Red didn’t look completely empty yet and maintained her sword and armor as she fought. Mash’s plan would be risky for him but should provide Red the break that she needed. He started pouring his remaining energy into making his armor grow, stopping his attacks. He was only moving to block the rats from getting past him. He grew his armor into a spiked stump that would cover part of the entrance. It didn’t get too large, but the rats avoided the spikes and funneled to the remaining opening. He kept growing the wall until he felt his energy fall dangerously low, then he sprang out from within it, heading towards Red’s position.

Red must have noticed him and didn’t resist when Mash shoved her backwards, with a new quarterstaff that he was growing. Once he was completely out of energy, he would have to rely on his Persist skill for the remainder of the fight. While he could use mana to repair a simple weapon, he wouldn’t be able to make his complex weapons or armors. They required to much concentration to maintain, and would have to risk pausing if he wanted to make them.

He spun his staff widely, knocking back a few rats with the motion. Only one rat died, the other two taking minor damage as they were flung backwards. He continued to swing, to move as he felt his skill kick into effect. He no longer had his armor and started taking a few scratches. He managed to avoid getting bitten and sustaining any major injuries, and focused all of his attention towards his movements.

He specifically designed his fighting style to work with his Persist skill. As the buffs hit him and his stats doubled, his body started moving more smoothly and the feeling of exhaustion vanished. The rats felt like they were jogging before, now it seemed like they were crawling. Even with his weapon in the shape of a quarterstaff, his new strength made disposing of the rats easy. He heard the crunching of their bones wherever he made contact. They were almost dying faster now than with his swordstaff and armor.

He stayed focused on the rats before him but paid a lot more attention to his own motions. Stopping before he killed the last rat, meant death. Even with the improvements, he couldn’t avoid them forever. However, he didn’t stop when he got bit for the first time, it hurt, but it was not a major wound. Thankfully, the wound was on his side, and not his arms or legs. His improved mental stats affected his concentration, and he found it easier to ignore the pain and focus on his fighting. With his improved concentration he took the opportunity to glance back at Red.

She was sitting and eating to recover faster. He also noticed Luke running up to her. That was all the time he could spare for them and looked back to the horde in front of him. It had dwindled significantly, but still seemed to have over a hundred rats. With all the dead bodies around, it became harder to use his eyes to identify the living from the dead. He found himself relying on the Mana Sphere and was reminded of how helpful it was. It had grown when his stats rose, which implied that the size of the sphere was dependent on a stat. He would need to figure out which one, before allocating his free stats. Afterall, he would have quite a bit after today.

Grinning slightly at the thought, he noticed as the sphere grew even bigger. Luke must have arrived and buffed him, and he could feel his movements improve again. Sadly, neither Red nor Luke could heal him from a distance. However, the bonus stats had changed a lot.

His movements and strength improved drastically, and his mental capacity grew enough to let him start forming his swordstaff again. It felt like he had undergone a drastic change, his mind working several times better than before. He thought that he could manage his armor too but didn’t risk it. With a small look, he saw Red and Luke sprinting in the other direction.

He worried for Jill, as he saw them run towards her, but had to deal with the rats before him. He could only go help them after killing all the rats here. He wanted to help, and focused more on landing hits, with his improved stats he could handle the extra damage. He could get healed by Red and Luke after.

He started moving forward, letting more rats approach him. His Mana Sphere was now over twice as large, and he could cover more ground by taking wider motions. Every motion hit more than one rat, and he had started incorporating more kicks into his motions. He stepped on a rat as it tried to run away and pushed until he felt the ground beneath his feet.

While slamming his foot down, he spun on the leg, making a wide swing with his staff, cleaving all the rats around him. He was far more efficient now that he was willing to take a few more hits. He made sure to pay them back, and every hit that he received would result in several dead rats. He wanted to make the most of the buffs and pushed himself to become more aggressive.

He stepped further out, he decided he would move deeper into the horde. When a rat tried escaping into the village, he needed to backtrack and kill it. It was annoying, but he was able to do it, and it allowed him to kill even more rats. The buffs lasted ten minutes, but he would kill them all within that time. With that in mind, he was glad when they stopped trying to sneak into the village.

The rats seemed to become frenzied and rushed at Mash even as he rained death upon them. He didn’t care what caused them to lose their mind, killing the rats like bugs. He embraced the fight more fully, as he didn’t have to worry about them escaping anymore. The monsters seemed determined to die, and he would help them. The fight had finished quickly, his buffs still active as he killed the last rat. He didn’t stop moving and tried making his way to his friends.

There were only a few rats between him and his friends now. Most were either dead or dying, and he killed the ones that were still alive. It took less than a minute to get to his friends, and he relaxed as he saw only a few rats remaining. They had succeeded, and he even saw the corpse of what looked like a bear. He would have to ask about it.

He killed the few remaining rats and approached them. Since they were safe, he checked his stats before reaching them. He stopped moving when he saw his health, leveling during the fight had literally saved his life. He didn’t have the opportunity to speak, as darkness devoured his vision. He collapsed to the ground motionless.

