As the group entered the mouth of the cave, Teddy likened caves to dungeons in an RPG game. For some reason, the System liked to gather or spawn its minions in these caves. They were absolutely great for levelling and finding treasures.

Every active cave has an alpha beast or monster. Alphas could simply be stronger versions of the beasts aligned with the cave, or completely boss level monsters. The larger systems tended to hold higher level beasts and higher level loot. Teddy had judged this cave to hold beasts around level 15. Which made the boss somewhere in the realm of level 20 to 30.

“How do you expect me to even fight in here then? I was injured in our spar. I haven’t even recovered yet.” Ray said

Status Screen

Health

165/310 (Regeneration: 15.5 HP/hour)

Mana

100/100

Buffs

Light Mending Potion (Regeneration +12.5 HP/hour, Mends broken bones at double speed) Cooldown: 27m

Debuffs

Broken Nose (Harder to Breathe, Strength -1, Dexterity -1, Agility -5) Cooldown: 3D:12h:45m

“Ugghh your busting my balls over here. I can’t give you another potion for around 30 minutes mate. You can only have one health and one Mana potion working at a time. Make do for now” Teddy replied. He then turned to Miu who was padding along quietly next to Ray. “You’re a scout, go find out what’s in the dungeon. You’ll get experience just doing that here”.

“Master, I’ll make sure to protect you with my life if anything happens” Miu said as she ran down the tunnel entrance.

They continued through the cave for about 20 minutes. The initial entrance seemed more like a dank hallway. They were slowly curving and going downwards into the earth but the cave overall felt fake in a way. The walls were just too smooth, almost like some game designer had made it without actually knowing what the inside of caves looked like.

Eventually they came to a large open square chamber 3 other hallways branching off in front of them. The left hallway looked extremely ominous. Spikes were poking from all sides of the entrance, whilst the right hallway was covered in moss.

“This can’t be real right? There’s no way this cave is natural” Ray said. He was starting to feel worried. A bad feeling kept tapping at the back of his mind.

Teddy sat down in the middle of the chamber. He was in deep thought and hadn’t even heard the question. In Teddy’s mind, there didn’t seem to be anything particularly wrong with the cave. It was a typical System generated biome.

The System was a hive mind with vast cosmic ability. It could reshape the worlds as it gained more influence over it. These caves were proof of that. The System tried to make them look and feel natural but ultimately as a hivemind, seemed to favour order above all else. Due to this, caves tended to have long slightly bent corridors with square chambers just like this one in intervals.

The system did try to make use of naturally formed caves as well, but they were obviously few and far between in a wooded area, which made the caves stand out all the more. Ray sat down next to Teddy. There was nothing more to do at the moment but wait for Miu to return.

Ray really wanted to talk to Teddy, break the ice. The silence was absolutely killing him. 30 minutes had passed, and Teddy was still deep in thought, it made Ray more nervous by the second. Finally, Teddy stood up. “So, what did you find?” he said.

Miu came padding out of the middle hallway, she seemed pleased with herself. She was dragging a large rat. She dropped it at Rays feet. “The only beasts I could find were rats. This one was level 12. I managed to catch it off guard and kill it” Miu said happily.

Teddy was frowning heavily. Something clearly had him upset. Ray looked between the rat and Teddy. “What’s wrong? It’s just a rat, nothing to fear from rats, right?” Ray asked.

Teddy was pacing, unable to come to a decision. Unknown to Ray and Miu, Teddy had extremely good hearing. He had unlocked what was known as a sub-skill. Sub-skills were natural skills which could not be bought or traded. They could only manifest over long periods of time, or by bloodline traits. In Teddy’s case. He had unlocked the perception based sub-skill [Advanced Hearing]. The skill amplified his hearing by about ten times that of a normal person and what he could hear didn’t sound great.

Specifically, Teddy’s hearing was filled completely with skittering sounds, and they were getting closer, albeit quite slowly. “We need to leave and fast” Teddy said. He was already starting to jog down the hallway they had come from.

