Duty Session 457: Obligatory Rat Maze

It has been over a year since the Adventurers have been delving into the underground cities of Yamato. There will always be an underground. There will always be rats. Less rats, one might hope, if not for -changes-. The shopkeepers are saying something different about the usual slaying of ten rats. There is a new passageway. New rats. New adventure.

A new call to action by the Hunter's Guild to get to the bottom of this furry fiasco. Find the new rat source and end their squeaky terror.

Haru is already at the merchant's shop just outside of the Peko Ranch near Carmina Gadelica. He is having a light conversation about the Lander's stock of cheese. Perhaps that is why the rats like the store so much. The Lander dialog is limited, but the Artificer does not seem to mind as he talks with warm hand gestures across the light interrogation. Never miss a moment to stop and dig a little deeper into the world's lore or reasons things are happening. Thats where people have gone before, after all. "Thanks for the time," he says, having ordered a small cheese snack for the road, "we will get started shortly." With that there is a motion to the back and the cellar where all the magic happens. More diligent than weird today, Haru is already making his way. Spiral staircase, classic.

Yeowang has joined in the rat cull. It's good to help out the Landers, of course, and to /stay/ on their good side. The Palace Landers have done basically the opposite of that, and look what it's gotten them. Unfortunately, that has turned around and gotten us as well, but that's being addressed. It'd better be getting addressed, or she's going to be furious with the Alliance Leadership. She's already got kind of a low opinion of them over events that have already transpired.

But here she is, ready to hunt rats, dark coat and pants tucked into high boots. Her long hair is coiled atop her head in a bun, pinned in place, and with a dark hood, the mane of honey blonde will not give her away. The presence of cheese in a cheese shop can only mean Rizadoman hasn't been through here, recently, he's a leading cause of rat starvation.

"Well well, look who finally got his head out of the crafting zone and back amongst the rest of the world." As usual there was no one a moment ago, yet now there is the tall dark Nightmare Were Fang somehow in the few moments one looks away, a teasing tone in her voice. "Rats, huh?" She rests her staff against her shoulder. "Guess it's a good time to test this out, and hopefully we can SQUEAK by." And she's already starting on the bad puns, oh dear. "Don't worry, I'm surrrrre everything will go just phe-gnaw-menally."

The spiral staircase is well maintained, scuffed by the foot traffic of a merchant that hauls the storage to the top levels. Scratches and gnawing. Those with fair Hunting and Searching concepts will notice the existance of the rodents have been around for some time without breaching the invisible barrier of safe storefront space above. The light here is dim with the torches along the wall unlit in their holders. The most important sense here is not sight but sound.

And Smell.

The acidic sting of refuse hits the nose as the wet schluck of garbage sticks to Adventurer footware. Squeaks of rats echo in some distant place. There must be a way onward to a source. The dripping sound of water suggests an exit, yet with all this object chaos it is not easily seen. Time to get to work.

"Spent over a year in that world before Adventuring, I was starting to miss it," Haru admits to Kau, voice more nasal as he tries not to breathe in through his nose. "Its funny," he looks around with the purple lens of his monocle lighting up in circles of white motion, "this was one of the first jobs I took from the Hunter's Guild, too. These problems don't go away easily." His hands make the 'Aliens' meme look in response to Kau, "Rats."

The Enchanter's fingers flick in finger snaps as sparks of embers flick out of them like starting a lighter. The embers fraction out, lighting burning away the gas in the room and pixelating away refuse in controlled sweeps. "Can't wait to see that in action. First trial run," he asks, clawing at the air with human hands that cause a larger burn against a broken barrel.

"Rats are one of those problems that keeps coming up... but it's changed over the year. Evolved, even. Like something out there is making sure the quests can keep up with our ever increasing strength." Kauchemar pauses at the bottom of the spiral stairs. Hisses and puts one hand over her nostrils. Sometimes the heightened senses of a Were Fang are a curse as well as a benefit. "Ugh. This room.."

