Rats (2)

"Hey Jim" Noah said

"My name is Jimmy" Jimmy said.

"Tomato, Tomata"

"Fuck off"

"Relaaax, I'm here to ask you about something"

"What?"

"Do you want to go on a quest with me"

"no"

"pretty please" Noah had twinkling eyes.

"No"

"I'll tell you the answer to the riddle"

"Fine…"

And so, they were off on their quest to slay the rats in the sewer. Jimmy was a wizard, and level 11 at that. Wizard was a tricky class, they were powerful but also very hard to master or even perform. As of now, Jimmy focused all his efforts on fire magic, and right now he could only cast three, golf ball sized, fireballs each minute.

Essentially he was defenseless, and his attack wasn't strong enough to kill a single rat, that was the steep cost of being a wizard. However, he was good company, he had a tongue for comedy.

He was a midget, brown hair, green eyes, and a large amount of attitude. They made their way to the sewers entrance, there were stairs descending into it the river. On their way they started talking, too boring to walk all the way silent.

"Eyy, you seen Jessica?" Jimmy said.

"No, who's she?" Noah responded.

"Big tits, no, huuuge."

"For real?"

"For real"

" How come I haven't seen her? I feel like someone like that would be hard to escape my sight"

"I heard she's a nobles daughter, she comes at the morning, selects a quest and leaves, never talks or comes in at night."

"Noble? I heard they scoff at being adventurers."

"They do, anything a peasant can do they scoff at. Probably, she feels just by doing it"

"But it's not anything special" Jimmy continued, "She has her guards follow her around, and they do all the heavy lifting."

"Really?"

"Yeah, like really strong"

"Wow"

"I know, she barely needs to lift a finger"

"Well, that's life"

"huuuuuge tits", he made his hands circulate in large motions.

They walked down the stairs, towards the door leading into the sewer. The smell was foul, it was dark, the sound of the streaming water was everything they heard. Jimmy quickly conjured up a fireball in his hands, it acted as a torch.

They walked down the path, this time Noah was eyeing the floor for any banana peels, bad memory. The rats were found deeper into the sewer, they walked over a metal bride, in order to cross the river and go to the deeper parts.

The rocks on the wall were near black, they had green moss growing over them. They had been cut neatly and were stacked in such a way that they turned and formed a half circle at the top. The sewers roof was quite tall, enough to walk through it without having to crouch. Noah's tongue tingles when he breathed in the wet air.

The small lamps on the wall that provided light looked old. The outlines, were all made out of metal, the middle of the lantern was made of glass and inside there was a candle that never melted. It was magical and required no oxygen to function.

They had gotten deep into the cave, deep enough to get lost. Then they saw the rats, far in front of them there were six yellow shining eyes, the eyes were jiggling up and down. The rats were running towards them.

Noah raised his sword up and took guard. Jimmy conjured up another fireball in his other hand. They stood defensively waiting for the Rats to attack them.

The rats didn't hesitate for a single second, they didn't slow down even for a moment. They shrieked their battlecry and almost sped up towards them. Jimmy threw his fireball at the rat leading the charge, burning its eyes and making it shriek loudly but not setting it aflame.

The second rat didn't stop and kept on running towards them, Jimmy threw his second fireball at the rat. It dodged, rats were clever creatures and it had adapted. With the second fireball thrown, the space returned to darkness, Jimmy started to conjure another fireball.

Noah had only the rats shining eyes to go off. He swung his sword vertically, It made the rats skull cave in. The third rat leaped at Noah, Noah saw its yellow eyes flying towards him and he sidestepped. Unfortunately, he sidestepped into Jimmy which had finished conjuring his fireball, showing a black burn on the lower left side of his back.

He shrieked loud enough to reverberate throughout the entire cave.

The rat landed on the other side, quickly gained its balance and went for a second attack onto his back. It landed as he was still shocked and bit him whilst scratching into his back with its sharp, dirty, small claws.

Jimmy hands flew towards the rat, he ripped it off Noah: it struggled viciously inside of Jimmy's grasp, he threw it into the river and it washed away.

Noah regained his composure shortly after, Jimmy had enough mana stored up to cast another fireball and so he did. The space was once again illuminated and Noah saw the blind rat trying to find its bearings. He went over to it and struck his sword into its head. It squirmed as it died.

But it wasn't the last one. Behind him he heard more squeaking, Noah quickly looked behind him and saw four more rats. He brought up his sword again, Jimmy conjured up another fireball and they were set for round two.

…

Noah standing unbalanced, horrified, and bloody. He had small bites and scratches all over his body from the rats. Jimmy tripped everywhere constantly, the constant spending of mana had taken a giant hit towards his consciousness, he could barely keep his own balance.

All around them were rat teeth, that's what they left when they disintegrated after being killed. They had killed, more or less, forty rats. But once again, they could see the jiggling yellow eyes approaching them.

No matter how many they killed they seemingly never stopped coming. Noah decided it was enough.

"Sorry about this Jim, try and hold your breath" Noah said and he dragged Jimmy into the streaming dirty waters with himself. The constant gasping for air and struggling to stay afloat was the last of their energy and both of them passed out.

They ended up waking up on the same beach Noah woke up on earlier, they were maybe thirty meters apart. Almost as if the body had it on queue, they both started puking. After a solid minute of puking Noah fell on his back and rested. His body was completely exhausted, he felt as if though he could fall asleep on the beach.

Then he got notifications.

'Level up'

'Level up'

'Scared shriek has levelled up'

'Backstab has levelled up'

Noah muttered "Stats"

--

Level: 12

Class: Rogue

Unassigned points: 2

Agility: 16

Stamina: 7

Magic: 5

Strength: 8

Charisma 5

Luck: 6

Skills: Basic sword fighting level 2, sprint level 3, Scared shriek level 2, Sub-Stealth level 2 (passive), backstab level 2

--

He thought a bit about where to spend his skill points and then decided. One point into agility, and one point into strength. Then he closed down the stats page.

After they had rested for a solid thirty minutes, Noah arose. On his way to Jimmy he wiped his sword in the sand, he hoped to remove the blood but instead made the sand stick onto his sword. He put it back into his sheathe.

He put his hand in front of Jimmy, Jimmy grabbed it and went aloft. He still seemed rather exhausted, and it made sense, mental exhaustion didn't recover quickly. They stumbled their path back to the adventurers hall.

They decided they would put this quest on hold until tomorrow and split ways, Noah suspected that Jimmy would go to his bed and sleep for the rest of today.

Noah's wounds had stopped bleeding, there were multiple wounds but each one was rather small and easily patchable. He felt himself ache when he tried to walk. He didn't really know what to do until Eva showed up.

He ended up going to one of the spots he usually went to when he was bored. It was one of the highest spots in the capital, the roof of a five story tall building. To reach it, you had to wedge yourself past a small hole, and then climb a ladder all the way to the top.

Noah sat on the edge of the building looking all over the city, whilst biting of parts of his salted jerky.