Dialysis Book: Chapter 10: A journey into Darkness

We went back in through the sewer in a particularly stealthy manner.

“You don’t need to carry me,” said Shade.

“I have boots, you have paws.  I don’t want you getting an infection,” I said as we crept closer to the hole in the wall.  Initially we thought about going back in through the inn, but that was a terrible idea.  We’d have to explain that there was a path from the sewer to his cellar, and that seemed counterproductive to getting paid.

Plus, I was just going to plug the small passage and that would be enough.  Hopefully.

“Alright, just get your wits about you and make sure you don’t get surrounded,” said Spivy before sounding more stern, “Again.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I whispered as I reached the hole in the wall.  Shade and I peeked in, searching for the tell tale sign of rats, and finding none.  I tossed Shade into the cave, he landed easily and sniffed several times.

“Too many smells, there were rats but I don’t know if they are still here,” said Shade.

I had a solution for that, holding out my spear and using the light skill on the tip.  I could flood an area with light at a low essence cost, so I did.  The small cave, which I’d previously only seen under torchlight, was suddenly brightly lit.

Shade blinked several times, but we’d just come from outside where our eyes were adjusted properly.  There were several rats that had spent their whole lives in this darkness, they didn’t take it so well.

Not that the sudden brightness mattered much to them, Shade was the more immediate threat and he snapped down hard on all three while maintaining his Shadow form.

“You’d figure that the light would defeat the shadow,” I said.

Spivy snorted, “Light defeats dark, more light makes more shadows until it doesn’t.  Light and Shadow get along just fine.”

She had a point, and I stepped into the room behind Shade, spear at the ready.  Several more rats attempted to run into the room from the passage to the cellar.  It was a repeat of last time, but this time we were ready for them.

Shade took all the rats at ground level while I stabbed the ones at the top of the passage with my spear.  I used Light Thrust against a rat for the first time, and it made the sharp tip of my spear even sharper.  One rat launched itself at me and when I thrust at him, the rat fell apart perfectly in two halves.

“Laser Thrust,” I said, admiring the cut.

“What is that,” asked Spivy.

“A perfect cut into something,” I replied, slicing another rat in two.

“Light’s not usually that sharp, but you do you,” said Spivy admiringly.  “Clearly it is working for you.”

Meanwhile, Shade was busy comping on rats.  He could stay in his shadow form the entire time because the targets were so small he didn’t need to spend his essence on increasing his bite power.  He just chomped and the rats were maimed or killed.

With his shadow form active, the rats were having a hard time figuring out what to bite and that indecision was costing them their lives.  After nearly thirty seconds and two dozen rats, the passage was clear.

Shade groaned, instantly becoming visible, “Even with his buff, that is still very hard to do.”

“You were a good boy,” I said.

Shade wagged his tail.  “I know it.”

“Wanna scout,” I asked.  “You can kill some monsters!”

“Can I?” said Shade, twirling around.  Then Shade went shadowy before entering the passage.  I used my mapping skill through him to scan the next room, but it came back empty.  I tried to push a light through to him so he could see better, but that wouldn’t travel through the core.

“Abilities from skill shards can be transmitted, not anything from your cores,” said Spivy and I nodded.  It didn’t make sense, but I wasn’t in a spot to argue with her either.  Still, with the connection I could sense if Shade was in pain, and more importantly that he wasn’t.  Checking the map, I knew it was relatively safe in the next chamber and Shade wasn’t going to be retreating through the hole.  I moved forward.

I kept my light dim until I got fully into the room, then blasted it out at full power for a moment as I cut the mapping connection to Shade.  I already seemed to have a bit more essence to play with, but that might have just been the process getting easier.

I could already make my light slightly brighter than when I started.

“Ears up,” said Spivy as we stood there, the chamber which we had been forced to vacate but had now reconquered.  We didn’t have any time for triumph, I could already hear the skittering.

“Bigger rats,” said Spivy.  “This is going to get messy.”

