The swarm of rats targeting Toz had turned into a figurative sea. It looked almost like a vortex with Toz in the center, consistently swinging his sword, casting magic with his cats. None of them holding back. If they didn't go all out now, they wouldn't have a chance to do so later either.
Mindle acted like a flamethrower. Nil created and sent out various armaments and pieces of metal to block their advance. Lucy kept covering large parts of the sea of rats in shadows, distorting their senses and creating waves in their movement. Lucy held back and distracted a large part of the rats alone, alleviating a great deal of the pressure on them.
Despite the dire situation, Toz and his cats pressed on, showing no signs of faltering or giving up, only leaving a trail of cut and charred rat corpses.
Toz kept swinging his blade like a whirlwind. He had completely given up on trying to focus enough to cast magic. He concentrated on keeping the rats off him and out of his clothes while the cats, sitting on his head and clinging onto his torso, cleared a path forward and killed as many of the rats as possible.
But no matter how diligently he swung his sword, no matter how many rats he cut down, there were always more to take their place. He couldn't stop himself from getting scratches on his face, on his hands, on his legs. The coat was enchanted with enough enchantments to protect against the rats, so his torso was fine, but Nil and Mindle clinging onto him also suffered several wounds.
If they crawled into the coat, they would be protected by it, but they wouldn¨t be able to help Toz as much as they did when outside it, and Toz would be in even greater pain. Though every time Toz saw a rat wound any one of his cats, his heart ached a bit more, and he swung his sword a bit harder, faster, fiercer.
Toz wouldn't allow himself to fall, not when his family of cats worked their hardest to make sure they got out safely, when they suffered and bled for him. They had only explored for barely a month, there was no way their journey would end here.
Toz had longed for this his entire life. Nil had done his best to support Toz. Lucy had always wanted to discover new things. Mindle had spent the majority of her short life in this wasteland without seeing the rest of the world.
Refusing to let the rats overwhelm them, the group squeezed out every last drop of mana, pushed their muscles past the breaking point, and clawed until their paws bled. But no matter how much time passed, or how many rats they killed, it all seemed neverending.
They had spent several days walking after leaving the canyon and then several hours sprinting. If they had kept the right direction, the group should have started approaching the grassy plains by now. But in the unending swirling mass of rats, it was hard to distinguish up from down, not to mention left from right, or north from south.
The dark red trail of blood had indeed swerved a bit off course, but it was still in the same general direction, and the group was steadily nearing the end of the wasteland. In fact, if the wasteland hadn't spread, they would have already passed by the edge of it. f(r)eewebn(o)vel.com
The grassy flatlands would have long since been in view if not for the rats welling up like a tsunami to swallow Toz and his group, and covering their vision of the outside world. By now maybe even the smell of grass would have made it to the group if not for the blood covering their faces. Or the stench of rats filling their surroundings.
It wasn't long until gusts of wind came sweeping into the wasteland from the plains, all of them blocked by the wall of rodents. The group was so close, yet so far, and they didn't even know it. It was up to fate and the group's determination if they would live to see another day.
Despite their best efforts, every step Toz took was heavier than the last, every swing slower, every sweep of a paw weaker. They didn't know how close or far away they were from safety. They didn't even know if making it to the grassy plains would have the rats leave them alone.
A feeling of despair began entering their minds, reinforced through the common bond of the inclination. When they had been filled with fighting spirit and the will to live, they had strengthened each other's feelings, but now that fatigue clouded their minds, the opposite also happened.
It was impossible to tell if one of them started considering the thought of giving in first, or if they all had a feeling of hopelessness at the same time. With the inclination connecting them, it didn't matter, and their minds and bodies were too tired to stop the thoughts from spiraling.
They had already fought for so long in this swirling mass of rats, there was no way they hadn't traveled far enough to reach the plains where they could leave the rats behind. Since they hadn't reached, they must have lost their direction and strayed even further away from the flatlands.
'In that case, why not give up and save us the trouble, end our misery now, instead of prolonging it if we're gonna die anyway.'
If it weren't for the pain and nightmarish reality of being eaten alive, they might really have collapsed without fighting it any longer. Thankfully, the rats were strong enough that their bites and scratches hurt even a second level thrice refined mage, but weak enough that they didn't leave serious wounds.
The pain kept Toz's mind awake enough to stop him from giving up. He had long since gotten numb to his muscles, screaming at him to stop. His arms barely moving as he tried to swing his sword. If he was lucky, he killed more than five rats in a single swing, when previously he had slaughtered more than a dozen with each strike.
He staggered forward, carrying Nil and Mindle inside his coat. After gathering remnants of mana and energy they pulled out of seemingly nowhere, they struck out, killing at least one more rat, with Lucy doing the same, from on top of Toz's head.
Although Toz hadn't noticed it yet, the ground he stepped on had turned from the arid, hardpacked ground of the wasteland, to dry, grainy soil, it what was what remained of the grassy plains shortly after the rats had ruined the earth. The ground got gradually less and less dead.
Toz and the cats could even have seen small sprouts of weed on the ground if they had been alert enough. But more rats killed themselves by hitting Toz's sword than he killed them by swinging it. He used his almost falling body as a weight to move his legs.
The cats had given up on trying to use magic and kept their claws out, waiting for the rats to kill themselves like they did on Toz's sword. It wasn't effective in the slightest, but they were too tired to do anything more. Mindle had even fainted with her legs stretched out, unable to hold out any longer. None of the others were far behind her. They had resorted to closing their eyes, saving every bit of energy they could to maintain consciousness.
A thought about putting away his sword in case he lost it, briefly surfaced in Toz's mind, but he didn't even consider it. He was too tired to even unclasp his cramping fingers, forget lifting and putting the entire sword into his coat.
Gradually the overwhelming pressure from the rats seemed to lessen before slowly dissipating.
Through his half-closed eyelids, Toz spotted some green. Although it might have been a hallucination, it looked like grass. Not the almost dead kind on the border of the wasteland, but a healthy, up-to-the-hip kind, with a flourishingly green color, it was the clearest sign they could get that they had reached the grasslands.
Although the wasteland wasn't too far away, it didn't seem like the rats wanted to advance too much. For fear of being detected or lacking the ability to leave their terrain, whatever it was, it kept the rats away from Toz and the cats.
As soon as the last rat scurried back to the wasteland, leaving Toz alone, he collapsed like a rotten tree.
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