Ren was running out of money, it was that time of the month where he needs to go to the job boards in town and pick a job. Hopefully there would be interesting ones this time around. He was sick of doing chores for other people, he wanted to do something exciting for a change, something that could bring his adrenaline pumping. He was due for some exercise for quite some time now. Living around humans had thought him how leisure and slow life could be, which was nice, until you’re doing it everyday. When Ren arrived at the Job board, he looked at all the jobs posted there, skimming through each one. There were some about investigating stuffs, cleaning stuffs, helping with the shop stuffs. All the boring ones, until he saw one that talked about eradicating a horde of infesting giant rats. Now that sounds like a job for someone like Ren. With no hesitation he snatched the job flyer and head towards the site location.

WC: 168

When he arrived at the location mentioned in the flyer, all he could see was a deserted building left in ruins. The wind then picked up. Ren could smell something horrible stirring inside, as if it was waiting for its next prey to step inside, as if it was waiting for Ren to serve himself to them. With that, he walked into the building, one of his hand on the hilt of his sword, ready in case of anything. As he entered, the smell picked up. It smelled of decaying bricks and moss, which didn’t bother Ren as much as it would a normal person. He took a look around and sure enough, the place was in ruins. The paint on the walls were ripping away, the roofs were made of patches of holes and a few metal bars were sticking around here and there, which was a bit dangerous if he doesn’t look where he’s going.

WC: 157
Total WC: 325

His mission was to kill any rats he sees. But it seemed like there was no sign of life in there, for now. Then he heard them, a few squeaking. He turned around immediately and ran towards the direction of the sound, hand ready to unsheath his blade. As he ran, a giant rat plunged at him with its deadly claws from the ceiling above. Slash! Ren sliced the rat in a blink of an eye. He knew there was more lurking. He moved and bent one of his legs to the back and bent the other forward, while his hands clutched on to his sword, readying it in front of him, forming a ‘Seigan no Kamae’ stance. He closed his eyes as a white magic circle appeared between it. Screeching then quavered around the room. The rats have came out of their hiding place, lunging at Ren with their claws like how their fallen brethren did.

WC: 157
Total WC: 482

His eyes were still closed, but that did not matter as he could feel their movements in the air. He moved one of his legs in a full circle as he swung his sword in a full horizontal arc around him. The wind stood still before he sheathed his sword with an audible ‘clang’. The giant rats that were attacking him dropped to the ground. He thought to himself, that the rats were far too weak. He speculated that there were stronger ones deeper into the building. He remembered the flyer stating that the leader might be somewhere lurking in the sewers. So Ren ventured further into the building, searching for a way to get to the sewers while staying on his toes.

He walked throught the building, it was mostly empty and deserted. No sign of life. Perhaps he had scared the rats off? Soon, he found himself wrong. The rats were simply calling for more backup. Ren noticed this when there were several loud screechings to be heard. Giant rats began to swarm from all direction. The young ronin smirked at this fearsome sight. He quickly moved his right leg back and bent his knees while bringing up his sword above his head with both his hands. A little bit of wind picked up when he did this stance, but he was too occupied to notice it. The giant rats striked, and Ren swung down his sword in a sideway arc, with one swing he had took out all the rats that were hit by it. With his sword now on his side, he was able to do another full horizontal swing. Taking out the rats that were beginning to surround him. Right after his sword reached the end of the horizontal arc, he wasted no time and dashed straight towards a direction with his sword brought out, taking out all the giant rats that were in his way. He followed it up with a couple more quick swings, his body moved in a dance, not stopping for an instant. But then as he kept slashing at it he found the number of rats to be quite overwhelming.

WC: 360
Total WC: 842

Ren crouched his body down and bent his arms to his sides, a white magic circle shined beneath him, he thun swung his arms to the sides, autumn winds picked up and raised him above the ground while another set of autumn winds swirled around, knocking back the rats around him. This gave him an opening. He clasped his hands around his sword and began to unsheath it. A white magic circle then appeared where the sword is being unsheathed, autumn winds gathered around him and he dashed forward towards the giant rats, striking them in one big blow of his sword. Then he leaped in the other direction with another swing of his sword. A large number of the giant rats have been taken out, there were only several of them left, and Ren wasted no time striking them all down.

When the bloodbath ended, Ren sighed a breath of relief. Although he was a fighter, he had never fought a swarm this large; and something tells him that this was just a few of the giant rat’s army, and that there were many more in the sewers. A sudden realisation occured to him that maybe his sheer strength alone was not enough, and that he needed to start working on his magical abilities as well. Something to take note of when he was done with things here. He swung his sword to the side, knocking off the excessive blood that stained it, before he wiped it with a part of his clothes. A samurai tradition he had never forgotten. It was his father who taught him that anyway. He caught something moving at the corner of his eyes. It was one of the rats that somehow managed to survive, fleeing its escape. Ren wasted no time tailing it.

WC: 300
Total WC: 1142

Rats are not intelligent creatures. They do not know how foolish it was to show an enemy where their hideout was, and that was exactly what that rat did. It turned a few corners until it escaped into a manhole. Ren smiled and thanked the rat for making his job easier. Ren didn’t bother to even climb down using the stairs, he simply jumped down instead. The rat he tailed earlier ran up to a figure. The light were limited down there so Ren found it difficult to make up what the figure looked like. That was until it turned around and gleamed its red eyes. It was an even bigger rat, its size comparable to that of an elephant. It screeched a loud screech at the sight of Ren. Ren guessed that this might be their ‘mother’ and the source of the horde of rats. At this mother’s screech, another swarm of giant rats began to fill the sewers. It was as Ren had guessed, the number of rats he fought before was just a little part of the larger army.

