Nervous eyes flickered up to Barkley as Avelina moved towards the rest of the fighters. The rats were attacking again and they needed every arm capable of holding and swinging a sword to defend against them. On her way over she passed by most of the women, too afraid to properly join the fray. Although the gender ratio was a bit skewed, it wasn’t as if all the men were being valiant heroes either. A good chunk of the men were also nervously sitting out. Bunch of wastrels, both of those groups.

Did they think that they’d be able to survive if they were weak?

Sure, they might be able to deal with the monsters as long as people guarded them, but who would defend them against their own guards. Utter fools.

As they reached the backline of the fighting, she looked for Jacob, conflicted if she should tell him. On one hand, she wanted to tell him about the fact that Barkley, most likely due to all the rat-men that he had already killed, was even above his level and that it could be dangerous if the power-levelled people here realized that they could actually pay them back, but on the other hand she didn’t want to reveal she could get Experience by patching people up just yet.

The decision was ripped out of her hands as one of the men holding the line suddenly backed off and started to run away, revealing the warm corpse of the man who had been standing in front of him, claw-marks all over him and his killer still hunched over his body, almost shivering with glee.

As the strange and disgusting creature reared its head up, her blue eyes locked with his beady black ones and combat started. She drew her sword without hesitation and stepped forward, stabbing forward once more. Her movements were noticeably swifter while at the same time having more ‘weight’ behind them. This came from a mixture of her training and increased attributes.

Still, she wasn't the only slight superhuman being around. The rat deftly dodged her strike, although his movements were a bit clumsy as if his body wasn’t fully functioning as it had been intended. Due to this, her blade scraped his left shoulder, but it was far from enough to make the feral thing stop.

For a moment, he paused as he hunched back before flinging himself forward, mouth open.

Avelina quickly and hurriedly stepped backwards, feet tapping against the ground in a rather hectic manner. At the same time, she pulled on the pommel of the sword with her left hand, using the lever effect to send the blade flying sideways in a heavy cut. Without a way to dodge the rat was swiftly cut in half, her [Clean Cuts] allowing her to fully bisect the thing with surprising ease.

Alas, the upper half of his torso still had momentum, causing it to slam into her chest, sending her sprawling back.

Defeated a [Fledgling Ratman lv.2], standard experience awarded.

Blood ruined her clothes as the notification rang out in her head, granting her a strange amount of clarity. Using the momentary respite, she glanced up. All around her scenes like the one that had just passed came to be. People fighting against the rats with varying amounts of success.

Some places were doing better. She could spot Jacob’s ragtag little group to the right and they seemed to be taking them down rather efficiently, working together. While Barkley; in the centre, himself just used his axe to maul them one by one, seemingly shrugging off the attacks without too much effort, protecting the people around him.

Even Craig was helping, using a spear of all things to stab from a distance. He clearly had the best weapon for this, but still as only barely pulling his weight. The amount of dead or wounded people on the side that Craig was defending seemed to be the largest.

Upon having assessed the situation, she jumped back in the fray, joining Barkley’s group. She didn’t need Jacob having an accurate count of the rats she killed, because she knew that psychopath would put in the effort to do so. She’d just get the information from Jennifer, that woman for all that she had the same temperament as Jacob, didn’t have his cunning.

She didn’t move too close to the bigger groups of people, given that if they got in the way that could be a clean one-way ticket to hell. There was strength in numbers yes, but not when those numbers didn’t properly know how to fight as a group. She lingered between Craig’s and Barkley’s group before she spotted another two rats attack one of the middle group’s frontlines.

She moved forward, at a good speed, but not rushing as she was trying to conserve her stamina. Upon arriving at the battle, she was just in time to see one of the rats chomp down on the defender’s left arm while the other one was moving in for the throat. Using their momentary distraction she jumped in and stabbed forward, sliding her blade into the stomach of the rat biting in his arms.

Defeated a [Fledgling Ratman lv.1], standard experience awarded.

The scream that followed as the one she hadn’t attacked tore out the man’s throat was one she’d be trying to forget for days. She knew that.

Without missing a beat, she raised her sword above her head and swung down with both of her hands, the blade cleaving into the remaining rat’s neck, digging deed before stopping on his collarbone. The twisted way their necks were evolving was still unnatural, meaning that her attempt at beheading it had failed somewhat, even with [Clean Cuts].

Defeated a [Fledgling Ratman lv.2], standard experience awarded.

Ding.

Reached Medic [Level 4]

[Unlocked Skill: Cloth: Allows for the user to slow down the bleeding of a selected target to 10% of the normal speed for 10 minutes. Can be used trice per day.]

The moment that she received the sudden rush of notification, she knew that she had chosen correctly. These defenders were still a danger to her and while she could most likely have killed the rat that had been going for his throat first, it was a risk. This way she got to kill both without risk to herself and one had even levelled after killing the defender she had left to die.

It had been a rational choice.

She still felt horrible for it.

Still, there was no time to get distracted by these things as she hadn’t been the only one looking to exploit momentary lapses in concentration. Out of nowhere, a third Ratman, this one having his fur tied into a knot, suddenly charged at her and as Avelina tried to pull her weapon out of the bone that it had gotten stuck in, she suddenly realized that it was stuck.

