The hour before dawn is a strange, liminal time in Oakhaven. The boisterous energy of the night has finally bled away, and the industrious hum of the morning has yet to begin. It is a city holding its breath. This profound quiet was the perfect cover for the business of shadows.
Dressed in dark, practical clothing, with my new leather pack secured tightly to my back, I moved through the empty streets like a ghost. My new boots, a wise purchase from Gregory, made barely a sound on the cobblestones. The Ring of Obscurity was a cool, comforting weight on my finger, my magical signature compressed into a barely perceptible knot. This was not a mission for a pyromancer, no, this was a mission for an infiltrator. Elara's words echoed in my mind: "This is a test of your prudence and your skill."
The sewer entrance Elara had marked on the map was exactly where she'd said it would be: a rusted iron grate in a forgotten alley behind the fishmonger's market. The stench that wafted up was a physical assault, a nauseating cocktail of rot, stagnant water, and something acridly chemical. It was the smell of a city's forgotten underbelly.
With a grunt of effort, I pried the heavy grate open. The sound of metal scraping against stone was obscenely loud in the silence. I froze, listening, my senses on high alert. Nothing. Only the distant cry of a single, early-rising gull. I slipped through the opening, pulling the grate back into place over my head, plunging myself into absolute, suffocating darkness.
For a long moment, I just stood there, letting my eyes adjust, letting the initial shock of the environment wash over me. The air was thick and cold, heavy with a dampness that clung to my skin. The only sound was the slow, rhythmic *plink… plink… plink…* of water dripping from the ceiling into a puddle somewhere nearby.
This was a fundamentally different battlefield than the Whisperwood. There, I had the sky, the trees, the open space to maneuver. Here, it was a tight, stone-walled labyrinth. My fire magic, my greatest weapon, was a liability. A single uncontrolled [Firebolt] could cause a flash flood of steam, blinding me. A [FlameWall] was completely out of the question. I would have to rely on my newer, more subtle skills.
I held out a hand, and a small, controlled flame blossomed in my palm. It wasn't the crackling [Ignite] of battle, but the steady, silent glow I had practiced in my room. The light pushed back the oppressive darkness, revealing a narrow, brick-lined tunnel. A shallow channel of murky, foul-smelling water flowed down the center, filled with refuse and filth. This was my path.
With Elara's memorized map in my mind's eye, I began to move. I walked on the narrow ledge beside the channel, my flame held out before me, casting long, dancing shadows that played tricks on the eye. I kept my [SenseHeat] active, pulsing it every ten seconds. The world around me became a map of thermal signatures. The stone walls were uniformly cold. The flowing water was a slightly different shade of cool. And everywhere, there were tiny, fleeting sparks of warmth: the normal, fist-sized rats that were the sewer's natural inhabitants. They scurried away from my light, chittering in the darkness, no threat to me.
I moved deeper, the sounds of the city above fading away until there was only the gurgle of water and the soft scuff of my boots. The tunnels twisted and turned, a confusing maze that would have been impossible to navigate without Elara's detailed map. I passed through junctions where massive pipes emptied their contents into the main channel, and side tunnels that were little more than cramped, bricked-up holes.
After twenty minutes of careful progress, I found the first sign that things were wrong. On the curved wall of the tunnel, five feet above the waterline, were three deep gouges in the brickwork. I ran my fingers over them. They were fresh. The edges were still sharp, the brick dust not yet washed away. They were too large, too deep, and too high to have been made by any normal rat. It looked like a badger had sharpened its claws on the wall, but we were dozens of feet beneath the city streets.
A few yards further, I found the second sign. A rat, or what was left of one. It was one of the normal ones, but it had been torn in half with savage force. Its entrails were smeared across the walkway. It wasn't a clean kill for food, it was a display of frenzied, overwhelming violence. Something large and aggressive was claiming this territory.