She was instantly right.  There was no central point for the rats to come from, so we didn’t have a choke point to defend.  Instead there were a half dozen tunnels sized for the enormous rats on the wall, and all of them disgorged rats at the same moment.

The smallest creature was the size of a healthy cat, and the larger ones were dog sized.  Worse, the dog sized ones were broad shouldered enough that if I had to pick the dog it would have been an american boxer.  Not one of the friendly boxers though, a very mean boxer that was raised by people who didn’t love him.  A bitter, sad boxer who’d never known treats or tummy rubs and decided to take it out on the world.  A doggo with malice in their heart.

Rocky led the charge, followed by his ratty cohorts.  Shade had to use his bite ability now and he dropped into sharp focus as he bit down on a rat, tearing off an ear.  Rocky lunged at him, but Shade hopped back narrowly avoiding a bite from the massive rat, unfortunately there were more rats and one got a chomp in from the side causing Shade to whine.

Furiously, I thrust my spear into the rat’s side viciously, then grunted while I tried to pull the head back out.

“You are spread too thin, you aren’t focusing enough on your spear,” said Spivy as I fumbled around.  I dropped the map entirely and just focused on keeping the room lit.  Suddenly my spear slid out of the wound and I saw that it regained the look of dim brightness it had before.

Curiously, I pushed more essence into the skill and the brightness increased slightly.  It was dimmer than a torch.

A rat got past me while I fooled around and bit me in the calf.  The leather clothing was not quite up to the task.  The bite hurt, but didn’t do too much damage.  Freeing my leg did the majority of the damage as the rat tore my leg open as I pulled it away.

His partner ran up to finish the job, but by then I was back on point and I slashed his head off before driving the shaft of my spear into another charging rat.  The decapitated one died, and the other one laid on the ground whimpering with its leg and several ribs shattered.

Shade meanwhile had another one of the dog sized rats on the ground and was attempting to land a decisive bite when Rocky leapt onto his back.  Shade tried to throw him free but the rat was having none of it.  He bit down into Shade’s shoulder when suddenly I heard a popping sound.

The rat was biting the crossbow, and Shade was nowhere to be seen.

Everyone was confused, I could sense Shade was somewhere near but I didn’t know where.  Meanwhile the rats had no idea what was going on, so I stabbed the one on the ground before looking for Rocky.

The massive rat’s teeth were stuck in the crossbow and he was even now trying to bite down hard enough to destroy the weapon.

“Hey, this is pretty loud.  Are you guys doing okay down there,” yelled the innkeeper right as Rocky bit through the loaded crossbow.  The weapon snapped into bits and the bolt flew through the passage towards the innkeeper and I heard it thunk into something.  There was silence for several seconds.

“Well, okay then, if you guys are doing alright I’ll just leave,” yelled the voice followed by hurried running up the stairs.

I thrust my spear at Rocky who dodged back.  I glanced over and realized of the six rats only Rocky was still alive, so I adjusted tactics.  I started dodging back, giving the rat room to lunge at me without committing to an attack.

The rodent didn’t realize what I was doing until he prepared to lunge again and Shade appeared behind him.  One quick bite to the neck and Rocky, the mega rat, was dead.

“I was hiding, how could you tell I was there?” asked Shade as he spit out a mouthful of rat fur.

“One of the rats I fought with died unexpectedly,” I said, gesturing to the deceased rat.  “I knew you must be around.”

Shade’s tail started wagging, “You are very clever.  I am glad we are a team!”

“Speaking of teamwork,” I said.  “What power did you use to get away from there?”

“Poop ninja substitution,” said Shade.  “I used it on the wizard too, it lets me replace myself with something from my butt and then teleports me away.”

Spivy twitched.  “It is just ninja substitution.  Your inventory is soul bound and NOT located in your butt!”  She yelled the last bit.

I shrugged, “I liked his explanation better.”

“You would,” she said seriously.

The room was quiet and I noticed a faint gray color from the rats I’d personally killed.  I touched it with my spear.

“Would you like to loot the rat?,” asked Spivy.

