The short spear was a throwing weapon he had drawn from a vending machine not long ago. It was a rare item with solid power.
His throw hit the humanoid creature squarely and nailed it to the corner wall.
But the thing didn’t die. It kept struggling and let out a sharp, piercing screech. The pitch was so high it made his eardrums sting.
At the sa ti, the walls around them and the ventilation ducts overhead began to rustle. The sounds ca from every direction. They were surrounded by rats.
“That thing is full of rats. A whole swarm just spilled out of it. And the ones in the walls woke up too. There are a lot of them!”
Yang Yi used his third eye and saw everything clearly.
The man was wrapped in black mist. His stomach bulged grotesquely, yet he walked through the darkness as if the corrosion ant nothing to him.
Rats of all sizes poured out of his body. A dozen of the big ones and too many small ones to count.
Yang Yi could deal with this many on a normal day.
But the rats crawling out of the broken vents above them, plus the heavier noise from farther down the corridor, ant real trouble.
They moved fast. The larger ones took advantage of their weight and rolled forward like balls.
Yang Yi didn’t hesitate. He pulled out three grease-filled firebombs, lit them, and threw them. Flas spread across the floor.
“Fall back. There are too many of them,” he told Suna.
“But there are so behind us too.”
Suna looked toward the path they had co from.
Rats spilled out of the overhead vents in huge numbers. There were fewer than in front of them, but once you added up all the openings, there were still more than a hundred.
All the vents were damaged. The wire sh either had holes or was missing entirely. This was probably the rats’ handiwork.
“Open the force-field barrier. Twenty seconds is enough ti to retreat.” Yang Yi’s voice stayed steady.
They hadn’t gone far. If they made it back to the base of the elevator shaft, they could escape the nest.
Suna did as he said. The large shield flared to life again, a faint red field of energy.
Yang Yi scooped her up and sprinted back the way they ca, ignoring the rats ahead.
He only swung the Fla Serpent Fang at the ones that dropped from above or slipped past the shield.
The dagger had been strengthened to its limit and carried a burning effect, which worked perfectly on these egg-bearing rats.
Each strike roasted them to a crisp, killing the pups inside.
Fifteen seconds later, Yang Yi reached the bottom of the elevator shaft.
The force-field shield had turned deep red and was starting to shake. He had used it earlier, and back-to-back activation shortened its duration.
He glanced up. There were no rats in the shaft. At least that was good news.
“Go up first. I’ll be right behind you.”
He pushed Suna upward and let her climb while he turned to watch both directions.
The back wasn’t bad. Only about a hundred rats. He could cut them down easily with the Fla Serpent Fang.
But the front was a different story.
The rats were beyond count. They fell from the vents like rain and surged forward like waves.
Even the fire he had spread with the bombs was smothered under their bodies.
Airflow down here was poor. With limited oxygen, the flas weakened, and there was even a risk of suffocation.
Yang Yi didn’t mind, but Suna could easily pass out.
He stopped using fire and fought with the Fla Serpent Fang instead. But there were too many. A few still managed to climb onto him.
Once they got on his body, they bit down imdiately.
Yang Yi wore the Penitent’s armour on his lower body, which cut down most of the damage. Only a few rats that managed to reach his upper body bit through his skin.
So even burrowed under his wolf fur to bite. Several spots on his back were already bleeding.
As for his stomach…
A rat that had fought its way up had just chewed open a hole when a tongue darted out from inside, grabbed it, and pulled it in.
“Tasty.”
Several tongues slid out through the tear the rat had made and started helping Yang Yi by snatching the ones that jumped onto him, eating them one after another.
“Tasty my ass.”
Yang Yi cursed. He could taste everything the mouths tasted. It was like licking a filthy rag. Completely revolting.
The Gluttonous Maw didn’t care and kept devouring the rats.
Suna had already climbed more than ten tres and was still going fast. Yang Yi decided it was ti to pull out as well.
If he got swallowed by the wave of rats in front, that would be bad.
He was probably parasitised on his back, but it wasn’t a real problem. This wasn’t his first ti, and he knew what to do.
“Fla healing.”
He slapped his own lower back. His entire back erupted in fire. The flas burned away the rats hiding under his skin and purged the toxins. Their bodies shriveled into black lumps and fell off.
Then he jumped up to the mouth of the shaft and grabbed the ladder to climb.
When he caught up to Suna, the rats had already started climbing after them. They packed together so tightly it looked like a rising tide.
But these creatures were slow in vertical movent and couldn’t catch up to the two of them.
By the ti Yang Yi and Suna reached the third floor, the rats had only just made it to the first.
Yang Yi pulled out a firebomb and was about to throw it but stopped himself. Instead, he pointed the Fla Serpent Fang downward and activated its skill: fla discharge.
He had barely used this ability since upgrading the dagger to its highest tier. Once he unleashed it now, the power surprised him.
A massive serpent of fire shot out, twisting and looping through the shaft. It dove downward and ignited every rat in its path.
The serpent acted like a living creature. It deliberately swept through areas with the densest clusters. It flew for several dozen tres, burning its way from the third floor down to the fourth basent level before fading.
The walls of the shaft along its path glowed red and warped from the heat, turning the entire space into a death zone.
Any rat that approached burst into flas.
“It's that strong?”
Yang Yi couldn’t help being surprised.
The Fla Serpent Fang cooled down, the red blade dimming to silver.
This fla discharge didn’t shoot a beam but a serpent that attacked a wide area.
Good thing he never used it back on the Nightmare Star. It could have burned down everything it wasn’t supposed to touch. The temperature alone felt capable of turning bone to ash.
With so many rats dead, disorder rippled through the swarm. A mont later they slowly retreated.
The danger was temporarily over.
The rats were concentrated on the lowest levels. The general warehouse was probably their nest.
The direction they had sward from pointed straight toward it.
Yang Yi checked their condition, then turned to Suna.
“Let’s head back. We can continue once we recover.”
He still had plenty of stamina left at sixty three, but Suna was down to forty seven. Returning to the ship to rest was safer.
A ship this large couldn’t be fully explored in one go.
And it was almost eleven at night, which was pri ti for trade and communication. It was better not to miss it.
Once the rats below returned to hibernation, Yang Yi would co back for the bone spear and check out the warehouse.
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