Chapter 4

The closer Sam was to the beast rat the stronger and the faster the rain of hits came from it's tail, he was jumping from left to right and barely avoiding it but in the end he wasn't fast enough and a hit landed on his shin and made him stumble, staying on the ground was basically suicide in this situation so he fought against the pain and kept moving.

What seemed like an eternity to him was actually only 5 seconds and he finally reached the rat, it's tail couldn't swing as fast now and Sam didn't find it hard to stay close to it.

"Time to die."

He said and he threw a big kick on the beast's nose, he felt the nose cracking and blood started flowing from it and the rat's mouth !

'Alright it seems like it's head isn't that sturdy, good news.'

Having found one of it's weak point so early Sam uses all his strength to kick it once more and made the beast whimper. The rat wasn't going to let him kill it without doing anything though and it swung it's tail once more towards him, he dodged it with ease this time.

The beast was in the same situation as someone using a whip, it was a fine weapon for mid-range fights but if it became a close-range fight the whip became a useless weapon and so the rat stopping swinging its tail and instead went for a very defensive move.

It rolled itself into a ball and the scales on it's back suddenly covered it's whole body like a pangolin, suddenly it's tail that had stopped moving started slashing non stop and left hundreds of dents onto the soft muddy ground, Sam also took a few hits and even his face had a shallow cut going from the top of his nose to his right ear.

'Damn it...'

This time he started getting really annoyed and straight away cut off the rat's tail with his dagger, since that part of it's body wasn't covered with scales he cut it off extremely easily.

Sam pulled his dagger slashes at the beast that was wailing in pain but all it could do was leave a white dent on it's extremely hard scales. The dagger he was holding now was made of pure mythril and even though it was weaker than equipment made from beasts materials such as bones, tendons, leather, etc, it was still a fine piece that could kill most primary beasts.

'I guess this rat's defense is one of the highest amongst grade one beasts, pretty unlucky.'

Sam tried slashing the beast a few more times but to no avail and it didn't seem like it was planning on going out of its scaled shell anytime soon so he started racking his brain for ideas.

Suddenly he looked back at the water pool and a creepy smile appeared on his face, the rat was quite heavy so when he tried lifting it he wasn't able to but he guessed with one person's help he would be able to.

He looked at the only guy in the group of three and he said:

"Hey, mind giving me a hand ?"

The guy had also stopped running when the girl from his group did and was looking with amazement and admiration at Sam, he didn't know what he was planning to do but nodded and walked over.

"Let's lift it and throw it into the pool, if it can't breath this thing will have to open it's shell and swim out of the water, I'll use that opportunity to kill it. You can have some of it's meat in exchange, deal?"

The man looked excited and said:

"Yes ! Deal !"

Even though he had done close to nothing he was still promised to get some beast meat, Alien beast cores had a huge amount of stored energy and so they were the most expensive and precious parts of the beasts but the meat also had some of that energy that was known for making people stronger, healing wounds and other magical things.

"Alright let's go, 3...2...1 !"

"Ughh!"

At one both of them lifted it with a grunt and walked to the pool where they threw it, without losing any time Sam jumped together with it and swam to the deepest part where it had landed, he looked at it and waited with his dagger in hand.

'The moment you open your shell you're dead.'

Seconds went by and above the water the two groups were looking intensely at the water while waiting for Sam to emerge, Sara who was supposed to protect him from wasn't sure whether to go in and pull him out or not, that beast even without it's tail still had one last ability that could be fatal if Sam wasn't aware of it !

"Even though there are informations about the Ruby rat on the Uninet I don't think that kid knows about it's hidden ability, maybe you should go pull him out."

Sid said and right after him, Ben who was dressing back added:

"The Ruby rat doesn't use that ability that often though because it makes it vulnerable for the next two years until it grows new scales, I don't think there is a need to worry."

Right when Sara made her mind and was about to jump off the branch and rush towards the pool she saw hundreds of shrapnels like scales being blown out of the water.

/

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A little bit more than a minute later when Sam started praising how long this thing could hold on without taking a breath he saw it loosening a little bit and in a split second all the scales on it's back were blown away from it's body at an unbelievable speed.

'Fuck !'

Even the resistance of the water wasn't enough to slow the projectiles down and Sam took one straight in the shoulder and one in the thigh.

From the surface the rest who were waiting for Sam to emerge saw hundreds of spiky scales being blown out of the water and slowly the water started to take a red dye.

Ash looked at Sara and said mockingly:

"Sara, it seems like you're going to be scolded by the higher ups hahaha."

Sara jumped off the tree and ran to the pool, the other examinees who were looking at the water without knowing what to do took a salute pose when they saw the badge sewn onto her shoulder, they didn't expect to see a sergeant in such a place !

She jumped into the water straight away and started swimming deeper and deeper, she looked around and could see the rat beast that was trying as hard as it could to swim back up, she ignored it and look for Sam but he was nowhere to be seen...

/

Sam tried swimming back up but his left leg and left arm weren't moving and so he started sinking, soon he touched the ground and tried using his right leg that was still fine to push himself to the surface but he had went too deep and in the end he started sinking again. Slowly he started losing consciousness due to the lack of oxygen and the blood loss.

His last memory before passing out was that he felt a pulling force behind him, similar to a vacuum.