With the other hand she holds her newly minted staff up, a glow of hazy blue emiting from the eye sockets of the punk metal album cover style skull topping it. Then she lowers it and makes a wide sweeping motion, releasing a wave of water before her to push some of the filth away from the center of the room. "There, now this place is a total wash."

Yeowang arches a brow at Kauchemat as she puns. Apparently bad puns are not a thing for her. But she carries on without a comment, heading down the staircase after Haru. She has no idea what an Aliens meme is, nor what Punny World Haru met Kauchemar in, but she knows reek when she smells it, and takes a few steps back up the stairs. Normally, she just wouldn't go in a place like that, and nevermind the consequences, others can deal with the filth, but she's not who she was outside the game and this does need to be dealt with.

Cycling clumsily through the small list of Godhand magic she technically has access to, she chooses one bit and follows the directions in the menu to use the power. She's skeptical, to judge from her expression, and those who've adventured with her know that it's because most of the time it doesn't work, which is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but this time, for whatever reason, the purification spell sinks in, and the stink eases a bit as the yuck slowly starts to evaporate.

The fires from Haru's fire Wave Artes clear open areas from the garbage that blocks sight. They pixelate harmlessly until their next scheduled return to existance. The burn is cooled by Kau's wash-waves leaving the place surprisingly clean. Know what this needs? The Light Lemon Pledge smell that comes from Yeo's skeptical magic. The Adventurers should charge for this service. The basement is claned up nicely.

Cleaning services aside, the goal was to find where all this shenaniganry is coming from. There it is as plain as day: A trap door build into the bottom of the chamber. Haru has little invested in the Physical stats so he does not use his hands to open it. There is a glance to if he wants to ask someone else to do it. Yeo would be the obvious pick. However, Haru instead he opts to leverage his Earth magic to conjure up a strong vine-like rope on the latch, string it over a rafter beam, and add a rock weight to pop it open. A second vine is strung over to create a rope to descend into the darkness below as it lacks any ladder. "What was it like before," the Artificer asks Kau, tugging onto the rope to test it before starting on down. "A standard 'kill ten rats' sort of quest? I'm glad there are powers that be keeping the action-folks entertained. Also I suppose it keeps the flow of XP and Coin going." He descends, slowly, "I think the real mystery is that, not the rat source."

No the real mystery is that no rope or ladder can interupt what feels like a cutscene style event that will cause anyone descending to fall. For Haru it comes off as losing his grip on the rope and plumetting the rest of the way. "Currsseessss," he echoes on the way down, quickly drawing out a token spell of defense for the Moonlight Goldsmith. Small crystals form around him, connecting in silvery lines with a sharp hum. By the time he is splashing towards the water he has a shell of magic around him, each 'pane' of it a different color as it represents a stained glass window. Time for the water ride through tunnels of rapid water and crashy wall-bits that would make a blue hedgehog proud.

Kauchemar pauses next to the water slide. "Well it certainly had less dangerous obstacles in the earlier iterations." She looks up, looks down, and makes a face. It doesn't smell like the other room, but does one really want to slip and slide down a water chute in the sewer? There might be stuff -other- than water in that water.

She opts to not take the waterslide.

Well more accurately, she doesn't take the water. Kauchemar uses one of her other magics, drawing on a nightmare's connection to the earthen elements, and leaps onto one of the rock formations. Which cracks under her hooves, and tilts forward to catch in the current, providing her with a stony boogie board to ride down to the bottom instead of sloshing around in the potentially disgusting waters.

Yeowang has been through enough rat missions before that she'll take a chance on jumping, and when she hits the invisible water below, it's with her breath held. She holds it long enough to get back to the surface, and winds up body surfing the wild current until they're dumped off in a small pool at the edge of some passageway underground. Sadly, this leaves her to climb out of the water covered in whatever sort of water fills this place up, though for her, it's less inconvenient than for, say, a werefang.

In any case, it's a simple matter, once out of the water, to menu-clean and menu-dry herself. She still feels a bit of the yuck, and will need a real bath and the end of this, but the filth is gone, at least.

