Lord of the Myriad Worlds

Chapter 208: Man Versus Rat

"Li Wei, you think you've got the full picture? You think you're something? Idiot — you moved too fast. You blocked everyone else's path, so don't be surprised when everyone blocks yours right back. Understand? This is a small lesson. What's a Rookie King worth when you're still drinking our bathwater?"

Li Yue unleashed everything she'd been holding in for days. The sheer venom in it told George exactly how much pressure she'd been carrying.

George listened attentively, expression a perfect blend of remorse and confusion. Liang Yuzhi, however, saw straight through it.

"Stop performing, Li Wei. You didn't actually want to trade for food — you wanted intelligence on the mission mechanics. Ha! Fine, I'll tell you this much: once we're gone, that Four-Star Rat King is going straight for you. Either you meet it in a decisive fight, or you abandon your wheat field and spend the rest of the mission huddled on the rooftop. Tell me — can you beat it?"

"Rookie King, my foot. Pfft!"

Liang Yuzhi was venting too, and she meant every character of it. She'd held it together for weeks. She and Li Yue were senior players, Three-Star Lords, respected in their respective departments — and they'd spent half a month being outplayed at every turn. If she didn't get this out now, she'd regret it for the rest of her life.

So she went ahead and said it. All of it.

George absorbed everything with the patient demeanor of someone listening to a much-needed critique.

Satisfying. Deeply satisfying. Consider it arranged.

Li Yue continued, triumphant: "You think getting friendly with those three ragtag Ability Users early gave you some kind of longterm advantage? You don't even know — about ten days ago, those three showed up at the parking lot while we were stripping vehicles. Claiming we were their 'slaves,' that they wanted to reproduce, that you'd sold us out to them — garbage like that. I went over and beat them flat on the spot. Weak as trash with a mouth they couldn't back up.""After that, they became our little servants. We used them to trigger the Critical NG. Want to guess how we did it?"

At that, both women burst out laughing — and in the laughter, simply ceased to exist. Dissolved into air.

They hadn't told him anything.

That was the point. Leave him confused. Leave him infuriated. Best fifty-four gold coins he ever wasted.

Ha!

George's expression stayed completely flat. He walked over and examined the three Ability Users' corpses — which were already rapidly decomposing, dissolving into three wisps of dark energy. Not even burials required.

So that was that.

He was entirely on his own now.

George processed this silently, then smiled to himself.

He went back to foraging. Unhurried, he spent the rest of the morning gathering wild plants and hunting field mice in the surrounding wilderness — preparing a proper breakfast and lunch with care.

He also cleaned and oiled his armor, readjusted the bowstring tension, ran a blade-oil treatment on the dagger, slept a proper afternoon nap, took a wash, shaved, cut the hair hanging in front of his eyes, and tidied himself from head to foot.

When the sun began to set, he went up to the rooftop, ate his roasted meal, watched the sky, and waited for an old acquaintance.

It arrived right on schedule.

At the precise cusp between day and night, it came — it came with all its children and grandchildren in tow.

In the wild, slanted red light of sunset, the center of the ruined town shifted. On a mound of rubble, a massive silhouette rose slowly to its full height. Royal posture. Commanding presence. The light and shadow interplay was genuinely artistic.

If George hadn't known better, he'd have thought he was watching King Arthur meet the Round Table at their final assembly.

He stood up. The same gold light bathed him from all sides.

Tonight — who was the king here?

George was certain that Four-Star Rat King was looking directly at him.

Beneath its feet, a tide of mutant rats began pouring from every ruin — catching the last of the sunset, they resembled a vast, moving golden carpet of fur.

This was war.

George had always held war in full respect.

He came down from the rooftop without any haste, put on the Noble Crest Armor with deliberate care, took every weapon he had, and squeezed out through the third-floor door. By the time he emerged, the Rat King and its horde had already closed to within striking distance, moving directly toward his wheat field.

The wheat had just germinated. Barely. Not visible yet above soil. Under normal circumstances, mutant rats couldn't launch a subterranean attack on that foundation — but right now they were coming in the open, in mass formation.

Exactly as Liang Yuzhi and Li Yue had described. They were experienced, he'd give them that.

"Squeak! Squeak!"

The horde was closing fast. A kilometer away. The Four-Star Rat King at the front, moving with the mass and presence of an actual bull.

George could see its eyes. Cruel and entirely composed.

His own expression was just as settled.

Nothing to worry about.

He even had time to finish chewing the dried field mouse in his mouth.

Because it truly was nothing special. At this point, everything simplified.

A few more minutes, and the horde of no fewer than two or three hundred mutant rats had closed to four hundred meters.

