After he mindlessly accepted the sword, she easily guided the near comatose boy to the door leading down to the cellar, "Hurry up and deal with the rats so I can show my... appreciation."
Issei gripped the sword tightly as his own sword rose at the mere thought of what her appreciation might entail.
Determined like never before in his life, not even the time he worked himself to the bone to get into Kuoh Academy, he stepped down into the cellar.
Unlike he expected, the cellar wasn't pitch black, it wasn't bright as day either.
However, it was well lit with plenty of torches in sconces putting off enough light for him to clearly see his surroundings.
At the bottom of the steps, he entered a hallway lined on either side with barrels marked with alcohol labels such as Ale and Mead.
He could see to the end of the passage where it turned a corner.
Between him and said corner was the biggest goddamn rat he'd ever seen in his life.
It wasn't monstrously big, but it was the size of a small dog making it rat-zilla as far as he was concerned. No wonder the wonderful oppai gave him a sword!
The rat wasn't paying any attention to him as it gnawed on a section of the rack holding the barrels.
Issei decided to try and sneak up on the rat so he could get it in one shot.
He'd never killed anything bigger than a cockroach before, but he would do anything for glorious oppai! The rat seemed oblivious to his approach until he got within a few feet of it.
With a squeak, the rat spun around to face him and hissed.
That... that didn't seem right to Issei.
He didn't have any time to think about it before the rat lunged at him with its mouth open and its wickedly sharp teeth in plain view.
He would deny the yelp he let out to his dying day! Un-manly sounds aside, he managed to bring the sword in his hand around and flail it at the rat to effectively ward it off from biting him.
He did not want to be bitten! Who knows what kind of diseases a rat like that could have!
The rat wasn't idle, with another squeak it charged Issei once again. Feeling slightly more comfortable with the weight of the sword in his hands, Issei swung at the charging rat once again.
The rat moved to dodge but let out a loud screech as the blade bit into its shoulder and cut it deeply.
Issei capitalized on the injury when the rat stumbled by swinging the sword down as hard as he could at the rat.
The sword cut through the rat, giving Issei his first victory, and then slammed hard into the solid stone floor of the cellar.
Issei shouted in pain and dropped the sword as the shock of hitting the stone flooring traveled through the sword and into his hands.
He jumped up and down and shook his hands vigorously to try and get the pain to go away. As he tried to recover from the pain, he looked at the sword and winced. It was now stained with the blood of the rat and the tip had been damaged from hitting the floor so hard.
He worried that damaging the sword would lower his promised reward!
With his hands somewhat recovered, he moved to retrieve the sword hearing a, somehow, deeper squeak just as his fingers curled around the handle.
Looking up while bent over, he came face to snout with a significantly larger rat. The one he'd slain was the size of a small dog, this one was at least twice as big, about the size of a medium dog.
And. It. Looked. PISSED.
It charged Issei with a long drawn-out squeak that sounded like a roar to him. He barely managed to get the sword up and pointed in the general direction of the rat and then it was upon him.
He watched, in horror, as the enraged rat impaled itself on the sword in its enraged charge. He stared, dumbly, as the now dead rat's weight pulled the blade toward the ground.
"What the hell kind of rats are these?! I was expecting Mickey Mouse here!"
SQUEAK!
Another rat, the same size as the second one and looking equally pissed off, let out a bellowing squeak and charged at Issei.
Panicking, the boob-obsessed boy tugged at the sword still buried in the corpse of the second rat. His jerking tugs became more desperate as the rat grew closer.
His eyes widened in shock as the rat leaped clear over its dead friend and slammed into him. Issei fell back, the sword coming out of the dead rat with a sickening shlorp and then flying out of his hand to skid across the floor and out of sight.
Issei screamed in fear and pain as he scrambled to get away from his attacker. The rat, unwilling to let its fresh meat go, began biting and clawing at its prey.
Issei's screams of agony soon transitioned into gurgling attempts at begging for help as the rat finally managed to rip his throat out. The rat let out a screeching victorious cry as Issei's struggles stopped.
Now it was time to feast!
"No, seriously. What the fuck are you doing Issei?! They were goddamn rats! Someone with minimal training could kill them bare-handed! I know you don't have training, that's why I gave you a fucking sword! There were only five rats, FIVE! I know I liked ragging on you, but Jesus Christ dude, way to prove me right!"
Ryuji so wished he had something he could throw at the wall as he watched the remaining three rats from his first scenario feasting on Issei's body.
Well, not really. Issei's real body was now inside of his inventory because it now belonged to him. What the rats were eating was just reshaped meat, a trick of the scenario that let him get a corpse as intact as possible while still rewarding the minions that liked eating flesh.
The real body had some minor damage from the claws and missing throat, but not much else.