"Behind you!" she shouted, as if I didn't know. I was the one with the (Sense) skill after all. Still, the fact that she screamed it said they were probably about to attack, and so I swirled around on my feet, thankfully not face planting on the stone floor this time, or worse falling into the sewer water, as I held up my left arm, braced with my right, and willed my weapon to fire.

"Die! Die! DIE!" I commanded, and three bolts of…light? Energy? Probably just safe to call it magic. Regardless, my wrist mounted crossbow fired them, and they were well aimed…this time. Seriously, no aim assist at all on this thing. They didn't curve or anything. Luckily, the bolts were friend-or-foe compliant, so, according to Lucia, those few times I'd hit her with them were annoying, like being pinched, rather than deadly.

To my targets, however, the bolts flew, and all three of the little rat bastards found themselves torn clean in two in the air, their bodies flashing brightly as the energy of my weapon attack clashed briefly with the energy of the Wave that was probably the reason they had glowing red demon eyes and claws that shone in the magelight that Lucia had made for us to see by, allowing me to stare them down as they finally perished.

I spun back around to find her using wind spells to push a few more against a wall, and six shots were needed to end those…there were only four, but I missed two of them. Still, they were dead, and I was breathing heavily, my brow dripping with sweat as I leaned against a wall, trying my best to ignore the slimy feeling on my back as I did so, and wondering what kind of cleaning spells Lucia knew.

"How man*gasp*y does th*gasp* that make?" she asked, and I looked to her, concerned. She was using a lot of her MP, and was already down to less than half her maximum according to my Status Screen on her. For all that, she'd actually managed to go up in level twice while doing this, from twelve to fourteen, and I myself was now level six, so it was a good spend of resources for the gains.

However, I wanted to answer her question, and soon went to another page of my status to find my inventory now contained a grand total of…three-hundred-eighty-six rat tails. Not bad for about three hours of work. Better, I had several dozen other small rewards, including 'beast pelts', 'beast claws', and most important of all 'small Wave Gems', according to Lucia the condensed energy of the Waves that allowed the Rats to be so powerful and smart.

Well, they were powerful and smart, compared to normal rats. It didn't take much effort to kill those sorts of things, not in a military sense, and thanks to one of my skills, we were able to find them with no sweat. (Sense) was an awesome skill. To be fair, observe, identify or inspect skills tended to be OP if you used them right, and at the moment, they had made us some bank.

"Almost four-hundred so far. How many more do you have in you, do you think?" I inquired, as we slowly began to look around the tunnel.

"If you had asked me that this morning, my Lo…Bard, I would have said a dozen at most. Hunting these vermin with you has proven most invigorating," she said, actually smiling through her soot covered face, a gift from my first bright idea when we found a rats nest in a pipe, and had her fling a fireball down it. Turned out sewer gas was flammable. Luckily it hadn't taken anything other than a few HP off us, instead of catching the whole sewer alight.

"Heh, stick with me, and we'll hunt all kinds of vermin down. Maybe even upgrade to pest at some point," I told her, and she smiled, genuinely smiled. Apparently I actually had some charisma points in this world. Of course, I knew she wanted me for my Bow more than anything, and standing up, I plucked the string on it, sending a pulse of magic into the sewer to hunt for more targets.

Luckily, there weren't that many more. The nests were easily dealt with by a few bolts from my crossbow, and her wind magic, as I'd nixed the idea of flinging a lightning bolt around for the same reason as a fireball, and earth magic might collapse the tunnels, was able to clear and even kill a few of the bastards for us. Better, my (Auto-Loot) skill applied to the whole party, instantly doing the work of taking the usable stuff from their bodies.

I had asked if we should deal with them beyond that, but she showed me that, since they were 'Wave' infected lesser creatures, removing the gems from their bodies caused them to 'decay' turning into ash. Apparently the Waves were not so kind to living things, turning them into little more than monster fodder that had to be exterminated by the peoples of the world, lest they harm the innocent.

Mind, she noted the greater creatures, basically anything above a pig, would not be so kind. Their bodies could persist like normal, but were filled with various toxins and poisons that required the church to deal with, though Heroes could apparently purify them in the same way. I was actually curious to try that out, as purifying something sounded like it would at least look really cool.

Regardless, we kept going. Four-Hundred was soon breached, and I got another level. Sadly, my meters did NOT refill from this, so I was starting to run low on stamina. It regenerated the slowest of my resources, and everything seemed to have a small cost. By the time we were at five-hundred dead rodents, I was ready to call it a day, directing Lucia and I towards the nearest exit.