The magical shell functions as a water sled for Haru as he swooshes across the water race mini game. "You know," he slides up one side half-pipe style, "this would be a fun ride." Swoosh to the other side, "like a water park ride." He does a little spinny move like a surfer on the water around the Earth Boarding Kau as the two avoid things like walls, jagged rocks, and things that float in the water that shall not be described. Meanwhile shark-Yeo is seen above and below the water surface, matching the currents like it was a dodge minigame.

The ride comes to an end and spits the three adventurers out like skipping a stone across a lake of water. "And its over," the white haired Enchanter says, drawing a swirl around him in lines of red with a single rune of green to create a pillar of hot air to dry himself off instead of opting for the menu method Yeo did. It comes with the whole 'hair flicking all over the place in anime wind gust style' before Haru does a little windshield wiper motion over his monocle. "So it upped difficulty," Haru asks, taking stock of the surroundings and the party health. "Huh. So you think its meant that we can't outpace the content? Like a rat in a cage?" Despite all his rage, it may be the truth.

Or perhaps a rat in a maze?! The place the ended up at is full of winding corridors that do not neatly follow the 'always turn left/right' method of maze navigation. It takes time and the reward is a larger chamber that squeaks of danger. That is a rodent of unusual size sleeping there. Massive, even. An ear twitches during the body-pull agro from the party. A red eye that opens. Paws that clean the whiskers with a lick. Always clean the whiskers. The chitter of an angry beastie as reeth that can rend metal are bared out. "Thats one buff rat," Haru observes as it charges towards them. Then there is the issue of the skull next to its name. "A buff, overleveled rat. Rataja."

It isn't time to fight this thing. It is not Elden Tales Online, despite the good evasion skills of the party. The Artificer stomps the ground to kick up a chunk of rock Earth bender style and starts pelting a stream-channel cast of rocks at it. Dakka Dakka. It affords him to move about while applying debuffing pressure that is designed to reduce this thing's speed/movement while they look for another path.

Yeowang looks up and up and up at the monster that makes its presence known, and as Haru scrables away, she will scrable also. "There's a way there, it won't be able to follow us," she says, pointing to a narrow passageway, while fishing for some of her recent hunting catches. She pitches it underhand, just past the thing's snout, and it snaps at it, but misses. It needs to pause in the pursuit of the party to snap up the small critter, and Yeowang has gained the group a bit of a lead.

A maze. With a giant probably rabid rat in it. "Pinky has really let himself go," Kauchemar quips, even as she's considering the options. "But of course there'd be a M.O.U.S. in this place."

In the end, she seems to be on a similar mindwave as Haru, but on the other end of the spectrum. She stomps a hoof on the ground, causing a barricade of jagged edged obsidian to rise out of it. The nimble Yeowang and slender Haru won't have trouble getting past it, but like one of those crystal growing science sets the spikes and spires continue to grow up and out, making sure that even when it does finish up with the bait it won't be able to directly charge after them giving the party all the more time to make haste for the small side passage.

The assault against Rataja, Lord of the Rats, sworn enemy of Dungeon Spiders, goes exceptional in buying time to not become two or three hit KO'd. The stream of rocks against its large body keep momentium difficult to press towards the group. It wails in frustration, noticing a morsel of food and snapping at it to consume from Yeo. The turn of the head makes it more difficult to turn back as Rataja, MOUS of legend, to press on with the combined ground and projectile earth magic. It weighs the options of the small lure in an agro debuff before it snaps out of it. 'Enough!' it squeals! It is large and majestic. It will not be made a fool of by FOOD. It charges as the party makes their way to the area Yeo pointed out.

"Ass yoouuu wiiisshhh," Haru yells with arms going full 'run while swinging, it adds speed' in response to both Yeo and Kau.

A final charge happens as the party finds a tunnel Rataja can't enter. It tries, charging in a Rat T-Rex style full with screaming maw and final lunge of gnashing teeth as that face gets stuck in the tunnel the party escaped into. Snap gnash! Gnaw at the air! "You know," Haru says, looking at the monster from a safe couple meters back from it, "I'd be upset too if I was stuck down here in that room without any way out." Thats the Summoner in Haru there, thinking of the digital creatures of death. His focus is less on beasts and more on Elementals, but still.

