Chapter 2: The Throat
From up ahead, a rat charged at him vehemently, drool pouring from its mouth and teeth clattering wildly. He slashed downwards and caught it right in its face. It backed away as he tried to slash it again, but the blade didn’t connect. It lunged forward two more times, only to reverse its direction whenever Raiden swung his blade to ward it off. Then, Raiden took the initiative and slashed downwards in a feint. The rat coiled back from the feint and then shot forward, not aware of the ploy. Raiden was already prepared to strike again and slashed down with a quick chop that bit into the rat’s skull and finished it off.
Raiden descended the tunnel and soon found himself in another cavern. Hissing and screeching in the distance let him know that he wasn’t alone. This cavern was much larger than the previous one, and so he hoped that he would have a little bit more time in between encounters. He pressed forward, hiding behind the boulders that were strewn about. He drew close behind another rat, moving as quietly as he possibly could to not alert it. When he got within striking range, he jumped out from behind a boulder to attack. He slashed multiple times as the rat tried to fight back, but was ineffective in its attempts. It quickly succumbed to its wounds.
Suddenly, a flash of hot pain rippled up Raiden’s leg. A rat snuck up behind him and clamped onto his boot. He fired his pistol right into its head. Not missing because of the close range. The blue bullet of energy penetrated the rat’s skull. The biting force on his leg grew slack, and the rat fell to the ground. Raiden tested his leg and felt no weakness. The bite had been superficial, with his sturdy boots stopping most of the damage. He had become careless and needed to be more cautious.
He circled back to the start of the chamber and then swept methodically from left to right, as he didn’t want to get ambushed from behind again. He noted that even though he had killed two of the rats in quick succession, he hadn’t been immediately swarmed. The sound in the cavern echoed, somewhat covering his position, and the rats didn’t seem all that bright. After a few minutes, he covered about one third of the cavern. The whole time, he had been recharging his mana pistol, and so he was ready when he spotted two more rats together. They snarled and leapt towards him. He began to move backwards, trying to use the boulders as cover and to keep one rat in front of the other. The strategy mostly worked.
As the lead rat closed in, he slashed toward its leg, wounding it. The other rat quickly came around to try to bite him. He slashed into its nose, continuing to backpedal. The cut aggravated the beast, but it didn’t slow it down one bit. As he was moving backwards, he nearly tripped as he stepped on a big rock. Quickly catching his balance, he swung wildly to try to keep the lead rat at bay. It dodged deftly and hissed at him. The rat with a wounded leg that was behind had finally caught up and began shoving the other rat to try to get back in front. Raiden used the distraction to commit to a full lunge as his blade bit deeply into the rat that hadn’t been wounded.
He retreated once more, this time carefully watching his steps and glancing back and forth to make certain that he had sure footing. He led the rats past a section where two boulders were quite close together. This let him deal with them one at a time. The rat with the wounded foot had regained the lead. When the rat got between the two boulders, he stabbed with his full strength. The blade went right through its neck, and it stopped moving. The other rat tried to scramble over its dead companion, but Raiden’s blade quickly found its head, ending its life.
Raiden advanced through the boulder field until a new enemy appeared. A rat that was round and bulbous and covered with many more spikes rounded a corner just out of sight. Raiden approached slowly, wary of the threat. He went in the direction of the rat until he nearly caught up. The rat turned its head and spotted him. Its eyes went wide, and it shrieked as it turned. It bounded toward him with lumbering steps and grew larger, swelling with each step. It had swollen to double its size by the time it made it halfway to Raiden, and the spikes protruded out alarmingly.
The rat squealed like it was in absolute agony, and an intense feeling of danger washed over Raiden. Instead of engaging the enemy, he followed his instincts and dove to the ground behind a boulder. A deafening boom exploded outward. A spray of spikes went in all directions with such force that stone shards littered the air from striking boulders. Raiden got up and peered around his cover, only to see dark shards embedded into the stone all around the explosion. Only a puddle of black ichor was left where the rat had been. Raiden shuddered; if those shards of carapace had hit him, he would have met a gruesome end. There was no way that this dungeon was normal. Something was definitely off. He wouldn’t turn back. He had to earn his class and pass the trial of the dungeon to join the order. He would keep going, even if it cost him one of his lives.
