Chapter 286: The Ugly Rat that Polluted the Sea (3)

“Hmm.” Ketal caught his dislocated arm, pressed the humerus into the socket, and seated the shoulder with a sharp twist. The bones had slipped under the weight of his own power.

Then, he moved toward the Ugly Rat. In that single stride, he arrived in front of the rat. His fist drove into its chest.

Crunch.

It was not the sound of a bone breaking but of bone turning to powder. The rat flew as if struck by a siege engine, its massive body thrown end over end.

“

Kiieeek!

” the rat shrieked. It tumbled across the ground far, skidding for kilometers before it scraped itself to a halt.

It stabbed its claws into the earth and barely managed to arrest its flight. Without that, it would have rolled for minutes.

“

Kah

...You monster,” it rasped, trying to heave itself upright, only to find it had no time. Ketal was already there with an axe in hand.

The rat flinched and swept both forelegs up to protect itself. Ketal brought the axe down. The ground split, and the rat’s bulk was driven into the crack as if hammered into a mold.

“

Urgh!

” Bayern exclaimed. Even Bayern, well clear of the battlefield, reeled. He swallowed down the taste of blood aftershocks had shaken loose.

He finally pulled free of the pressure of their clash. To avoid the spillover, he had retreated so far that anyone lacking a Hero’s sight would not have seen the fight at all. He steadied his breath and looked back over his shoulder.

“My god...,” he muttered.

The space beyond seemed warped. Strikes of that magnitude were unmaking the world. It was a battle between monsters.

“So when he fought me... that was just child’s play,” Bayern murmured. He understood that what he now saw was Ketal’s full strength, unmasked.

Boom!

“

Kaak!”

The rat managed to block the blow that followed, but the foreleg it used shattered like pottery.

𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

Ketal did not pause. His face was blank. He lifted the axe and drove it down again. He struck, then struck again, then struck a third time. He worked like a lumberjack felling a stubborn tree. The armor of rot broke apart, and dark green blood spattered in sheets.

The rat flailed and slashed with its ruined limb. The claws angled for Ketal’s head, and the power they carried was enough to mark his flesh. The claws cut only air. Ketal had dodged the attack. He appeared behind it and clamped a hand on the back of its skull.

“Just die.” Ketal’s voice was low, almost toneless. He slammed its head into the ground.

The green-stained earth deformed. Another crater scarred the North. The rat howled in raw pain. Ketal did not spare it a glance. He kept his grip and drove the skull down again. And again. And again.

When he had fought beings like demons outside the White Snowfield, he had always drawn a line for himself. The battles had looked like formal duels—murderous, yet bounded by a cold courtesy he imposed on his own hands. His enemies had come to kill him, to erase his existence. Even then, Ketal kept his line.

Now there was no line. There was only the fastest way to end the enemy. It was savagery in its simplest form.

He was not the wandering barbarian named Ketal who traveled the world. He was the ashen-haired barbarian of the White Snowfield, the chieftain who had survived there and torn apart a thousand monsters with his own hands. His fingers tightened on the rat’s skull. A crack ran through the bone.

However, as he drew the head up for another impact, a harsh stench blew across the field. The ground sagged into liquefied sludge. The poison grew denser than before, thicker and fouler.

Ketal let go and stepped out of the cloud’s reach. That concentration was dangerous even for him without Myst guarding his lungs; a single breath would start to melt the tissue. He could recover, but he had no reason to invite harm.

The rat staggered to its feet and swayed. Ketal’s attack had landed deep.

“Heh... You are still a monster. What could have created a thing like you?” it muttered in disbelief. The eyes it set on Ketal held no hatred, only the stunned wariness of a creature watching something it could not categorize. “In all our long ages, nothing like you existed. Then you burst out as an Anomaly and broke the balance. You ruined everything. Do you not think so?”

“Be quiet.” Ketal’s reply was indifferent. “You can die here.”

“In your current state, victory would be hard for me.” It admitted the truth without arguing. As they stood now, the difference between them was obvious. If they fought a hundred times, the rat would lose ninety-nine. However, that did not mean it would die. “It has been a while since I felt pain.”