My hand tightened on the hilt of the knife at my belt. My [SenseHeat] pulsed again, more urgently this time. And there it was. Ahead, around the next bend in the tunnel, was a heat signature. It was large, far too large for a rat. It was the size of a small dog, and it was moving slowly, deliberately, in my direction.
My heart hammered in my chest. *Do not engage unless absolutely necessary.* Elara's voice was a calming anchor in the rising sea of my adrenaline. This was the test.
I extinguished my palm-flame with a thought, plunging myself back into darkness. The sudden blackness was disorienting, but I trusted my other senses. I pressed myself back against the slimy wall, finding a shallow alcove where a section of brick had crumbled away. I held my breath, listening.
First came the sound: a wet, dragging scrape accompanied by the click of claws on stone. Then came the smell, a wave of putrescence that was even worse than the sewer's ambient stench. It was the smell of sickness, of flesh actively rotting on a living creature.
A moment later, it lumbered into view, its form barely visible in the faint, residual light that filtered down from some distant surface grate. It was a rat, but a monstrous parody of one. It was as large as a wolfhound, its body a corded mass of muscle beneath matted, patchy fur. Its eyes glowed with a faint, malevolent red light. But the worst part was the sores. Large, open pustules covered its body, weeping a thick, viscous fluid that glowed with a faint, sickly green luminescence. The necrotic ooze dripped onto the stone floor, sizzling faintly.
[Observe]
[PlagueRat] (Level 8)
Type: Corrupted Beast
Health: 150/150
Description: A common sewer rat that has been grotesquely mutated by a powerful source of Decay magic. It is unnaturally large, highly aggressive, and its bite carries a potent, flesh-rotting disease.
Weakness: Fire.
The confirmation sent a chill down my spine. This was it. The creature ambled past my hiding spot, its long, scaly tail dragging on the ground. It seemed to be patrolling, its head sniffing the air. It was a soldier, a guard. I stayed perfectly still, my entire body screaming at me to blast this abomination into cinders. But I held back. This was just a symptom. I needed to find the disease.
Once it had passed and its claw-clicks had faded down the tunnel, I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. My mission was clear. The rat had come from deeper in the sewer system. I had a trail to follow.
I relit my flame and moved forward, my pace quicker now, more purposeful. The signs of the corruption became more frequent. The strange, glowing green moss I'd seen oozing from the Plague Rat's sores began to appear in patches on the walls, casting an eerie, spectral light. The air grew heavier, the scent of decay becoming an almost tangible presence.
I found the remains of the rat catchers' last stand in a wider, four-way junction. A rusted, broken lantern lay half-submerged in the muck. A few feet away was a tattered leather gauntlet, its surface covered in deep bite marks. There was no blood. Or rather, there were no bloodstains. The glowing green moss seemed to grow thickest in the areas where blood would have been spilled, as if it were feeding on the memory of violence. The two catchers hadn't just been killed, worse, they had been consumed by this place.
The thought hardened my resolve. This wasn't just a mission from Elara anymore. This was a cleansing that needed to happen.
Ahead, I heard a new sound, it was a cacophony of chittering and squealing. My [SenseHeat] flared, showing not one, but three large signatures in the tunnel ahead, blocking my path. Peeking around the corner, I saw them. Three Plague Rats, clustered together, gnawing on something I couldn't, and didn't really want to identify.
There was no hiding spot here, no alcove to slip into. The tunnel was a straight shot. I could try to fight them. Level 8. I was Level 7. Three of them would be a brutal, bloody fight, and a noisy one. It violated the mission parameters. I had to get past them. I had to be a ghost.
This was what [Haste] was for.
I took a deep, steadying breath, my mind going into the cold, calculating space of a commander. I measured the distance: about forty yards of straight tunnel. The rats were distracted, facing away from me. I had the element of surprise. A ten-second burst would be more than enough.
I drew on my mana, channeling the fire not into my hands, but into my muscles, my nerves, my very blood. [Haste]!
The world dissolved into molasses. The chittering of the rats became a low, distorted drone. The drip of water from the ceiling became a series of suspended, glistening jewels.
