Busy night.

John fell to the ground and checked his cheek where it had just hit the branch. He was not bleeding and the pain only lasted a second before fading. It would be to do most of what he was doing without Gamer's Body.

Cali swung from a branch and let go of it like an acrobat, even doing a somersault before landing on her naked feet right next to him. The agile huntress was wearing absolutely nothing, having stored everything she had on her in the ring that John had lent to her. He had proposed it to Sylvia first out of respect for her status, but she had had the same reasoning as he did. Be it to hunt, harvest resources or train, it was more logical for Cali to have the ring while they remained in the kingdom.

John and Cali had spent the last two hours training with Parkour either by climbing trees and jumping from one to the next in the glade, or by doing some rock climbing at the feet of the mountain range.

"You shouldn't pick the red ones, I saw that one, but I prefered the orange on the left. If you try this on harsher conditions you might die, John," said the huntress, offering him her hand to help him get up. John took a few seconds before accepting it, he was distracted by the glistening naked body of the caramel skinned huntress. John himself wasn't wearing his full armor, he wanted to be as free of encumbrance as possible to train with this. He had only kept his boots, boxers and had put on his slime body suit.

"I progress faster if I take the hardest paths."

"You fall more often too. Try difficult ones but easy enough that you can chain moves, that was working very well before," she instructed. The Parkour skill had some sort of hidden combo mechanism that he had discovered by training with it. For each consecutive perfect move he performed he gained some extra speed and became able to take harder paths, of course it also made falling more spectacular due to the speed. It was chaining those combos on orange paths that had allowed him to bring the skill to lvl 4, once the gain had slowed down he had decided to try red ones, but he failed too often to make any progress.

"What a gracely way to displace, Pack Master. You jumped and tumbled like one of the folks, true marvelousment. Self has to do a reportation, the pack has discoveraged a thing, a thing of interestment to your honorible powerness."

John chuckled and didn't have to turn to know who just talked. Algernon's speech pattern was unmistakable. He knew that he should correct him and teach him and his pack to speak correct English, but the truth was that he found the way he talked so damn funny that he didn't have the heart to ruin it.

"Algernon! How goes the pack? And what of this discovery?" he replied, getting up and walking closer to shake the small hand offered to him.

"Oooh a wonderness absolutifactly. Many graces of you to take knowledge of the pack. The new nest we have in your own is warmthific and the safednest, food and water a plenty with the Broodmother's bags. Deep in the shadows, farther than rat have gone before, proudly valiant daughter of self ventured. Nashin by her name. She undiscovered some wondrous place, big stones with symbols, fire and tail twitching feeling. Yes, yes it is truth all of it, blood of self wouldn't lie. Guide you can we, but many crunchies on the way, many, many. The pack is ready, fight for the Pack Master, to the last one, on our tails!" declared the rat patriarch in his usual speech.

"I don't require all of the pack, only the one who discovered it and a few of of you. Gather them at the castle and tell them to be ready!" said John to the rat. He smiled and ran away at great speed. The answer John got from Anna was a text telling him that she was happy and loved him, but also a few pictures and a file. Anna had sewn a backpack designed to be worn by rats, with another pair of straps to slide their legs in to stop it falling over their head in case they ran on all fours. John had used some of the crappy clothes he had bought for Cali and Vesta (which he realized now, they would never wear) to craft a few of them. He had also given them zip lock bags that could fit in those backpacks. The rats instantly started organizing a supply line for food, water, wood, grass and anything that they could use. Cali had offered them some of the meat she had gathered while hunting, but not before Vesta tried her hand at cooking stuff. She was not doing marvels yet, but the rats community was of the same opinion than the elves, cooked meat tasted so much better than raw food. She had even started cooking the scarab meat in a cauldron with scraps of vegetables to create some sort of stew that was apparently found to be so good by the rats that it was always running out faster than she could make it.

John called Sylvia and all of the group gathered at the entrance of the tunnels. The rats had probably found the Underworld Altar he had been looking for and even if he did not have the quest anymore he wanted to see it more closely.

Five of the larger rats in armor, weapon in hand were gathered there. Sylvia did not have the time to create a new armor for herself and after what happened last time she agreed to use one that could be removed more easily. She and the two elves where wearing some armor made of lizard skins. Cali had her bow, despite it not being the best thing in tunnels, but also a pair of knives and an obsidian tipped spear. Vesta had accepted to carry a spear, but she had removed the suit from one of her hands and was ready to fry anything hostile. Sylvia had her staff and was there to heal and assist the group more than to fight.

The descent was long and boring. They were leaving a few marks, but the rats were pretty confident in being able to find their way back home. On the first part of travel a small army of workers and soldiers was following them, harvesting the dead crunchies and anything else that they could find in the cleared areas, but the group got further than they preferred, so they retreated since the supply line was becoming too exposed and required too much troops to secure.

After a while Cali asked John for the pickaxe or the axe, using them to squash the scarabs more effectively than she could with other weapons. The area attacks of Vesta were taking care of the smallest ones, John and Cali were hitting the biggest and Sylvia was taking care of keeping everyone alive and healthy. They were able to fight as a team with ease.

The rats had little need to take part in the fights, acting as rear guard and bodyguards for Nashin, their guide.

John saw no trace of the large creature and its traps, but he was happy not to be there alone. Most creatures didn't attack humans and human-like people in this kingdom, but this one seemed determined to do so and the insects were not discriminating, trying to eat anything in sight.

"Soon there, recognizing sour roundings. Yes, yes, this way. You'll bite your tail seeing the thing, it is like none the same," said Nashin, clearly her father's daughter.

A few waves of stupid scarabs later they finally reached a big room with its own light source.

"Well, fuck me!" said John.

"What? Right here? If you want, my king," replied Cali, clearly not satisfied with their quick fuck during a break of the Parkour training earlier.