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Raiden was on edge from the near death experience he had just avoided. He advanced through the boulder field but didn’t find any more rats until he reached the very end of the cavern. There, a trio of rats sat as if they were guarding the exit. They hadn’t spotted him yet, and so he came up with a plan to try to split them up. He tossed a rock at one of the cavern walls, hoping that one rat would break off to go investigate. They perked up at the noise but didn’t move from their positions. Raiden then went back and found one of the dead rats and brought its corpse up to almost the cavern exit, where he hid it behind a boulder. He hoped the smell would attract one of the rats to come and feast on the corpse of its dead companion. He sat there for a while, but the rats still didn’t move. Raiden, eventually relenting, walked out from behind the boulders so they could see him. That finally got their attention. They fully sprinted towards him all at once.
He ran back into the boulder field, hoping to lose them. They were too fast for him, though, and quickly caught up. There was a patch of boulders just ahead that only had enough space for one rat to get through at a time. He managed to skid to a stop in between the boulders, but one of the rats was already leaping towards him. He slashed sideways and knocked the rat away. Another rat was right behind it and dove towards his legs. He tried to stab down at it, but the end of his blade caught on a spike and skidded off. Luckily for Raiden, the rat was going too fast to come to a complete stop and ended up shooting past him between his legs.
Raiden turned around awkwardly and stabbed down again, this time piercing the rat’s heart. He spun to find where the last rat was, only to have his vision filled by a mass of furry limbs and teeth hurtling towards his face. Raiden ducked his head at the last moment, but the beast latched onto him. A searing pain exploded in the side of his neck, and not a moment later, it was joined by another agony as the rat bit down onto his skull, only to have its jagged teeth bounce off after tearing through skin. He then shoved upwards with his pistol to try to push it off himself, but it wouldn’t budge. Moving with instinct, he turned the barrel all the way in toward the rat, making sure it wasn’t pointed at his own head, and then fired. The rat cried out and fell to the floor, and he wasted no time giving it two quick stabs.
The rat, which Raiden had knocked to the side, then made its reappearance. Like a feral animal, it dove for him. Raiden swung his blade horizontally to knock it to the side once again. With adrenaline rushing through his veins, he slashed repeatedly until the creature stopped moving. With huge, gasping breaths, he looked around for more danger. Nothing stirred in the cavern, however, and Raiden gratefully rested against a boulder to regain his strength. He had blood pouring down the side of his neck from one of the rat’s claws and a nasty gash on his head that was bleeding equally.
He sheathed his weapons and pulled out his pack to pour some water on his wounds and clean them out. He had packed a few simple linen bandages and a few of those he used to press against both his head and his neck. His heart was still thumping in his chest, and he still took in big gulps of air. Working quickly, he set the linen that he was pressing against his head to the side and grabbed a new piece of linen, which he used to tie around his neck. He repeated this process twice more. When he finished, he realized he only had one piece of linen left. He put the bloody linen that he had set on the boulder earlier back onto his head and then used a fresh piece of linen to wrap around and tie it in place. He knew his makeshift bandages wouldn’t be very aesthetically pleasing, but he didn’t care.
It isn’t like the rats are going to judge me. They want to eat me after all.
He was inwardly relieved that he was still able to make light of the situation. That fight had been brutal and, honestly, a little terrifying. If there had even been one more rat, Raiden wasn’t sure he would have survived. The rats were fast and vicious, and even one extra creature made a huge difference in his being able to overcome them. Raiden thought about the battle and how it could have gone differently. He figured he could treat the trio of rats like the two that he had found and fought previously. He had been saving his pistol as a means of last resort since he only had one shot, but he realized that if he had used it immediately, then he wouldn’t have been overwhelmed as easily. He knew he had to be careful with that line of thought, though. If he used his pistol and missed, it could spell the end for himself.
He pulled out his pistol and began to charge it. Raiden knew he had to keep pressing forward into the dungeon so that he could earn his class. It was dangerous, yes, but he had survived so far. As he thought about it, danger was part of the point. A person had to earn their class. It wasn’t just given to them. If you wanted to gain the Arcane Knight class, then you had to fight like an arcane knight. They used their mana to empower physical objects and engaged in melee combat. As Raiden thought about his progress, he could feel a stirring in his soul, and he knew that he was edging closer to unlocking his class. Raiden walked forward, descending lower and lower into the caverns of the gauntlet. After a few hundred paces, he found himself on another level. The mushrooms on this level were slightly larger than the ones on the upper levels, and the space was much smaller than the previous cavern. What wasn’t smaller, however, was his enemy.
