Chapter 12: Horde

With all of their backs exposed to me, I quickly pulled Guillotine from my back, releasing it from its magnetic attachment point. Positioning the heavy blade to my right side, I tightened my grip on the weapon's handle and dashed forward, quickly covering the remaining distance.

The instant I was in range, I performed a wide cleaving swing with such force that I effortlessly cleaved right through three-mole rats closest to me like a hot knife through butter, splitting them apart and killing them instantly. Within a couple of seconds of completing that swing, the remaining mole rats noticed something wasn't right through the heavy movement I just made.

As they were about to turn around and start investigating, I continued my charge forward at my fastest possible speed. Swiftly arriving at the new prey, I transitioned into another attack, cleaving through two more mole rats and right as my blade sailed past, both of their bodies erupted, releasing copious amounts of blood.

While the blood started pooling, the remaining mole rats that I'd yet to deal with finally got themselves together and turned around. Just as they did the largest mole rat from before, who I suspected to be their group leader, released a high-pitched screech signaling the remaining mole rats within the group to charge.

Looks like I'm left with two more directly in front of me and five more on my right. I don't exactly want to be handling enemies from multiple directions, so I deal with the two ahead of me first before I move to eliminate the last five on my right side.

Done planning out how I wanted to dispatch the remaining mole rats, I wasted no time and rushed the two in front of me and made another wide cleaving movement, easily killing off those two poor bastards. With those couple of moles taken care of, I turned my attention towards the five incoming mole rats and took a step forward while making an insanely wide swing. Which actually managed to cleave through four out of the five-mole rats, surprisingly, although I lost my balance for performing such a wild maneuver.

As I was trying to regain my balance, the last remaining mole rat slammed into me and brought me to the ground. With my back now against the hard rocky surface of the tunnel floor, the mole rat latched its jaws around my thigh and started thrashing its head back and forth, attempting to tear a chunk out of me. But unfortunately for it, my armor held up firmly against it, thus it managed to do absolutely jack shit to my armor, let alone me. Although its bite force was applying quite a bit of pressure on my poor leg.

Unwilling to let the mole rat continue to chew on my armored leg and do as it pleases, I tossed Guillotine aside, and tried prying the creature's jaws off my leg. After attempting to get the damn thing to release my leg for a short bit, I had no luck due to the rat's bite force being quite high. Thus, I retrieved my trusty Custom Combat Knife from its sheath and stabbed it directly into the mole rat's jugular, and ripped it up the side of its neck until my knife was stopped by its spine.

As blood spewed out from its neck, it continued to thrash about for a short while until it began to lose strength and a few moments later; it stopped moving entirely. When the mole rat died, its jaws lost all strength, so I unwrapped it from my leg and stood up back before I kicked its worthless corpse off to the side.

If there were any more of them that could've ended badly for me, I'll have to watch and keep track of all opponents going forward no matter how weak they may seem.

Now that all the mole rats were dead minus the one that ran deeper into the mine tunnel, I walked over to where I tossed Guillotine and picked it up. Placing it on my back, I backed up to wait and see what sort of friends the sole survivor would return with, but with my 12G Laser Pistol drawn and my stockpile of grenades ready to be thrown at a moment's notice.

Nothing of note occurred for a while and as I was beginning to get antsy, I picked up a small rumbling sound coming from the tunnel's depths and felt some faint vibrations from the rocky floor.

Looks like reinforcements are on their way, time to farm.

Ready to receive the coming exp, I waited eagerly for the mole rats to arrive. No more than a minute later, a large group of about three dozen mole rats came running into view, unaware of the danger that awaited them.

God damn, that's a shitload of mole rats. I better start lobbing grenades to thin their numbers some.

Not wasting a second, I hurriedly holstered my 12G Laser Pistol and started throwing my stock of MFC Grenades right into the center of their group.

Whilst I was in the midst of rapidly chucking my grenades, I began putting some distance between myself and the swarm of mole rats. A few seconds into backing up, the grenades started landing in the middle of the small hoard. Seconds after the first landed, it went off producing a corona of plasma that engulfed and vaporized the mole rats near the center of the blast and turning the ones near the border of the blast radius into piles of ash.

With the first MFC Grenade going off, the other two sailed through the air and followed suit shortly thereafter, with the same corona of energy thinning their numbers even further down to just eight of them. As the coronas of plasma cleared, the remaining mole rats started producing panic-sounding squeaks. 

So with a prime opportunity sitting in front of me I drew Guillotine from my back once again and advanced forward with my blade at the ready as fast as I possibly could. Reaching the nearest mole rat within seconds, I performed my usual right-to-left swing, slicing through two of them right out of the gate. 

Those two disposed of, I continued moving forward. But just as I was closing in on another kill, one of the little rats leaped at me with its jaws wide open, ready to take a chunk out of me. Reacting quickly, I swung the flat side of my sword at it and the moment my weapon made contact with its torso; it produced an audible crunch from the impact.

While its body flew off and crashed into the tunnel wall, I continued rushing forward onto the next few mole rats in sight. Once I was in range, I cleaved through them like the rest, leaving me with only two standing and the one collapsed over by the tunnel wall. With the group of them nearly wiped out, I speedily made my way over to the two still on their feet and ended them then and there.

Now that those two were sent on their way to their next life, I turned back around and walked over to the mole rat that I had incapacitated earlier. The instant I arrived in front of it, I saw that the mole rat was having trouble breathing and was barely hanging on by a thread.

"Sorry little guy, but it's a dog-eat-dog world out here and I have no intention of leaving this world anytime soon." I said to the struggling mole rat before I raised the hefty blade I was carrying above my head and swung down on its neck, ending the little guy's suffering.

All enemies eliminated, I scanned the area to see if there was any immediate danger. When I found none, I took a moment to settle my heart rate and breathing while leaning up against the tunnel wall.

Yeah, I think that's enough for today. I could definitely do more, but I'd rather not get ahead of myself and get bogged down by more enemies than I can handle. I honestly don't know how I convinced dad to let me venture in here all on my own, the Daddy's Boy perk must've done the heavy lifting.

Spending the next minute resting, both my breathing and heart rate calmed down enough so I returned Guillotine to its spot on my back and moved my 12G Laser Pistol from my belt to its designated pouch along with the MFC Grenades. From there, I began my journey back through the tunnels in the direction of the mine entrance.

...

As I was closing in on the mine entrance, I heard an extraordinarily loud rumbling sound behind me, originating from the depths of the tunnel.

Seconds after the rumbling became noticeable, an alarm started blaring as Old Man Pete came charging over yelling at the top of his lungs. "BOY GET YOUR ASS INSIDE NOW!"

Not wanting to find out what sort of trouble was coming our way, I did as he told me to and raced straight into the vault. Whilst the large metal doors of the mine entrance started to close, I caught a glimpse of a horde of at least several hundred-mole rats storming over. 

Staring at the coming tide of them, half in amazement and half in horror, the massive swarm crossed over into the firing range of many laser turrets surrounding the entrance. At that point, all hell broke loose and the dozens of turrets started unloading onto the waves of blind mole rats, creating a literal light show like no other and eliminating swaths of them.

While the laser turrets were putting in work, the couple gatling turrets finally spooled up and started spewing hate down range at the many, many moles charging for the mine entrance.

*Brrrrrrrrrr...*

…

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Sorry for the delay I was in the middle of a move the last several days.

If you want something else to read, that's similar to this, check out my other webnovel Wasteland Conqueror. It has a lot more chapters released.