There was another stone rat standing right in front of us, only difference was that his stone rat was about four meters long, two high and very menacing in appearance. In retrospect it looked a lot like the normal stone rats, it had a rock covered exterior from snout to tail, and it had an underbelly of normal grey like skin, just like a reptile. But apart from the massive size of this rat, there were spikes growing out of its back, and they stretched all the way to the tip of its tail where they spread to form a mace like tail.
The tip of the spikes had a purple coloration that let out a kind of purple vapor, that disappeared seconds after it came into contact with the air. Its fangs were huge, and they were just like the dentures you would see on a crocodile, but only worse. Its lower fangs was superimposed over the top, and the two main fangs shot out of its gum and extended for almost half a meter before ending in a rather fearsome tip. This rat had the mouth of piranha, a crocodile and sabretooth tiger combined. At this point you didn't need to tell me that being caught by any part of it's body, would mean bad news.
"How did it get behind us?" Teluna asked as the darkness coating his body flickered and stuttered, reflecting his troubled state of mind.
"I don't know, but if we don't get past this monster, we're going to die." I answered back.
Knowing that my rune would work on anything, and I could attack from a distance if I wanted to, gave me some sort of comfort. I had every tool available to kill this thing, however without knowing its capabilities it hard to predict what might happen. The giant stone rat shifted its weight, as it seemed it was about to attack.
I had to take the Initiative as I swung my sword, letting the blue wave that was sure to break every bone in it's body fly out. Then something I did not expect to happen, happened. The blue wave that was carving up a trench in the ground as it advanced, leaving rubble and pieces of earth behind, was dodged. Granted the wave this time was in a vertical slash rather than an horizontal, but the speed at which it left my sword was not something that could just be dodged.
The rat sidestepped the wave, and shot towards me in anger. It was fast, too fast as it crossed the distance between the two of us in seconds. I panicked and swung my sword again, this time in a horizontal manner, so that the rat would not have much room for dodging. And then it surprised me again as it jumped on it's hind legs and literally summersaulted over the blue wave of soul energy. As it was coming down, it was using the force of its unexpected acrobatic jump to bring it's spiked tail slamming for my head. There was not enough time left to dodge, but before the tail could land, I felt a hand pulling me as Teluna dragged me back.
"BANG!!!"
Dust and rubble flew up into as the ground was cracked, with the rats spiked tail deeply entrenched in the ground. I was caught off guard by the sheer power of this thing as I tried to figure out a way to beat it. Teluna threw a dagger towards it, sending it whooshing through the air at speeds my eyes could not trace. But the rat pulled it's tail out of the ground and battered the construct of darkness away from itself.
This was going to be harder than I thought, and to make matters worse....I was a little bit low on soul energy. Anything I had gained from the rats I had killed, has been used in the breakthrough. And while I was now in a higher realm and more powerful than before, my tank was almost empty.
The rat did not give us anytime to catch our breath as it shot straight for us, Teluna responded by throwing his daggers at it, while I quickly scrambled to my feet. The rat simply weaved and danced around the daggers like a fighter or something. I couldn't help but be shocked, this was no ordinary monster. It was intelligent, too intelligent if you ask me, and fighting it like it was a normal stone rat right would only end up costing me and Teluna our lives.
I ran straight towards the rat, I was sure Teluna thought I had gone mad. But fighting this rat at a distance was suicide, not that fighting it when its closer made me any safer, but it was too fast and flexible to throw things at. Contrary to it's stone body, this rat moved like it was a cat.
I figured that if I was closer to it, then there would not be much room left for it to dodge my attacks. And with a sword as deadly as it was simple. The rat's fate would be sealed. When the rat was about three meters away from me, I send my soul energy into the sword again, I was about to put an end to this discussion before I was hit by a truck. Or at least, what felt like a truck.
