Chapter 46: Throwing Rats

Faced with Eike’s threat, Sean very badly wanted to throw back some sarcasm. He wanted to tell this arrogant, goal-oriented motherhumper exactly where he could stick his plans, and exactly how far in he should delve while doing so. In the moment, he wanted nothing more than to get kawaii as fuck with the bastard. But there were just a couple of problems with that.

Leading the pack was that Sean had long since kept a philosophy about picking fights. He wasn’t exactly a pacifist even before he warped his way straight into Armageddon, but to the extent he had ever considered fighting, his thoughts on the matter had always been something like Don’t Start a Fight You Can’t Win.

It might feel good and honorable, but if your brave stand ended up with you getting your ass kicked and the asshole who did it feeling even better about themselves, that meant it was stupid bravery. That was the kind of courage nobody needed, and in this case, the kind that would probably get him killed.

Breca, insane as he seemed to be, was pretty hard to take down. Sean doubted he could have done it without the element of surprise and a long-shot combination of weird tactics. The fact that Breca had to at least pretend to follow Eike’s orders meant the arrogant offworlder was stronger, and probably by a wide margin.

And he was backed up by what looked to be a full shield-tank and someone with so little in the way of weaponry that screamed being a mage-build of some kind. He had no experience against shields and magic, which was enough to remove much of his hope of squeezing his way out of the alley, even if it turned out Eike couldn’t behead him at will.

Let’s be realistic though. He absolutely could kill me. Now’s not the time to fight.

“Do you really have to, though? Nobody knows that I…”

“I don’t have to, but I don’t trust you to stay quiet. And I’m angry. This will… soothe me.”

As Eike was interrupting, Sean was already pulling up the prompt to will himself on a one-way teleport off Earth towards destination whatever. There was a lot he was willing to do for Earth, but that was assuming there was actually something productive to do. Eike had backed Sean into a literal corner, one where his life expectancy was losing a large fraction of its mass every single second.

He had hoped he would resist the temptation, stay the course, and be a big damn hero, but he really wasn’t sure he had the dedication such a thing would take. At least this way, his hand was forced. He wouldn’t have to feel bad about not saving Earth.

Not as bad, anyway. He flicked the switch and ordered his immediate safe passage to some other place. The air around him took on a static charge that made the hairs on his arms stand despite his armor, and he felt himself getting lighter in preparation for the transmigration.

“Oh, look, Eike. You were right.” The mage-type reached inside his shirt, and pulled out a glowing talisman. “Looks like he’s trying to use some kind of warp. A strong one, by the looks of it.”

“You can block it?”

The mage shrugged. “It’s an achievement reward with absolute wording. The only way he’d be able to warp when I use this is if he had a counter to my block. And there’s no way he does.”

“Well, then,” Eike said, cracking his neck. “No use giving him time to think of something, in any case.”

Sean watched the conversation happen with a growing fear. However worried he was that Eike might be able to destroy him, the fact that the man felt comfortable enough to take his time doing so only made it worse. And as much as he hoped that the mage was talking out of his ass, a quick check of his newest notification showed that things were about to take a turn for the worse.

Teleportation Blocked

While your option to leave Earth for a safer place is still valid, that doesn’t mean that you can do it any time. When teleportation is being blocked by a skill, an item, or some other system-provided means of preventing escape, the choice to use the teleportation is similarly disabled.

Don’t worry. Once you’ve gotten yourself out of whatever you’ve gotten yourself into, the option will still be there.

“Oh, shit,” Sean said.

“That’s correct. Despair. It makes for a better story.” Eike drew his sword back over his shoulder, preparing for a killing strike.

“Oh, no, it’s not that,” Sean said. “It’s just that I remembered something.”

—

“So my brother and I are walking down this alley, and there’s this guy. Muttering to himself, drunk off his ass in a way you can smell from fifteen feet away, just pissed as hell at something. And my brother, he’s drunk too, so he’s making a lot of noise, weaving from wall to wall, and he bumps the guy.”

“Is this a fight story?” Sean asked. Jeff himself didn’t fight much, although Sean always got the impression he could handle himself. But virtually every person Jeff had grown up with was a hard drinking, hard-fighting son of a bitch of some sort or another. He had very, very good fight stories.

“It is, but not like you think. The guy starts yelling, right? And my brother is too drunk to have any sense, so they end up yelling at each other from ten feet away, maybe five or ten minutes of just yelling like jackasses. And I’m laughing my ass off because you can’t understand a word of what they’re saying.”

Jeff took a slug of his beer. He drank the weakest, most naturally light beer on Earth, one after another, like it was water. This was about his eighth since he and Sean had got to the bar, and he was only just now starting to feel them.

“And then, the guy’s hand drops. I think maybe he’s grabbing a knife or something, so I’m getting ready, right? And then his hand comes up and he hucks something at my brother. Guess what.”

