Seeing the rats approach through the narrow tunnel, I decide to stand my ground for now. As the tunnel is quite small, only one or two will be able to move out at a time, and since I have a weapon with a long reach, I should be able to hold them off for a bit, and get some XP. Once the first rat reaches the tunnel entrance, I swing my whip around to hit the rat, with little finesse involved - after all I've never even held a whip before, let alone used one. I miss the rat, and once again my left leg comes alight with a strong burning pain, causing me to almost collapse. Luckily, after my recent heavy exposure to pain, I have become slightly more tolerant towards it - although not to any significant degree - and manage to remember to use Mana Regrowth to heal myself. Taking a second swing, however, I hit the damned creature. Also, I remember to identify the rats once they come into my direct line of sight, for the skill XP.

It takes me six hits to kill the first rat, giving me a baseline for those that follow, which is also around the same as those in the water, as they are the same species. Although the rats appear quite dumb, as the next two rats file out of the door oblivious to the fact that their companion is dead, allowing me to kill them. As those two die, however, a strange, faint pulse appears in my mana vision, coming from further down the tunnel. At this, the rats begin to emerge in twos or threes, slightly more sporadically. I still manage to kill the rats as they come out, allowing me to kill another seven, although I am slowly getting pushed back. Looking up into the tunnel once more, I see a larger mass exiting the tunnel, along with a flood of the same rats I've been fighting, and identify it;

Monstrous Sewer Rat King - Lvl 7 - [BOSS]

The Monstrous Sewer Rat King is the evolution of the common monstrous sewer rat. A rat king can only exist when rats of it's species have reached a certain population in the area, and when that occurs one rat will be evolved. The rat king holds command over all normal rats of it's type not under the influence of another king.

These traits make it a worthy foe for low level and rank adventurers, as well as city guards who clear out the sewers of mobs.

+50%

'Ding!'

Congratulations! Skill - Identify Has Leveled Up!

A skill needed by most adventurers (and owned by all Earthlings), Inspect allows you to see the basic stats of items and monsters. Details depend on relative level of skill, user, and object.

No cost to use.

1 second cooldown.

Novice lvl 4 - 90.10%

*Detail of identified information increased

'Well, at least I get benefits from being fucked over, I guess...?' Even though skill level ups seem to do little except between skill tiers, I still welcome the increase, with a total of two levels as I got one more while killing the rats before. However, the sheer level of fuckedness I am about to go through now is seriously off the charts. Even though I'm a much higher level than when I faced the Slime Queen, I can't distribute any of my attribute points, or have any of my title stats apply (not including stat unlocks, apparently). So, I am essentially a level one noob trying to fight a level 7 boss mob and his hordes of level 3 minions. 'How much more fucked could I b- actually, let's not continue that thought, I could always have to face a level 100 dragon on the next floor... heh...heh...'

I begin to back away, but stay away from the water - these are after all sewer rats, built to swim quickly, even if this rat seems a bit big to do such a thing. The ~1m tall rat-like monstrosity follows at a surprising pace - especially for it's bulk. The dry area of tunnel up here is only about 15m long and 3m wide, so I have very little room to maneuver, especially with more of the little ratty buggers around the edges of the tunnel. It is slightly faster then me, leaving me with no choice but to try and face it head on. I start to whip the giant rat as I continue retreating, however I can only get in a few whips before the rat reaches me. At this point, I pivot and run past the rat, once more whipping it as I move past. Continuing this pattern, I whittle the rat down to what I would guess is around 50% health.