WC: 182
Total WC: 1324

He clenched his teeth and made a ‘tch’ sound. The situation was turned against him. But he had no other choice than to fight. He moved his right leg back and bent his knees while he brought his sword up to his face, with the blade pointing forward. He took a deep breath in. Then exhaled it in a loud outcry. He lunged forward while swinging his blade, taking out the giant rats that were in his found. The rats would found the young ronin standing before their ‘mother’. He wasted no time and release a powerful upward slash. The ‘mother’ rat bellowed a painful cry. Ren bent his knees and swung his arms to the side, producing a magic circle beneath him and summoning a gale of autumn winds to pick him up above the ground. When he was above the ‘mother’ rat, he plunged down and striked it with a big blow of his blade. But surprisingly, it only scratched the gigantic creature. Which left Ren a bit appalled. He had never encountered a creature that could withstand the full blow of his plunging strike. Perhaps he was still inexperienced in these kind of things.

WC: 197
Total WC: 1521

That hit him right in the head as the ‘mother’ rat retaliated and swiped her claws at Ren. Knocking back the young man. He received the full blow of it. The giant rat swarm followed up the attack and striked at Ren. He had to stand back up, or else he would be a meal for them. He swung his arm to the side, a white magic circle shined and a gust of green autumn winds swirled around him and knocked back the swarm of giant rats that surrounded him. It gave him the space he needed to gain his momentum back. Before the swarm of giant rats could swarm him again, he used his sword like the rats have never seen before. He swung it in a side arc, before turning his body to unleash a full horizontal arc. Then he followed it up with an upward side arc. He then dashed towards a direction with a couple slashes this time. Taking out more of the giant rats than what he would have taken out before in a dash.

WC: 180
Total WC: 1701

Ren kept at this for a while, slashing around and keeping at his body posture, remembering all the training he had when he grew up as a samurai. It must have been a couple hours by now. The young man was covered in blood. Most of the rats have been taken down. All that were left now were some of the giant rats and the ‘mother’ rat. Ren looked at the ‘mother’ rat with in intense gaze. His usual warm crimson eyes were instead red in malice. One might question who was the real monster here. Ren wasted no time and leapt forward towards the ‘mother’ rat and striked with his sword, damaging the beast. The ‘mother’ rat striked back with her claws but Ren managed to jump up and dodged the attack, while he was in mid air he swung his arms to the side and the autumn winds helped him to reach a greater heights. From that height Ren striked down and unleashed another plunging strike towards where he had stroke the ‘mother’ rat before. The sound of meat being sliced could be heard reverberating throughout the sewer. The ‘mother’ rat had been taken down. The remaining giant rats fled in horror at the sight of their leader being slain. Ren stood there, with his sword in his hand. His breath shallow and rapid, his chest rose and fell at rapid intervals. He wiped away the blood that covered his face. He processed everything that had happened and looked around him. Perhaps he really was a monster. But something didn’t feel right. He felt like this wasn’t the end of things.

It would be crazy to venture deeper into sewers after that battle. But curiosity won Ren over. Instead of heading back to safety, he decided to discover the unknown. He turned a few corners in the sewer, and all he found was scattering footsteps. It was probably the remaining giant rats running away for their lives. They understood that Ren was not a force they should reckon with. One might question why Ren was still searching for something when he had exterminated a lot of the giant rats. It was because he did not believe that the ‘mother’ rat was their leader, not at all. He believed that it was just one of their stronger units, and that their leader was still somewhere in the sewer. Hiding, lurking, watching his every move.

That was when he saw something moving. A shadow, a sillhouette that had the shape different from that of the rats. Like before, Ren wasted no time in tailing the figure. It seemed to have noticed that Ren had noticed of its presence and sped up. But they were no match for Ren’s speed. Slowly Ren began to catch up with it. Suddenly several giant rats then jumped at Ren from the sides, but in just one slash of his blade the giant rats dropped dead to the ground. But they did manage to slow Ren by a little bit. That gave away the information that whatever Ren was chasing, it had to be someone important, someone that mattered to the giant rats, or someone that could control the giant rats itself. That was when Ren decided to lunge forward to tackle down the sillhouette. As Ren got closer to the figure, it spewed out a black fog that took Ren by surprise, stopping him in his tracks. The black fog messed with his vision, he couldn’t see anything. So following his instincts, he backed away. When his sense of sight slowly returned, he noticed that he was alone, and whatever he was chasing then had already escaped. He had lost it. With no more clues to track he trace back his route to where he came from. There was a possibility that he could get lost in the giant sewer system, thankfully he had enough experience in the wild to navigate his surroundings.

With the remaining strength he had, Ren walked out of the building with a few scars and bruises here and there. But it was nothing that he couldn’t handle. As he exited the building, a man clapped his hands to congratulate him. Wonderful, he told Ren. He mentioned that he was one of the people working for the person who posted the job advertisement. He told Ren that he noticed the flyer had gone missing and went to see the site for himself. He said that Ren did well in exterminating a major amount of the rats and even the bigger life-threatening one. He also mentioned how dexterious and scary Ren was, and that he look forward to working more with Ren in the future. He gave Ren the rewards he deserved and with that Ren walked away, itching for a nice warm bath.


WC: 803
Total WC: 2504