#13. The Sewer Calamity (2)
#13. The Sewer Calamity (2)
[Faint Poison Resistance (F) proficiency at maximum. Faint Poison Resistance (F) Lv.2 → Faint Poison Resistance (F) Lv.3]
I'd figured it for a nice-to-have, but it actually leveled up. The heavy metals were boosting my skills, and the rats down here turned out to be decent experience shuttles.
[Experience Points at maximum. Lv.14 → Lv.15]
[Empty Stomach (E) Lv.6 proficiency at maximum. Empty Stomach (E) Lv.6 → Empty Stomach (E) Lv.7]
And that, finally, was how I hit Level 15.
The biggest perk was safety. Lately I'd been living on high-risk, high-return plays, but low-risk—no, no-risk high-return is always the ideal.
A Warg might be a different story, but rats like these could swarm me all day and never accomplish anything. The matchup was fundamentally lopsided. No matter their numbers, I was a slime without vitals, and one application of Hardening rendered their attacks meaningless. They were still monsters, so I got experience from them. Ten or twenty points apiece, maybe. Not a lot individually, but their sheer numbers were staggering. And with Evil Devouring converting satiety into experience on top of that?
I didn't have to hunt them down one by one like back on Jirisan. An endless tide of rats, sewage that steadily raised my poison resistance—I hunted on in high spirits. As I walked the sewer paths, my eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness.
After enough rounds of slaughter, the creatures seemed to learn. They started fleeing. But I'd been hunting with detection skills since my slime days—running just bought them time, nothing more. And this was a one-way tunnel, so there was nowhere to run.
The presences beneath my feet told me I was getting close now.
[Weak Sight (E) Lv.4 proficiency at maximum. Weak Sight (E) Lv.4 → Weak Sight (E) Lv.5]
[Dark Vision (F) Lv.1 skill acquired.]
Dark Vision. A little late to the party, but a free skill is a free skill. F-rank or not, it was another tool. My night vision sharpened, and the hunting got easier.
[Faint Poison Resistance (F) Lv.3 proficiency at maximum. Faint Poison Resistance (F) Lv.3 → Faint Poison Resistance (F) Lv.4]
***
[What? Come back?]
"It's more urgent here."
[Hold on. You're telling me one goddamn Wolf is more urgent than these bastards?]
The person on the other end was incredulous. The team leader answered without missing a beat.
"Yeah."
[Hey! I've been running around for months and you spring this on me? Are you insane?]
"Clan Leader's orders. Take it up with him if you've got a problem."
[Fuck. You get better at blackmail every single day, you know that?]
"Don't you think it's about time you stopped swearing like that? You do know I'm your superior, right?"
A sound of grinding teeth came through the receiver.
[I'm coming! I'll come! You cheap son of a bitch.]
"When?"
[When do I have to be there?]
"The sooner the better. Tomorrow at the latest."
[Then why the hell do you ask?!]
"Politeness?"
A long stream of curses blasted through the phone. The team leader just laughed through it.
[Bunch of useless fucks. Calling people back and forth over one Wolf. Give me a break.]
"Sorry. But I think it'll be rough without you."
[......It's that bad?]
The voice on the other end flattened slightly.
[Is it really there?]
"Definitely. And we think it's evolved."
[Evolved? They'll make up any kind of bullshit... Hey, I'm hanging up. I'll call you back!]
The team leader stared at the abruptly disconnected phone for a moment, then his brow furrowed.
"What's his damn hurry..."
He propped his chin on one hand and went back to reading a document.
[Department Transfer Request Form]
***
The presence my detection picked up wasn't a rat. It was something much larger. I drew a deep breath as I registered the signatures clustered around it.
The presences still detectable beneath me.
"Grrrr—"
I abandoned the Warg shape and spread my body wide, stretching across the sewer like a filter screen. I advanced, filling the tunnel completely without leaving a single gap. The rats scrambled backward, soon cornered. A bulkhead sealed off the dead end with iron bars—the gaps wide enough for their small bodies to slip through.
And wide enough for me, too. Reshaping my form at will, I had no trouble with tight gaps.
It should be around here somewhere.
I slipped through the bulkhead gap and used Tentacle Bundle against the ceiling, lifting the wall upward. Once upon a time, stroking or tickling was all I could manage. Now I could lift it like this. It really hit me, seeing that growth.
Anyway, lifting it revealed a hole. No, not a hole—a passage.
No wonder nobody ever found this. The ceiling was the path downward. It might seem strange that the way underground was in the ceiling, but sewers are where water flows. It must have been an unavoidable design choice.
Climbing up, I found a cramped space where an adult would have to bend over to pass through. Naturally, it was crawling with rats.
[Teeth Rat]
[Length 44.5 cm] [Height 7.8 cm] [Weight 960 g]
[STR 21] [AGI 26] [VIT 19]
Teeth Rats. They looked like nutrias. The fact that something like this had been hiding in the sewers was astonishing. If it ever got out, they'd probably churn out a dozen B-grade horror movies claiming it was based on a true story.
