Chapter 95: Smelly ROUSes (Patreon)

While standing by the Gate in the morning, Mahya exclaimed, "Shit, we forgot Lis's advice about getting better armor. John, would you mind lending me armor again?"

I handed her the armor she had previously used and asked Alfonsen, "Do you have armor?"

He replied with a "yes" and retrieved a leather armor adorned with small metal plates in strategic areas, along with the largest shield I had ever laid eyes on. The silver-bluish color of this shield was unlike anything I had ever seen.

"What's the shield made of? I have never seen anything like it.”

Radiating pride, he said, "Mithril."

Mahya whistled and said, "Wow, that's expensive."

“I'm from the royal family; money is no obstacle,” he responded with a tone of condescension.

Mahya and I made eye contact but remained silent. Occasionally, a single glance says it all; there is no need for words.

I wrapped Rue's body in the snake armor Lis had made for him and asked him, "Everything okay? Are you comfortable?

"Yes! Kill! Snakes! Yum!"

We all burst into laughter. Scratching his ear, I assured him, "We're on the lookout for monsters, but if we come across a tasty snake, we'll do our best to eliminate it for you."

The speed at which his tail wagged made me fear for its safety.

"Do we plan on being invisible?" I asked.

Mahya shook her head, "No, we need the monsters to see and attack us. If not, we'll be stuck searching for them for hours. When we cross back, we'll do it while invisible."

I agreed, saying, "That makes sense."

Mahya took out wooden poles and started sticking them into the ground a few meters from the gate.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"We don't need unwanted visitors."

When she was done placing all the poles, we crossed the Gate. On the other side, there was a forest filled with short, twisted trees, thick leaves, and the scent of damp soil. The smell reminded me of the swamps in New Orleans: wet, musty, and with undertones of rotten eggs.

Sneaking along, I focused on listening intently to the various noises around us, determined not to be caught off guard. That thought reminded me of my mana sense, and I spread it as far as possible. After walking for about twenty minutes, we heard noises in the distance, but nothing yet entered the field of my mana sense.

Mahya told me telepathically, "From now on, we should only communicate via telepathy."

We pressed on, and the noises drew nearer, until a gigantic rat suddenly burst out from the shrubbery. It was even bigger than Rue! I was taken aback. My eyes widened, and I briefly stared at it. Fortunately, Mahya had more experience than me, so she quickly killed the rat by shooting an arrow into its eye while I was still stunned. I shook my head and told myself that encountering monsters shouldn't be a surprise since I was here to kill them.

I took out my crossbow and started looking around more intently.

Mahya said, "John, start harvesting it for the crystal. Alfonsen and I will take care of the other monsters. If we need your help, we'll let you know."

I split my mind to stay aware of my surroundings and encompassed the rat in mana. Oddly enough, it didn't dissipate. I diagnosed it and discovered that it was an ordinary animal, or at least close to ordinary. The internal organs of the rats in this place were in a completely different position, and I found a beast core, but it wasn't a monster.

"These are not monsters but mana beasts," I sent to both of them.

"We need to get back to the gate," Mahya said in an urgent tone.

In unison, Alfonsen and I asked aloud, "Why?"

"These are rodents, they swarm. I don't want to fight hundreds of them."

Hundreds sounded terrible, so I immediately said, "Let's go."

We hurried towards the Gate when rats began leaping at us from the trees. I stashed the crossbow and swapped it for the two Katana-like swords—from all the weapons Lis trained me in; those were my favorites. A rat leaped at me, and I struck it with a sword. It flew away but didn’t look injured. Instinctively, I covered the blade with a mana edge and hit the next rat that tried to jump me; it took its head off. More and more rats were leaping at me, and my mana sense was very confusing; it was hard to keep track of what was going on when everything appeared twice, once in my field of vision and another time in my mana sense field, so I turned it off.

I kept fighting and killed a few rats, and oww! A rat bit my leg from behind. I immediately activated my mana sense; being confused is better than being attacked from behind.

More and more rats leaped at me, and I fought them with both swords. The training that Lis forced me to do really paid off. I moved on instinct and didn't have to think about what to do; I just moved and fought. A rat bit me on the shoulder, and I almost dropped the sword from the pain, but I overcame the instinct, split my mind into the third part, and started casting Healing Touch.

Mahya yelled, "John, store the rats and keep moving. Don't stop to fight."

I tapped the rat closest to me with my foot and gave the command to store it. To my surprise, I managed to store all the rats within the range of my mana field. Excellent! I ran between the rats as I fought, stored them all, and kept running towards the Gate while fighting and healing myself. I wasn't an expert fighter yet and got bitten several times, but I healed myself and kept going. A rat bit my ankle hard, and I fell, rolled on my back, killed it, healed the leg, got up, and kept running.

I went through the Gate to Earth and realized I was the last one to make it through. I looked at the others; Mahya looked fine, Alfonsen had blood on his legs, and Rue looked the most injured. Immediately, I started healing him. His legs were covered in bites, and he had a nasty bite on his neck, causing him to whine in misery.

After I finished healing him, he said, "I hate rats!"