At this point, the giant rat makes a peculiar noise, accompanied by another mana pulse, after which the smaller rats surrounding the area rush in to try and defend their king. The giant rat backs off behind the swarm of monstrous buggers, of which even two or three at once could cause me serious harm - and there are dozens of them. Kicking any that get close, I try to keep them all at range, while abusing Mana Regrowth for health regen, at least as much as my mana pool can handle - after all, my MP regen is only 0.1/min with Mana Vision active, and 1MP/min invested into the skill. I still continue lashing out with my whip, but with the flood of enemies, I manage to once again hit myself twice. The threat of death is the only thing stopping me from passing out from pain, with how badly mauled I'm getting, but with all the adrenaline in my system I manage to persevere. I manage to kill a few of them, before the rats once again back off.

As they resume their previous positions, the rat king once again approaches. Obviously this fight is on some form of pre-programming, or perhaps it could be just their instinct as a race. Me and the rat king once again resume our former tango - me getting mauled often in exchange for getting in a few points of damage. Sadly, my mana pool empties within the first few exchanges, as I have to spend one or two points of mana to regen the damage he does to me, meaning that I can only rely on my meager mana regen to heal. Luckily, this trade off does allow me to get in a lot more damage quickly, despite how painful it is. I start getting more evasive - after all if you can't recover from an attack why receive it - and continue laying down small amounts of damage to try and whittle down the boss' health.

Before it even reaches what I guess to be about 25% health, I'm already in trouble. With practically no mana to heal actively, my health keeps taking more and more hits. With each hit from the king rat, I lose about 1hp - so long as it is not a direct hit. Most hits I manage to dodge, but it takes me 10 mins to regen the amount of mana to actively heal that back, although as I have one point invested into the mana regrowth skill, I can heal it passively in one, however it is much easier to manage and target damage with active healing - after all, I still feel the effects of being injured, such as mobility loss, which may not be a priority for the passive skill. Still, I am taking much more damage than I can heal at the moment.

Once I manage to drop him down to ~20%, my health starts getting too low to keep fighting in a frontal confrontation.. Deciding to take a risk, I deactivate the mana vision skill in pulses, so my mana regen goes up while I should be able to still see. However, the sudden shifts from bluish light to darkness are, in fact, really disorienting. Instead of being able to heal faster, I begin to instead lose health faster, and within a few seconds my health goes down to about 3/10. The boss charges me, sweeping my feet, and sending me a few meters backwards into the closest wall. As I hit with a thud, dropping my health to 1/10, A new band of bright bluish light appears overhead, and makes the rest of my mana vision unclear. Deactivating it, I see that a row of ceiling lights have turned on - obviously I just flew into a switch.

Sadly, smaller, more detailed objects are hard to spot with mana vision, as it merely shows the mana all objects emit in small amounts. However, now that the switch is on, I can have much greater mana regen, which will allow me to heal faster. Looking across the room, it also appears like the rats are purely adapted to see in the dark, perhaps the same way I was, as they all appear much less coordinated and seem to have a much harder time telling where they are going. This, luckily, includes the rat king.

The new addition of light also allows me to properly see my surroundings and the rats - as well as what they look like. Like most rats, these have brown fur, four legs, and a rat-like body (duh), however they also have bright red eyes, webbed feet, and a paddle-like tail, showing how they are adapted to the water. Strangely, though, the rats' eyes appear slightly glazed. However, features like their mouth and teeth seem to be pretty similar to normal, however on a much larger scale - then again, I haven't ever inspected a rat's teeth before. The sewer rat king has a very similar appearance, just with the addition of the aforementioned crown-shaped protrusion, and larger claws and teeth to it's scale. Strangely, it's eyes also appear to be much brighter than the others', perhaps indicating some type of ability - maybe the king rat is controlling the monstrous rats, which could explain the pattern of the fight?

Within seconds, the rat king recovers from the sudden change in lighting, even though the surrounding monstrous rats are still practically blind. The recovery period, however, allowed me to recover some health, although not enough to make any worthwhile change. My stamina has also risen slightly out of the red, but not even giving me enough back to make one swing at full power. The main gain from the lighting change, however, is the observations I can now make. Although I have already observed the rats for their appearances, I have not looked around at the presumed service tunnel. In Mana Vision, although you can indeed see things, it is more like using an infra-red camera. What you see is dependent on the mana differentials between all things, with living beings having greater mana concentration than inanimate objects. This, however, also makes water appear opaque, although outlines are visible beneath it - hence how I could see the rats - as well as make your surroundings look like an amorphous blue-ish thing - no texture or form over the basics is discernible.