Still just experience, though. I devoured them without mercy as I moved along the ceiling, and eventually found a way down. More of a chute than a path—bored clean through like a slide. I shot down. Four seconds later, I finally entered the underground proper.
More rats everywhere. I was starting to get sick of the sheer numbers. Who could've imagined a space like this beneath the sewers?
"Squeak! Squeak?!"
The rats panicked at the sight of me and tried to bolt. Their efforts changed nothing.
[Faint Hearing (F) Lv.9 proficiency at maximum. Faint Hearing (F) Lv.9 → Faint Hearing (F) Lv.10]
[Faint Hearing (F) Lv.10 at maximum level. Faint Hearing (F) Lv.10 → Weak Hearing (E) Lv.1]
Finally, Faint Hearing ranked up to E-grade. Which meant I was now subjected to plenty of noise I'd rather not hear. The underground acoustics made everything echo terribly. I decided to disable Hearing for a while.
Before long, the path ended. Sewage had flooded the tunnel. Water leaking from the ceiling had dripped and pooled over time, carving out deep channels. The gully was nearly ten meters across, but with the Swimming and Diving I'd honed in Baemsagol, it wasn't much of an obstacle.
In the novel, this gully had given people a fair amount of trouble. Of course, that was because the water was full of filth.
[Contaminated Piranha]
[Length 15.3 cm] [Height 5.6 cm] [Weight 340 g]
[STR 24] [AGI 21] [VIT 25]
Because these piranhas infested it. Real piranhas, minus the movie exaggerations, aren't that threatening—but these looked like they'd jumped straight out of a horror film. Razor teeth, monstrous ferocity, and they tried to devour me on sight.
It was pointless. With Hardening, I could turn nearly as tough as steel. Monster or not, STR 24 wasn't piercing that. I didn't even need Hardening—All Damage Reduction and Weak Regeneration were enough to soak it. They'd have to kill me while I sat still.
The rats and piranhas yielded similar experience. Swimming and Diving both crept up, amicably, from 4 to 5. I was still a little short of Level 16, but it had been a very long time since I'd hunted this comfortably.
I polished off the piranhas without fanfare and climbed out on the far side of the gully. I was practically on top of him now. The long sewer's end was in sight. Less than a hundred meters to Rat Man.
He must have sensed me coming. He kept glancing around, visibly agitated. Two or three old incandescent bulbs mounted on the ceiling cast their light, illuminating a humanoid shape wrapped in a robe.
Rat Man. The thrill of finally meeting a figure from the novel in the flesh lasted only a moment. The grotesque sight made my face twist. The simplest description: a rat standing on two legs like a person. Extremely unsettling.
The novel's brief description hadn't prepared me for the revulsion.
[Master of the Sewers (Rat Man)]
[Length 1.61 m] [Height 45.7 cm] [Weight 28.9 kg]
[STR 67] [AGI 104] [VIT 97] [MP 115]
I'd appraised him immediately. He was much weaker than I'd expected—I'd assumed he was around my level. Oddly, the stat sheet listed length, not height, at 1.6 meters, even though he stood upright. He squeaked for a second, then fiddled with the occult-looking necklace around his throat.
"Squeak. Squeak?! What is this, —squeak?!"
He spoke. I knew he could speak, but hearing it happen was still strange. Even if his voice was an unpleasant, metallic rasp. He glared at me, grabbed a flask off his desk, and hurled it at me at once. I confirmed the incoming flask with Appraisal and let it hit.
"Squeak squeak! Squeak!"
His sneering lasted only a moment. His mouth clamped shut as I bared my teeth. He gulped and shuffled backward.
[Nerve Poison Flask: A toxic agent in which various chemicals, including acetylcholine, are blended with magical power.]
Nerve poison did nothing to me. On the contrary, it was helpful—it nudged my Poison Resistance up to Level 5. Realizing his poison was useless, he flicked his gaze around frantically, every inch the creature desperately searching for an escape route.
'Great for leveling poison resistance.'
"H-hisss!"
[Intimidation (F) Lv.5 proficiency at maximum. Intimidation (F) Lv.5 → Intimidation (F) Lv.6]
The boiling snarl that echoed through the underground was chilling even to my own ears. His face tight with terror, he raised a filth-smeared dagger.
For someone so terrified, he'd chosen to fight rather than run. He leveled the dagger at me—a thing that looked like a single scratch would give you tetanus or anaphylaxis—and bared his eyes.
...Not that I cared.
There were a few catastrophes I could preempt, but I'd come to the sewer first for one reason: matchup. No matter how desperately the monsters here—and this one in particular—struggled, they couldn't beat me. More precisely, they had no way to kill me. Poison was useless no matter how much he used.
He lunged. His AGI was lower than mine. With Perception and Intuition layered on top, it was harder to get hit by him than to dodge. I sidestepped, avoided him, then pounced from behind. Flattened to the floor in an instant, he let out a terrified "Squeak!" He yanked another flask from his coat and threw it. This time I stepped back and dodged.
Bubble-bubble...
The stone floor boiled. Nerve poison I could ignore, but acid would work. Still, if it couldn't hit me, the distinction was meaningless.
"Fast—squeak!"