“Yes.”

Between the two rats I’d killed, I received a rat core as well as some loose string.

“Animals don’t carry coins, do they,” I asked.

“Not typically,” replied Spivy.

“I keep finding coins,” said Shade.  “Every time I kill anything they have coins.”

I checked my personal inventory and found only the money Shade had given me earlier.  In fact I didn’t have any money, the goblins that I killed all had trash with them not money.  My inventory was cluttered with the detritus of rats and goblins, and Shade kept finding coins.

“I call shenanigans,” I yelled.

“He has a salvage aspect on his core,” said Spivy.

“What,” I asked, looking at her.

“We were fighting goblins, ninja classes are very compatible with looting aspects so I stuck one on there,” said Spivy.  “When Shade loots he gets more money by default and all the trash items get converted into coins.”

“I also get more red bark, and better items in general,” said Shade.

“So should I let him loot the monsters,” I said.

“Probably, that would be a lot better,” said Spivy.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before,” I said.

“I’m a helper fairy, not a ‘tell you how to play your class’ fairy, that was Shade’s responsibility, and he told you,” said Spivy.

“I am a good dog,” replied Shade.

I considered that for a long moment, “Right now we are just looting trash mobs anyway, you would have told me before we looted something important like the king rat.”

“I did tell you right before you fought the king rat,” said Spivy.  “Remember everything I told you.”

Shade sniffed several of the rat holes in the wall while I finished sorting my inventory full of useless trash.  Shade’s power to loot only worked when the corpse was initially looted.   There was nothing else of value here, so we needed to keep moving forward before the rats got back on their feet.

“I smell a rat,” said Shade as he continued sniffing.

“Seriously,” I said.

Shade rolled his eyes, “I mean, I don’t know which hole he came from.  They all smell like rat.”

“The big one,” I said.  “It is the only one the king rat could fit through.”

“Good point,” said Shade and he started down the tunnel before I could say anything.  Grumbling, I used my mapping skill through him and tracked where he was going.  It didn’t take long to find the main nest.

The rats dug out a large section underneath the floorboards of the inn, leaving themselves enough room to do their ratly business.  Shade paused by the entrance, searching for the king rat as I sized up the situation.

“It’s big enough for me to crawl through,” I grumbled and got on my hands and knees.

No rats bothered me, thankfully, and I scooted in behind Shade as he sniffed around.  Thin streams of light were peeking through the floorboards from the room above, and I was trying to carefully spot the target.  I was going to have to be precise to fight here.  The room was maybe four feet tall, and the supporting beams cut across the room so if I tried to stand I’d give myself a concussion.

I thrust my spear into the room and used light on it.  The room got significantly brighter, but still no rats.

“I’m sure he is in here,” whispered Shade.

I thought about the sizes involved and a cold wind blew through my soul.  I pulled my spear back, adjusted it slightly, and thrust it straight up into the top of the tunnel.  The King Rat screamed and leapt down from his hiding spot directly above the tunnel entrance.

Brave Shade, the wonder dog, yipped and tried to move back while I thrust forwards with my spear.  The king rat was inhumanly quick and easily dodged my clumsy strike.  I needed to focus everything into my spear core to hit him, and that meant it was going to get a bit dim down here.

Since I was dropping light anyway, I brought up my light shield skill and projected it between me and the King Rat.  With two sources of light and the ceiling, I was at least content that the King Rat couldn’t just hide in the darkness.

Unfortunately, that left me fighting the king rat alone for several seconds while Shade collected himself.

"Any ideas," I asked.

"Try not to die," replied Spivy.

“Any useful advice,” I asked.

“Aim for the face,” replied Spivy.

I nodded, pointing my spear at the rat.  Rat's couldn't roar, but they did have a loud, shrill, cry to tell you to stay back and this rat was much more massive than normal.  The noise he made was so loud that my ears throbbed and if I wasn't so terrified of getting bit I would have moved my hands to cover them.