It is not to say that the party has found the source yet unless Pinky back there is mind controlling all rats. There is more to this tunnel and it is getting darker. Deeper. Dark moss and mold grows along the side of the walls, much to the Artificer's interest. Much climbing and searching later leads the trio over a nearly collapsed area and into a room untouched by light for years. It gives a glow of green that even Mountain Dew would be proud of. The luminosity comes not from moss. It comes from the large glowing rats that have been changed by /something/. The rats radiate magical energy, turning their milky white eyes towards them as the green hair bristles on their backs. A single squeak of awareness becomes a chorus as a sea of teenage mutant magical rattos engage in mortal combat.

"So, thought," Haru says as he conjures out an orb of water, "someone messes with rats, right? Classic lab experiment stuff." He adds in the moss he found along with a chalky blue mineral. Apply fire magic to boil. Air to disperse a mist into the area that area effects the rats themselves. "So what we really need to find is the mad scientist. Or study a few of these rats. For science." Uta has rubbed off on him a bit. Science!

Kauchemar holds up her staff, unleashing a burst of magic from the skull's maw... but the rat she catchs with it quickly shakes off the effects. "They are certainly smarter than standard rats." All she did was briefly falter it's approach. "Don't think we can wrangle these with our summoner abilities. I suggest we hasten along our path before they assume an obstructive position."

Yeowang peers at Haru, attempting to follow his train of thought. "The real question is, how does a rat that big not starve to death down here? Something like that's got to eat a hundred pounds a day, right? How often does it get an adventurer? Not more than a bite off most, it should have starved to death." She frowns. "I'm saying that logic doesn't apply."

Which is an appropriate segue into the next room, where magic has done weird things to the swarm of rats that attack, and can't be stomped, so it seems. Not easily, anyhow, they take almost no damage from it.

This doesn't stop her from trying, because nothing else seems to be working. Her magical attack, such as it is, fizzles, as so much of her magic does, and she's left kicking rats across the room and dropping them 1 HP at a time. She's worn down hard by the time the last one is pixels, and needs to catch her breath.

In Obligatory Rat Maze, Rats slay you! The glowing rats pass their disenchantment checks against the brew that Haru dispersed at them. A couple go as far as to inhale it deeply like an angry bull just to show what they think about the Alchemy. "Well, shi," the Wave Artes caster says before one of the rats jumps onto his chest and starts clawing those little red lines at him. Back to traditional methods! Rocks, Fire, and Magic! There are too many of them. Kau's assault doesn't outpace the incoming horde. Nor does Yeo's. Overwhelming Rat Forces. ORF.

The dust settles and the party has less health than when they started. Victory at a cost. They progress onwards through the furry and flame. "A rat of that size?" Haru thinks, taking his mind off of the horde they left behind. "Rats can bite through just about anything and eat it. Not sure if nutritional logic would apply, but I would assume it ate the rats we just saw. Only way I can think it maintains the size and strength." A hand motions as his best logical answer, "so to it, we probably looked like a welcome meal to ratricide." The next path is much shorter as if it wants the group to find the final room. Large area? Obvious path. "Boss battle," Haru observes as it has all the signs of one. All that is missing is a save point, a new item, and a couple healing consumables in a nearby chest.

"Now that," Haru connects the last rat conversation to this one, "I don't know. It has a diet on raw lightning?" Zip Zoom. The lightning rat crackles and dashes around like an evolved mascot of a franchise. A storm of bolts come their way. Boss battle indeed. "Okay okay. Earth grounds Lightning. You picked the wrong group to tango with, Raiju." Haru double checks the name. Raiju? "If you weren't so lethal I'd be introducing you to Yumi right now," Haru intones as he takes Boss battles seriously enough. Those are the things that can wipe you. He grabs the metal bars that once served as the cage for this creature and pushes his feet deep into the earth. A deep breath and an exhale as the rocks in the tunnel begin to coat over the metal to prevent the creature from using it against the party. One less environment trap. Then the crystaline coating shoots out, breaking into jagged shards to keep a healthy damage over time on the quick critter. Dodge all you want, the damage is still chipping away.

