Chapter 285: The Ugly Rat that Polluted the Sea (2)

Pillars of green shot up and swallowed Bayern whole. They were not simple fumes but thick, layered poison, venom that stained flesh and gnawed at the soul. Anyone caught inside would rot from the marrow out and rise again as a slave to the rat’s command.

Kwoom!

A single, crushing shock sent the rat skidding back. Its eyes went wide.

“Mm,” Bayern muttered. He stepped out of the pillar. Poison slicked his skin in a greasy film, yet none of it had entered him. Myst clung to him like glass and kept the taint at bay.

“So that is the shallow trick you fragile creatures Outside have been given. It saves the body, perhaps, but you did not protect the arm,” the rat said.

The rat was not wrong. The forearm its claws had pierced was still under assault. Myst held the venom in check and stopped the spread, but it did not clear the poison. It pulsed there, stubborn and alive.

Monster

, Bayern thought, narrowing his eyes. It was an alien thing, troublesome even for him.

Which was why his certainty finally settled. Long ago, in the Emperor’s legends, there was a horror spoken of in low voices, the Ugly rat that polluted the sea. He was looking at it.

“Then I’ll ask one thing,” Bayern said.

“Your resolve pleases me. Ask, and I will answer.”

“What is your relation to the White Bear?”

“You mean the bear in the White Snowfield?” Puzzlement flickered across the rat’s face. It looked almost amused that someone from Outside knew of the bear at all. Even so, it answered without pressing. “I coveted its domain. It was not easy. We fought a long time, and no end came.”

“Hahahaha!” Bayern could not help it. Laughter broke free, and he even clapped once in rough delight. “Good. Very good.”

He closed his hand tightly around the axe. A warrior’s light rose in his eyes.

“It is a shame you are not the bear, but this will do,” Bayern finished.

The Ugly Rat before him stood on the same rung as the White Bear. If he toppled the rat, then a victory over the bear would not be beyond reach. Heat climbed in his chest. This was a chance to spit on the humiliation that had lived too long in his past. It was worth showing everything he could give.

His frame shuddered, and Myst poured through him in a roaring tide. It hardened muscle and bone, then went farther. The boundary dissolved. Myst and flesh became one.

He had not drawn on this secret even when he fought Ketal. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and a bestial focus locked onto the world.

“I will kill you!” Bayern charged.

The rat’s expression changed. It slashed to meet him, faster than before, but Bayern’s speed had doubled. The clash rang out, and the rat’s bulk slid sideways. It grimaced. The claws that had struck the axe were scored and ground down along the edge.

Bayern did not stop. He hammered in again and again. Each exchange forced the rat back, gouging fresh furrows in the already ruined ground.

“You are strong.” The Ugly Rat was honestly surprised. Bayern’s power was astonishing even to it. “To think the Outside held strength like this. How you remind me of those unpleasant barbarians.”

Bayern surged forward once more. This time, the rat twisted instead of blocking. The axe carved through the space where its neck had been an instant before. The rat grinned with narrow eyes.

“But you cannot control it. You are unpracticed. You are wielding power beyond your measure,” the rat said. It was no simple beast. It was clever, and clever enemies always chose the most effective attacks. “I could fight you through, but why bother. Rise, my earth.”

The land erupted like a volcano. Plumes of poisoned earth billowed up and broke the sightlines. The rat slipped through the bursts, letting them hide its movement as it ducked Bayern’s blows. It was stalling, plain and simple. Bayern clicked his tongue.

The secret he had unleashed, this union of Myst and flesh, was a brutal power. The drawbacks were just as clear. He could not control the pace as finely as he wanted, and the Myst cost was savage. That was why he had not used it even when trading blows with Ketal. The duration was short, and the rat had chosen a method designed to waste it. If the fight stretched, this form would turn against him.

The optimal choice, in that moment, was to retreat. If he fled at full speed while the union still held, even the rat would not catch him. He could mend his arm, recover, and return for a clean fight.

Run away? Me? When such a change lay before me? When I finally have the chance to repay the humiliation of the past?,

Bayern thought, mouth twisting. “Don’t make me laugh!”