Which is probably what the rat expected as he lunged as soon as he was finished.  He bit down hard on my spear shaft, but the wood appeared to be too stout for him to simply bite through.  That did leave him right on top of me, and the rat used his vicious claws to tear at my armor.

If I wasn't wearing the leather armor, that would have ended me.  The claws tore deep rents into the leather, tearing deeply into my skin, but without it the rat would have shredded my organs and daddy needed those.

Twisting the spear, I forced the king rat off of me.  I thrust the sharp end at the rat's head, but he neatly dodged to the side and bit at the shaft.  I managed to pull my weapon back and then thrust it again, this time the rat didn't bother to dodge and my spear thudded against his chest.

The rat spit out the pointy part of my spear.  The deadly part.  The part that transformed a stick into a spear.  I was armed with a broken stick fighting a rat larger than my dog.

"Well, shit," I muttered.

The rat snarled and prepared to lunge, and my spear core was having issues working with my new staff.  This was going to suck, how did one deal with a charging animal?

Then I remembered, I dropped the butt of the spear to the ground and locked it in place with my knee before holding up my hand.  As the rat charged, I activated flash one handed bathing the room in blinding light.

Of course, just using one hand ensured that I was blinded too, not that it mattered much.  I had the staff lined up right when the rat launched itself at me.   The end of my staff wasn't pointy, but it wasn't smooth either.   More importantly, in this context, was that it was solid and braced so when the rat hit it, all of the force of his charge was applied to a very small point in his shoulder.

There was an audible cracking noise as the rat thudded to the ground, both from the rat and my now defunct staff.  The neat thing about a stick was that if you broke it in half, you now had two sticks.

I was twice as armed with a weapon that was even less effective than before.

I was unfortunately too blind to see in the current environment, so whatever I was going to do needed to be spectacular.  The kind of plan that made your reputation, but then I heard the rat scream.  Shade was back and I could see him biting down on the rat's other leg.

This didn't stop the rat either, the king rat turned around and bit at Shade.  My dog barely got away from a bit that would have ended him.  That however left me with the rat paying attention to Shade.

I took the shattered half of the spear, and thrust the short length of wood into the creature's side, running most of the remaining length into the rat's guts, where I left it.   The rat snapped back at me, and I in turn only just managed to get away.

The rat's front teeth were overdeveloped even for a rat, and I could see now how he just bit through my spear.  The first bite was where the spear had broken, the rat hadn't quite bitten through my spear in the first attack but it was very close.

All of that came to me the moment the rat prepared to leap again, it lunged forward then stopped abruptly as he ran into my light shield.  The small, hand sized disk wasn't much but it did kill the rat's forward momentum allowing me to move backwards.

Well, flung onto my ass was more appropriate as even though the shield hovered there, it was like I was holding onto it with an invisible arm.

The rat bit down on my shield, and started to shake.  I could feel the shield collapsing but a thought occurred to me.  Spivy said the shield was part of my essence, and I could use my powers anywhere on my essence.

I generated a flash a second time the instant the shield failed.

My second flash was not nearly as bright as the first for two reasons.   First, the flash was power hungry and I had been fighting for quite a bit so my reserves were starting to peeter out.  Second, and more importantly, the shield was entirely contained inside the mouth of the rat when flash activated.

I could clearly see the outline of the rat's skull before everything turned dim.  I don’t care what Spivy said, I had clear, and obvious, retina damage after this but the rat must have been blinded and stunned.  I had effectively detonated the flash part of a flashbang inside the rat's skull.

Shade used that moment to materialize behind the rat and bit down as hard as he could on the rat's neck.  His essence infused chomp, combined with vigorous shaking, was enough to fracture the spine of the monster, ending him.

"Good boy," I mumbled, blinking rapidly as I slumped down into the garbage.

"You both did well," said Spivy as she landed on my chest and began casting spells at my eyes.  Everything stopped being purple in a few seconds and she patted me on the cheek.  "Good work with your skills."

"I need to figure out how to not blind myself with flash," I groaned.

