We all make mistakes. Some take longer than others to materialize. Some are barely survived, if at all. Some doom you.

  I was trying to decide which I’d just run into as I looked at my burnt arm and heard the wailing.

  “I was too cocky.” I chuckled to myself.

  I leaned back against the wall and decided to think about my family for now.

  I’d have to make a choice soon.

  *****

  Earlier

  I could feel the power radiating through me! I felt stronger than I had, I was stronger than I ever was and I embraced it fully. I ran down the corridors, running into different groups of rats. The smaller ones I tackled, fought, and scrapped. I was sadly forced to kill them, their small size actually making it harder to keep alive than to not when it came down to it.

  The next fight I tried harder to manage it and ended up having to fight more and more rats that showed up. Unusually, these all seemed to just solidly gang up on me. I didn’t know by what esoteric rules the rats decided who was foe and ally among their kind but this time I seemed to have lost that gamble. Three become four became seven became a dozen.

  And by the end of it?

  I left twelve rats the size of small dogs beaten, bruised, and hurt. But alive. And with only mild injuries to show for it. None of them would even scar! I laughed, taking it all in. It was beyond intoxicating for once in my life to be strong. To fight things that would kill a weaker man, a weaker Mutai, a hundred times over, and come out on top!

  My soul felt light, my fists felt solid, my feet felt steady, and despite everything, I felt better than I ever had. If I got strong enough, I might even be able to purge the diseased flesh! I was truly living on top of the world, despite being in a sewer!

  The fighting continued and continued, each one bringing with it more than I could have ever hoped to gain. New ways to fight, new ways to move, new quickness, new movements. I learned quickly, every injury a new lesson on what to avoid. I couldn’t just win. I had to win while taking as little damage as possible and keeping my enemies alive.

  That last one was purely a luxury and because of that, it was the sweetest of victories.

  But it also served as effective training. In a few ways, I was hobbling myself, making it harder to fight. In others, I was learning how to properly fight. Not all opponents would be as easy as these rats. Not all would simply fall from jumping on the big ones and biting into their neck or throwing the smaller ones towards the ground. No. I’d seen that toad man. He was going to take this sort of fighting, my punches to his body.

  I grinned in a pained grimace. I was also going to take his own move and use it against him. Make him know how it feels to have your stomach nearly punched through.

  Days became weeks and changes were apparent. Smaller rats seemed to join together more, groups got bigger, and hordes became more common. I could outrun them with ease now but once, just once, I decided to try and fight one.

  It was glorious.

  It was the most enduring, longest lasting fight I had. I had to constantly back peddle, practically running backwards, while throwing out mostly kicks but also a few punches here and there. Stomping and killing the weaker rats when I could, diving into turns to get even a single moment more of pause, hiding in dark alcoves and ambushing them with light from my Vambrace. I had thought it impossible to fight a horde and in many, many ways, I wasn’t wrong. But no challenge would stop me! I would push the boundaries till it broke. I couldn’t fight a horde, but I could slowly destroy it over time.

  Long lasting it may have been but nothing could be forever. A large rat intervened and then I was forced to run away for all my might. I managed to avoid the horde but it was the first time I had to run away and fight a large rat. It was dangerous. Its claws raked into my back and nearly hit something vital. I fought with all my might for that one, but any delay allowed the horde to catch up.

  I finally managed to both kill it and run away from the horde. In many ways, it reminded me of my first day here but the difference was staggering. Hurt? Yeah, I was hurt, but I had won and felt better than ever. I would have liked to beat the horde but some things just weren’t possible without being able to hit a whole lot of enemies at once. I was many things, but not an army.

  When the big rats started to group up, I struggled. Fighting two torso sized rats was far more than twice as difficult and practically eliminated half my advantages and made so fighting cautiously was the only option. I would call that battle a draw, at first. I got away and one seemed to be knocked out.

  Still, I didn’t stop. The things I could learn from fighting two enemies at once was vast. I got better, I got stronger! And I explored further.

  New enemies awaited. I’d practically beaten all the rats I could but I still didn’t know if I was ready for the toad man. But I’d heard the slopping of meat and the smacking of chains. It was finally time to explore those corridors.

  Carefully, I walked down, keeping my eyes open. The first thing I noticed was how many more rats were here. They seemed to be everywhere and that was saying something. And they always attacked on sight, en mass. Their power level was the only thing keeping me from being totally overwhelmed.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  [2]

  [3]

  The vast majority were just normal rats.

  Finally though, I found the source of the slopping meat sound. I thought I was prepared for anything. I expected a new enemy, something that slapped against the ground to move.

  I was not ready for what I saw.

  I turned the corner, only to see what seemed like a hundred rats eating something. For once, to my astonishment, they ignored me totally and completely. The thing, whatever it was, kept moving. I could barely see what it was underneath all the rats.

