Ratfolk Outpost

The sewers were still the same sewers—damp, cold, and carrying a pungent stench.

Slimy moss grew across the bricks on both sides. From afar, it looked like patches of baldness on the Dungeon, while tiny insects had made their nests in the cracks between the stones.

Heka raised the oil lamp level with his eyes. At that moment, he had three eyes.

The tunnel ahead curved downward, leading to an almost vertical steep slope. Heka recalled that this should have been part of the Dungeon's city wall.

Their destination lay at the northeast corner of the Dungeon's main tower. Once they passed through this inner city wall, they would be nearly there.

By now, the outside of the wall had completely fused with the earth and stone. The passage they were standing in was inside the city wall.

But Dungeons often warped after merging. Sometimes faults and distortions appeared as well, and Heka was not sure whether this path would remain passable.

Just as Heka held up the oil lamp and carefully illuminated the darkness below, he saw that the darkness was not driven away. Instead, it twisted.

It spread rapidly up the walls. For a moment, even the flame trapped behind the glass was suppressed.

"What the hell is that?"

Deko, following beside Heka, jolted in fright.

Fear came from the unknown. He had never fought in sewers before, and everything here was utterly unfamiliar to him.

"A rat swarm."

Heka identified the enemy at a glance. The boy handed the oil lamp to Deko beside him, then asked for a torch from those behind him.

As sparks scattered in all directions, the rat swarm finally stopped. The rats that had been forming a living ladder upward instinctively shrank away from the scorching orange wave.

When the flames set several of the foremost rats ablaze, the swarm finally realized this was not an extra meal it could swallow.

Looking at those rodents, each roughly the size of a cat and sporting long, wax-yellow incisors, Deko felt his scalp crawl.

Nearly all the fur on these rats had fallen out.

Their bare skin was not normal flesh-colored, but covered in large black blotches with only a few sparse tufts of fur scattered between them.

Most eye-catching of all were their unimaginably powerful muscles. Deko felt one of those things could kick a cat to death with a single blow.

"These are rats?"

Deko pointed toward where the rats had vanished. There were small holes beneath the walls, and such holes had been common along the way. He had thought they were formed by erosion.

Remembering how he had been walking close to the walls just moments ago, Deko felt a chill around his ankles.

"Yes, but something's wrong. Rats in a normal swarm don't look like this.

Let's move. Sewers never lack strange things like these."

"Something really is off. There was intelligence before that Ratfolk were infiltrating Seapeak Port's sewers. The Wealth Church had always been dealing with these filthy things.

Could we have run into a Ratfolk outpost?"

Deko clearly knew more. Looking at the spot where the obviously abnormal rats had disappeared, his brows immediately knitted together.

Heka asked for a rope, fastening one end to the wall with an iron spike. Grasping the other end, he descended to the open space below.

"Have you ever seen Ratfolk in the sewers before?" Deko asked again after coming down beside Heka.

The team paused here for a brief rest. Mainly because the unsettled Deko was directing several people in the group to use rat-repellent powder to block the holes the rats had entered.

Heka watched them doing useless work, but did not stop them.

Those rats really had been strange. It was normal for them to be afraid.

"No. I have seen Ghouls in the sewers, though."

Heka adjusted the oil lamp's knob, making the flame burn brighter. They were almost at their destination, and the lamp still had plenty of oil.

All he could say was that the Black Mountain Merchants truly deserved their reputation as filthy rich. They were far more professional than he had been when exploring the sewers alone.

"That makes sense. Ratfolk only arrived in recent years. They probably haven't infiltrated the area where you usually operated.

Oh, right. Ghouls generally have a challenge rating of two. How did you survive?"

"Challenge rating?

Is that also a classification standard used by the Adventurers' Guild?"

Hearing a term identical to the one used on the panel, Heka immediately became interested.

"More accurately, it should be the Realm Forger's classification standard."

"And who is the Realm Forger?"

Heka felt as though he were reading a highly specialized academic paper. He looked up a technical term to understand it, only to find several more unfamiliar technical terms.

Still, that was a good thing. It meant he was beginning to get somewhere. If he kept digging, he could often find a textbook or a comprehensive review paper.

"The Realm Forger... Hmm, how should I put this? Of the Dungeons we have explored so far, probably about half were pulled in from beyond the realms by the Realm Forger.

The Realm Forger differs from the other gods. The Realm Forger has no clergy and no churches, though we generally consider the Adventurers' Guild to be the Realm Forger's church.

An adventurer's level is judged by the Realm Forger. Of course, other gods, including the mage lords' side, have their own ways of judging levels. But for now, the Adventurers' Guild's assessment of class levels is considered the most authoritative.

Challenge ratings are also announced by the Realm Forger. You can see them on the stone platform in the Adventurers' Guild.

Generally speaking, a monster with a challenge rating of one is a monster the Realm Forger believes can be killed by an adventurer with a class level of one."

"Oh, is that so?

I jumped into the sewage beside me. The current was very swift in that area, and that thing was busy eating some unlucky bastard at the time, so I ran."

Deko recalled the water flowing through these sewers. There was no clean water here at all. The water here was, and could only be, sewage.

At that thought, the man immediately moved away from Heka in disgust.

Heka curled his lip. In truth, he was rather disgusted by Deko as well.

Because Heka suspected that Deko had also taken part in the search through his excrement back then.

After all, there had been more than twenty Huika Gold Coins involved. Compared to that, even shit became acceptable.

"That really is a story with some flavor."

Deko sighed, then led the team onward.

Fortunately, this section of the Dungeon was relatively well preserved. Thanks to the exceptionally sturdy brick-and-stone structure on both sides, it had not yet been crushed by the earth, rocks, and houses above.

After a relatively smooth journey, Heka and the others finally arrived before a massive boulder.