“A rat this big on the open sea?”
Yang Yi stared in disbelief.
He had grown up in the south and had seen plenty of large black rats, but he had never seen anything this swollen and round.
It was about thirty centitres long and had no tail. Its whole body was a ball of black fur with short limbs. If not for the head, he would not have recognised it as a rat at all.
He used the Fla Serpent Fang to pry the body out of the cable duct behind the wall. Information appeared as soon as he touched it.
【Na: Ho-Settler Rat】
【Description: A dangerous abnormal rat known for building nests inside other living creatures. It warps the host’s mind, alters the host’s body, and moves freely in the dark. When food is scarce it can enter a dormant state for long periods, resisting hunger and the surrounding corruption. It is very good at drilling holes in your head.】
“A parasite rat?”
Yang Yi shared the information with Suna and shoved the cut tal plate back into place.
From what he could see, these rats were dormant, similar to hibernation. They could resist hunger and darkness for a long ti.
And there were many of them.
There were several hidden inside nearby cable ducts and ventilation shafts.
He didn’t know the exact number, but judging by sll and sound, there were about seven or eight in the imdiate area.
The ones further ahead were beyond counting.
Suna crouched down, put on cloth gloves, and started examining the dead rat.
She had never seen a rat this bloated. It looked wrong in every way.
She turned the body over. Its bright red eyes were still wide open.
“Look here.”
Yang Yi had been debating whether to lower the brightness of the container’s light, but he leaned down when he heard her.
The rat was on its back now. The fur on its abdon was noticeably shorter.
Under the fur, there were dozens of tiny rat heads, each the size of a peanut.
“What in the world is that?”
【Disturbing anatomy detected. Your sanity decreases by 3.】
Yang Yi felt a prickling across his face and a surge of disgust.
Suna handled it better. She took out a simple pair of tweezers made from iron scraps and pulled one of the little heads free.
It was a miniature ball-shaped rat, almost a perfect copy of the bigger one but much smaller. It counted as its own creature.
Half of its body had already been cooked. Bits of skin and at broke off as she lifted it, giving off a rotten oily sll.
Once removed, a dark recessed hole was left in the larger rat’s belly.
Suna continued inspecting the body and discovered more of them. Not only the abdon but the sides of its back held clusters of these tiny rats.
The fur on those areas was thicker, and since the fur color matched, the small ones blended in easily.
“The arrangent reminds of the Surinam toad. It keeps its eggs embedded in its back until they hatch.”
She paused.
“But rats give birth to live young…”
She borrowed the Fla Serpent Fang from Yang Yi. The blade’s burning effect worked well for shaving off fur.
The rat’s coat ca away quickly and exposed pale gray skin that made it look even worse.
But the bare skin made counting easier. More than three hundred small rats were packed across its surface. Once pulled out, they ford a small mound on the floor.
The host rat was now visibly thinner. Aside from its scorched organs, its entire body had been filled with these little creatures.
So were still squeezed inside the belly cavity, ready to crawl out at any mont.
Its own internal organs made up only a tiny fraction of its volu. Without the tiny rats, the body looked dried and hollow.
Yang Yi wasn’t very interested in rats, but he couldn’t stop his mind from imagining what a parasitised person might look like. Sothing pushing out beneath the skin. A rat head breaking through.
If there were enough of them, and if they reproduced like this…
【The disturbing image unsettles you. Sanity minus 2.】
Suna kept dissecting the creature, though she had switched to her witch’s dagger.
Yang Yi stayed alert. He watched the corridor ahead and dimd the light so the glow wouldn’t wake more of the rats.
Ten minutes passed.
The rat’s body was now in pieces, though the general structure could still be understood well enough to reassemble if needed.
“The adults can probably move quickly by rolling. The little ones under the skin can extend their forelimbs to push it along.”
Suna swept the dissected remains into her treasure pouch. She had a basic understanding of how the creature was put together.
“Let’s catch a living one. I brought a container. It can resist the corruption, and I want to see how these things manage to survive in it.”
She pulled out a tal case and began assembling it. It was the sa type she had prepared earlier for storing the Fruit of Plenty.
“Will that even hold it?” Yang Yi asked.
Pure tal might have worked, but a thin sheet of iron didn’t inspire much confidence. These rats had unusual teeth shaped like shears. They could pierce into sothing and slice through it with ease. Even tough tal cables inside the ducts had been bitten clean through.
“Just grab a few small ones. We can remove the teeth. That’ll solve the problem.”
She had clearly thought it through already.
Yang Yi nodded and discussed the plan with her.
Half a minute later he tracked down another Ho-Settler Rat by sound alone.
This ti he didn’t stab blindly. He opened a small hole first and shifted into his werewolf form.
The mont the opening appeared, he saw the rat inside. It was awake and staring at him with grey eyes.
Dozens of tiny rats burst from its body and rushed at him. So even shot out from its back like bullets.
None of them reached him.
A faint red shield blocked the opening. The gemstone bracelet on Suna’s wrist glowed and ford a wide energy barrier.
Any rat that touched the deflective field veered off, as if the air itself pushed it away.
The field only worked one way. It blocked incoming attacks but allowed strikes from the inside.
Yang Yi raised the Fla Serpent Fang. The blade passed through the barrier without resistance and drove straight into the host rat.
He killed the large one and the swarm inside it in the first instant. Then he struck the remaining small ones one by one with sharp precision. The blessing of the third eye made his aim perfect. In a few seconds only seven or eight were left alive.
He switched from stabbing to swatting and knocked the last surviving ones unconscious.
Suna dispersed the barrier and extracted the still-living rats. She used her dagger to remove their teeth.
So would probably die later, but one surviving specin was enough.
She placed the small rats into the tal box and sent it to her witch’s laboratory.
Yang Yi sniffed the air. His sense of sll had sharpened after transforming.
He looked ahead. The third eye caught a black humanoid figure for a split second. A bone short spear appeared in his hand and he hurled it forward.
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