I exploded into motion.
My feet barely seemed to touch the ground. I ran on the narrow ledge, a silent, grey blur against the dark brick. I passed the three rats in a heartbeat. From my hyper-accelerated perspective, I could see every disgusting detail: the twitching of their whiskers, the pus welling in their sores, the yellowed incisors tearing at their meal. They were completely unaware.
As I reached the far end of the tunnel, I could feel the spell beginning to wane. The world was starting to speed up around me. I ducked into the next adjoining tunnel just as the spell snapped off.
The world crashed back in on me with its normal, frantic pace. My heart hammered against my ribs, and my legs burned with the lactic acid fire of the spell's after-effects. Behind me, I heard confused squeals. The rats had sensed something, just a brief shift in the air pressure, a scent on the wind, but they didn't know what. I had done it. I was past them. I was a ghost!!
I pushed deeper, the sense of being near the source becoming overwhelming. The glowing moss now covered entire sections of the wall, and the air was so thick with the stench of decay it was hard to breathe. The tunnel ahead opened up, widening into a vast, circular chamber. It was a central cistern, a hub where a dozen sewer lines converged. And in the center of it, I found the heart of the sickness.
It was a pulsating, tumorous mass of flesh, moss, and corrupted earth, easily twenty feet in diameter. It looked like a giant, cancerous heart half-buried in the floor, its surface glistening with the same necrotic green ooze. Veins of glowing green energy pulsed beneath its skin, sending waves of corruption out into the surrounding water. At least a dozen Plague Rats scurried over and around it, tending to it, guarding it, seemingly born from its foulness.
And then I saw him.
Fused into the side of the grotesque mass was a human body, or what was left of one. It was one of the rat catchers, his face a silent rictus of horror, his body being slowly, horribly absorbed by the growth. This thing didn't just kill, it consumed. It grew.
My stomach churned, and a cold, hard rage settled in my gut. This was an abomination. This was a plague waiting to be unleashed upon the city above.
I needed more information. I crouched behind a large pillar, my presence masked by the shadows and the overwhelming stench, and focused my will [Observe]
[Corpsebloom Cyst] (Level 15)
Type: Magical Abomination (Minion Generator)
Health: ???/???
Description: A nexus of concentrated Decay magic, seeded into a place of filth and death to grow and spread its corruption. The Cyst absorbs organic matter to fuel its growth and periodically spawns Plague Rats to defend itself and expand its territory. It is highly resistant to physical damage but vulnerable to cleansing magic.
Warning: The Cyst is linked to its creator. Damaging it will alert them to your presence.
*Seeded. Linked to its creator.*
My blood ran cold. This wasn't a natural disaster. This was a weapon. Someone had planted this thing here, deliberately, beneath the Merchant's Quarter of Oakhaven. Someone was cultivating a plague in the city's heart. This was an act of magical terrorism.
My mission was complete. I had the intelligence. I had found the source. Elara's orders were clear: get out without being seen. I had to leave. I had to report back. It was the smart, prudent thing to do.
But as I began to slowly, carefully back away, a new shape detached itself from the shadows on the far side of the cistern. It was another rat, but this one was different. It was massive, easily the size of a pony, its fur a mangy, dead-white color. A crude, bony crest protruded from its skull, and its eyes glowed not red, but a terrifying, intelligent violet.
It didn't sniff the air randomly. It didn't patrol. It stood perfectly still, its head slowly turning, scanning the chamber with a predatory focus that the others lacked. Its gaze swept past my pillar, then snapped back, its violet eyes locking directly onto mine from across the cavern.
It saw me.
A low, guttural growl echoed through the chamber, a sound that was less animal and more a declaration of war. The other rats stopped their scurrying, turning as one to face me.
I had been made. The ghost had been seen.
And Elara's final order came to mind: *Do not engage unless absolutely necessary.*
The giant white rat let out a piercing shriek, a command to attack, and the entire swarm of Plague Rats turned and charged toward me.
It was absolutely necessary.