The shattered foreleg twisted back into its proper shape. Powdered bone rose as if called and knit itself. In moments, the rat’s body had returned to form.

Ketal’s did the same. The muscle fibers that had begun to tear under the strain of his power tightened and smoothed. Hairline cracks in bone sealed. The burst vessels along his arm and shin vanished. An onlooker would have struggled to decide which one was the monster.

“I have no reason to fight you,” the rat said. Its purpose was not to trade blows with Ketal. “I will defile the world. A nuisance like you can be ignored.”

“Do you think you can ignore me?”

“I believe I can.” It chuckled. “You cannot kill me.”

Ketal frowned. He did not contradict it. In the White Snowfield, he had never truly killed the high-tier creatures. He could slaughter weak ones like Whities without a thought, but once a monster reached the rank of the Ugly Rat or the White Serpent, it stepped outside the concept of death. He could tear them apart yet not end them.

“We will see.” Ketal narrowed his eyes. That might no longer be true. He had gained Myst, the world’s secret power. With it, he might force an ending, which was worth testing.

The rat had no intention of testing it with him now.

“I will not waste time on a pointless fight. I have a long way to go.” The rat began to sink into the poisoned earth.

“Are you going to run away?” Ketal said, his voice cold.

“This is my domain already. There is nothing you can do.”

“I know. That’s the troublesome part.” He clicked his tongue.

The rat slipped deeper, swallowed by its own terrain. He did not try to stop it. The fight had told him enough. If the rat committed to retreat inside its domain, catching it now was not feasible.

“I will simply avoid you and keep staining the world. When I have spread my filth wide enough and made it mine, when my power has grown in the new domain, I will face you again. I will kill you then, barbarian.”

With that, the rat was gone. Ketal stood there a moment.

“I will kill you,” Ketal said under his breath. Then, he turned and headed back to Bayern, who was watching with a dazed expression. “Are you all right?”

“Not really. Ketal, what was that thing?” Bayern asked him.

“We can talk after we return. There is nothing good about lingering here.”

Poison was still creeping into Bayern in slow threads.

“Understood,” Bayern replied, nodding.

Ketal took him back to the northern capital. The waiting barbarians ran up, voices tripping over each other.

“My king!”

“What happened out there?!”

Power had collided with power. The sky had shaken, and the earth had heaved. Even the capital, far from the field, had felt it. Bayern waved them away and lay down. Ketal stood over.

“How are you feeling?” Ketal asked him quietly.

“Not great.” Bayern gathered Myst as best he could and forced the film of poison off his skin. It was ugly, but not catastrophic. His arm was another matter.

The rat’s wound lay on top of the bear’s. Flesh and bone alike were dissolving. Barbarians boasted absurd vitality. A Hero like Bayern could heal a wound that would kill a normal man in a week. Even so, this was not mending.

“You need rest. Should I call a doctor?”

“There is no such thing here, and rest is not the priority,” Bayern said, swallowing pain. “Did you bring it down?”

“No. It fled. If it chooses to run inside its own ground, even I cannot catch it.”

“I see... But what was that monster?” Bayern asked him.

“It’s the Ugly Rat that pollutes the sea.”

“So I thought.” Bayern’s smile was thin. The monster from the Emperor’s legends had appeared in the North.

“Unlucky for the demons. The rat happened to rise in the very region they invaded,” Ketal added.

“For us, it is a small blessing,” Bayern replied. At least they did not have to stop both the rat and the demons at once. He exhaled and shook his head. “No. Taken by itself, this is still the worst.”

A monster from legend, one even he could not beat, was hunting the North. If that was not the worst, then nothing else could be.

“We have to respond. We have to move fast,” Bayern said. He meant to ask Ketal what he knew about the rat, but his wound was too much. His body swayed as the poison was winning. It had begun to bite where Myst had thinned.

“I understand your urgency, but rest first,” Ketal said.

“All right. I am sorry. Let us speak tomorrow.”

