Rune Seeker - Book 3: Chapter 53: Bristle Rat-Pack King

“This is absurd!” Seena said at the same time she torched a long line of rats with her Flame Gout ability. Long seconds of rushing flames washed across the rats while she tossed a pair of fireballs from her other hand, but it hardly made a difference.

By keeping track of his stacks of Killing Spree+, Hiral saw they’d still killed less than twenty of the rats.

A small explosion within the rushing wave of rodents showed From the Ashes+ still worked. Unlike before, though, there was no cascading effect of more monsters exploding.

“It’s only got one health bar,” Yanily said. “The Rat-King must be able to share its health with all the rats.”

Hiral dodged back from another smashing strike of dozens of rats condensed into a huge mace—countering with his greatsword to kill two more—and looked towards the center of the mass. A split second of attention brought the Rat-King’s name and health bar into view.

“That thing has a lot of health,” Hiral said, another backhanded sword-strike keeping the rats at bay.

“I can’t get close enough to attack the boss directly,” Seeyela said. “Too many of these little bastards all around. I’m changing tactics.”

Before Hiral had a chance to ask what the changed tactics would be, a pair of Gravity Wells appeared in the air above the boss. From one, three hydra heads grew, spitting lightning, fire, and burning lightning at the rats beneath. Out of the other, a shower of Ghost-Web Venom rained on any unfortunate monster close enough.

Though each small attack didn’t inflict a large amount of single-target damage, the constant onslaught noticeably eroded the long health bar.

“Looks like that’s it: Lots of consistent damage,” Seena said. From the ground beside her, four small totems burst upward, grinning wooden skulls wrapped in thorned roots sitting at the top of each. A snap of her fingers, and the skulls’ mouths opened, four seemingly endless streams of fiery darts peppering the rat swarm.

Small hits, huh? I’ve got just the thing. Pushing more power into the Emperor’s Greatsword, Hiral jumped back one more time, planted his feet, and hurled the sword forward with all his strength. Multiplying the sword’s weight by a factor of over fifty just as it left his fingers, the weapon flipped end over end to cut through the chasing rat river. That wasn’t his real plan, though, and he connected quickly with Stormstrike and Death Knell.

Needing a better vantage point for his plan, Hiral jerked his right arm down to his side and pointed his fist up at an angle. Beside him, Stormstrike followed the motion perfectly, and his threaded solar energy Stormstepped him right over the leading edge of the swarm. The monsters crashed down where he’d just been standing like a wave, but didn’t spot him appear a hundred feet closer to the center.

From there, the rat swarm looked almost like a vast whirlpool, thousands of the dog-sized monsters in a state of constant motion. Even as he hung in the air for a second, his Rune of Gravity cutting off the ground’s pull, his high Atn couldn’t keep up with the ebb and flow of rat bodies. They were all moving so much that no one party member hit the same rat twice, even if their attacks were only a split second apart.

And Yanily was right: There was some kind of health connection or funnel running between them all. The blood! That was it. Somehow, the blood was connecting them all and passing along the shared health. Now that he was looking for it, it was as plain as day. Every injury just released more blood to spread to the other rats, reinforcing the link and keeping them all alive when hundreds should’ve fallen to the individual injuries.

Good to know, but not why he was up there. Normal gravity already starting to overwhelm the influence of his rune—and the rats taking notice of him—Hiral pushed solar energy into Death Knell. Activating Sever Life and Cutting Field, he jerked his left arm down and buried the sword in the ground near where the Boss had been. Before he released the connection with the sword, though, it was time to test something.

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Adding a touch from his Runes of Expansion and Separation, the previously small, invisible blades suddenly tripled in size and cut twice as deep. Nice! That was the end of how long Hiral could stay in the air, though—not even accounting for the twisting geyser of rats erupting up right below him—and he blasted away on a step of Rejection.

The golden dome from Left’s Banner of Courage covered a large part of the field over by Yanily, and Hiral shot right for it. “Yan, do that lightning thing you did with my Cutting Field.”

“Got it,” Yanily said, a pulse of lightning erupting in a circle around him to push the rats back.

The second he had some free space, his whole body transformed into lightning itself, and he shot towards the sky. The blink of an eye was all the time it took, and he crashed back down with his Skyfall ability.

BOOOOOM!

No health-sharing effect was going to save the rats directly under the spearman’s point of impact. The ground cratered. Rat bodies simply disintegrated. Lightning charged the air itself and combined with the razor-sharp blades of the Cutting Field.

“There we go!” Seena said, and Hiral looked up at the Mid-Boss’s health bar.

70% and dropping quickly. They were doing it!

Hiral touched down on the ground, the buff from Banner of Courage washing over him, and cut off his connection to the two swords. The Reinforced Blightsteel Sabre fell into one hand while he drew an RHC with the other.

As fast as he’d moved, the rats were already almost on top of him, and he stab, stab, stabbed a barrage of thrusts at the incoming wave, then darted to the side. The necrotic effect from the sword might slow the healing, but he couldn’t hit nearly enough rats to make a difference. Or… could he?

A pull of his RHC trigger—more out of habit than anything else—and Hiral double-stepped back on bursts of Rejection. With enough distance between them to get a chance to focus, Hiral wrapped the necrotic energy of the blade in a sheath of Expansion. Adding in two layers of Increase—one each for size and power—he swept the weapon around in a wide arc at the same time the rat horde rushed for him. Like he’d done to expand the range of his kicks, the crescent of energy practically leapt out of the blade. Pitch black and radiating a deathly-cold aura, the necrotic wave was easily as tall as Hiral was, and thirty feet end-to-end.

Where black energy met rats, the rodents hissed and screeched, their blood turning into a thick, oil-like sludge. A dozen of the monsters fell dead at the contact, and the wave recoiled—but just for a second. Only the monsters that made immediate contact with the dark energy had suffered from the effects, and the swarm quickly discarded those that had been infected. Not even a heartbeat later, the wave rushed forward again.

No problem, Hiral thought, looking at his Ever Changing+ timer. He had a few seconds left. Still time for one more test. Another double-step back bought him some breathing room, and he cocked the sword back around his side and focused again on the blade. With all the bonuses he had now from things like the Torc of the Hive, max-stacked Vengeance, and Ever Changing+, plus the Banner of Courage, he was almost guaranteed to get a critical hit. The damage bonus from that would be pretty good, too, but big single hits didn’t work well on this boss. No, he needed something to drill the necrotic energy into as many rats as possible.

Drill, huh?

Adding the Rune of Compression into the equation, Hiral again swept the blade around in front of him. This time, though, instead of creating a wave of black energy to meet the rat swarm, hundreds of foot-long needles sprang free from the blade as it cut the air. Unlike the necrotic wave that had broken against the wall of rats, these spikes punched right through the first layer of outer rats—and the next ten layers as well.

Necrotic energy spread deep and fast into the rushing horde, the health bar above the Mid-Boss even turning black for a few seconds before it shed the infected limb. Hundreds of rats fell dead as they lost the critical connection keeping them alive, and the river of rodents recoiled from the dangerous sword.

Seeing how effective the sword had been, Hiral was just about to forgo the bonuses he got from Ever Changing+ to keep using the weapon when something shifted. The wave retreated from him. A pressure filled the air, as heavy as when he unleashed the Emperor’s Greatsword.

What?

The whirlpool of rats parted to reveal the Rat-King glaring bloody murder at Hiral with some kind of paired bone axes in its hands. A roar of anger—of challenge—and it shot at him like a loosed arrow.