"There is a passive in the light core that lets you look at bright light without damage," said Spivy.  "I'll have to teach you about meditation so you can learn it."

"Good to know," I muttered as Shade dropped something on my chest.

I grabbed it and snorted, "Good boy."  I returned my old walking pole to my inventory.  It was bent, and had been gnawed on for a while but that walking stick had gotten me through some rough places.

Shade sniffed around some more, then barked, "I found something."

I got back to my… knees and crawled over.  No use in even trying to stand.  I found out what happened to the previous adventurer.  His, or her, body was in the corner, or bits of it were at any rate.

The adventurer was wearing chain armor, which still had their skeleton in it but no fleshy bits. The rats had obviously devoured their whole body, and what that leaking mess did to the armor was best left unsaid.

"Where's the head," I asked looking at the skeleton's spine.  "Oh."

"King rats like to ambush from above and behind," said Spivy, who mentioned that earlier thank god.

"The adventurer crept in here and the King Rat bit their head off before they had a chance to react," I asked, imagining what one of those rat bites would have done to someone's neck.

"That would be my guess," said Spivy as she hopped over and started going through his stuff.  Apparently you couldn’t loot non-monsters, so to loot a person required you physically search a corpse.  While that bothered me, Spivy seemed unconcerned.  “Normally the adventuring guilds are pretty thorough about beating that singular fact into people’s heads.  Either that rat was far more clever than normal, or this adventurer was one of the kinds I didn’t like to train.”

It was hard to imagine going through all the effort to be an adventurer just to have it end like that.  One quick bite under an inn, then get eaten by rats alone and forgotten.  Of course, Kialee knew about the nameless adventurer.

"Heywood," said Spivy.

"How do you know his name, is that a fairy power," I asked.

"No," she replied holding out what appeared to be a wallet, "I found his ID."

"There are ID’s here," I asked, trying not to think about the dead guy.  An unknown dead guy was bad, if I found out this guy's history it would make the fact that I was looting him a lot rougher.

"All adventures get one," said Spivy.  "They can only be modified by a guild leader though."

"Do they have magical databases that let everyone see the details of the registered person," I asked.

"Paper records, mostly," said Spivy.  "I mean, this guy was from the Elven Dominion, they’re pricks but elves can’t really tell humans apart."

“Seriously,” I said.

“No,” replied Spivy as she searching around for something else.  “But yeah pretty much.  I mean they could recognize a human’s face as different, but beards confuse the heck out of them.  Take this guy, if he were to shaved they would just have to take his word that he was the same person.”

I looked at the bearded corpse.  In a dark part of my mind, I thought that your hair was going to go away but it didn’t.  It was there, and there, and there because the rats had eated his face.  Just not all of it.  They didn’t like the beard.

"Good to know," I said, taking the ID from her, then I considered a diplomatic way of asking my next question.  "What about his cores and equipment?"

"The cores were probably destroyed when he was killed, and I don't sense them hiding around the room," said Spivy.  "That's usually the case with adventures when they aren't successful by the way.  A class core is very personalized. "

"Okay, and his equipment other than that armor," I asked.

"Why not the armor," said Spivy.

"It looks like it is full of the old adventurer and rat droppings," I said, examining the suit.  There were even signs of some pretty significant rusting caused by all the blood leaking out.

"Take it and give it to an armorsmith," said Spivy.  "They are well versed in cleaning out old suits of armor.  You could make a go of cleaning it yourself if you are cheap, I know some tricks!"

"Why would I do that," I asked.

"Before I answer, could you tuck yourself back into your pants," asked Spivy.  I looked down and realized I was absolutely covered in deep gouges.  The lack of pain bothered me.  If I was on Earth, I'd have been totally disabled by this level of injury.

"Why did you heal those," I said, ensuring that my other best friend was secure.

"With your class active, damage like that heals overnight and fixing your eyes took a lot out of me," said Spivy yawning.  "If I healed all that, I'd be unconscious right now."

"These were his," said Shade, handing me a tube and two short swords.  Handed was the easy term.  Materialized from inventory into my hands was the correct one, but that took too long to explain for the exact same result.