The rat had swung it's barbed tail at me, luckily for me I was close enough that the mace like part of the tail could not touch me, but that did not mean I was lucky. At that moment before that tail swept me off my feet, I could feel the tiny spikes on the side of its tail, spikes that I never noticed before. And they slid into my body for about four inches before the force of the hit picked me up and threw me into the air like a simple ball.
I understand pain, after all it has sort of been a constant companion from the very moment I had woken up in solitary as a vampire. And all of the time I had been close to death and narrowly escaped with the skin of my teeth. Compared to then, what I felt now completely dwarfed those other experiences.
"CRASH!!!, THUD!!!!" " ARGHHHH!!!"
Was that me screaming, I couldn't really be sure I was a little disoriented for a moment there. I could feel all of my bones, and they were intact, apart from the numerous holes poked in my side by the stone rat, I was completely unharmed. But this pain that I felt consumed me, I could breathe, yet at the same time I couldn't breathe. My heart was still beating normally, but I felt it stop painfully and restart itself over and over again in the span of a few seconds. And then there was the burn, it was as if someone had poured a highly concentrated doze of silver and sunlight straight down my throat and my veins, and stood there watching happily as I burned from the inside.
But my body was fine, at that point there was a sort of connection, an understanding about what was happening to me. It was as if whatever was torturing me wanted me to know it was responsible. I arched my back up in pain and then bent my body side ways as my eyes flew open wide with pain. I contorted my body and limbs in obscene manners as I tried to find an angle where the pain was not so much.
I could feel someone or something pulling and scratching at the insides of my body, I could feel them carry sandpaper used to smooth a silver sword, and use that sandpaper to scrub at my spine trying to peel my veins and nerves of its frame. The pain came from the poison in my system, and it was not your average poison, rather it was a hallucinogen. But this was a special breed. A tiny drop of this thing, even on your skin, and a person would be force to re-experience every pain they have ever been exposed to in their life, raised to the power of ten.
And the poison in my body was quite happy to tell me so, because it was a parasite. And it would grow and feed off my agony until my entire synapses were fried from the torture. I had no idea what was happening with Teluna, but as for the giant rat, I could see it hovering over me. And it was smiling. This level of intelligence was not something any kind of monster would have, there was something about this rat, and I couldn't put my finger on it. But Regardless I was helpless.
I could hear the sound of metal resounding of a hardened exterior, I suspected that the rat was using its tail to deflect every thrown dagger from Teluna, even in my pain filled haze I gave a sigh of relief, happy that the kid was still alive. The rat opened it's huge jaws, about to bite down on my neck when.
"SHRRRIIIKEEEEEEKKKKK!!!!!"
Due to my close proximity with it, the sound was actually deafening for a moment. It shook me really hard. But I could also see why, and enormous lance of darkness was shove through one side of its body and out the other. It was almost five meters long and a meter wide, and it was slowly corroding away at the rat's body.
The beast shrieked again and turned a bloody red eye towards Teluna, I think at this point it now understood that Teluna was the more dangerous of our pair. But there was no way I was letting this rat near that boy. I stretched my hand, and let loose all of my soul energy, converting from it's unseen and intangible form, into a form of matter I could control...…..gas. And then I pushed it all into it's body, and watched with satisfaction as the rat took a deep breath.
This was the end game now, I could feel every part of the rat, but I was not going to give it a painless death by simply pulling it's soul out of its body. So I did the next best thing. With my advancement to a higher realm, my control over my soul energy had grown by leaps and bounds, so I used my soul energy to disconnect every major artery, vein and nerve within its body. The rat suddenly went stiff and fell sideways, almost immediately the pain I was feeling vanished and I jumped up to my feet. I looked at the rat and saw that it was still alive, but I did not care how as I sent my soul energy to it's heart, and encompassed it, covered it and made sure every inch of it had my soul energy embedded. And then I proceeded to stop it from beating, as painfully as possible, until the rat was no longer living.
[TOWER HAD ABSORBED 534 POINTS SOUL ENERGY.]