It was on our way that we heard it. The sound of a Boss…I mean, I didn't know it WAS a Boss, but the roar, the way it shook the ground from the sheer volume of it. Yeah, it was gonna be a Boss of some kind, and I quickly motioned for Lucia to toss a glowing ball of light down the tunnel, where I thought it had come from, while using (Sense) again…and then trying to make a saving throw against peeing my pants.

What I sensed, and what her magelight globe lit up was a terrible looking monster. I remember an old horror game with some mitochondrial creatures being mutated from the animals and people in New York City. This thing looked like a giant version of one of the rat enemies in that, a face split in half, exposing the brain a little, while the tail was split into three wicked sharp looking stingers at the end.

"A Nest Mother!" Lucia shouted, pointing towards it. The hide was thick, obviously, but I still fired about half a dozen bolts into it as it came towards us, doing next to nothing to its body, as the bolts drove in, and then vanished. That did at least make it mad, however, as we started to run as it reared back its head and then breathed out, a plume of thick, smoke-like fog spilling from its jaws. I was well versed enough to know not to breathe that in, and as I saw a corner, I grabbed Lucia's arm and yanked us around it, the stream, luckily, billowing out much slower as we kept moving away from it into the side tunnel.

"Info on this thing?" I asked as we turned another corner, not even having to look back to know the thing was scrambling after us.

"Nest Mothers! They're like the Queen of Rats! I've never even heard of one in a city this size, they usually make their homes in deep woods. This one must have found its way here during the chaos of the First Wave. It would explain all the Wave infected rats," she said as I turned around briefly and fired a few more bolts into the thing. They did piddling damage, but they slowed it a bit as we turned yet another corner.

"Weaknesses?" I asked, and she looked at me with those green eyes, but seemed unable to say anything. That said it all. These things were just HP bags. You did enough damage to take it down, and it died. Nothing complicated, but nothing we could take advantage of either. That left us in a pretty bad spot. Hopefully someone above had heard this thing's roar, and was already sallying some adventurers to come to our aid.

We wouldn't last that long, however. My Stamina was almost drained, and while she didn't have that stat, I could see she'd put most of her MP into our hunting earlier. She had maybe a magelight or two left. Nothing that would directly help in this case…not without some support, and I actually smiled as I started to form an idea in my head, looking back to find the rat was still around the corner from us.

I quickly surfed into my menu, looking around. I had more skill points to spend on some unlocks, though nothing for the transformation ability tree, this would still get me something useful, and within a second, my Bow began to glow, as we dove around another corner, making the complete circle of this part of the sewers, luckily, the fog dissipated quickly, allowing us to freely move forward, at least until I put my arm on her shoulder and stopped her, spinning us both around.

"What are you?" she asked, but before she could say anything more, I used my new skill (MP Transfer). My Weapon shined brightly in the darkness over the sewers, tendrils of it moving from my arm and into her body, causing my own blue gauge to go down to nothing, but filling hers back up…like a tenth of the way, but it would be enough, as I pointed forward.

"Cast when I say so!" I shouted, leaving her no room to argue, and like a trained adventurer, she steeled herself. I did too, truth to tell, as this might not work, but, hey, better to die than be killed, right? And who knew what would happen to me if I died in a fantasy world.

The next instant the Nest Mother came barreling around the corner, actually thudding into the wall outside the passage, and causing the whole sewer system to shake around us, bits of dust and debris creating a small cloud between us and it. Then it reared back its head, rather than charging us, just like I'd hoped it would, and I held myself against Lucia's back, bracing her body.

"Lightning bolt!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, and she wove her staff before her, lights running up and down the wooden thing for a moment, before she pointed the end of it forward, and a bolt of electricity leapt from that into the air.

Luckily, the dust in the air worked to keep the sewer gas from igniting, a welcome bonus honestly, as I'd expected us to be burned, but the bolt, as I'd hoped, instantly set the fumes of the Nest Mother's gas attack ablaze, transforming the green-black cloud into an orange and black bit of hellfire, even as it began to race towards us, the light of it nearly blinding, and the hair on my skin tingling from the heat.

"Wind spell, as strong as you can!" I commanded the moment the lightning bolt was done, and she quickly shifted onto her heels, as she spoke a single word, and a huge blast of wind erupted forth, coming from her whole body, not just her staff. The kickback from it was even stronger than I'd expected, as we were both sliding along the slick stone sewer floor for three meters or more.

It had the desired effect, however, as the wind slammed into the fiery inferno, and kept it from rolling over us, instead forcing it to move backwards, right into the face of the Nest Mother, which let out a truly unholy shriek for several seconds that overpowered even the crackle and spitting of the fire, before finally the flames were in her lungs, and it became a terrible wheezing noise that slowly wound down like a balloon running out of air.

