Giant Rat Horde Leader

A familiar sight greeted Eidiri, as the tree line parted once more, the rats gathering off to the sides.

"Ah, it's the 'old ugly lad once again," Eidiri insulted the Horde Leader.

"Hey, umm... Eidiri? This guy's pretty big," said Edgar, stating the obvious.

"Okay, just like normal. I'll kite it and you guys sneak hits in," Eidiri ordered.

"Okay boss," they reply back.

Eidiri then proceeds to charge the hulking beast as it sniffs the air, its feral look turned towards them.

Almost as if it recognized Eidiri, a glint passes through its beady eyes, homed in on him.

This time, however, instead of outright charging him, it instead sent a wave of rats at him to soften him up.

The wave consisted of about 7 12 or so rats. As this small wave charged at them, the Horde Leader circled around Eidiri, leaving its minions to occupy his attention.

Eidiri rolled to the side, avoiding the reckless charge, then he lashed out with his knife, slicing one open.

A sharp nip at his ankles caused him to take a brief stumble.

Deciding to ignore the rat on his ankles in favor of the other 10 bloodthirsty beasts, he rolled to the side and skewered another one.

Flinging the corpse aside off the sword, he swung his leg out and flung the rat off his ankle.

Then the group of rats ignored their fallen comrade, rushing by him, trampling him under their paws.

On the other side of the battle, the Horde Leader was storming towards Kendrick and Edgar, almost galloping in a way.

Ken was forced to the side in order to dodge the first swipe of its claws while Edgar got caught by the blunt force of the tail, launching him away from the fight.

This left Ken to fend for himself, and much like Eidiri before, he couldn't really do much but struggle to avoid the attacks.

Seeing the situation take a turn for the worse Eidiri began to panic a little, showing through his actions.

While before he methodically weeded out the rats, now he was taking more risks to dispatch them faster to go and relieve some of the pressure off of Ken.

Edgar after stopping to regain his breath from getting slammed in the chest was now running back to the battle, hoping to give Ken a brief respite.

"I can't get him off of me!" Ken cried out.

"Just hold on for a bit longer!" Eidiri called, "The wave's nearly dead over here."

At this point in time, the already bad situation got even worse.

The brief conversation Ken had with Eidiri disrupted his concentration enough so that he didn't notice the tail reaching under him and swiping at his legs.

With this, Ken was knocked on the ground, the angular snout and baleful gaze of the Horde Leader gazing at him from above.

In desperation Ken rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the jaws of death that snapped down where his head used to be.

As the rat was chasing after Ken, Edgar sneakily went up from behind it, taking care to not alert it.

When the distance was closed enough so that he was within striking range, Edgar lashed out with the knife, drawing blood along the tail.

A sharp wail broke the air, and the rat trashed in a fit of rage.

Although such a result wasn't too bad, Edgar had initially been looking to severe the tail altogether, and now the rat was enraged.

"Ah! Goddamn it! The bloody thing is berserk now!" Ken screamed in frustration.

"Just keep dodging it. We'll wear him out eventually!" Eidiri said.

"I bloody know that! What exactly do you think I'm doing?" Ken replied, annoyance staining his words.

With the last flick of his knife, the last of the ordinary Giant Rats finally fell, it's undignified squeak crying out as it limply fell to the ground.

Finally, now that the wave had been cleared, all three of them were clear to team up on the Leader.

The initial plan of the baiting into the rocks was long since thrown out the window, and while Ken and Edgar maintained its attention, Eidiri tried Edgar's method and attempted to fully sever the tail.

There was a slight problem with such a task, however, this of course being that the tail was being flailed around wildly, making it difficult to even approach the damn thing.

"Okay let's back off first and regroup. Edgar, you try and lure it to the rocks again. It clearly is after you for that stunt."

"Ken you and I are going to handle it's aggro when it gets too hot for Edgar, okay?"

"When we get to rocks, we're going to play around the terrain," Eidiri issued quick orders around, Try to keep it going in circles and all that, okay?"

And with the orders distributed and tasks divided, Edgar continued to run as the Rat recklessly charged him, it's dark red eyes somehow appearing even more malevolent than before.

When the Rat had nearly caught up to Edgar, the duo of Ken and Eidiri dashed in and began to make narrow cuts on its limbs, successfully drawing it's attention away.

When Edgar had reached a practical enough distance to keep kiting the monster, the duo dashed out.

And with that the cycle continued, every time that Egar appeared to be in danger, the attention of the rat would be taken, only for the rat to end up being significantly confused, it wondering which target to chase after.

In the end, it's pride for it's formerly unblemished tail won out and it resumed chasing Edgar, however, when the gap between Edgar and it got alarming, despite the duo's attempts to draw it away, the rat was hyper-focused on Edgar.

The rat as a whole was completely fed up with the cycle that it only now recognized, and the gnashing of the teeth got closer and closer to Edgar.

Seeing this, Eidiri gritted his teeth and in under a moment had approached the rat's behind, raising the knife above his head, he executed Steel Song's Slash ability, dealing 13.5 points of dmg to the rat, finally bringing it down to a quarter.

The tail landed with a heavy thump in the field, and black blood began to spew out of the stump where the tail had once been.

Crying in pain, the Rat began to scream in agony.

Attracted to one of their leader's being brutally beaten, many lesser rats began to appear, following the path that the battle had created through the field.

Seeing this, a small amount of anxiety took hold of them, and they began to rush to kill the Leader, seeing how if the Leader died, it wouldn't be able to keep summoning the reinforcements.

The true might of the Leader isn't individual strength but that of numbers.

After a highly intensive chase in which Eidiri and Edgar had both nearly been decapitated several times, they reached the rocks.

Seeing this, they split in several directions and whenever the rat would chase one of them, one of them would appear from one of the outcrops and stab the Leader in the legs, hindering it's mobility.

To further add insult to injury, due to these being bladed weapons, they possessed a chance to cause a bleeding effect upon hit, and eventually, Eidiri successfully applied it, causing it to take consistent Damage Over Time.

With this bleed effect applied, it wasn't a matter of if, but when the Leader would die.

The Rat Leader had practically been led around by the snout from start to finish, but now, it had had enough.

With a reverberating roar of anger, the Leader crouched down, preparing what the trio thought to be it's ultimate move.

Cries of dodging, and "Oh God get the hell out!" were common at this point in time.

Then the rat committed a feat that they had never expected.

Leaning down, the rat actually lifted one of the giant boulders they had been dancing around, preparing to fling it at them.

If this connected, surely it would be an instant kill, crushed by the weight of the unyielding stone.

As the muscles in the rat's forelimbs tensed, the tension reached a climax, little beads of sweat dripping down all of them.

If one of them were to be eliminated right now, the probability of them successfully slaying the thing would drop dramatically.

They had already spent over an hour on this fight alone, and all of them were unwilling to fail just like that.

Desperation began to rear it's ugly head in Eidiri, and suddenly as the Leader was tensing to throw the boulder, an insane idea came to mind.

Taking Steel Song, he reared his arm back with knife in hand, and whipped it forwards, releasing the knife and sending it flying towards the rat.

Those few moments where the knife soared through the air, were probably some of the tensest they had experienced.

And finally, as if David had slain Goliath, the knife connected in the left forelimb of the rat, causing the grip to shift and the boulder to drop on top of the rat, crushing it beneath it's weight.

Seeing this the trio joyously cried, seeing their efforts bear fruit as the stupid beast was finally slain, the oncoming force of rats being dismissed as their leader perished.