I continued along the course of the dimly lit tower. The fractured stones bricks beneath me cracking with every single step that I took. The noticeable smell of burnt candles and ash filling the air while the ambience was preoccupied by the occasional flickering on and off of the torches that hung suspended over this dark gothic realm.

  I continued walking until until coming to a stop. My ears could feel something. Something was here, right around the corner of this stone building. I placed my body entirely against the wall and peered my head over to glance at it.

  There was a giant brown rat on the other side of the stone building. It was like the rats of my house and the slums but unlike those little guys, this guy was obviously a lot larger. And seemingly a lot more fierce looking as he had a look of anger on his face.

  Something that would manifest as he turned the corner and charged right towards me.

  I dodged his head but and reached out for my sword to run up to him and slash him. Slashing his neck, the creature squealed out as I plunged the blade deeper and deeper into him. Eventually, the creature’s life would come to an end after enough time.

  [You have vanquished Giant Brown Rat] [Lvl 1.]

  [You have leveled up.]

  “Congratulations on your first level! What are you going to invest your stats into?”

  “I don’t feel like investing my stats right now especially considering the fact that I don’t know what is here. But I will invest my stats into what I think would be good when I am in combat.”

  “Well that does make sense. But just to help you out, I am going to fly above to see what’s around here.”

  “Alright. Tell me what our enemies are going to be.”

  Sparkle nodded before flying off to the sky right above me, leaving me all alone. With nothing but myself and the corpse of the dead rat, I stared at it. My sword had still been plunged in the giant rat’s neck and I reached out for it in order to butcher it.

  Severing the neck, I chuckled slightly as the game was showing some cyan boxes right in front of me.

  [You have acquired the skill Butchering]

  [Butchering has leveled up]

  [You have acquired Brown Rat’s Severed Head.]

  [You have acquired Brown Rat’s Fur.]

  The notifications continued to pop up as I severed the rat with every single cut and eventually the rat’s form was effectively indistinguishable as it’s form was reduced to a neatly piled stack of items which appeared right before me.

  I had a look of surprise. At first though, I would have thought that the stack of butchered items would have been more messy but it seems like that was not the case. Considering how fine looking the items had been but more than anything else, it seemed like the system had converted the butchered remains into these clean items.

  But even though I am ranting on, there is no way that I would be complaining about something like this because there is no real way for me to complain about something good like this happening considering the fact that neatly butchered items would get me a lot more money than gross butchered items.

  I held my hands together in thankfulness as Sparkle came back. A look of surprise had been on her face. She descended down right to my side and I stared at her with a look of confusion as I never saw her with this much of a shocked look on her face.

  “There’s 31 other monsters here! And it’s not just rats but skeletons and zombies!”

  Wait… Zombies!?

  My mouth began to foam with anger and fear. The mere mention of zombies had struck a chord within me considering that these creatures of the night were terrifying existences. Even despite the fact that they were not real beings, just watching a movie about these creatures would force me awake for hours on end past midnight.

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  My eyes shuttered and I glanced at Sparkle who had a joyful look on her face.

  “If you are afraid of them, I could help you too! After all you are my master so there is no way that I am going to neglect you!”

  “I appreciate it but I can’t see how you are going to help me with such a tiny body of yours. And other than tha-”

  A strong gust of wind blasted towards me and a cocky look appeared right on Sparkles face. It soon turned to an expression of shock. I turned over to the side behind me as a bullet size hole appeared in a stone house right behind me.

  I chuckled slightly.

  “Well, it seems like you are capable of helping me out. So I take back that comment since I was being unnecessarily rude and skeptical towards you.”

  I bowed my head towards Sparkle who began to chuckle. She placed her hand on my forehead.

  “There’s no need to apologize, you know. It’s just that you don’t know how amazing I am so of course you would be surprised!”

  “Hey if you were this amazing, why couldn’t you have killed the rat for me?”

  “Well…”

  Sparkle had an awkward look on her face. Something that would immediately turn to a look of embarrassment.

  “Well it’s just that I wanted to see what my master’s fighting prowess looks like before anything else! After all it would be unfair if either one of us did most of the work!”

  “Yeah your right. I hate slackers and more than anything else, I would hate being the slacker. So let’s do the best that we can in order so none of us may be called slackers.”

  “Right boss!”

  —

  The two of us continued killing rats and for the most part it was an uneventful process. With Sparkle shooting them right in the head with her strong and precise wind bullets, and when I could, I sliced off their neck and killed them. With the rats that she killed as well the ones that I killed too, I butchered them too and transferred the rest of the items to the inventory.