Ray and Miu ran after Teddy. They were struggling to keep up. “What’s going on, did I do something wrong?” Miu asked. As Ray began to relay Miu’s message, he was cut off.

“Don’t bother, I can hear her if I want, which I’m doing now, though I’m being rude jacking your link.” Teddy growled.

Before Ray could protest, Teddy continued speaking… “We’re in deep shit. In the entire time I’ve been here, I’ve never come across a single rat or cockroach but I’ve heard rumours. Rats are the worst. Every single cut from a rats claws or teeth will apply a weak poison on you. This ain’t right though. There shouldn’t be such a large system here”.

“Why should we worry about that. We can take em” Ray panted out.

“We should worry about that because the rat killed by Miu will be one of the absolute weakest. A trash mob if you will. We’re fucked because where there are rats, there are thousands. We’re fucked because I can’t guarantee they won’t continue chasing us out of this cave.”

“But if they die in 1 hit, can’t we just back against a wall and fight them off one by one?”

Teddy let out a huge sigh of exasperation. “No! you don’t get it. If there are thousands, they’ll just swarm on top of us. 1 cut might not seem like much but when you are losing 1 health per minute from that cut and receive 50 to 100 of them within the first minute of a fight, you’ll be dead in less than 5 minutes. The poison fucking stacks!” He yelled, trying to urge Ray and Miu to move faster.

“Far out… Anything we can do?” Miu asked.

“Just run for now. We are almost at the exit” Teddy said

They eventually passed the exit and moved into the woods. What was waiting for them was the stuff out of nightmares.

Identify Used

Elite Rat Guard x5

Level 30

Born specifically to defend the rat king. Completely focused on its task and in the event of starvation will gladly feed itself to the king.

Rat King (High Boss – F)

Level 50

King of all rats in this region.

This particular rat king is overly aggressive. It likes to test its might on anything that enters its lair.

[Congratulations. Identify has reached level 10]

[Congratulations. Identify has reached level 11]

[Congratulations. Identify has reached level 12]

[Congratulations. Identify has reached level 13]

Teddy just looked at Ray. “Welp, it was nice knowing you” he simply said, resigned to his fate.

“There must be something we can do…. Some way to get away?” Ray said, though in his mind, he felt like it was hopeless.

“Probably not. Give me one of your daggers. Any one of them.” Teddy Said

Ray chucked the dagger he originally purchased from town towards Teddy. “Why do you want it anyway”.

“You coated that poison shit on it yeah? Only chance I can think of is if it works on the rats. Probably won’t be enough to kill em but maybe we can slow that shitty king down with it.”

The king was bored of waiting. With speed that was absolutely ridiculous for a creature of it’s size (twice the size of Ray), the rat closed the distance and immediately attacked Teddy. To Ray’s horror, even Teddy wasn’t able to react in time. The rats teeth sunk straight into his arm, just below the elbow. Teddy screeched in pain. His arm had been sheered clean off.

Ray didn’t have any more time to watch Teddy’s fight. The 5 guards also sprung into action. Luckily for Ray, they seemed to be a bit slower than his sparring matches with Teddy. Though, their strength was definitely off the scale. The first rat reached Ray and immediately attempted to bite him. Ray dodged backwards and drew both his daggers.

Miu immediately padded forward with as much speed as she could muster. She quickly scratched one of the rats and ran away from Ray. She hoped she could get a few of them off him long enough for him to perhaps killed any that were on him, or at least paralyze them, giving him a chance to escape.

2 of the 5 rats turned and raced after Miu. She padded into the trees away from the group while Ray and Teddy fought where they stood. Ray dodged another swipe from the first of the rats. He was forced to roll to his left when the second bit at Ray from the right of the first rat. During the roll, he threw one of his daggers straight it. The dagger dug into the rat’s foot. Ray came out of his roll and ran straight towards Teddy.