"Swords are minor magical items," said Spivy.  "We could probably turn one into a spear head, if we find an agreeable blacksmith."

"Not the guy in town," I asked.

"Nope, he's got a profitable business and won’t want to risk it.  Check with Kailee, she probably knows someone," said Spivy.  Shade was rooting around finding anything else he could that was valuable.  He had a strange sense about that, but multiple items vanished into his storage.

"I should be more mad at her, right," I asked, looking around.  "I should be more upset at this whole situation.  I almost died, and found someone who was killed being an adventurer."

Spivy was fiddling with the tube, "But you aren't."

"No, and even knowing that is weird I can't build up what I think is the proper level of upset about this," I said.

"That's because of your cores," said Spivy.  "When you take on a class, you tend to not sweat the small stuff, and by the small stuff I mean injuries, dead guys, harrowing encounters with vicious monsters.  A core reduces the effects somewhat, but a class core pretty much reduces the emotional impact of adventuring significantly."

"So I have to be an adventurer?" I said.

"I didn’t say that," replied Spivy, leaning up against the tube.  "You can quit whenever you want, but you are going to be able to use the logical part of your brain to come to that conclusion.  Just like your essence powers your constitution to ignore pain and heal wounds, it also fortifies your willpower to keep away the mental demons that come with adventuring."

"Is that why I'm over my depression," I said.

"Possibly, or you were just looking for a massive change and getting to a new world with a whole new life was what you needed," replied Spivy with a shrug.  “One of the two.”

If I could really fortify it like I could fortify my physical health maybe I should just stay here.  Maybe.  Mom would miss me.  In any case, this short term vacation of mine would last until it was over.

“Whelp, we are done,” I said, turning to the exit.

“What do you mean,” asked Spivy.

“We killed the big rat, we are done,” I said.

“I bit him until he died,” said Shade, which was true enough from a dog.  It was certainly a team effort.

“The question was actually to kill all the rats,” said Spivy.  “You killed some of the rats.”

I looked at multiple smaller tunnels, “Oh no.”

“There are 12 left,” said Spivy.  “At least according to the quest prompt.  I suggest you start poking things with your spear.”

***

Tasaldan sat down the tray of eggs and cornup slices, then checked to see if the bread was burning.  It wasn’t of course, but no halfling innkeeper worth his salt would let bread burn.  It was bad for his reputation and that was something Tasaldan valued more than money.

He heard a groan, so he wiped his hands on his apron and waited until there was a slow trudging sound coming up the steps.  Tasaladan considered how to play it for a moment.  Finally he shrugged, he’d play it by ear.

“The problem is dealt with,” said Max as he and his delightful companion reached the top of the stairs.  The dog barked happily and sat next to his companion, tail wagging.

“Good, I’ll sign off on your quest form and give you some breakfast if you want any,” said Tasaladan.  The young adventurer looked confused and Tasaladan thought he heard a chirp, which he promptly ignored.

If there was a fairy helping the adventurer, he certainly didn’t want to notice it.  That would have been far more trouble than it was worth.  Plus, the duke stopped paying out fairy informants years ago.

“Yes, the quest token that I can exchange for the reward, which is stored at the guild hall,” said the young adventurer, nodding.  Tasaladan handed it over and noticed that the dog’s breakfast was already gone.  He hadn’t even seen the dog grab it.

“Well, I think the guild hall will be open soon, thank you for a good night’s work,” said Tasaldan with almost a straight face.  He’d paid for discretion, but after the first adventurer didn’t come back, he’d take what he could get.  The young man was loud, and yelled a lot.

Plus he swore in a language that Tasaladan’s class ability couldn’t interpret, which made it exotic indeed.

None of that was conducive to a good night's sleep, but this was an ongoing problem so Tasaldan had ensured no one he cared about was located on the first floor.  He’d survived nights with little to no sleep before, that's what tava bean juice was for.  He was just glad he didn’t have anything important going on today.