Yeowang shrugs at Haru's postmortem of the encounter with the huge rat from before. "What we ought to do is come down here with a Wave-sized party and gang up on that thing. If we could get that size of party, or raid, or whetever it's called, together, I think we could take it."

As to the next rat, the diet of raw lightning sounds about right. She gets a few karate chops in, then has to dash to cover as she rises to the top of the aggro table. Once she's lower down, she'll come back up, take a few shots, and when it comes after her again, she'll dash off. It's not the bravest way to fight, but it works.

Kauchemar watchs the electrified rodent zig-zag-zoom around the chamber like a living lightning bolt. "This version was smart enough to eat a thunder stone," she quips, the similarity to another old video game not lost on her. Or certain other media connected to it... then again, they're probably lucky it's not that version, that thing seems to have plot armor half the time.

This one, on the other hand, is easy enough to deal with. "Don't let it catch you standing still." Which she herself takes into consideration after quickly INSPECTing the thing. Raiju.. geez, it even sounds similar in name. But move she does, deftly and almost literally dancing out of the way when Raiju lunges at her.

Only to appear directly behind the elemental rodent, channel Earth element into Grindcore Staff to insulate it, and jabbing it down into the ground. To ground herself, as it were, even as she reachs to grab the rat with her other hand, and use her debuffing magic to suck some of the power out of him and, presumably, slow him down as the electrical current is grounded into the floor of the dungeon away from him.

The insulated metal keeps the lightning rat from unleashing a stronger environment damage over time that would cause significant pain. It attempts to crack away at the crystal casing with bolts of lightning force only to be met with bleeding damage over times itself. The timing of crashing against the bars opens up more than a couple timed strikes from Yeo to do sizable chunk damage on top of the applied damage pressure. Finally the creature gets HardCore GrindCore'd when the agro gets pulled to respond to Yeo and neglects to defend itself against Kau. Its super effective!

The quick antics of the large monster reduce its health at a pace fast enough to beat the enrage timer for the phase that would cause the ever glowing creature to unleash what could be a truly devastating lightning based attack. Instead the creature gets smaller amd smaller as its health pool drops. Eventually it is the size of a normal rat again, albiet with yellow fur and sparking gaze of defiance to having lost. It hisses at the party and darts back to a crack in the wall. When the crystal coating is removed from the metallic rods, several of them identify as Lightning Rods. Haru picks one up with magic and runs an Appraisal over it with his monocle. "Huh. Same thing Fuka used to make her Arcane Blade." Lots of unique items getting forged these days!

"Fun," Haru observes as the white circles that show on his purple lens fade away, putting the object in inventory for a future project.

Yeowang looks around now that the boss is dead, and says, "Well, that didn't go too badly. But now I need a shower, I think, or at least a bath. Someone needs to invent pipes and plumbing here, I think that'd be better than rockets. Well, rockets for the Palace Landers, but then plumbing."

After the lightning rat is defeated into normal rat porportions Kauchemar taps her staff a couple of times to disperse some lingering current in it. "The rats just get weirder and weirder... which isn't easy considering one of the previous ones was a skeletal monster. And now it's like the other end of that electric mouse spectrum. Tiny and annoying."

She flicks one of the pieces of lightning rod into her hand as Haru examines it. "Could be useful in the future." She tucks one away. If nothing else, the next time she has to deal with a lightning monster.

Haru looks to Yeo and shrugs. He rolls his right shoulder and stretches the stiffness out of it with his left hand. Earth magic can be rigid. "A skeletal rat?" the human asks Kau. "On the plus side, we don't lack for variety. We just need AquaRat and NightRat and it can be the Vermin League." A smile, "Alright, obligatory non-crafting times done. World is safe from rats another day. Im thinking an accessory for smelling nice is in order, but it'll probably come out all Alchemy." Because is perfume and cologne a thing? "Maybe a nice burning incense stone." The real reason Haru adventures: inspiration for crafting.