Grade 3 Swift Rat

For a long long time they kept killing the rats, after hours the corpses of tens of thousands of rats the size of adult cates were everywhere at the entrance of the cave.

Finally when the hundreds of mercenaries were getting tired of fighting and the back lane of magicians were running out of mana, finally the flow of rats coming out of the cave grew weaker and weaker until there was no more, except one.

A rat the size of a lion on earth got out of the cave with red eyes, it looked slowly around the group until its eyes fell on the meat on the ground, seeing it the rat slammed its tail on the ground and disappeared... a second later it appeared near the meat, it grabbed the biggest chunk and disappeared to reappear at the cave's entrance.

"This is a grade three Swift Rat !"

It was Roland that spoke, this rat was probably the king of that herd of rats. What was surprising was that it was allowed to live in the cave by the Waterwalking Tiger... magical beasts were very territorial, they usually wouldn't let a beast that was not much weaker than them on their territory and this Rat must be only one grade under the tiger, this situation could only mean two things : the tiger was a weird individual that had allowed this to happen, or the tiger was actually much stronger than the rat.

This rat even appeared at the worst timing when everybody was starting to feel tired, some of the weakest mercenaries already couldn't stand on their legs and fell on their butt.

"Bring out your last ressources of energy everybody ! We gotta get rid of this rat today or the mission will be delayed !"

Nobody could say no to the boss so even those that were sitting got on their feet again and went into a fighting position.

From the back came a lightning ball 2 times stronger than the first few that came earlier.

Thomas turned to look at who could throw that and behind Frank had appeared a second ring, his rings looked exactly the same, two purple rings made of lightning. Both Thomas's rings were silent when behind his back but Frank's one's were very noisy, his element wasn't suitable to an assassin or the kind of jobs...

Turning back to look at the rat, it had been hit by the lightning ball and was surrounded by a cage of lightning.

"Attack it now !"

Everybody threw attacks while it was still surrounded by the lightning as it had a paralyzing effect on top of its very high damages.

The first guy to attack wasn't ready for a counter attack and was bitten on the calf.

The rat tore off half of his leg

"AAaaaaaaaaaah !"

The rat still couldn't move because of the paralysis effect of the lightning but it could still defend itself if it felt endangered.

The weakest mercenaries couldn't approach it so they looked at the archers and magicians awaiting for them to do the job.

Roland and his wife both took out their swords of their scabbards, around their swords appeared a yellow glow, after a second both their swords were coated in that glow.

They approached the rat before the paralysis effect faded, lifted their swords and brought them down on its neck before it had the time to react.

On its neck were now two slashes but the rat didn't seem to be bothered by it and started moving back with the meat now that the paralysis had faded, during the short time where everybody was waiting to see if that rat would fall a blue flame hit it right on the face.

"Kririiiriiii"

The rat screeched and started rolling on the ground, slamming its tail and head around. After a minute of pain the rat stopped moving, it was finally dead.

When Thomas approached the dead beast to steal its magical power he was blocked by another magician

"Where are you going ? We all participated in the fight you can't have it for yourself !"

"Move, first you didn't attack it and even if you did I was he one that killed it."

Said Thomas, he knew it wouldn't be easy to absorb it's magic because of the rest that would want a share but he had to be fast before it faded into the air.

"That's right we all deserve to share the magic !"

Now other magicians started to talk too, first they were afraid of Thomas as he seemed as strong as Frank while having only one ring but now that they were a group they gained confidence.

The only one that didn't move or claim his share was Frank, he kept looking at the group and said nothing, as non-magicians didn't have any use for magic power remnants Roland and his wife also stayed out of the discussion.

"I won't say it two times, move from here before the mana start fading !"

"What are you doing if we say no, kill us ?"

Thomas had started getting impatient, now he could do two things :

Kill the group of magicians and take the mana before it faded but he would probably have to fight with the rest of the group after that, was it worth it for a grade 3 magical beast ? He was still thinking about it.

Then he could scare them away...

He summoned his ring behind his back and lit his body on fire, there was no explosive power in this spell. It could only make him seem more intimidating and release a very strong heat, he had developed it the first time in the forest but didn't find any utility to it. This time he used it to try if it's intimidating power was really existing.

Now that Thomas's body was on fire, every time he took a step flames were left on the ground in the place his feet's were at a second ago, he raised his arms and pointed them at the group of magicians, flaming balls appeared in each of his palms and grew bigger every time he took a step forward.

Each one of his steps forward made the other magicians take a step backward, seconds later he was in front of the dead body of the rat. The only issue now was that if he tried absorbing the mana he could get attacked as he had to focus and could defend himself.

Thinking back about the first spell he threw today that almost killed the other mercenaries, he used his flames to draw a circle around him and made the flames rise high enough for nobody to see him.

The circle was wide enough for him to push back the rest of the magicians, he didn't stay in the middle of it as if they threw spells blindly inside the circle that's where they would aim. He pulled the rat to the side and started absorbing it, after a minute he felt pain in the third eye and a numbing feeling in his neck, a familiar feeling but it didn't hurt as much as it did the first two times, mana started to gather inside him like waves and the mana in the air was thinning.

All the magicians realized it but one of them realized at which rate it was depleting from the air, he looked at the flaming circle and thought

'His mana was originally very condensed, I had never seen a one ringed magician with that much mana around him. Now it's growing even more, is he getting his second ring ? This kid won't stop surprising me, even if he joined the capital's academy he could be a core student... what is this kind of genius doing in this place ?'

When everybody has put their tents again and had forgotten about Thomas , except the magicians of course that were still watching jealously at the flaming circle, Thomas inside the circle had three rings behind his back, the usual gold and blue ones and a purple one that kept rumbling like thunder, the third element he had awakened was Lightning.

He could still only use one ring in front of people but he was growing stronger and stronger, he also had enough power now for Tom to hold his promise and tell him what was his revenge about.

As he was busy with the hunt he preferred waiting until they made it to the inn to ask him about that, tomorrow would be the big day. After hiding his rings he got out of the flames and got back where Hull had put his tent under all the magicians's eyes, especially the acute eyes of Frank.