Then it was over, when the flames had consumed everything about the monster before us, leaving nothing by the horrid odor of burned hair and meat. Its skin had melted off of most of its flesh, and the head was eyeless now. The place where I'd noticed the slightly exposed brain was now empty, and I could only guess that it had been burned to ash too. The thing was very, very dead.

Exhausted, mentally and physically, we were left standing there, both panting hard, sweating, for a long, long moment, before finally we collapsed onto the floor. She was looking around, shocked, and then turned to me with a smile, and I started laughing, rather relieved at not being dead, and noticing I had some 'pop up' messages I dismissed for the moment as I wasn't exactly feeling up to parsing them at the moment.

We both got up after a few minutes, just as several people in armor came charging in, guards not adventurers, and they looked at the still smoldering corpse behind us. Lucia confirmed what had happened as one of the guards helped her keep on her feet, and we literally limped from the sewers, and back into the light of the sun. The bright, stinging sun as it turned out we'd only been down there for about three hours, and it was only just passing into the afternoon.

Still, we rode that high of being kick butt adventurers all through the town, as the sound had indeed translated up into the city itself, giving us a nice little parade of people, including some surprising Demi-Humans in the mix. Not many, but hey, some were better than none, and at least said the racism wasn't complete and total, so maybe I wouldn't have to deal with that during my time here. Then when got back to the Adventurers' building(Which I learned was called their Hall)

"Just what in the Abyss did you get up to?!" screamed the woman at the counter as we came in, and every eye turned to us, the entire line of waiting adventurers with it, making me really wish I had an invisibility power at the moment…that was a Spear exclusive in Dimensional Sign, but maybe it might not be here. Regardless, the woman literally leapt over the desk, revealing she herself was a Demi-Human, possessing a panther tail.

"Um, Ray, we fought a," began Lucia, but before she could finish, the woman, Ray, was standing right in front of us, and making wild gestures with her hands.

"I KNOW what you fought, Lucia. You know how I know?" she asked, and then pointed towards a corner of the Hall, where my tray had been left…the tray that was overflowing with rat tails, five-hundred-twenty-two of them to be precise, along with dozens of other things, and most noticeably, the heart of something who's heart was larger than my fist, which meant it was likely the Nest Mother's.

"I see. So the (Loot Cache) skill worked," I said, and walked over to the tray, ignoring the look Ray gave me as I began to shuffle through the contents. My status window immediately popped up at this point to tell me all the wonderful things I could unlock with these things, by adding their mass to my shield. Most specifically, the pelts could get me something called the (Beast Bane Bow), which promised increased effectiveness against such things.

"It worked alright, it worked to make this place stink like the sewers…wait, why don't you two?" she asked, and I realized she was right. Despite spending the last few hours in one, we had apparently had most of the smell literally burned off us by that last attack. That was…useful, though it did make me wonder why my clothes hadn't been burned in some way, and even seemed to be clean now.

"We had an...explosive end to our fight with the Nest Mother, and I think that helped with the smell," I told her, finding a rat claw that looked particularly shiny in the loot pile, my Bow could use that to do some (Claw Bite) skill unlock, which sounded useful.

"Wait…you really found a Nest Mother down there?" she asked, and I nodded.

"We did. We were slaughtering its children, and it popped up to try and kill us, but the Hero of the Bow was able to kill it!" said Lucia, smiling as she walked over to me, and I shook my head at that.

"No, I helped, to be fair, but that was all you, Lucia. Her spells won the day here, and I think, if there's a reward, she deserves it for killing the thing," I told her, and Lucia seemed about to object, but before she could, Ray interrupted.

"A Nest Mother. A level thirty-five MINIMUM creature, and you killed it? Like, it's not gonna pop back up with one eye missing and a hate on for everyone in the city?" she asked, sounding like a situation that had happened before, but I shook my head.

"Unless they can survive having their skulls emptied of eyes and brains, and apparently I have its heart crystal thing here too, so I'd wager it's not getting up again any time soon," I said, hefting the gem up from the pile, much to the shock of everyone there, as the thing had apparently been missed in the sheer volume of other loot.

That got the whole Hall abuzz as everyone began to question us. Asking things about where we'd seen it, and how it felt to kill something that was apparently typically the sort a whole army of adventurers would be assigned to. That was a nice ego boost, but I admitted that Lucia killed it, again, and more importantly we were only able to take it down by luck more than anything else.

Still, when things died down, I asked about payment, and Ray had us come to the back of the Hall, where she had to open up a real safe, not like the cash sack thing up front. Here, she kept…well a freakton of money. Like, it was a glittering horde, with coins, gems, and even some weapons in it, all built into a space that looked like it shouldn't have held even half that much stuff.