  But things would only begin to change with the crackle of bones. With my back against a stone house, I turned the corner and stare at it. There was a skeleton archer patrolling the area and I looked at Sparkle who had gleaming eyes.

  “Can I take care of it boss?”

  “No. I want to try this guy on my own. Plus I haven’t really fought an archer before so I am curious what fighting one would be like."

  I walked out into the open and stared down at the skeleton archer who noticed me. He reached out for his arrows while I slowly walked up to him. He loaded his arrows and aimed it towards me.

  A rushing arrow came towards me aiming right for my head. I opened my mouth in shock not expecting the arrow to come so fast. Honestly, I thought I was built different like a movie character and through some sort of luck or skill, I would be capable of catching the arrows right in my hand.

  But I wasn’t built different.

  [You died]

  —

  The brightness of the sun shined once again and I was outside of the tower once again. Appearing right at my side with blue sparkles at her side had been Sparkle. She had a look of annoyance on her face.

  “You died because you didn’t dodge!”

  “Yeah I know that. But I really thought that I was built different and could have dodged or grabbed the arrow at the very last moment.”

  Sparkle stared at me as if I were profoundly retarded.

  “You are a level 1 character so there’s no way that yo-”

  “I’m actually level 5.”

  “Well even still, at such a low level you can’t even hope of something like that which is so outrageous so how about doing things the normal way how things are meant to be. Approaching the archer when t wasn’t looking at you and beat it to a pulp.

  “I could do such a thing but it’s cowardly and besides, it wouldn’t be all that fun if I were to beat them up so quickly.”

  “Well that’s true but that’s what you want to do so I wont complain about too much about since you are my friend.”

  “Thanks.”

  I entered into the tower once again with Sparkle floating right by my side. The giant metal doors creaked open once again and to my surprise three giant brown rats had been on the other side of the door. All staring me down with a hungry look in their eyes.

  I stared at them as they launched towards me. They all jumped at me at the very first moment that they had seen me but they weren’t all jumping at the very same speeds. It was the middle one who was the fast, the right one who was the slowest and the left one who was in the median for speed.

  I darted to the left and with my sword I slashed along the feet of the leaping left rat. It fell to the ground with a loud oomf and I turned to face the rest of the rats who fell onto another.

  “You guys have no real coordination and because of that, that is how I will eat you bastards alive"!”

  I said aloud with a cackling laugh and staring over the battle scene had been Sparkle who had a concerned look on her face.

  ‘Hopefully she is just saying that as a metaphorical rather than something that she actually does.’

  (She actually does eat rats in real life)

  I continued slashing on the left rat who had been right in front of me and plunged my sword right into its head. Simultaneously the two other rats turned to face towards me and charged towards me once again. The one on the left which had previously been the middle charged towards me like a bull in a Chinatown.

  And I dodged his ramming strike by leaping over. Descending back down on to his running body which leapt out of the tower, I stabbed him right in the head until he lost consciousness.

  I chuckled as I turned to the last remaining rat who had a look of pure shock and fright on his face before suddenly turning around and running.

  “Sparkle injure that last guy.”

  “Of course!”

  A wind bullet formed in her pointer finger as she pointed towards the rat. With the rattle of her words, a hole appeared right in the rat’s chest. The rat continued to live before weakly limping away.

  “Isn’t it a lot easier to have me support you in fights after all I could take care of enemies that are far away or are attacking you with ranged attacks.”

  “It would be easier but even still, it’s not what I want. I will not grow as much as I want to. Also I am going to hunt them down for a bit but could you try scouting things out again. I want to know if things might have reset here.”

  “I’ll be going.”

  Sparkle said before floating above me and I continued to walk along the hallways of the tower’s first floor in order to end the rat. My eyes laid upon it, the rat was fleeing away from me and it continued to run to the very end of the tower. It was turned away from me scratching intensely at the floor of the tower.

  I stared at it with a curious look before Sparkle came back to me.

  “I’ve counted and there’s 32 enemies.”

  “So minus the two enemies that I killed, it seems like there are more enemies compared to the first round of me fighting here.”

  “Yeah and the compositions of mobs was different. Last time 40% of them were rats but now it’s 50% of them being rats.”

  “Damn. That’s a lot of rats… But speaking of rats, where do you think that one is trying to go.”

  I continued to watch that desperate injured rat dig into the ground. It was like it’s nest or something had been in the dirt that it was trying to dig up. But do rats even have a nest?

  I walked up to the rat with a look of interest on my face.

  Suddenly the rat descended into the ground as if falling into the section of what is beneath the floor. I stared at Sparkle and she nodded back at me.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, the two of us walked over to the hole dug up by the rat and without a further doubt, the two of us descended…

  End of the chapter.