The humanoid replied with a flat, dead expression, "What?"
The lizardman looked over at their heavily armored friend and questioned, "What? What did it say?"
"Well, it said it was attracted by the smell of flesh and death," the rat-person replied with a hint of disgust in their voice.
"Oh, well that's absolutely fucking terrifying," the lizardman responded in a dead, almost sarcastic tone.
The rat began thinking that maybe that was a bad answer. It looked around nervously, and finally came to one conclusion. Run. The rat used [Focused Muscle Strengthening], [Strength Enhancement], and [Speed Enhancement]; it then charged power in its back legs and sprinted at the large tigerkin. The tigerkin reacted by swinging their fist down at the rat, however, the rat was far too fast and went right between their legs.
The party swung their heads behind them, but the rat had already used [Presence Erase] and its new level 6 spell, [Stealth Enhance]. At this point the party could no longer see their rat target and ran off in the direction they had expected it went.
The humanoid rat had yelled even at the lizardman, "Why didn't you use your [Track] skill on it!?"
"We had already pretty much caught it! A shadow rat shouldn't move at that speed," the lizardman replied defensively.
"Dammit, I can't smell it! We must be upwind," the tigerkin exclaimed.
The rat ran as fast as it could possibly move. At this speed it had already lost the party, but it had to make sure it lost them. It would need to run somewhere new - far, far away from the humans. For a while later it ran, and ran; it ran through a couple of deer on the way. While it never stopped to eat the whole body, it did eat whatever it could scoop into its mouth on the way. The rat kept running until it heard a notice.
[Warning: You are down to 15 St]
Hearing this notice, the rat made a dead stop. It realized in its run it had been eating up St and its magic had worn off long before. Realizing this, it had decided to move at a much more manageable pace. It took up a speed-walk pace and continued in one direction throughout the day. The sun had begun to set, but the rat kept walking. In the evening, the rat heard a sound it had never heard before. The grumbling of its stomach; in its continued walking, it had forgotten to feed itself.
The rat shifted its focus onto [Mana Detection] while it walked. Something had popped up on it. The rat made a left and looked for the source of this signal. It saw nothing. It couldn't see anything but it did detect the location of the monster. The rat had run behind a tree and kept low to the ground because most likely, the monster had already seen it. It began to crawl while in the shadows; its shadow cloak would give it stellar camouflage while in the dark of the evening. It pounced on where the signal came from.
The monster the rat was aiming for reacted quickly; it launched its tail at the rat. This tail had a sharp stinger on it, which stabbed into the rat's leg. The rat used its tail to slice at the other tail, but was too late. The stinger had injected a venom into the rat.
[Notice: you have been poisoned, you will lose 2 Hp per sec. All passive regeneration will stop.]
[You are poisoned -2 Hp.]
The rat had been alarmed by this development and quickly used the spell [Cure Poison].
[You are no longer poisoned, passive regeneration will start]
The rat immediately felt relieved at the reactivation of passive regeneration. The rat stopped feeling elated and looked at the monster which had just attacked it with [Body Scan]. Stinger Lizard, this lizard had a venom injecting stinger at the end of its tail. It had no weak spots, but wasn't very strong either. It relied on hiding and wearing down its opponent with toxins. The rat then used [Intimidate]; the lizard began to feel extreme fear to this rat, and got a debuff to its stats.
The rat used the sudden weakness of the lizard and sprinted behind it. The rat then used its tail-blade to slice down and chop the lizard in two. It worked. The lizard could only really rely on its venom; if something could get past it, the lizard would be doomed.
[Skills: Tail Whip have leveled up!]
The rat had missed the feeling of quick to level up skills. The rat chowed down, avoiding the venom gland stored next to the lizard's anus. It finished its meal and walked away.
The rat continued its walk and noticed the forest trees getting thinner. As it continued to walk, it led to a field; the field spread out across the horizon with small critters being seen every now and again in the short grass. In the field stood a city. It was half the size of the kingdom, but seemed to be doing just as well. It had carts flowing in and out of it. The rat could see a banner hanging down, this banner was white with a golden outline. It had 4 golden golden symbols on it: a lion's mane, a dragon's wings, a goat's horns, and… a rat? The rat was confused by the mismatched designs on this banner. Then it had an idea, a stupid one, but the rat was only 4 days old so it seemed pretty good. If the rat had been seen as a symbol these people saw as royal or majestic, then shouldn't the people there be okay with one smallish rat?
Maybe it was the ignorance of the rat, maybe it had been the exhaustion, but this seemed like a good idea. The rat began to walk towards the gate with lot's of unearned confidence. It walked up to the gate and immediately there was talk of the rat. Some screamed, some simply gasped, but the biggest reaction had been that of the guardsmen. They yelled about this rat, but had not put their weapons to its throat. The rat could see they were visibly sweating, could it be the effects of being in the rat's presence? Must be!
13 more guards showed up and then pointed their spears at the rat.
… Well shit.