Had he noticed something when I backed off? He ditched every nerve-poison flask on his belt and started flinging only the acid vials. Dodging them was easier than taking candy from a baby. Eventually he resorted to using his magical power, but he was still painfully slow. The Monster Wolf had been far faster.
When the vials at his waist ran out, he planted his hands on the floor as if he had no other choice.
'Ah.'
That was why the stat sheet listed length, not height. He was never a biped. He was a quadrupedal beast, only mimicking a human shape. Not a person at all.
True to his three-digit AGI, he began darting everywhere. Completely different from before. He ricocheted off the walls with that nimble body, bouncing off floor and wall alike. The sheer agility startled me for a second. His claws began to gleam ominously.
That was his magical power. It looked paltry compared to the 115 in his stats, but it was mana.
I didn't know much, but I knew getting hit by a mana attack would be dangerous. He launched a flurry of strikes at first, furious, but landed nothing. Midway, he summoned rats to join the fight. I ignored them and harried Rat Man relentlessly. His earlier bravado drained; now he was running.
"Squeak!"
His movements were disorienting, but slow. Honestly, I could've ended this much earlier. I'd drawn it out because I wanted to see. This was the first time I'd encountered a character from the novel in person. I was using Rat Man as a benchmark—measuring where I stood right now.
Rat Man made an excellent benchmark. Good reference material for my next plan.
I'd seen enough. I closed the gap using Swift Foot, Charge, and the rest of my skills—
"Skreee?!"
—and subdued him in a single motion.
Most of his magical power was tied up maintaining his minions. I'd already devoured those minions, but the mana didn't return to him.
Without his mana, he was just a beast. There wasn't a single reason I should have struggled. I pinned his lower back with my claws.
"Squeak-squeak! Skreee! Skreeee!"
Rat Man screamed. My jaw opened, and he began to tremble.
"—Squeak! Sp-spare me! —Squeak!"
His tail whipped my face. With his STR, it barely tickled.
"You possess a Predation skill—squeak! Such strength! You may not speak, but you have intelligence—squeak! Let us make a deal!"
"......"
"Squeak! Squeak-squeak! Spare me, and I will offer you this sewer—squeak! As your personal feeding ground—squeak!"
'That's a little tempting.'
My own private farm? Considering how fast rats bred, the offer had genuine pull. Just stopping by periodically would be a massive help for leveling. As I showed a flicker of interest, he seemed convinced we were communicating and offered a groveling smile.
...It really wasn't a bad idea.
"S-So—squeak? With the numbers you just consumed, I can regenerate them in a month—squeak! If you let me live...!"
He knew how to bargain. Regular shipments of rat monsters from Rat Man would be a steady, renewable experience source—excellent fuel for growth. A farm owner who produced experience rather than golden eggs.
"Squeak! Then you understand...?"
A greasy smile and words. They were the last things he ever expressed.
[Rat Man consumed. Experience Points and Satiety increased.]
[Satiety at maximum. Satiety converted to Experience Points.]
[Experience Points at maximum. Lv.15 → Lv.16]
'No compromises.'
The feeding-ground idea had honestly made my ears perk up. But when I thought about what he would go on to do later, he had to die here. More to the point, there was no guarantee he'd keep his word.
His vileness. The hideous experiments he'd carried out. Knowing all of it, I could never trust him. I possessed that knowledge. Rat Man had no idea I knew who he was.
From the beginning, he was never a viable negotiating partner. The King of the Sewers fell, emptily, just like that. But the job wasn't finished. I picked up the key hanging from his belt.
Best to be thorough with the cleanup.
Killing him had prevented the catastrophe that would have struck Busan. I couldn't claim to have devoured every last rat in this sprawling sewer, but without a master to command them, they couldn't cause a city-level disaster on their own.
Besides, I'd clean up the leftovers anyway.
On my way back. Every last one. So thoroughly that my detection wouldn't pick up a single rat pup. I intended to erase every trace of Rat Man from this world.
Click— clack.
I slotted the key into the lock and turned it. Beyond the door: a gruesome sight. Consider for a moment how he'd managed to command so many monsters.
I looked at the slabs of flesh arrayed on either side and let out a sigh.
Chimera experiments. Chimeras actually exist in reality. Normally it's nothing more than blending the coat colors of a white mouse and a black mouse. The problem was that this was the novel's world—and not modern Earth.
He was a monster and a brilliant alchemist. Using that expertise, he'd bred a single pair of chimeras into the Curse Rats, Greed Rats, and all the other sewer monsters. And right in front of me was the culmination of those experiments.
Something huddled beyond the dark iron bars. I illuminated it with one of the bulbs hanging from the ceiling.
'...It's already here.'
I'd held out a sliver of hope. This was two years before the novel's start, after all. That hope was mercilessly crushed.
[Sewer Monster (Chimera Beast)]
[Length 2.47 m] [Height 56 cm] [Weight 169 kg]
[STR 265] [AGI 82] [VIT 244]
Countless eyeballs embedded all over its body swiveled and fixed on me.
"......"
Yeah. I know. There is exactly one animal in the world with sclera that stark white.