Now, however, with normal vision, I can see much, much more. For example, I can now tell that the walls are brick, and that the surface I am standing concrete, and part of - as I presumed - a sewer service area. There is a ladder on the far wall, sadly bricked off at the roof level - presumably due to the whole dungeon/pocket dimension/reality-based thing that this place is. It does, however, still give me a refuge - if I could get there. Of course, it is on the far wall of the service entrance place thing, with most of the rats between me and it, not to mention my new best friend, the hopefully soon-to-be-dead monstrous sewer rat king! Joy!

Despite these kind-of helpful revelations, I still have a very angry and quite injured sewer rat king opposite me. Both of us are down to ~20% health, with me on two and him (it?) on whatever the fuck what I approximate to be 20% health would be. From just those stats alone, it would seem that I now have the advantage now that it's minions are down, but that is most certainly not the case. Before I could use mana to heal, but now that I'm out, it will take me a while to regen to full health. It is still useful that his minions appear to have become more passive.

Once again I decide to focus on bullshittery to win, sprinting at the rat. The rat counter-charges me, his crown facing forwards, and as I nearly reach him, I shove hard with my right leg, sending me to the left, although still moving forwards and still standing. My new stats help with this maneuver, apparently, as instead of landing flat on my face like any normal (and not trained) human would do, I do the aforementioned action of standing up! Screw you physics!

As I had hoped, the rat continued sprinting past me, it's eyes widening comically in my peripheral vision. Of course it stops relatively quickly, but now I have crossed the 10 meter distance to the ladder. Leaping up it, I climb up the fixed ladder quickly, to the point where I am above the rat's reach. The normal rats all crowd around the base of the ladder, as the king once again approaches. He begins pacing beneath the ladder, as I turn my body to try and face the rats. Hooking each leg behind one rung, and resting each foot on the rung beneath, I manage to lock my lower body onto the ladder. Sadly, I can't get a much better position than that, due to the way the curved ladder is attached to the wall.

I hold onto the ladder with my left hand in this position while I tentatively extend myself to whip at the rats. The position is unstable to say the least, but is manageable enough to work. I focus on the king, only whipping any other rats while the king is out of reach - still doing damage to both despite the weakened hits from stamina loss. I spend about 5 mins doing this, allowing my health to regen, and even some of my mana along with it - which is instantly used to heal critical areas. This further hurts the king, even though my damage is reduced as I can exert less force through the whip. At the end of this period, I estimate that he must have dropped down to around 10% health. I give out one more whip, catching the king on the shoulder, and then stare in shock.

The king bellows loudly, which seems to make the surrounding normal rats regain focus and clarity, even in normal light. His fur also begins to glow red, as he backs up. He lets out another low growl, and sprints forward. As the minion rats part at his growl, I see his muscles swell beneath the crimson fur, as he lowers his crown-shaped protrusion to face the wall the ladder is built into. Of course, the rat is trying to smash the wall, or ladder, down, so I am within his reach. Not to mention the apparent use of a berserk phase!

As the rat king slams into the wall, I feel something crack beneath me, the wall I had assumed solid obviously having an area behind it. As the wall tilts forward slightly, I desperately try to throw myself forwards, free of the falling wall. I have a final look down, seeing the rat king, stopped in it's tracks, blood dripping from it's crown. It is staring at the falling wall, seemingly in the same state of despair as I am in, as my feet catch the rung they are hooked around. I come free slightly, falling towards the ground.

Before darkness once more comes forward to greet me, my last thought is;

'Why does this always happen to me!?'