Two hundred seventy-six rats were near me. Two hundred seventy-six that could kill me before I could find Kasidy. I had failed her. I had just told her I would watch out for her, and she got captured. Never mind the fact that I also failed to find a place to set up a new dungeon so we could rest.

I knew I needed to focus; I needed to not get killed by the rats that were nearby. I needed to find a way to rescue Kasidy and Blink. I needed to do it now, and I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what had happened to them, and I didn’t have a clue where Renfry was. He might be dead, but for all I knew, Kasidy was dead too.

I slowed my mind as much as I could as I backed away from where I found the rats. Something was wrong with the rats, and I didn’t know what that was either. They didn’t attack until I kicked the one, and even a dead rat landing near or on them didn’t stir them up.

They were also quite not moving much, if any, and the place didn’t smell like rats. Something was wrong. This couldn’t be right. The room went back to its dead silence as I stood still. I was angry; more than angry, I was scared. I didn’t want Kasidy to get hurt, and she was locked up. The two I cared for the most were in cages, and Irwin was bleeding out as well.

Renfry was either separated from the rest or dead. I needed to let Blink know I was coming as fast as possible. If they were already captured and taken there, I was somehow much closer than I thought I was.

Too much was changing too fast. Rats that weren’t acting right, Kasidy captured, and Renfry missing. All my problems could get fixed if the rats weren’t here. If I had dungeon access, I could rest and recharge. Then I could figure out how to rescue everyone.

Yet, here I was without my dungeons and without my friends. I shouldn’t have split the party. Sure, we would have had a hard fight, but I was sure we could have killed these rats. I should have brought everyone with me, but I failed.

By then, I had backed myself back into the light. Not the full light of the Castle but where it reached. Just enough that if a rat came at me, I would see it. Just enough light to fight and perhaps just far enough away from the rats that I could activate the dungeon seed.

Warning!

62 hostile creatures within core room perimeter.

Dungeon at risk of destruction

Reduce hostiles before Planting Dungeon

I started to cuss in my mind. The pop-up wasn’t giving me enough information. I needed to know how many to reduce. Or even better, where they were and why they weren’t reacting.

I backed up closer to the Castle line. I was now just two steps from being in the full light. So I activated the seed again.

Warning!

16 hostile creatures within core room perimeter.

Dungeon at risk of destruction

Reduce hostiles before Planting Dungeon

Seed is too close to Castle Core. Available mana reduced growth stunted.

I couldn’t keep back the outburst. “Damn it!”

Too much was going wrong. When the word came out, I knew I had fucked up. Badly. Just the one sound of my voice stirred up the rats. It was horrifying as all the eyes opened, and the red beady devils looked my way. Yet they still didn’t make a sound.

I only had 90 seconds left on my standard. My totem was most of the way full, but there was no way it could kill them all. Worse than that, there was a large rat with them. Its eyes weren’t as big as the Huge Giant Rat’s, but I could tell it was getting up there. This meant there might be magic, and it was likely armored or some other crazy thing.

They only gave me a moment before they charged. I couldn’t set my standard down as the floor was stone which meant that I could only fight with throwing daggers and the totem to start with. It had been a while since I had been in a fight like this.

Then the first few came into the light, and it all made sense. They didn’t make any sounds because they weren’t alive. The first ones crossing into the light I didn’t even know to expect as their eyes were gone along with everything that wasn’t bone.

I grinned slightly. Things were bad but not as bad as they could have been. The two hundred seventy-six rats were undead rats. Now I just needed to figure out how I wanted to fight them off. Then I could set up my dungeon, rescue Kasidy and have fun killing the lich. Repeatedly.

Daggers sucked for fighting the undead, and even more so, I didn’t want to use the mana for pausing my knife, but if I was going to be planting a dungeon, then every second here was twenty-four there. So it made more sense to go all out from the start.

I needed to back myself up all the way down the hall into the castle control. I wanted the light for what I wanted to do. There was no sense in trying to fire off my stone sphere at the big guy without seeing where he was. I also needed to be able to target the zombie rats fast. The problem was that the undead didn’t want to give me a chance to prepare.

As they lunged at me, I let my standard kick on. Then I placed next to the wall my totem of conflict and retreated. I had never seen any undead attack an item. Even if it was hurting them, they always went after me. So either I had a face that was just unlikeable, or they didn’t know they could harm the item. Either way, it played to what I was good at.

