Elite Ratatuo

Liam was trying to pick the perfect time to retreat.

There were simply too many rats and the metal fence wasn't a permanent solution. The same could be said about the small mountain of corpses that had formed through the death of hundreds of horned rats.

More than a third of the students he saved were trying their utmost to fight. None of them was fearless but they understood that Liam couldn't defeat thousands of rats all by himself.

If they wanted to survive it was imperative for them to learn how to fight for themselves!

Liam saw from the corner of his eyes that a few Elite Ratatuo had destroyed the metal fence right next to the school building. Dozens of huge rats, Blazing Tooth Rats, and the Elite Ratatuo made their way through the metal fence but their targets weren't Liam and the students around him.

Instead, they smelled fear and decided to stalk easy prey. Thus they followed their instincts and jumped through the windows of the ground floor to make their way inside the school where screams of terror followed soon not much later.

"Is there a place without windows, or where the windows are at least five meters above the ground?" Liam asked out loud, not expecting the students around him to give him a logical answer.

Without expectations, it would be harder to disappoint him. Nonetheless, he hoped for the best. Liam racked his brain to recall a few building complexes from earlier when he had looked down the cliff. The images of the city were still vivid in his mind but that didn't mean he knew the city better than the students who had been living there for a bunch of years already.

"The… the library…no…the hospital?" The voice of a young man reached Liam's ears. Looking to the side, Liam saw a young man with blonde hair. His eyes were filled with golden electricity currents and his movements were rapid.

The young man was one of the few human students who had been the first to spring into action. Liam remembered him blocking the second Blazing Tooth Rat which he couldn't slay fast enough.

"Rex, just shut up!" Another voice reached them from the left and Liam quickly discovered the athletic man, whose body was sheer perfectly trained for long sprints.

His Soultrait was activated, allowing the young athlete to move nimbly and rapidly. Rex, the blonde-haired student, couldn't even see the flat hand coming as it landed on the back of his head.

Liam was different because he could see the slightest motion in his peripheral vision. His expression didn't falter when he saw how the athlete smacked Rex's back of the head.

Instead of listening to their quarrel, Liam ended the life of a few more monsters, just to notice that his weapons were slowly beginning to feel heavier and heavier.

The heavy rain had already been annoying before Liam began fighting hundreds of rats but things turned even more difficult afterward.

Due to the heavy rain, his entire body and weapons were soaking wet, which forced him to hold the handles of the longsword and the battle axe much tighter than he would usually to not let his hands slip. At the same time, the rain forced him to pay even more attention to his surrounding area because every step could mean he slipped down the wet mud or pools of murky rainwater.

It wouldn't be long before he would get a cramp in his hands, and his Stamina was also deteriorating rapidly. He had yet to purchase more Energizers because their effect deteriorated the more often he took them in a short period of time, but it wouldn't be long before he would be forced to take the next batch of Energizers.

"Everyone should be at the gymnasium. It's the biggest gymnasium in the cou—...." The athlete said, just for Liam to interrupt by dashing closer.

An Elite Ratatuo, a rat the size of a donkey and packed with muscles all over its body shot through the thinnest gap of the small pile of rat corpses. The athlete was the closest to the Elite Ratatuo and it was about to sink its sharp teeth in his skin when Liam's battle-axe came flying at it.

Liam unsheathed the second longsword for the first time since he entered the valley and he used more Arcane Power to trigger the active effect of the Devil's Eyes to the limit.

The world around him seemed to slow down. His erratic breathing grew ragged as his eyes detected everything that happened around him.

The movements of the Elite Ratatuo were unveiled to him and Liam predicted the monster's next moves with the use of his spatial awareness, the movement of the Elite Ratatuo's muscles, where the monster's gaze would flick to, and most importantly, its stance.

Taking the high stats of the Elite Ratatuo into consideration, Liam knew that he shouldn't face such a monster. He was simply not strong enough to handle a monster on that level with his low stats.

At least that was what he should be thinking under normal circumstances. Yet, upon seeing through the eyes that had been enhanced with his Soultrait, Liam's confidence began to skyrocket.

He had never heard of the Devil's Eyes Soultrait and didn't expect it to be this powerful. Liam predicted the Elite Ratatuo's attack and he evaded it by a hair's breadth using his wits to the extreme. His predictions could be wrong but he had to trust them entirely in order to ensure his survival.

The slightest bit of distrust in his capabilities would result in his death so Liam moved rapidly. He detected the change in the Elite Ratatuo's movement the moment he threw the battle axe toward it and reacted accordingly, evading its pounce before cutting through the thick fur of the Elite Ratatuo's side.

Afterward, he twisted his body by leaning backward until his back was on the verge of breaking. However, it was not even a millisecond later that the Elite Ratatuo's claw whooshed past his head.

Liam's black horn missed getting hit and broken by the razor-sharp claw by a hair's breadth but he didn't even think about the horrifying aftermath that would have followed if the claw had hit him.

Instead, he finished the final attack he had prepared while evading the ferocious monster's attacks!