Chapter 9: Chapter 8

In an instant, she found herself at the head of a small squad. Thirty people in all, and she had kept her own equipment, which was good. If she had to do this without the new Blade Of Ulric, things would probably suck. Mostly because the siege was done and she’d have to wait for ages to test it out otherwise.

Complete the Patrol with more than 60% of the squad remaining

 

Looking over at her men, she saw that they were the clumsy-in-the-field volunteers kind of men who could barely march and were not wearing armour that fit them very well. The test would be more keeping them alive than anything else. She was sure there would be some enemies coming to try to kill her and her men but wasn’t sure what. And that was what put her on edge, waiting for the enemy to arrive. Still, if she was on edge then her men were thrice as on edge, so she'd steel herself and make sure the men were as well as they could be. When the enemy finally did arrive, it caught everyone off guard with who it was. The vanguard scout came sprinting towards them, waving his hands dramatically and shouting.

“Rats! G-g-giant rats!” he shouted, arriving in front of Estaria with a panicked face. She mentally sighed and resolved herself to the fact that this job would be her dealing with a group of paranoid levies. Reaching out to plant a hand on his shoulder, she gave him a comforting smile that she gave everyone who got spooked out in the field. It was a smile that everyone learned how to do because everyone got spooked now and then. It was the nature of such high tension.

 

“In a situation like this, you can see something at a glance and it can panic you. You can think you have seen something, and you can go running off to tell someone. But you can’t report such things casually. As the forward scout, your report affects the entire squad. You have to be clear, you have to make sure that what you saw is what you saw. If it is not, then you have put everyone in peril” She finished her speech, and he seemed less panicked. A lot more towards the fact that he had seen something and worried rather than getting a clear view. It might have even worked if the speech didn’t immediately lose all credibility as a man pointed and shouted.

“Gi-giant rats!” The man screamed. The cry of surprise and fear fluttered through the ranks. Even Estaria took a step back. There were many monsters of the world, so why had it made her giant rats? She was shocked that they even existed, though stories always came from somewhere and The Empire did have stories of giant rats in the sewers. But then, she took a step forward and looked to her men.

“So the rodents are a bit bigger than usual. I don’t see any giant cats around here, so we have to kill them! Handgunners! Ready your weapons. Swordsmen gather in a line in front of them! They are threats to the Empire and will be killed as such!” Estaria’s thunderous voice rocked the men on their heels and halted the rout. And then to punctuate her orders, she pulled out one of her pistols and put a bullet down-wind, Sub-targeting the closest rat’s head. It was a white mook, and so its head was blown clean off. And then his friend was also downed as Estaria reloaded the gun with a flourish and fired again. Such precise shooting and the reloading trick that was most impressive gave the men the spine to follow orders and regain their positioning. Estaria’s pistol was joined by handguns, but they were hastily and inaccurately fired, and only a few of the bullets in each volley made it to their intended targets.

Sooner than she had hoped, they were inundated with rat. Scabbed, Swollen with hunger and with fur matted with dirt and other things best not thought to hard on, these creatures were desperate like a wild dog. Flailing claw and the occasional stabbing spear - they didn’t even have weapons for the most part - couldn’t hope to get through shield and armour, but the weight of number and desperation was doing the fighting for them, and men were buried and suffocated under a tide of dead rats.

Seeing their friends be squashed by giant rats had an understandably adverse effect on the morale, but Estaria kept them in place with her grit and presence, slicing heads and splitting torsos with her blade, eventually clearing the wave of rodent and concluding the situation. Three people had been mauled to death by the rats, three more were nursing bleeding claw-strikes, two had been resuscitated from near asphyxiation And everyone was shaken.

“Well, that wasn’t exactly the first combat situation I wanted you guys to be in, but you did well. We’ll finish up this patrol and-” Estaria was interrupted by the words of a beast behind her, which caused the whole squad to shrink back in fear.

“Kill-stab! Take Life-Bodies for Underempire!” the large, black-furred rat had a fractured grasp of how to talk, but that didn’t make it any less intimidating. A large, well-equipped thing with a dozen others. Taller, broader, more menacing than the half-dead creatures that came before, it occurred to Estaria that the ones before had been to shake up the line and test their defences before the proper warriors arrived.

 

The order to fire was one that went unheeded this time, and so with a curse, she just rushed the closest rat and struck with her Second Slice. The first blow knocked the vast majority of its luck down - and did some damage to health with the ice, it seemed magic didn’t play nice with Luck - and then the second blow sent it sprawling to the ground, where it died. The second black-furred rat thrust his spear, and it bashed against her shield with a jarring thud. Her retaliatory swing clipped most of the luck, but she wasn’t destined to kill it, as a pair of handgun bullets slammed into it. Having lost its Luck, the bullets hit home and felled the rat. Her radical charge into the enemy had emboldened her routing squad, at least enough to stand behind her jeering and shooting handguns. Although the way they shuffled back when it looked like she was going to retreat to them implied she was on her own as far as a fight went.