Teddy wasn’t doing well. He had managed to injure the king rat slightly with the dagger Ray gave him, but it seemed like the poison wasn’t working. He switched to one of his large swords and decided his only shot was finding a way to distract the rat and going for the feet. If he could just cut one of them, they might be able to run away.

That distraction came in the form of Ray charging straight at them. Unfortunately, the rat king didn’t even hesitate. It simply flicked its tail straight into Ray’s chest and sent him flying backwards. He crashed straight into one of the elite rats who was caught off guard. Ray immediately jumped up. The tailed hadn’t really hurt him, so he was able to move freely.

Ray tried to dodge another attack by the rats but he was quickly surrounded by the 3 and took his first real scratches, one to his arm and one to his left ear.

[You are Poisoned: Taking 1 damage every minute]

[You are Poisoned: Taking 2 damage every minute]

Ray knew this would probably be his end. He was surrounded, taking more and more hits and wasn’t able to do anything. He began to get angry. He remembered his fight with the Panther Cats. All through his time on this world, he was either being captured or attacked. Ray stopped caring about his body and jumped towards the closest rat. He flung his dagger forward and was rewarded with screech.

He pulled the dagger out and dove under the rat, emerging from the other side and continued running. He had hoped he scored a critical hit but wasn’t sure. He suddenly heard a shout of celebration.

“I GOT ONE!” Miu had shouted.

Miu was a cat, the natural enemy of rats. It turned out that any damage done with Miu’s attacks inflicted nearly 4 times the damage. Whilst that still wasn’t much, her smaller size actually played a benefit. She was able to easily dodge the claws and teeth of the rats and inflict small scratches with bleed stacking on the rats.

Slowly but surely, Miu savaged one of the two rats and it fell to the ground. When she screamed out, she hoped it would help Ray and Teddy gain some kind of advantage.

[For valor in battle, you have gained Strength +5 and efficiency +0.10%]

[For use of your speed, you have gained Agility +5 and efficiency +0.20%]

Miu was ecstatic. An entire level from a single monster. She turned to the final rat attacking her. She had lost attention for just one second, paying attention to the level up. The rat bit straight into her back, causing a savage wound. The single bite was enough to take 75% of Miu’s health.

“Fuckin Rat, just die!”

Miu charged away. She needed to regain her speed and distance. One more hit and she was dead. She padded back into the fight occurring, moving as far away from her rat as she could. What she saw on the battlefield shocked her.

Teddy was now missing his entire arm from the shoulder, instead of just from the elbow. Ray wasn’t faring much better. One of his elite rats was down but he had at least 10 small scratches on him. He wouldn’t last fighting like he was.

“Teddy, chuck me a potion, I gotta get it to Ray. He should be able to take one now!”

Unfortunately, Teddy wasn’t paying attention, he was too busy with the boss. Teddy teleported behind the king rat and stabbed it straight in its backside with Ray’s dagger. The rat was clearly getting slower, and the poison was the only thing that could be doing that. He didn’t even bother to remove the dagger, simply jumping back and grabbing his second large sword. The first one lay on the ground, completely destroyed.

Teddy yelled a battle cry and activated his final trump card. [Critical Blink activated] Teddy teleported. All Mana in his body suddenly left him. His giant sword was a blur as he kept teleporting to all rats in the vicinity, every time he swung his weapon, bits of rat flesh went flying. An eye of the rat king suddenly popped out in a bloody squirt. One of the elite rats was cut in two, the other had lost a foot. A final swing at the rat king was blocked. His sword shattered and teeth sunk into Teddy’s neck. The rat king tossed him to the side, a bloody mess.

Ray looked on in horror. Teddy wasn’t moving. Had the rat king won? Ray ran straight at the final elite on him. He slid straight under the rat and sliced open its belly. Intestines landed straight on his face as the rat collapsed on top of him.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!” Ray screamed. Ray threw his dagger at the rat king before his vision went black, the last thing he saw was Miu charging at the rat king.