Raging Rats

Ruins. All there is to see are ruins. Cities worn and torn and villages burned to the ground. Skeletons are everywhere, but nothing living, not even an animal. What happened here?

The skeletons aren't those of a human, which means they belong to one of the other races that inhabit this world, but I don't know which one. Hell, the only other race that I'm certain of other than humans are demons.

Currently, I'm sprinting down the streets in one of the many abandoned cities I've come across, looking for some sign of life or a clue to find the site of the ancient curse, but there is nothing.

The only thing I have going for me right now is that this race also happens to use english, just like humans.

There must be some sort of clue as to what happened here though. Bodies are strewn about all over in many different areas, some more hidden than others. Some of the skeletons also seemed to have cracked bones, which suggests that they were injured when they died.

A war perhaps? Maybe an attack by a large group of monsters? Then again, how large must a group of monsters be to kill this many people?

As I'm thinking quietly to myself, I finally catch the first glimpse of life I've seen since arriving on this new land. A small little rat. It sat hunched up by the side of one of the many old and broken buildings in the city, nibbling on a small piece of bone.

"Hey there little fella."

Considering this is the first thing I've seen since arriving here, it's only natural that I would say hi, right?

As I approach the rat, I crouch down right in front of it. Its beady red eyes look me up and down as it continues chewing on the small bone that it has in its tiny claws.

I reach out one of my hands to give the rat a small pat on the head.

"How are you doing? Where is eve-"

Before I could pat the rat, however, the rat let out a loud high pitch screech, one that would drive people crazy. It screeches for only a few seconds before scampering away down an alley. How strange.

Wait...

HOLY SHIT!!!

On my mini map in the corner of my vision, the entire area was colored red, but it wasn't the map itself that was red. It was showing me just how many enemies were aggressive towards me right now, and it numbered in the thousands.

Suddenly, I started hearing hundreds of more loud high pitched screeches all around me, and with that, the area of my map colored in red became even more expansive.

The screeches continued distances far away from me, ending up more than ten kilometers away and still spreading.

Raging Rats, and hundreds of thousands at that. No wonder the race here were wiped out along with any other species. With this many monsters, you could take out a kingdom!

In only a few moments, I can hear the scampering of thousands of tiny legs running full speed towards me, and not long after that, I can see them. There were so many that you couldn't see the floor beneath them, and plenty of them were running atop the backs of each other, trying desperately to beat their comrades to me. This is the stuff of nightmares right here.

There were so many on my map that even I couldn't get an exact number of how many Raging Rats there were. My old world had a problem with rats in the past, but this is an entirely new level. These things must have screwed even more than rabbits did.

That isn't important though, as I am completely surrounded by an ever approaching swarm of rats. Walls were literally collapsing as they rushed towards me and bumped into the walls with their large numbers. This is crazy.

With this many rats, I don't imagine there are any surviving animals within a one hundred kilometer radius. That being said, I decided to turn up the heat. I've only created a flame near this temperature once, and that was when I had first decided to test out my powers.

That flame will be puny in comparison to what I'm making now. Oxygen, fuel, condense, repeat. I do this process over and over as fast as my mind can process as the swarm comes ever closer to my position.

Just as the swarm was about to be close enough to nibble on my toes, I released the ferocious flame of unimaginably high temperature. Just like the first time I had tried out this power, the sky went red from the immense heat, but unlike before, it was blood red. In an instant, all of the rats within a one hundred kilometer radius should be exterminated.

Considering I haven't even been on this land for an hour, I would imagine that the ocean was probably close enough to the flame to be partially evaporated. As soon as a single instant passed, I destroyed the flame along with its heat through the use of water magic, freezing the water in the air as cold as I possibly could.

With that, the blood red sky vanished, replaced with the blue sky everyone knows.

"Damn. The flame was so intense that it literally evaporated some of the soil beneath my feet along with the ruins."

The entirety of the city had vanished within only a moment of the ferocious heat I had created. As soon as I had fixed the temperature, however, it all quickly solidified and came racing back down from over head in many weird and bizarre shapes.

Just as one was about to crash onto my head, I shattered it with the flick of my finger, turning it to mere dust in an instant.