I turned around and started to run away from the undead. I had my totem in place, and now I wanted more light. It would let me attack from two sides at once, hopefully letting me win. No, I knew I was going to win. It just wasn’t going to be pretty.

I dropped my dome as I ran. While I could have kept it up, I figured most of the rats didn’t have ranged attacks. So it would save my precious time. I would need every second if I was going to come out winning.

As soon as I reached the end stairs, I turned around. The rats had been chasing me the whole way. I flicked on my shield, and the stone air sprung into existence. Inside the dome were the first five rats, all skeletons. I focused for a moment on the lead one.

Hell Spawn

Undead (Skeletal)

HP 55

Mana 30

Weight between 50 to 75 lbs

Armor rating 1

Weapons

Bite: Blunt 2, Magical 1

Claws: Impaling 4 + 1 Magical toxin

Hell Spawn is the general term for all rodents that are made undead. They tend to be raised in mass and function almost as if they have a hive mind.

Hell Spawn are more fierce than when they were living. Each Hell Spawn keeps their normal talents but gains a pack awareness and additional health. Like Hell Dogs, when Hell Spawn run, they convert mana instead of stamina which leaks out their feet, giving the impression of smoke

Hell Spawn take damage the same as living animals, except they are immune to poisons. Hell Spawn can not regenerate damage and must be magically healed by adding mass back to them from other dead.

I didn’t even read everything before I knew it. Almost compressed knowledge came into my mind as I saw the close hell spawn jump at me. I quick cast fire fist onto my foot and shifted my feet as I shot a sidekick at the creature. The skeleton rat tried to latch onto my foot but couldn’t as the force of my kick sent the burning beast flying out of the dome.

The other four weren’t idle as they attacked all at once. I kept my standard up, holding the other back as I shifted around. I couldn’t use the standard as a weapon as I would gain negatives to my skills if I tried. However, I could keep it between us. With my standard in my left hand, I started to dance.

The second spawn to reach me found that I still had my knife in my hand. As it leapt at me, my dagger flashed out, scoring a grazing shot but still activating a pause. I stepped forward and fired off a round kick at the next rat before it got off the ground. My foot snapped its head back and around, but the monster kept coming.

As I placed my foot on the ground, I shifted my weight around and thrust a back kick into the body of the third one. With this kick, I had long enough to pop off my fire first spell, which I needed to figure out how to rename. As my foot made contact, the magical fire wrapped around it.

If everything were in a perfect world, I would have been able to finish off all four of the paused hell span before the pause wore off. Unfortunately, however, I wasn’t in a perfect world, and the hell spawn I paused jumped back at me. I now had one come at me from the front and one from behind, along with a headless one running tight circles.

The first one attacked from my front again, and I took him out with the same move as before. My blade just clipping the bone on his snout. The one from behind, however, took my focus on the first one as a reason to jump onto my back. I felt the weight of the rat and its pointy little teeth biting through my chainmail coif.

I twisted to my left and slammed my back into the wall. The thing might have been magical, but it was still only about ten pounds of bone. So when I threw my whole body into slamming myself into a wall, the hell spawn shattered with the most satisfying crunch.

I wished again that I had an XP count that changed. Then I could tell if I had killed something. That slight thought brought my focus to my HUD, where I saw that Renfry was still alive but low on health. The other two had vanished from the party.

I panicked as I kicked the paused rat into the headless one, sending them out of the dome. I thought to Blink. “Is Kasidy still alive?”

Blink sent me confusion and an image of Kasidy sitting in the cage. “She looks it, Daddy! Are you okay?”

I sheathed my dagger and drew my first throwing spike. Of the dozen hell spawn that could get to me, three were the zombie version. I smiled and threw my fire-based spike at the near one, then followed that up with another fire.

I thought back to Blink. “She and Irwin fell out of the party, and I thought they were dead.”

Blink fired back. “Who’s Irwin, and what’s a party?”

I had three spikes left. One would pause my foe. I left that one alone and slammed my other two into the unharmed zombie. It dropped clearly out of mana to stay together. Then pulsed my dome, and three spawn fell through.

I sent an image of what I was doing to Blink, hoping it would make her leave me alone. “Irwin is our healer. He joined up after you left. The party lets me see how they are doing.”

Blink sent back across the bond hunger, jealousy, and rage. “No fair! You get to have a fun fight!”

* * *