In the end, he was still a barbarian. The old shame had changed him, yet the core remained the same. Before a worthy foe, he did not step back—better death than disgrace.

He bellowed and went straight through the erupting ground. He crushed the jets beneath his boots and cut down the curtains of dirt and poison. He drove forward through everything the rat threw in the way and closed the distance in a straight line.

The rat slipped and leapt and twisted, but its space kept shrinking. Myst burned fast. Even so, Bayern’s body drew closer, step by step. At last, he broke through it all and stood before the rat.

“Die!” He bared his teeth and slashed a murderous line. The force of it cut the horizon thin. The rat bent away at the last moment. However, it was not far enough. The skin across its chest burst with a sharp pop. Dark green blood spilled out and smoked in the air.

Bayern’s blade had punched through the armor of rot. The decay that had served as a carapace parted beneath his edge for the first time.

“Oh? Strong. It has been a long time since I bled,” the rat muttered, sounding purely impressed. “But it seems like you’re done for.”

“

Huff, huff.

” Bayern’s knees gave way, and he dropped. The union of Myst and his body had already unraveled. The instant he forced that blow through, his Myst reserves hit bottom.

“You filthy rat...,” Bayern muttered. He really had poured in everything. Moving his body felt like trying to lift a house by the eaves. This was his loss.

“Truly gratifying strength. I will stain your flesh and put it to good use.” The rat strode toward him without caution. Bayern had spent himself. The threat was gone.

Just then, he bared his teeth again. He tightened his fingers around the axe. A pocket of Myst he had hidden at the bottom of himself kicked like a waking animal.

The rat’s instincts screamed. Venom surged over its body in a defensive flood as it threw itself aside. Bayern swung, and the world split. A dense, heavy band of Myst ripped the space ahead. The poisoned earth parted in a clean line as if someone had split a plank with a perfect stroke.

The rat’s chest burst open. This time, the wound was deeper by far, enough to kill a normal creature by blood loss alone.

“You wretch,” the rat said.

“That was my trump card, and you managed to dodge even that,” Bayern muttered, clicking his tongue.

“You were pretending to have spent every drop... You even left yourself with a small wound, so I would lower my guard.” The rat’s voice, for once, held genuine surprise. “Even a direct hit would not be lethal, yet the recovery would not be instant. Clever. You remind me of the one I saw Inside. Back when he was weak, he used this same sort of trick.”

“Save your chatter. I lost.”

Bayern admitted it without complaint and squeezed the last of his strength into his hands. He would not allow this thing to stain him. It was better to end himself with his own blow than become the rat’s possession. He reached past empty, found one more ember of Myst in the dark beneath, and hauled it up.

He would burn the body through and leave a final cut. That was a barbarian’s thought, simple and clean. Just as he was about to end himself, something odd happened.

“Hm..,” The rat halted. It glanced past him, and something like alarm flashed in its eyes. “

Kiik!

”

It lowered itself, fur rising along its spine, every hair standing on end. It took on a posture of open caution. The sudden shift froze Bayern mid-motion.

This was the rat’s domain. The earth for miles was filled with poison. Their fight had thickened the venom until even Bayern had begun to feel the weight of it. Yet someone was walking through that land bare, no shell of Myst, no visible guard.

Bayern’s eyes widened. “Ketal?”

Ketal appeared. Bayern stared, momentarily at a loss. Ketal’s face was dark. Until now, Ketal had always been bright around him, easygoing, his smile quick, his manner light. In Bayern’s mind, Ketal had become a man who never lost his grin.

Now it was different. His expression hung low and heavy. The air around him crawled cold. Just looking at him raised gooseflesh.

“Wait. That... that thing... How is that even in this world?” the Holy Sword blurted in panic. It sounded as if it knew something, but Ketal paid it no attention. He spoke in a low, gloomy voice.

“So you crawled out, too,” Ketal murmured.

“Barbarian...” The rat edged backward. It was a cautious retreat, obvious even to Bayern. He had never seen the creature signal wariness so plainly. “I knew you had come Outside, but I did not think we would meet this soon. Unfortunate. I had meant to stain at least half the world before I came to grind you underfoot.”

“How did you come out?”