“Sleep deeply.”

Ketal left the room, excused himself from the barbarians clustered outside, and returned to his lodging. The look on his face kept them from pressing him with questions.

He lay down and clicked his tongue. This had not been a surprise. Whitie had already burst out of the White Snowfield. There was no reason the rat could not. It was simply unpleasant. He drew a long breath and let it out hard. Sitting in a foul temper only cost him. He smoothed his thoughts and let the feeling settle.

“What should I do?” he murmured.

“Um. Are you all right?” The Holy Sword, quiet until now, felt the moment and spoke.

“I am fine. Sorry you had to see that,” Ketal replied, nodding.

“No, you don’t have to apologize. I was honestly terrified because it was my first time seeing you like that, but I am fine again now. All living beings wear masks. Even the gods in the Hall of the Gods once got caught cheating and had to suffer through the scandal. I can understand.”

Now that Ketal had set his face back in its usual lines, the sword chattered as if relieved. Ketal almost laughed.

“Do gods cheat?” Ketal asked the sword.

“They are very human. They did not speak for a hundred years afterward. Another god had to mediate and mend things... Ah, I should not have said that. Could you keep that secret?” The Holy Sword shivered.

“I will.” Ketal smiled and nodded. The way the sword made noise by itself had a way of loosening the tightness in him.

[Whew. Thank you. That rat... it was a monster from the White Snowfield, was it not?”

“Yes.”

“So those things still remain Inside. And you fought them... and survived.” Its tone had gone small.

“Do you know what they are?” Ketal asked it.

“I do. I am a Holy Sword. The gods poured information into me. What they told me included those creatures. I simply never thought I would see one.”

Even a tool that had sat in the Hall of the Gods’ vaults had only known them as doubts on a page. They were so old that existence itself seemed like the wrong word. Ketal’s expression turned to interest.

“So you know,” Ketal muttered.

“Not a lot. I do not have details on each monster, but I understand where they come from.”

“What are they?” Ketal asked it. Even he did not know in any precise sense. He had learned by surviving there for a very long time. He did not know their origin or their nature.

“Um...” The Holy Sword hesitated, searching for a way to explain it that would make sense. “To answer, I have to begin at the start of the world.”

“I know the basic history.”

“Really?”

Ketal answered offhand. At the beginning, the world, the universe, was one. Then, one day, there was an explosion, and expansion began at an extreme pace. That was the start. Time piled up, and at last the universe cooled into the shape we know.

The Holy Sword was aghast. “W-wait. How did you... That is knowledge only the gods know, or at most the highest of the demons.”

“I had a guess.”

So the history of the universe is the same as the one on Earth

, he thought, and let it go. The sword remained rattled for a long time.

“W-well... yes. That is the beginning. But the world did not immediately take the form it has now,” the sword finally replied.

“I know that much too.”

“You do? That will make this easier.”

After creation, the world spent a very, very long time in chaos. There was no gravity, no stars, no water, no air—only a universe broken and filthy, a past no one knew, only inferred. It was the dark age.

“At the end of that age, the world finally stabilized. Gravity arose, stars and continents took shape, and water and sky came to be. The gods and the demons were the first living beings born into that stable world,” the Holy Sword explained.

“Mm?” Ketal frowned. The statement held a contradiction. “But the beings in the Demon Domain are called the Oldest Ones.”

If gods and demons are the first life, why were they called the oldest?

Ketal thought.

“Are you saying that the beings from the Demon Realms are born before the universe was born?” Ketal asked the sword, half jokingly.

“Not that. I said the gods and demons were the first beings in the stable world.”

“Wait.. You don’t mean...?”

The Holy Sword answered like a teacher confirming a student’s answer. “What you’re thinking is right. Before the universe looked as it does now, before the gods and demons, there was only broken confusion. In that age, living beings arose for the first time in the true sense.”

They were existences of another concept entirely, beyond value in the current frame.

“Creatures born in the dark age. That is what the beings inside the Demon Realms are,” the Holy Sword said.