"Rue, you said a complete sentence!" I exclaimed enthusiastically and hugged him. "Now practice saying the sentences instead of shouting them into our heads."

Alfonsen came to me and said, "Enthusiasm can wait. Heal me!" He was scowling and sounded displeased.

Diagnosing him made it apparent that he had several bites on his legs, including one quite deep. After healing him, I examined myself and discovered that my armor was destroyed. I knew I had endured multiple bites, but I was so immersed in the battle that I didn't register all the bites; I healed myself and kept on fighting. Checking my mana to figure out how much I healed myself, I saw it was 1470/9300. Wow! I used a lot for the mana edge and to heal Rue and Alfonsen, but it still was a lot of bites.

Just to be sure, I diagnosed Mahya, and she had a minor scratch on her hand. I was glad I diagnosed her because apart from the bites themselves, these rats also carried diseases. After everyone was healed, I cast clean on Rue, Mahya, and myself.

"Thanks."

"Of course," I said, took a deep breath and added, "That was intense."

"I hate swarmers," said Mahya with an angry glower.

We sat for a few minutes to recover. Rue put his head on my lap, and I stroked him.

Mahya told him, "Congratulations on the levels."

I identified him:

____________

Rue

Bonded Familiar

Level 8

___________

"Buddy! You got three levels! Congrats!"

"He got two levels," said Mahya. "He was level six."

"Not five?"

"No, he was level five after the dungeon and level six after the nest mother." She gave me a reproachful look, "You forgot to identify him after the snake fight?"

I nodded, embarrassed, and rubbed my neck. She and Alfonsen started laughing.

"Hey, don't laugh! You grew up with this shit; I didn't. I remember to use most things, but it takes time to become a habit. For almost forty years, I didn't have those abilities!"

She patted my back and said, "Yes, dear. Whatever you say. There is a reason your Archive moniker is 'Clueless."

I gave her a dark look and cut this conversation short.

After fifteen minutes, Mahya said, "We should start processing the rats."

Alfonsen made a sound of disgust and said, "They stink."

I gave him a medical mask and said, "Put it on; it might help."

Mahiya asked, with her hand outstretched, "Can I have one too, please?"

We donned the masks, and I took out all the rats. I was astonished; I knew I had fought a lot of rats, but not that many. Over thirty rats lay in front of me! And Alfonsen was right; they stunk to high heaven. It was like a combination of a baby diaper and roadkill that were left for a week to bake in the sun. Ugh!

I activated Appraisal, and the only thing that drew my attention was its head.

Beast Core 2-4 Gold

I didn't remember how much I appraised the beast cores of the wolves and bears in Tuonela, but I knew for a fact that it was higher. After removing the core from the rat, I understood why. It was as small as a grain of rice.

I asked Mahya, "Aren't those too small?"

"We can merge them."

"How?" I asked in surprise. I never heard of such a thing.

"The same way you combine a dungeon core. You hold two together and flow mana into them until they combine. That's the difference between mana crystals and gems. And the capacity, of course."

I stared at her, completely bewildered, and said, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Lis never explained?" She looked surprised.

I shook my head.

"I won't go into all the uses mana crystals have; I'm sure you have a few books on the subject. Maybe even books you learned the language already; Lis has tons of books on mana crystals. But we're really after their ability to function as mana batteries.

"You can store mana in several ways, but gems or crystals are the most effective. You can use diamonds or mana crystals without aspect to store mana for general use. In other gems, the aspects are inherent and cannot be removed, whereas you know how to remove aspects from mana crystals.

"Also, mana crystals are best for this purpose because you can store in one of these tiny crystals the same amount of mana as a pea-sized diamond or even a little bigger. If we merge them to the size of a grape, something like thirty crystals, we can reach the storage amount of a diamond the size of a plum. Besides, your house's charging station is incompatible with gems, so we need mana crystals.

"After I place them in the boat's system and balance all the flows, we can take them out, put them in the charging station, and return them to the boat when full. If we fill all the nodes, we'll have enough mana to sail to the US and back."

"Appreciate the explanation," I said, giving a nod. "How many rats do we have?"

They both took out all the rats they had stored and after we counted them, we saw we had eighty-seven rats.

"Is this enough?" I asked Mahiya.

She sighed and said, "No, we need at least five times that and preferably ten times that."

Alfonsen looked aghast, shuddered, and asked in a raised voice, "You want us to fight eight hundred rats? Are you crazy? They're dangerous, smelly, and disgusting!"

I was in complete agreement with him. Eight hundred rats? I shuddered, too, "He's right. No way I'm fighting eight hundred of those things."

Mahya looked resigned and said, "Maybe the Gates in Tibet will have a better option."

We continued to process the rats, and all the while, my mind was working to find a solution. After removing the cores from all the rats, I asked Mahya, "What do you want to do with all the bodies?"

"Let's throw them back into the Gate."

"How?"

"I'll show you."

She took a rat, went to the Gate, touched the inside of one of the anchor stones with one hand, and threw the rat inside.

Huh?!

"How did it get through the Gate?"

"I activated the gate when I touched the anchor stone, and since the rat is dead, there's no problem throwing it in. It won't work with a live creature."