With a heavy impact, she landed on the ground as the furry little creature pinned her down. She could feel its claws digging into her shoulder and thigh, drawing blood. Still, as she flinched from the pain, her left hand pulled her knife, the one that she had used to cut open Barkley’s bandages, and slammed it into the side of the Ratman.

A loud screech attacked her ears as the creature recoiled in pain, but didn’t let her go just yet. It was clear that a single knife in its side wasn’t going to be enough to put it down. As it lunged at her throat, she twisted the knife while using her right hand to protect her face. A painful moment later, she felt his incisors dig deep into her skin, tearing muscles.

At this point she was going on pure adrenaline and pulled the knife out of the creature’s side before stabbing him again, all while it kept trying to push closer to her, nails recklessly piercing through her clothes as it simply tried to struggle to stay alive. Still, in the end, Avelina had the advantage. After who knew how many stabs, the creature finally slumped over on her.

Defeated a [Fledgling Ratman lv.4], standard experience awarded.

Ding.

Reached Medic [Level 5]

A pained rasp left her throat as she pushed herself up and glanced at the battle around her. That one had been smart. Its level showed it. It had probably ambushed quite a few people as it did. She was happy that it was dead.

As she realized that the battle was winding down, she limped back to the camp, deserting the front lines as she realized that she was in no state to fight. Her right hand was clearly out of commission for the time being and she needed all these wounds treated before that she’d get infected.

She understood now how Barkley had gotten this high level this quickly. Who knew how many pitched battles that he had been in.

The moment that she sat down, back near their medical supplies, she could feel her body crashing down as the adrenaline spike that she had been riding was curving down again. For a moment, she inspected the wounds on her body before placing a hand on her leg and thinking of the skill that she had just gained, trying to test it out.

For a moment nothing happened before something clicked in her mind. She could almost see the blood that was flowing out of her wounds coming to a halt. It was an interesting skill, especially given that haemorrhage was one of the leading causes of death when it came to wounds like these. Only a few places would really kill a person that quickly, without relying on them bleeding out.

Her blue eyes closed for a moment as she placed the bandages with some alcohol on them above her wounds. For a moment she hesitated before biting on her teeth and bringing it down. Barkley had been able to suppress crying out from the searing pain that came with disinfecting wounds like this.

Sadly, she wasn’t Barkley.

Once her mind wasn’t filled with just pain, she started to rub as thoroughly as she could, making sure that the wounds were clean. That way she at the very least wouldn’t need to suffer this agony more than once. Even as she knew that she’d need to disinfect it again when she would have to replace the bandages.

Their medical supplies were a bit limited to change bandages too often, but she was more than willing to splurge a bit on her own recovery. If people complained, they could do so to the other person who could properly stitch them up and treat their more serious wounds, oh wait, there wasn’t anyone here.

After finishing the treatment on herself, she shakingly stood up and glanced around. A few of the non-combatants had been watching her, most of them at least having the decency to look ashamed for not having aided.

“Medic!”, a haggard, but still stunning, woman suddenly called out to her as she came rushing over, “Please! It is Craig, they, they-”

Avelina didn’t even wait for the woman to finish speaking. She grabbed her bag of medical supplies and started to move forward. While fighting with her right hand was out of the question, she was good enough to do some basic treatment with her left and a stunted right hand.

As she reached the front once more, she noticed that the fighting had ended and that the group of people had clearly gone down from being sixty strong to about a bit more than half of that. From the haunted looks in the eyes of the people around her, this wasn’t a new occurrence.

Her eyes glanced down to Craig, the older man who had taken charge of this group of ragtag survivors. The father of the young man that she had killed at the start of this, Adrian. The piece of shit who apparently kept sleeping around with one of the cleaning ladies, and in a twisted way, had gotten her into this situation.

If he hadn’t slept with that cleaning lady, the windows wouldn’t have been dirty and she wouldn’t have made it a habit to stare at them.

He looked pretty bad. Half of his gut had been opened up and he was losing blood, fast. She crouched down next to him and swiftly inspected his wound, revealing that the wound didn’t seem too deep so as long as she could stop his blood loss, he’d probably make it, although he’d be bedridden for quite some time.

“Can you help him?”, the woman from before called out to her.

Avelina glanced at her, thought about the new skill that she had just gained, almost as if the system knew that she’d be needing it here-

And then met Jacob’s cold eyes, silently giving her a single command.

She took a deep breath and then pushed herself up, shaking her head. As she opened her mouth, she could feel everyone leaning closer and tensing up. Hope and fear flashing through most of their eyes, making her realize that Craig might not have been a good person, but these people somewhat respected him.

“I-”, she stumbled on her own word as she was about to explain her skill to them, not wanting to let a well-respected man in front of her just bleed out before a small part of her mind objected to the idea.

These people were dangerous if they ever turned against them and she had no guarantee that Craig would be grateful enough to not harm her after all of this was over. Nervously, she bit her lower lip and changed the answer that she had been going to give all of them.

“Sorry-”, she averted her gaze, “He is losing too much blood too fast. Nothing I can do about it, even if I started now.”

Somehow that lie hurt more than anything so far.