"Expansion Spell. It can't be applied to something that moves, like a bag or the like, but something that's just going to sit there you can do it to," she explained when I questioned it, and then pulled some things out from the space. Namely a not at all small bag of coins, and a much smaller, but far heavier looking bit of metal.

"Now then, if I'd known you were going to kill so many of the stupid things, and stink up my Hall all day," she began, and I winced. I really hadn't thought about that when I'd done this, I'd just thought it would be convenient to have my bounty items appear at the Hall.

"I'd have asked the castle to lower the bounty to half. This is gonna really crimp our relationship, even if you did kill a Nest Mother," she began, as she stacked ten coins together, and then quickly began to do the same, using the first stack to measure them out fast, rather than counting them. It was an interesting system, honestly, and made me wonder how the coins were made so evenly…but I figured it was probably magic in some way.

"More importantly, I would have asked for some gold coins to pay you with. As it is, I'm breaking the petty cash paying out just the rat tails, which does bring us up to a problem," she said, as she finished, and I did a quick count…by which I mean as she slide them towards me my status screen helpfully counted them, providing the number of five-hundred-twenty-two silver sliding into my hands, and then into a bag that I slipped onto the belt at my waist.

"See, the bounty for a Nest Mother is twenty gold. Normally. But today, I don't HAVE twenty gold. Not even half that. As such, I'm gonna have to offer you some…different compensation," as she spoke, she laid three items on the table. The first was a very wicked looking dagger, like a serrated edge, with a bend in it so it looked like a lightning bolt. Better, she tapped it, and it actually crackled with electricity. Awesome.

The second was gemstone, one my status screen said was a decently sized emerald, worth about twenty-two gold. Better, it helpfully provided me with a breakdown of what it could do for me, either being put to use in the construction of mid to high tier accessory of some kind if I could find the proper artisan, or even used directly on my Bow to upgrade it with a new form or ten, all of which would be stronger than the base I had.

The third was a rod, like the one Lucia herself wielded, but of about two ranks in quality higher. It would improve her spells by a factor of almost two, AND it would decrease her MP usage, allowing her to cast more. It was a good piece of gear, all things considered, worth almost twice what Ray had said the bounty was at thirty-four gold, though my skill advised that haggling might change that.

"I can't exactly offer you all three of these, it wouldn't be right, even if he's to be the one who saves us all, I have to make sure I keep the Hall in good order. So, which one of these will you take in lieu of coins?" she asked, and I turned to Lucia, who looked like she was almost salivating at the rod, which made the choice a non-issue. No debate, no hesitation, I pulled the rod across the table, and held it out to her.

"But…I can't, you need the gem, or maybe the dagger yourself, you can," she began, but I just smiled at her, as I rather forcefully held out the thing to her again, almost shoving it into her hands.

"Miss Lucia, it has been an honor to be at your side today, and I would be remiss not to see the slayer of that creature rewarded properly. Please accept this, with my thanks for all your efforts," I told her, and saw Ray roll her eyes, either at Lucia's humility or my speech, but regardless, Lucia soon snatched the new rod out of my hands, and then hugged it, along with her own weapon to her chest like they were babes in her arms.

"Good, now we have one more piece of business then, and I can get the two of you out of my hair," said Ray, as she soon pulled out a sheet of paper from seemingly nowhere, and slapped it down on the desk between us. On it was…me. Like, from my angle my (Translation) skill was providing all the data, and it had my stuff, height, weight, even had my blood type somehow…probably magic.

"What's your adventuring name?" she asked, picking up a quill, licking the tip of it, tapping the bit of metal she'd brought out before, causing it to ring and the tip of the quill to shine slightly, before then placing it on the parchment, where it floated above. I looked at it for a moment, then back to her.

"Do I need one?" I asked, confused.

"Every adventurer needs a second name. It lets us…mingle better with the normal people, and pushes us away from our early lives, before we were touched by the Hourglass," she explained, and I nodded, seeing the purpose. People who became adventurers in this world using such things wanted to be 'reborn' in a way, so they picked new names, which likely meant Lucia and Ray were not either of these women's real names.

That did leave me thinking for a moment that, just as a gag, it might be fun to give my real one for this, just to screw with the world and see what happened, but glancing down at my wrist, I had another idea, and smiled as I leaned forward.

"How's about Corvo? Corvo Attano," I said, and she shrugged, obviously not too concerned about the name itself, just wanting to make sure I had one, as the quill wrote something in their language my translation function said was the name I'd picked. Strangely, I now had the urge to go find a skull mask and a queen to serve, but for now, Lucia and I rose from our seats, and exited the Adventurer Hall, to make our way back to the castle.