After we finished throwing all the rats in, I cast Clean all around the Gate to get rid of the blood and said, "I think I have an idea how to collect the rats that we need."

"How?" Mahya asked.

"If we poison them, will it harm the beast cores?"

"No, and it's a good idea. But how will we get them to ingest the poison? Mana beasts are smart; they won't just eat it because we want them to."

"Rats like cheese, so we can use the smelliest cheese we can find. It should mask the smell."

"Ugh," said Alfonsen. "Smelly cheese stinks worse than the rats."

"Yeah, but we need the fuel to reach the US, and I don't know about you, but I prefer to smell stinky cheese instead of fighting murderous rats."

He sighed audibly and, in a resigned tone, replied, "Yes, I concur. Cheese is the more preferable option compared to bites."

After returning to Hangzhou, we took a day off to recover from the battle, then went looking for stinky cheeses and rat poison. After the first cheese shop, Rue announced, "I want go hotel! Stinks!"

I took him back to the hotel, and we continued to look for stinky cheeses. After we bought fifty kilograms of them, we went looking for rat poison. We were looking for a liquid poison that we could inject into the cheeses, but unfortunately, we only found grains.

When we returned to the hotel, we all put on surgical gloves, took thin wooden sticks, made deep holes in the cheeses, and stuffed poison grains inside.

I called Rue and asked him, "Smell this, please."

"Stinks!"

"Does it stink like cheese or like poison?"

"Cheese stinks!"

Good enough!

It took us hours to stuff all the cheese, but finally, we were done and went to sleep.

The next day, we returned to the Gate. Mahya again placed the camouflage poles, and we crossed the Gate, this time invisible. The other side of the gate was full of bones. Ugh, the rats ate their family. Just the thought made me shudder in disgust.

We moved all the bones so they wouldn't prevent us from crossing back and crept to where they first attacked us. We didn't see or hear a single rat.

I asked them telepathically, "Shall we continue, or shall we leave the cheese here?"

"Maybe it's better to go back towards the Gate where we don't have to go far to pick them up, spread the cheese, make a lot of noise, and when they come, cross the Gate back," Mahya suggested.

"Good idea," responded Alfonsen.

We returned to the Gate area, and fifty meters from it, we started walking around and scattering the cheeses. After we scattered all the cheese, we stood by the Gate, canceled the invisibility, and started shouting and making noise.

I shouted, "Stupid rats! Delicious food here! Come eat!"

Mahya and Alfonsen snickered but didn't say anything.

When we heard rustling in the trees, we quickly crossed the Gate and decided to wait a day and see what happens. We returned to the lakeside and spent the rest of the day swimming and playing in the water. We didn't use the E-foils; the lake was very peaceful, and we didn't want to disturb its tranquility.

The next day we crossed the Gate while invisible and immediately saw corpses of rats. We walked around, collected them all, and I asked Rue, "Look for the ones we can't easily find and store them. Give them to me when we cross back."

"OK!"

Good thing his shouts were mental, or all the live rats would be here in minutes.

We collected more and more bodies—I personally collected over two hundred and I had no idea how many they collected. After ten minutes without finding another body, I returned to the Gate.

I asked them, "Are we done here?"

All three of them sent a "yes" in unison. Rue, of course, yelled it, and we crossed the Gate back.

On the other side, we removed all the rats and started processing them. I didn't count the rats, but simply opened the head, took out the core, threw the rat into the Gate, and moved on to the next rat. We continued to work like this until it was dark, and me and Mahya cast our light balls and continued to work. At some point, I could no longer throw rats into the Gate. Something blocked me.

After casting invisibility and attempting to cross the Gate, I came face to face with a mountain of corpses. I pushed them hard and moved the pile a few meters. I kept pushing it further and further until I pushed it away from the Gate. The thought crossed my mind that I feel sorry for the Traveler who will try to use this gate in the near future; the stench will be appalling.

We finally finished processing all the rats sometime in the middle of the night. I cleaned Mahya and myself and also the entire area around the Gate, and we returned to the hotel just after sunrise.

We took all the crystals out to count, and including the crystals we collected the first time, we had nine hundred and sixty-four crystals.

I asked Mahya, "Is that enough?"

"I'll know for sure after we merge them to a good size, but I think so."

"We'll take care of it tomorrow. I'm going to bed."

Before I went to sleep, I went to shower. I had the Clean spell, but I needed water. I took a long shower, scrubbing myself and washing my hair over and over, shuddering now and then. It was a harrowing experience.

Before I went to sleep, I thought about it and decided that while it was disgusting—especially the stench of the rats and opening their heads to remove the cores—overall, this experience was good for me. I saw I was no longer helpless but could fight to defend myself and deal with particularly unpleasant situations.

But there were still things I needed to work on, like remembering to move and not to wait for Mahya to remind me, and practice my mana sense. It was an amazing tool that I wasn’t utilizing enough. Lis taught me to fight, but those things I needed to develop myself. All in all, I felt that I did a good job in my first real battle. It felt like an important achievement. I was also glad that we didn’t have to fight eight hundred rats. It’s always better to work smarter, not harder.