That was when George raised the Three-Star War Bow, drew a precious Three-Star Sniper Armor-Piercing Arrow from his quiver, and drew the string slowly to full moon. Simultaneously, the Blood Crow — locked at Level 2 in orbit above — acquired the Four-Star Rat King as its target.

At that moment, the target let out a sharp squeal. The entire horde instantly accelerated, flooding toward the wheat field. And the Rat King — George was fairly certain of this — flashed him a grin.

'Shoot me, or save your wheat field?'

Then the creature began moving. Fast. Approaching the sprint speed of a charging bear. And it was running in sharp zigzag patterns.

'Come on. Come shoot me. I dare you.'

George shot anyway.

The Three-Star Sniper Arrow left the string with a sharp, piercing cry. The air split. The projectile carried enormous kinetic energy — at minimum ten times the power of a standard arrow. That was beyond any doubt.

What was in doubt: whether he'd hit.

And in the ordinary sense of the word, of course he wouldn't. The Four-Star Rat King's movement was impossibly evasive.

Standard approaches would accomplish nothing against it.

George was not a standard approach.

In the critical final fraction of a second, the Blood Crow dissolved into a streak of crimson light, merging with the arrow in flight. Through the Blood Crow's course-correction, the arrow's trajectory shifted in a way that defied normal physics — and hit the Rat King dead center on its spinal column.

Dead center.

The creature's defense was undoubtedly exceptional, but the Three-Star Sniper Arrow still drove three full centimeters into it. The Rat King screamed. Its huge body rolled. Its rear legs went completely limp.

Paralyzed.

This was the best window to finish it. George let it pass. He turned rapidly, drew, and fired — arrows flying in sequence, pinning mutant rat after mutant rat to the ground as they rushed the field.

But these rats were operating on something beyond ordinary instinct. They absorbed the losses like they'd been ordered not to stop, flooding toward the wheat field in an unstoppable wave.

George drew and fired at speed, every shot clean — over thirty arrows in under a minute — but he couldn't deter them. They were too close to the field now.

He dropped the War Bow, grabbed the Heavy Wooden Sword, and jumped from the third floor. He sprinted directly at the field and threw himself into them.

Close combat, it turned out, was the correct answer.

Ten kilograms of heavy wooden sword, one horizontal swing per arc, clearing a wide radius. No matter what angles they rushed from, he refused to give ground — stepping forward, cutting left, blocking right, sweeping in broad arcs. Not a single mutant rat reached the interior of the wheat field.

The field's design was serving its purpose. Without that one-meter-wide, three-meter-deep trench ringing the perimeter, he would have absorbed some losses. With it, this was entirely manageable.

The enlarged mutant rats still hadn't completed their full mutation. They couldn't leap the gap cleanly — they had to first drop into the trench, then clamber up the far side. That gave George just enough margin to intercept each one. Down they went, one by one, like dumplings into a pot.

As fast and as fierce as they were, even the ones who threw their bodies directly at George accomplished nothing. Cowhide Boots — Three-Star. Noble Crest Armor — Three-Star. No helmet, but these teeth weren't breaking through, and George was faster than any rat in any room.

In under a minute, he had hammered down over a hundred mutant rats. By that point, real fear began taking hold in the horde. They scattered in all directions with frantic squealing — and George went right after them.

If you came all this way, did you think you'd just leave?

He caught every one he could and flattened them.

He was beginning to think about letting himself breathe again — when his every instinct fired at once. Hair standing on end. No time to look. He lunged forward, one explosive burst, vaulted up and out of the trench perimeter — and about a dozen thin, golden, needle-like Rat King bristles shot past the air behind him, embedding themselves in the earth.

Those bristles looked delicate. They were not. If even one had connected, George wasn't sure his Noble Crest Armor would have held.

When had the Rat King recovered?

Spinal column hit — and it just walked it off?

If the spine wasn't a vital spot, where was?

George was genuinely alarmed, though he had absolutely no time to look back. He ran. The predatory sensation was tracking him like a radar lock.

And there it was: if you could have seen it from another angle, the Rat King was coming like a tank being unloaded at full throttle, its fur shifting under the sunlight as wave after wave of bristles turned a blazing gold — ripening like a wheat harvest, launching in systematic salvos, tracking and carpeting the ground twenty-plus meters behind George's every step.

George had swapped to the Dog Butcher title just to squeeze out the last of his Agility, and he was running with the full conviction of someone who intended to survive — legs pumping, face distorted with effort.

As composed as he'd been ten minutes ago, he was now equally desperate.

Just like the song goes —