Name: Mash Class: Wood-Forged Pseudo-Monk

Level: 10 → 18

Health: 64 / 420

Energy: 0 /1060

Fortitude: 35 → 42

Endurance: 55 → 57

Strength: 31 → 34

Agility: 34 → 40

Intelligence: 45 → 49

Wisdom: 38 → 41

Charisma: 22 → 24

Free Stats: 0 → 40

Skills: Persist, Mana-wood Creation, Artificial Meditation, Mana Sphere, Monks False Core

Persist: Go beyond your limits. Continue current action even after depleting energy. Stats improve while at 0 stamina.

Current Bonus: +100% stats

Artificial Meditation: You have stolen the techniques of mages and monks to form an artificial technique. Meditating will increase the rate at which your body recovers, even healing minor wounds.

Current Rate: +100% recovery

Mana-wood Creation: You know how deadly sticks can be. Forge your mana into wooden creations.

Mana Sphere (Passive): Your eyes just weren’t enough. Sense the changes in the mana around you.

Current Range: 5 feet

Monks False Core (Passive): An unnatural mana core has fundamentally altered your body. Stamina and Mana combine to become energy.

______________________________________________________________________________

Red’s P.O.V

Red didn’t want to leave Mash by himself, there were still so many rats left. Although, she needed to help Jill and Luke. They had seen the rat queen, and it was making it difficult for them. Luke had come to get Red, as soon as He spotted it. He said that they would only have a few minutes before it joined the fight.

The two of them were now sprinting as fast as they could, Red started pooling her own blood into a ball as they ran. Luke healed her so that she could use extra blood without much worry. She didn’t have much mana left but could make at least one or two powerful attacks.

She arrived in time to see Jill catch a rat by its mouth and rip the top half of its head off. It was certainly a display that she hadn’t been expecting, but she pushed it to the back of her mind like everything else she had seen today. She had bigger things to worry about.

The queen rat was five or six times larger than the normal rats and fought smartly. It only struck at Jill when both her hands were occupied, and mostly let the other rats try to bite her legs. She was worried that there wouldn’t be enough blood, but that seemed foolish now. They almost created as much blood as Mash did.

When she got closer, she started gathering the blood from the battlefield. She would kill the queen with a single attack. She yelled at Luke when the queen rat seemed to notice them.

“Distract the queen, I can kill it if you can make it hold still.”

She stayed confident, and Luke nodded without batting an eye. She did though, when Luke transformed, growing to almost double his own size. His body seemed to bulk up significantly, and he grew a wicked scorpion tail.

“What spirit turned someone into a fucking chimera?”

She unconsciously asked the question even though there was no one around to hear it. She wondered if he would be able to kill it himself but doubted it. He must have transformed earlier, and the remaining rats meant that the form wasn’t unstoppable. However, he did slam into the queen with enough force to cause the ground to tremble slightly.

His tail immediately coiled around one of the rat’s legs and stabbed into her side. The queen rat let out an ear shattering screech, as it tried to run away, but didn’t budge in the slightest. Now she had to fulfill her end of the promise.

The blood formed into a thin needle, that stretched for several feet. It wasn’t any thicker than her arm and she shot it at the rat, making it stay compact for as long as she could manage. It tunneled into the rat like a nail through wood. As it pierced the queen rat’s skull, she let go of her fine control and let the blood expand. The queen stopped moving, as the insides of its skull was flooded with blood. It gushed out of wherever it could, creating a horrific image as it poured from its eyes and ears.

The fight wasn’t over though. When the queen died, the rest of the rats grew enraged. They seemed to lose all purpose and control and just threw themselves at Jill and Luke. She wanted to check on Mash but needed to help with the rats in front of her. Jill was obviously tired and needed to take a break. Since Jill didn’t have big skills like Mash or herself, she used her stamina and mana much more slowly, but eventually even she would need a break. Red took the initiative and moved by Jill’s side while telling her to retreat.

Jill took the opportunity without protest, and almost collapsed as she got behind the gate. Red faced down the rats before her, there were not many left now, but she was also low on mana. She opted to let her leather armor take the blows, forming only a blood sword to conserve her mana. Luke with his large size was drawing most of the rats to himself and made it so that she could fight freely. They were killing as many as they could, but they needed a break.

Thankfully, someone else had arrived to help with the few remaining rats. She thought it was Jill at first, but noticed the oddly shaped weapon. It was Mash, he must have killed all the rats on his side and come to help. She wondered how he managed to accomplish that.

Those idle thoughts vanished when she saw him; Mash was covered in wounds. How did he even have the health for that? She noticed a handful of gashes across his body, and even some large bite marks. Those were just the ones she could see from here, but he didn’t seem to slow down at all. When she heard of his Persist skill, she thought it was strong, but that wasn’t enough to describe it.

It had let him fight like he was overflowing with stamina and mana endlessly. It had even made him stronger and faster, and she felt a little jealous as she realized that she couldn’t follow his movements. The improvement to his abilities was massive. With Mash here, the remaining fight only lasted a few seconds. Mash approached awkwardly, swinging his weapon at already dead rats. When he got close, he stopped, and just fell to the ground without so much as a twitch.