Chereads / A Rat’s Second Chance (Old) / Chapter 15 - A Rat and Parties

Chapter 15 - A Rat and Parties

The rat woke in its burrow. The hole was dark and damp, so it felt just like home. Well, it would've except the buildup of water in the rat's small abode. The rat, alarmed by this sudden flood, ran out of its home at top speed. Because of the rat's decision to run at top speed, it burst out of the hole with such force that the dirt around the entrance was blown away. The rat launched at a tree, where it flipped itself so it would land feet first on the trunk of the tree. When the rat had landed, it clenched down with its paws, so it could look at the area around it from a safe distance.

The rat looked around. It had been raining while the rat was asleep, so it had covered the forest's foliage in drops of water and dew. The rising sun shone through the morning dew, and the light had formed into small rainbow lights. The scene was beautiful; one could describe it as mystical and mysterious. The emerald green leaves were illuminated by the rising sun, along with everything else in the forest; this gave the forest a pleasant, refreshing look.

Well, not everything was illuminated. There was a small dog-sized blob of darkness hanging off a tree's trunk. That blob was the rat - the only dark spot in the entire forest. The rat did not know what rain was, so it was confused by the dampness of the forest. As the rat did not know rain, it chose to ignore the change in moisture levels, and it first went to find some breakfast. Time to ruin the beauty of the forest!

After an hour's walk, the rat had found a horned rabbit. This small, fuzzy monster had found a nice bed of grass to call its breakfast. Its head had then been removed. The rat tried out its new bladed tail attack for the second time. Still extremely lethal. Neat. Very, very neat. The rat had walked over to the headless body of its prey and chowed down. With crunching and slurping noises, it swallowed down the small rabbit. Truly, the stomach of the rat did not fit in with the body.

After the rat's breakfast it wandered over to a lake. This lake had a waterfall on a small cliff next to the lake. The rat had dipped its head down to drink some water, but then the rat jumped back. On its [Mana Detection] it had sensed the fast approaching mana of a monster. There was a splash from the lake, as a lizard humanoid had sprang from the water. It had landed in a battle stance with a spear in one hand and its claw like fingers tensing up.

This was a lizardman. It had a human-esque shape and intelligence on par with one. Their heads was closer shaped to that of a lizard than human, with sharp teeth to match. This species' was covered in scales ranging from dark green to sky blue. It had eyes where the e white of them were yellow, their irises went from orange to purple, and they had vertical slits for pupils. The lizardmen have gills and a tail resembling that of a crocodile. The lizardmen were considered demi-humans by the different intelligent races.

The lizardman in front of the rat had light armor, the kind you could see on a rogue or scout. From the bushes to the left of the lizardman, a small figure had dashed to the left side of the lizardman. Another figure ran to the right side of the lizardman, something large. To the left of the lizardman stood a humanoid rat. One of the many choices from the rat's evolution list. To the right, a tigerkin.

The humanoid rat stood at half the height of his lizardman friend, but had much heavier armor. They had two maces with full on plate armor. A golden symbol had been placed on the middle of this humanoid rat's armor. The humanoid rat had been eyeing the dark rat closely; the party of adventurers had been stalking it for an hour now.

The tigerkin had been the opposite of the humanoid rat. They had barely any armor on! Their chest was bare, except for a strap that kept their… skirt… loincloth on? Honestly, this thing was either a pervert, or a barbarian… which is a pervert. Even the rat had been looking at the tigerkin with disgust, and it didn't even understand why!

The party had begun talking amongst themselves, in a completely alien language. At least the stuff the goblins used was simple! This shit is confusing as hell! Suddenly the rat had heard something it did understand. It looked at the source of the speech, and saw the humanoid rat.

They had once again said, "What is a shadow rat like you doing here!?"

The rat had been left speechless. Could it understand this creature's speech? Then it remembered something from its evolution screen. It had stated something about humanoid rats being able to communicate with rats. The rat thought about what it should say to avoid too much trouble. These creatures had been intelligent, and where there was one intelligent being there would surely be many more.

The rat had begun to initiate in the first conversation of its life, "Drinking, why's it matter to you?"

The humanoid then replied, "It matters to us because you were running from the start of a forest fire. Normally a rat running from fire is natural, but you're a shadow rat. The evolution before the tier-three monster, Black Rat. One of the signs of death."

Shit. How was the rat to tell this humanoid that it was actually a dark rat? This would make it a matter of curiosity being a new species, but also something which could be much worse than a shadow rat. From the rat's perspective, it might be fucked. This thing was what happened when you combined a strong rat, humanoid rat, bullet rat, shadow rat, and royal rat. The dangers this monster presented were high, and it was only a tier-two monster! This thing had god knows how many evolutions in front of it.

The rat in desperation said, "Just curious about the smell of flesh and death, you?"

Silence. Dead fucking silence.

The humanoid replied with a flat, dead expression, "What?"