  It walked forward, mindlessly, making large meaty sounds on the ground.

  [2]

  It was, weak. Pitifully so. Whatever this creature was, it was no enemy. It was a poor victim of rats. I heard a loud meaty thwack and turned towards the source. Another creature, but this one had come from the ceiling. I only now noticed a hole there.

  It stood and-

  My heart broke and my mind spun.

  For starters, this thing… it was dead. No matter what, it was a hundred percent dead. It looked like a person but, bloated. Skin stripped away but somehow filled in with more, meat. My first thought was a zombie. I’d heard rumors they existed but to see one… but if it was one, it wasn’t anything like the stories.

  Where its legs should have been was just, tumors. More like an elephant’s legs than a person's. It was horrifying.

  Its clothes were, in a way, the worst part though.

  Because I recognized them.

  Stained and bloody they might be, but I’d never forget that symbol. Two lines and a large crescent underneath. A smile.

  The Smile Company.

  I grimaced. The Smile Company was the one that followed after Vega, destroying the land and stripping it of its resources. Its HQ was here in the city but it apparently was spread all around, through many locations. Their people had been the ones to destroy my island for resources and force me to go to Vega City, a deal between them and Vega himself.

  I’d mostly thought of them like the world’s worst, most cruel vultures. Terrible, awful, and annoying, but my hatred towards them had been far more minor in comparison. They hadn’t killed my family or destroyed my village, just my island. Terrible but, I had bigger worries and sources of vengeance.

  Looking at this though, it had a good way of growing my hatred in rapid time.

  I’d been hearing these sounds for the entire time I’d been down here. This was… that had to be at least hundreds of people. How many more places did they dump their failed experiments out at? How long had they been doing it? Their kill count had to be higher, a lot higher.

  This… this was evil.

  They were a technology company for god’s sake… why would they need to do so much human experimentation? Why would they need to kill so many? What on Vega were they doing?

  Bile in my mouth, I turned away. I knew what the rats were eating now and was far worse for it. There was no helping these… Abominations. Their soul was gone, all that was left was a rotting corpse walking around, in all the wrong ways.

  I’d make sure to stop this when I could, if I ever got strong enough. Fighting a company rather than a person seemed, nearly impossible. But I’d figure it out. They deserved that and more for what they had done.

  Shaking off the malaise, horror, and disgust, I returned to my search. Meat wasn’t the only sound I’d picked up echoing across the tunnels. There were also chains. The sounds seemed to be louder, or perhaps just echoed more, because it took me a while to find and get to their source.

  I could hear them now, on the other side of the tunnel turn after I crossed one of the wooden bridges. Whatever it was was just around the corner.

  I prepared myself, smiling. Whatever this was, it was going to probably be a new enemy. I had no reason to believe anything that stayed down here for a long time was going to be anything short of hostile. I took a deep breath, and turned.

  I’d expected chains.

  But until that exact moment, I hadn’t realized that I’d expected more than chains. Humanoid, two arms, two legs, bald, even a face, but composed entirely out of chains. Every step it took seemed to cause a million chains to grind against each other and even just standing still, its body seemed to be in constant motion. The chains moving almost like liquid through it.

  And yet all of that paled before one very important realization. One that made my heart skip a beat and my body go cold.

  [15]

  Oh.

  It turned towards me, eyes of glowing red narrowing.

  I tried to run but it raised a hand and snapped a finger.

  I saw a spark and then all was fire.

  *****

  I barely made it out alive. It hadn’t even truly bothered to attack me. It had simply caused a spark and the sewer gas had exploded. A lucky, fearful dive into the nasty water had saved most of me but I felt like I had been boiled alive and my right arm had been burnt entirely. It was a miracle my Vambrace still worked at all.

  Now everything was in motion. Seeing me had set that thing off. It was some kinda, some sorta Chain Wraith. The ability to make sparks down here was far more dangerous than I had ever thought. I was practically sitting on top of a bomb at all times.

  I could hear explosions now, many explosions, which was bad. I was at home. If the noise was reaching me, it was only a matter of time before they reached the alligators below. They would come up and I would die. I could run away but how long till the chain wraith’s were gone? Because there was definitely more than one.

  I couldn’t fight those things. They were far beyond me. If I was truly unlucky, which seemed probable given my luck, they were actively searching and hunting for me right now. They were probably running into rats.

  I poked the bear and now I had a choice to make.

  I either run far, far away, and hope to find somewhere else I can escape.

  Or I explore the tunnel or the water room and potentially have to fight toad man or some new horrifically dangerous creature.

  “I was definitely too cocky.” I chuckled.

  The choice was obvious and there was no time to spare.

  The river below was already stirring and the explosions were growing louder.

  It was time to fight a toad man.

  Patreon (20 Advanced Chapters)

  Discord