 

The support was helpful, as the Handguns snapped at anyone who tried to encircle her, and it seemed that despite being big and well armoured, the rats were not the bravest. None wanted to charge towards the group of gun-wielding men except in number, and every attempt to go around the woman in front would leave them exposed to the Handguns for too long before reaching the enemy. And so that lead to the only possible route, going through the woman. And so the sight of Estaria holding off a dozen armed ratmen while her men cowered behind her and fired off pot-shots whenever they thought they could, was branded into their minds. The woman captain carving up rats with her sword, each blow cleaving armour and spilling blood until by bullet and blade, there were no more rats left to fight.

 

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Turning back to her men with a scowl that sent them scurrying back as much as the giant rats had, she cocked her head and wordlessly ordered them to continue the march. It took them a minute to get back into line because nobody wanted to go near the rats and so gave them a wide berth, but eventually, they finished the patrol and got back to camp, where Estaria delivered the report of giant rats to the Commander - just because it was a magic dungeon test thing didn't mean she could neglect protocol. And one of the black-furred rat’s heads because she knew he would just laugh at her otherwise. Of course, it was spooky to see a giant rat’s head dumped on your desk, but he acknowledged the risk that this presented to his camp, and that night there was double guards around the perimeter. Several squads came back undermanned, a few never came back at all, and it was putting everyone on edge.

 

And then, the edge was justified. Rending the night and stirring people from their slumber was the crack of a handgun. All at once the camp came alive with activity, soldiers rushing from their tents to investigate the noise. And from there it was seen, a giant horde of rats descending upon them in the thousands. Chittering, screaming, raging forward like a tidal wave of fur and fang. The more disciplined handgunners among the camp quickly took to firing lines and delivered volleys into the horde, well experienced with the weight of number that many threats could bring. But the rounds were swallowed by the endless tide and there was nothing that could be done to slow it down. The night watchmen were simply absorbed into the teeming mass, and it surged towards the centre of the camp where the rest of the men gathered. And a new box.

 

The Skaven Descend.

 

Lovely and ominous. No quest, no direction, no anything. If these creatures were to overrun this camp, the city beyond them would be helpless. No warning of the oncoming horde, they would be at very least crippled, at worst crushed and emptied entirely. She could stay and fight, but the battle was so one-sided even her powerful attributes would do no good. And yet…

 

“Commander! Get a horse and go warn the city! We will hold them off long enough for your warning to matter. And take the head, so they can’t just ignore you” She told him. He had the position and standing to make an impact in the courts, and would at least gain the support of the martial-minded nobles. He seemed shocked at the sudden, blunt nature of it all, but quickly felt the truth in the words, grabbed the head, and set off out of the camp on horseback. That was the city saved, but now she needed to deal with the camp. The camp they were all going to die in…

Well, if it was her destiny to die in this quest to get a Job, then she was going to make the most spectacular death possible. She opened the shop for a moment and got Shop closed during Dungeons which was just perfect.

Returning to the front, she drew her pistol pair and unleashed both rounds, before quick-loading them and firing them off again. Her Cool ran dry from constant reloading, and then the pistols were discarded and she rushed into the fray, backed by swordsmen and halbarders to her sides and handgunners to her back. It was a fight far different from the siege of Middenheim. There she fought for the city and her life, but here she fought to kill as many of the bastards as she could and to give the Commander as much time to get away as they could manage. A pile of rats grew in front of the line as blade and bullet cut them down like wheat, but no wall held forever. Man after man fell to the swords, the spears, and the fangs of the rats. Some of them were overcome and set about ripping apart whatever they could get their teeth into and eating it.

 

Bullets ran out, and so the Handgunners made a desperate charge into the horde, and a momentary split in the wave gave Estaria the view of a large, heavily armoured rat-man, leading on the rest. She didn’t know if this was real or fake, but given the power of the System, it could be either. Or both. And so she pushed off, charging through the hole in their line, swift as the greatest of horses. A lesser man would simply get caught in the throng as it closed back up, but Estaria was fast enough to keep ahead of the curve, and so ending with a great leap, she soared towards the Rat-man, smashing him from his perch with her shield. Rolling to recover from the landing, her blade swiftly took a sizeable chunk from his Luck bar, which was reciprocated very quickly. The rat was fast, and it struck with undue force, but it was a situation where Estaria could truly grasp the speed of her own movements.

 

They clashed like lightning, a Rat-man squeaking in the broken tongue of rats, and Estaria blocking, dodging, and weaving. Eventually, with extended sub-targeting strikes, she disabled one of the Rat-man’s legs. And with just enough Cool built up, she threw a Double Slice to his head. The first cut triggered a Critical Wound, and with the second, his head came away from his neck. Mercy Of The Wolf providing the damage needed to kill him dead. More black-furred rats came out from around her, screaming in what seemed to be happiness. Why they would be happy that their boss was dead she didn’t know, but she geared herself for the fight. And as her health began to deplete, she was wondering when the quest would be over.

 

30%...25%....20%.....15%.....the quest, would be over any minute….10%.....5%.....any, minute……..

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