Chương 232: Slash Rats Part 3

The first Frost Over did little more than chill the area and give a small layer of frost to the fur of the Slash Rats. But when Damion cast it a second and then a third time, all the wet Demonic Beasts became frozen beasts. The wet ground around the area served as the perfect conduit for the spell's ability to freeze an area. All the Slash Rats in the spell range were flash frozen and the water that had pooled into the subterranean nests froze solid, sealing the dens.

Yuri was retreating down the other side of the hill. Navigating through the Fire Walls Geoffrey started and then jumping the final few meters to clear Ronald's bramble wall. At the same time, Phil was spraying the wet downslope with Ice Breath, making an icy slope that was difficult for the Slash Rats to climb. Ice below them and ice on the slope out, the Slash Rats were trapped in a slowly growing frozen prison. At least that was the case before the ground started cracking.

When the ground started cracking and splitting apart, Damion suspected something larger was underground, waking up and struggling to break free. Unfortunately, he could not see anything with True Sight through the mass of Slash Rats, living and dead. Not wanting to stick around and find out what was working its way out from below ground, Damion flew off towards the defenses the rest of his team had set up.

Phil followed behind him and a moment later the two were safely behind the bramble wall, feeling the ground as it continued to shake.

"Do you think we woke up the mother of all Slash Rats?" Ronald asked worried. Inara gave the Wood mage a cold stare as she killed a Slash Rat with Dark Blade. The Demonic Beast was one of the few that managed to make it through to the edge of the bramble. There were not many Slash Rats making it over the hill, past the Fire Walls and through the bramble thicket, but there were enough to keep Thomas and Inara busy.

"Even a B Rank Slash Rat would not be able to shake the ground like this. Whatever is causing it, is not a Slash Rat," Thomas told him. The ground continued to rumble, and more Slash Rats began making their way over the hill. All the mages were now scrambling to target the Demonic Beasts as they stopped bothering to run around the Fire Walls and simply barreled through them.

"Something has them spooked," Geoffrey called.

"Yuri, make sure the Slash Rats that are burning don't burn down the bramble wall," Damion called out instructions as more Slash Rats started appearing on the top of the hill.

"Ronald, start reinforcing the wall anywhere that gets weak. Thomas…"

"Got it, Twister on top of the hill," the Wind mage said before Damion could give him an order. Whatever was disturbing the ground on the other side of the hill, it seemed to terrify the Slash Rats. This eventuality was not included in their plan, but Damion felt that having the surviving Slash Rats driven into the team's defenses was not entirely bad. He just hoped that whatever was down there was not too much for them to handle.

While Thomas' Twister was slinging the rampaging Slash Rats through the air, Phil thought it was great sport. The Snow Hawk was up in the air attacking Slash Rats that had been picked up and tossed by the spell. Evidently, the bird was using the opportunity to perfect its midair tactics. The tide of Slash Rats soon subsided, and the team was able to finish the last few stragglers off. As their spells faded away, they noticed the ground had stopped rumbling and the ground had not shaken for several minutes.

Leaving each of them wondering if whatever it was had left or perhaps gone back to sleep.

"Is that what a beast wave is like?" Inara questioned. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Perhaps if we hadn't slaughtered most of the Slash Rats in the basin ahead of time, you would have found out what a beast wave is like." Inara did not say anything in response, but Geoffrey and Yuri both felt a chill go down their spines at the thought. They had seen how many Slash Rats had been in the basin. Their meager defenses at the base of the hill would have easily been overrun by that horde.

"Should we take a look and see what is over the hill?" Ronald asked as he was picking leaves off his bramble thicket to use for future attacks.

"First, start collecting the carcasses. These are all E Rank Ferocious Beasts. It would be a shame to waste all this money," Damion said producing a spatial stretching bag. Such bags could hold a lot, more than spatial artifacts in most situations. The downside of them, was they were not easily concealable. Spatial artifacts could be disguised as almost anything, even worn as a ring or necklace.

Spatial stretching bags like this could hold an enormous amount of material, but not forever and usually not weightlessly. Damion learned long ago how useful these bags were, though very often people neglected their use in favor of a mage with a Spatial affinity. The affinity was not rare, but as Arica had once told him, unless the mage had a high talent and affinity, they would never become a true Spatial mage, capable of creating spatial artifacts.

All the mages with mid and low Rank Spatial talents usually ended up working as mules for guilds and dungeon runners, like George Kripke, who Damion had hired for his second labyrinth run. For now, everyone was collecting and tossing Slash Rat carcasses into Damion's bag. He had no way to count how many of the Demonic Beasts were tossed into his bag and as they neared the top of the hill, he felt that soon he would not be able to carry it.

When the group looked down into the basin where the Slash Rats had made their nest, they were shocked to see the majority of the basin floor had vanished. When Damion flew off during the fight, the floor of the basin had been a frozen lake, due to the combination of Driving Rain and Frost Over. But now, it looked like a sinkhole had opened up and swallowed almost everything.

With True Sight, Damion could see a hole in the side of the pit which seemed to indicate to him that whatever had awoken beneath the Slash Rat nests had buried itself deeper into the ground to avoid being disturbed.

"Careful around the edge," Damion said to Yuri who was gingerly making his way down the slope to check out the hole.

"If you're going to go down there, toss those rat carcasses back up here," Thomas called down to his friend while he stuffed more rat carcasses into Damion's bag. The bag was very close to its max capacity. Damion guessed there were several hundred Slash Rat carcasses inside and that it weighed at least a hundred kilograms. He could still move it, but before too much longer, even he would struggle to.

"Are you going to lug that bag around with us for the rest of the dungeon?" Thomas asked as he piled the last Slash Rat carcass they could find in Damion's bag.

"We could lug it back to the Breach entrance and…"

"And what? Push it through or leave it there for someone else to come along and steal from us," Geoffrey said, cutting Inara off.

"I've got it covered," Damion said as he pulled the entire bag into the Magic System Inventory. With the Inventory, he could store the entire bag full of Slash Rats in one slot. The downside of course was that he had to bring out the entire bag at once, but that was not really an issue. In the Inventory, Damion could see that the bag contained a total of 429 Slash Rats.

A far cry from the thousands that had been in the nest, but most of those carcasses had fallen down the sinkhole and none of them were in a hurry to investigate where that led. When the group saw Damion store the spatial stretching bag they started to panic. Spatial stretching bags were not meant to go inside spatial artifacts. Spatial artifacts were made by creating a small pocket of space and attaching it to the artifact.

Spatial stretching artifacts simply stretched the space inside them, granting large storage, but at the cost of a constant mana draw. Inside a spatial artifact, a spatial stretching bag would not be able to draw on the ambient mana of the world.

"Don't you know you shouldn't put a spatial stretching object in a space ring, if the spatial stretching bag runs low on mana it could collapse and then overload your spatial artifact popping its pocket space," Thomas told Damion. The Wind mage would not be sad to see Damion lose one of his spatial artifacts in such a way. But the Ice mage did have at least a thousand gold worth of Demonic Beast materials and cores in the bag and Thomas did not want his share to be lost.

"Don't you know this is one of the Fontane's new space rings, it is very advanced," Damion said with a smile, playing off Thomas' concern.

"Hey, there are tracks over here," Ronald said from the crest of the hill leading around the edge of the valley.

"They look human!" If you are reading this novel anywhere except Royal Road you are reading a pirated copy. Support authors and their mediums by reading on the original hosting site.