"Come on Arabuis! We're almost halfway to the Mustrial Well!" A young girl's voice said with excitement. It has the freshest water of all in the town of Mustrial!" A vision imprints in my head once again. Like words in a book, the scenes speeds through my eyes with blurry haste. First a scene of a little girl, wearing a plain villager dress reaching out her hand, and my body telling me to take it. Then a scene of nightfall, feeling like I'm just laying there, enjoying the moonlight of the trees. "It's beautiful isn't it?" The same girl's voice rings in my ear from the right to the left. Another scene comes, this time a fire…ball? "You did it! You learned fireball!" Her voice once cheerfully said, before the scenes disappeared and darkness came to reclaim its land. It felt so peaceful… I just want to… sleep…
"Wake up! WAKE UP GIAI DAMN IT!" A loud cry broke Telonio from his trance, the headache coming back as he did. "What…where…" But his voice was drowned by the sounds of loud bangs from the dwarf's gun, as Thurium desperately slowly steps back. "I'm gonna be out of ammunition soon, so get up already!" He said with anger in his voice as he slapped Telonio's helmet. Telonio, with his head still in pain, struggles to get himself up,and the sudden smell of blood didn't help either. With barely any light for his eyes, Telonio subconsciously expands his mana sense, scanning all the nearby rats and tunnels. An organism of less than 1.5 meters, most likely the dwarf, and creatures ranking in the hundreds soon got within his mind. "My stuff better have not gotten damaged…" Telonio mumbles to himself as he gets back on his feet.As his eyes adjusted to the extreme dim light, a rat's corpse greets him. As the sudden past events flashes in his head, he hastily attacks the rats coming at Thurium; its guts spilling upon the walls. "I don't wanna deal with rats anymore after this…" He said, still struggling to breath a little from the intense pain. "Was it my fault you decided to solo raid this?" The dwarf said angrily, who has switched from his guns to a double sized axe. "How we spliting this anyways? 90-10?" Telonio asked, his voice just mumbling from his sore throat. "Haha! You can joke too! You'll be fun to drink with!" Thurium shouts as his axe cuts through another rat humanoid with ease. With Telonio now in action, the fight gets considerably easier for the two as they mow through the army of rat monsters like an alchemist losing money.
"80-20." I mumbled as I slammed another rat humanoid with two of its comrades, its body flatting like sliced bread. "Say that earlier and I might have just ditched your body here for the rats." Thurium states as his axe slices two rats at once, and coincidentally slicing the manastone alongside it. "Damn it my manastone!" While the dwarf was too busy scavenging his lost wealth, I was carefully saving my stamina. Just judging from the near non-existence of light sources, these rats specialized in pitch black combat, and it would have been more difficult had I not trained my manasenses for years. "60-40 since you did rescued me, but I have repaid that favor just now." "I'll do 70-30 because I know you won't be able to get out of here without me." The dwarf remains silent, probably angry but knows I'm right. We continue the fight for a few more minutes before the corpses themselves start piling up like a wall, and it seems even monsters know when a predator is nearby with enough dead bodies. But when the minions are dying too fast, their alphas come out next. Rat humanoids considerably more muscular than their counterparts arrive, stone clubs in hand. "Seems like the big fellows woke up." The dwarf states as he rips out another manastone from the nearby corpses and tosses it into his sack. "Three of those are mine." I said, propelling myself forward, my right hand held back. Choosing the middle one, in this case was also the least muscular one, I launched my fist with only around a third of my strength. However this rat seems to be slightly smarter than the usual variety, since it did try blocking my fist with its hand, but it forgot to account for one small character: strength.
Monsters have bones made to endure tough attacks from both prey and predators, and the same can be said for muscles to some extent. However, these rat monsters were born not for close combat, but for sneak attacks and during the night, so even if you do put muscles on an assassin, they won't be good at using them.
So, what happens when an assassin gets into a fight head on with an adventurer like me?
Absolute Death.
The rat's hand did block my fist from making direct impact to its heart, but all it did was make it lose its hand along its heart. As its muscles and my arm tores through its rib cage, I can almost feel the blood trickling down and trying to sneak through my armor looking for the smallest of gaps. The rat, suffering too much shock, barely moves his arms before collapsing. It was a near instant encounterment, an inevitable situation.
The both two from either side didn't seem fades whatsoever. "Seems like all those muscles weren't for show, but they do act as good restraints." I said, my mana senses telling me to take a step back from the remaining pair of muscular rats as they launched a fierce assault with their clubs at me, hitting everything from the ground to the walls. "Muscles are only good when you also train your speed and agility alongside them." I said with my hands now behind my back, my habit of playing with monsters getting to me again. "Telonio was it? Let's get going, we've been in this dungeon for hours." I heard the dwarf's voice from behind me. "Ok." I mumbled to him, pulling out my greatsword from my back. Pressing my legs against the ground, I slash my greatsword with precision, aiming for the stomachs of the two monsters. Even though they launched themselves with clubs over their heads, they might as well been floating in my eyes. So much blood on the floor it flows like a river from all the corpses…