“A bottle.”

“Nope. Try again.”

“A brick.”

Jeff got a shit-eating grin on his face, leaned in close enough that Sean could smell the beer on his breath, and let the cat out of the bag.

“A rat. A full-sized, fully living rat. He just grabs it, barehanded, throws it at my brother’s head.”

“Bullshit.”

“Hand to god.” And then it was true, regardless of how implausible it sounded. Sean had hung out with the old man long enough to know that whenever Jeff used that particular statement, for whatever reason, it carried the promise of absolute truth. Someone had actually thrown a live rat at his brother.

“What did he do?”

“He rushed him. Big old fight. No way my brother wasn’t gonna fight, but if you wanted to be extra sure, throwing a rat at him was a good way to make it happen.”

Jeff took a big drink of his beer, apparently enjoying the memory.

“So?” Sean asked.

“So what?”

“You know what, you old fuck. Did he win?”

“Yeah, he won.” Jeff scratched his belly. “It was a mistake to fight, though. Dumbest thing I ever saw.”

Jeff was a handyman of sorts, and had always been shaped more or less like he was now. But Sean had seen pictures of his brother. His brother was a football player in high school, one who never stopped lifting weights. He was a big jacked pile of angry tendons and muscle fiber. If this particular fight was with someone of a similar build, Jeff would have said so.

“Why a mistake? Your brother is huge.”

“Well, yeah. And it was one shot, and the other guy was out. But if it hadn't gone that way? Then you’re fighting the kind of guy who throws rats. And a guy who throws rats is willing to do things most people aren’t willing to do. He’s not the kind of guy you want to get in a fight with.”

—

Eike was moving forward. Relaxed. Confident. But Sean was no longer worried. He knew something Eike didn’t. It had been a busy week. He had killed piles of rodents, fairy tale children, lumberjacks, men made of garbage, panthers, bear-shaped ghosts, and a hero rabbit. He had made friends with a dragon and eaten a truly stupid amount of lentils.

And somewhere along the way, he was only just realizing, he became the kind of guy who threw rats.

Cracks of the Earth Challenge Commenced

You have chosen the path of bravery, opting to parlay your recent progress into a hundred-to-one shot at victory. You will have endless opportunity at the cost of endless danger, and build the kind of head-start that often leads to the birth of legends.

If you lose, you will die. Most worthwhile stuff is like that.

In your case, the challenge will consist of three waves. The first two are what you might expect. Swarms of things, packs of things, things that shoot lightning, and so on. The last wave is a true hail-mary long-shot almost-sure-death scenario crafted just for you.

And honestly? If you can’t make it past this, you don’t have any place in the competition. Compared to the terrors you will face in there, this will seem like a warm, fuzzy memory of a fun walk in the park.

Or you’ll be dead and not worrying about any of this. Too late to back out now, anyway.

As Eike stamped his feet like a cat gearing up for a pounce, the Earth started stamping back. He and his cronies looked around them as asphalt tiles, bricks, and various other pieces of debris started falling out of the buildings around them.

“No. You didn’t,” Eike screamed. “You won’t!”

His sword started to glow red, and all the leisure in his pace evaporated in a moment. He dashed towards Sean, his cronies in tow. The mage’s hands glowed green. The tank appeared content to not glow at all, opting to instead to somehow suddenly look like he was heavy enough to pulverize Sean into jelly on the pavement.

Sean was fine with it, kinda. It had looked a lot like he was going to die anyway. At least this way, they’d be facing a big threat without the chance to prepare, and without their full team. With any luck, killing him would cost them their own lives.

Instead, something very different happened.

Interference detected.

Crack challenges aren’t exactly sacred but they do have a very specific purpose. All the apocalypse beasts in them are for YOU. They are a test of your strength and tenacity, and an opportunity for gain in and of themselves. They determine things about you and are, we can’t be clear enough, for you.

If other contestants were allowed to prevent you from completing your challenge, that would ruin the purpose of the whole thing. You might have noticed that people who attempted just that have disappeared. That’s on them. The 100-mile instantaneous transport they earned as a result is, as they say, on the house.

Enjoy your challenge.

And disappear they had. Eike was gone, just like that, and so were his two cronies. Sean didn’t have much time to feel happy about that, but he tried to feel relief as much as one could while dodging the crumbling remains of ruined multi-story buildings.

He managed to get out with little worse than a few bruises, which was a fair trade with being entirely unprepared for what came next. The Earth continued to shake, but only for a few seconds before the same terrible Earth-rending sound Sean had heard on the TV started emanating from the ground. It was loud enough to hurt his eardrum, but softened enough that it didn’t instantly incapacitate him.

And then, just as the system had predicted, came the swarms.