into his shoulder rather than his windpipe. The yellowed incisors cut through his flesh like a hot knife through butter and then, after a moment of resistance, severed his collar bone.

For a moment, pain overpowered his calm and black spots danced before his eyes. Then fresh adrenaline hit and Gamer’s Mind pushed back the shock. Between the muscle and bone damage in his shoulder, his right arm was basically useless until the rat let go. With how they were positioned, he couldn’t bring his legs to bear either. Left arm it was.

What to go for? Its eye? Neck? No, the butt of the bolt the rat took entering the room still extended from its body. With as much **** as he could muster given the awkward angle, he hit it with the root of his palm, pushing the projectile deeper.

The rat recoiled jerkingly, releasing the Gamer’s shoulder with a screech of pain. In a heartbeat, his shoulder stitched itself back together. With full strength and mobility restored, he shoved the rodent off him and got back on his feet.

Glancing at HP bars, John saw that he couldn’t afford trades like that. He still had a solid lead, but he’d lost a lot more than it had. For all that the rat had reacted strongly to him striking at the bolt, doing so hadn’t dealt much damage. The bolt was probably wedged in somewhere where it had already done most of the damage it could. Meanwhile, having his shoulder chewed to crap had been a costly affair.

Heeding the instinctual knowledge that came with Unarmed Combat Proficiency, he dropped into a low, stable stance. With his torso bent slightly forward and arms partially extended, it was somewhat reminiscent of a typical sumo stance. The whole point of the stance was to stay on his feet, whether against tackles or attacks on his legs. He could probably afford another round of getting knocked down in a pinch. He would, however, need to otherwise dominate the engagement to an unrealistic degree to make it through two such blunders with any chance of victory intact.

They circled each other for a bit, which John was only happy to keep doing. While she’d written nothing of the sort in the party chat, he was confident that it was because Qhila was not used to having one, rather than because she wasn’t coming. In other words, time was on his side.

The rat pounced again, still damned fast despite the poison debuffs. The best counter he had time to mount was a palm strike, little different from a slap, really. It did a pittance of damage, but more importantly it thwarted the pounce, sending them back to circling.

With two more exchanges like that, John had gotten a better read on predicting the beast’s movements. That meant he could try for something fancier, but it was probably best to go for something decisive. He had seen nothing to suggest that the beast couldn’t learn, given that spray paint was a less intuitive thing for an animal than physical combat.

Best thing to go for if he got one good shot out of this was a debilitating injury. The fact that he could inflict those but it couldn’t was his big advantage in close quarters. As for the best thing to debilitate- His strategizing was interrupted by needing to fend off another pounce, but that very thing also provided the answer.

If he could cripple the **** it could put into pouncing, making it harder for the beast to knock him over, his margin for error would grow. At worst, that meant better chances to hold on until it became two on one. It might also let him go for harsher counters when it pounced, though, or maybe even be enough to switch gears towards offense. And the key to the pouncing **** was the hind legs.

He angled his part of the mutual circling to put them closer to the wall. When the giant rodent next pounced, he didn’t slap it. Instead he grabbed its forelegs and stepped to the side, twisting it in midair so that it hit the wall, side first.

The size of the impacting surface diluted the **** far too much to deal meaningful damage. However, between the disorientation of unexpected movement, not landing on its feet, and writhing in pain from the impact jostling the bolt, it bought John time. Time to dart in and stomp on its hind leg with his heel.

In addition to the sound of snapping bone, that made for a decent chunk of damage. Specifically 21, taking it down to 63 HP. A buff icon showing up next to the poison debuffs on the rat’s nameplate warned him that things were about to take a turn for the worse.

Cornered Rat
+30% STR
Immunity to pain, fatigue & fear.
Duration remaining: 4 min 59 sec

He tried to back up before the beast got back on its feet, but he didn’t get far before it pounced. Far enough to fend it off this time, but rather than circle for a bit, it went straight back on the offense immediately.

Despite the attacks being graceless and the rat tending to veer to the side of its broken leg, this sent him into a now familiar downward spiral of getting pushed further and further off his balance for every avoided strike. The buff had fully made up for the loss of pouncing impact from the broken leg, on top of which the rodent was absolutely relentless.

How could he get out of this? Alchemist’s fire would end up all over the both of them, as would the hedgeslug slime or a molotov. Distracting it with food had extremely low likelihood of working. Nothing else in his inventory seemed like a solution.

Being able to think strategy while fending off pounces didn’t stop the relentless **** from chipping away at his balance, and so his line of thought was interrupted by falling on his ass.

Resisting the instinctive impulse to interpose his arms between the rat’s mouth and his throat, he instead let the daily failsafe in the Hat of Close Calls protect him. The sudden redirect of the attack sent the rat most of the way over his head. Quickly, John pushed the beast the rest of the way off him and got most of the way back on his feet, before the violent dance of crumbling defenses started anew.

His Skill list wasn’t much help here either. Accelerate Recovery, for all that he had come to realize that it was a pretty decent Skill, remained useless during the fight itself. He already had Enhance Muscle going, and even if Pheromone Aura had worked on rodents, it was currently immune to the only relevant pheromone.

He could use Barrier Basics to leave the barrier. That would probably either forfeit the Boss fight, and reward, right then and there or leave Qhila to try to finish it on her own. Which she might succeed at, since he could let her know that he left. But doing so might still cost him the reward. Something to keep in mind for if he got dangerously low on health, but he’d rather try to see the fight through first.

Down he went again. With no more help forthcoming from his magic hat, he raised his arm. Blocked from accessing his face and neck, the rat sunk its teeth into the forearm, rodent incisors slipping in between the two bones at its center.

The Gamer groaned as searing pain shot up his arm, but it got worse. Instead of letting go and trying to **** its way past the arm, the rat started thrashing. The pain multiplied and set black dots dancing across his vision for a moment before Gamer’s Mind reasserted analytical calm.

The thrashing dealt continuous damage, tearing flesh. If it wasn’t reforming wherever the yellowed teeth weren’t currently in the way, he suspected the beast might have torn one of the bones out of his arm in moments.

Punching at its head and flank as best he could was not keeping up in damage. Maybe if it hadn’t been moving so wildly and erratically, he could’ve had a shot at its jugular. But at this rate, if Qhila didn’t show up very shortly, he would have to bail. Unless- ’Alchemist’s fire! It isn’t a problem for me if I put it inside the fucker to start with!!’

Gritting his teeth, John pushed two fingers of his free hand past the captured arm, hooking them into the rat’s cheek. Then he willed forth the self-igniting liquid from his inventory, as fast as it would flow.

The rodent’s trashing sent some droplets back out of its mouth, and more splashed onto his bitten arm adding to the tormentous cacophony there. Most of it, however, stayed where he’d put it, or maybe even went down the rodent’s gullet.

In either case, the combat log informed him that this was a critical hit. With a calm that a small part of him found eerie considering the situation, he did mental math on damage figures and remaining HP. His conclusion came to him winning with somewhere between 15 and 20 HP left to spare.