“And you ask that when you were the first to crawl outside? The seal is broken. We do not have to rot in that wretched snowfield anymore. We can roam the world that was ours. As we please.” The rat set a paw down. The ground under it sagged and sloughed away. “This place is the first step. I will defile the world itself.”

𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

“I see.” Ketal gave a small nod. “Bayern. Get as far from here as you can. I cannot promise you will not be caught up in this.”

“O-oh. Understood.”

Bayern was unsettled. Ketal’s presence had fallen into a deep, dim place, but even that description fell short. The feel itself had changed. It was alien, closer to the rat than to the man he knew, and then stranger still. What Ketal had held down and kept in leash was seeping out with his mood, and it was wrong in a way that made the skin want to leave the body.

The Holy Sword felt it too.

“Wait, this... this is...,” the sword muttered.

The Holy Sword was a tool the God of the Forge had made with their own hands, a divine instrument more familiar with the gods’ true forms than anything on earth. It understood, dimly but truly, what the gods’ rank and force meant.

Which was why it could tell that what was leaking out of Ketal was different in kind. It was not him. It was not like him. It was twisted and yet vast, a rank the Holy Sword could not name, and one thing only was certain. Compared to the gods of the Hall of the Gods, there was nothing lacking.

“B-be careful,” Bayern said. He quickly pulled back, widening the gap.

“You should not have come here,” Ketal said, still gazing at the rat.

“I see that you are still so full of stubbornness. We are not sound things ourselves, but among us, you are ruined in a special way.”

“Shut up.” Ketal planted his foot and kicked off. He left the ground and rose cleanly. He closed his hand into a fist above the rat’s head and gathered power. Vessels burst along his forearm. The muscle twisted and threatened to give way, as if even his flesh balked at the load.

Ever since he had stepped Outside, he had seldom taken a fight with any real gravity. This time was different. He drove himself toward the rat with full intent, and when he spoke, the words left his mouth as if they carried poison.

“Just die.”

The fist fell, and the earth opened.

***

The North had become the rat’s domain, a land soaked through with venom. In the middle of that poisoned earth, a hole yawned wide. It was so deep and broad that from above it was hard to see the bottom; a sinkhole torn in one blow.

“

Kaaaargh!

” The rat, which had avoided the strike by a sliver, screamed. The ground erupted again, like a volcano coughing magma, except what it spat was poison.

It filled the air and broke the sightlines to hide its move. The trick was the same one it had used to slip Bayern’s full-force charge. Bayern had answered by forcing himself through the chaos.

Ketal’s answer was much simpler. He lifted his foot as if the whole thing annoyed him and filled the motion with power. Vessels popped along his foot and up his calf. He brought the heel down on the erupting earth.

The ground flattened as if a giant hand had pressed it. Plumes that were about to burst jammed back into the soil. That was not all. A spreading fracture laced outward in slow, clear lines. The cracks touched, then touched again, and the effect began to reach across the entire field.

At last, the earth could not bear it, and it collapsed. The land in that quarter broke into pieces and slumped down. A vast crater took shape, raw and jagged. If someone found it later, they would swear a star had fallen there. The power was enough to make that guess sensible.

“

Kiaaaaah!

” the rat shrieked like a thing in seizure. Venom condensed in its mouth, packed tighter and tighter until it hummed. “

Kaaaaa!

”

It spat. The beam of poison flashed across the field like a line drawn with a ruler. It had not shown this when fighting Bayern. This was its true power, and its path would have run on and on—off the battlefield, perhaps all the way to the barbarian capital. Put simply, even High Elf Queen Karin would have struggled to block that breath cleanly.

Ketal raised his fist and set his legs. He drew his arm back until the tendons stood. Vessels popped along his forearm in a scatter of tiny ruptures.

Then he punched. The poisoned beam struck a greater force and went out. Sightlines cleared. The air lurched and thinned to a vacuum for a heartbeat. The filthiest stretch of land and sky on the continent became, for a blink, the cleanest place anywhere.

“You monster...!” The rat laughed once, short and breathless.

The aftershock rolled out and hit it. The rat bounced twice, tumbled, and skidded harshly across the ground.