Chapter 37: Rescued Students
The next group wasn’t far behind them, and like the first, they had also taken time to kill more Rat Demons, so that the rescued students would come back to a prize of their own.
Most of the warriors had at least one spare weapon at this point, so they were lending them to the students they rescued, and letting them get the final hits on the rat demons. It might not be entirely in the spirit of the quest, but it still counted.
The groups were coming back in rapid succession, and going by the number of completions that they had managed, there shouldn’t be too many Rat Demons left in the area.
The question was whether the ten who had gone underground to find the Rat King could finish the job.
"Who all is left outside? Did we keep track of teams?" Reggie asked as he collected his reward from Kalli.
"Just the team looking for the Rat King. Everyone who went out above ground is back for the afternoon. I don’t think that they’re going to head out again today. We got a lot of students back for the Academy, but it looks like it wasn’t all good news."
Reggie nodded. "I’d rather not remember. But for sure, not all the students made it. But I heard a curious thing when I got back. I hear that you’re actually the hidden powerhouse in the group."
Kalli rolled her eyes. "Vastly overstated. Idiocy isn’t bulletproof."
The warrior winked at her, clearly amused by whatever he had heard.
"Come on now, no need to be shy about it. Everyone has heard the story by now. About how a bunch of goons came to loot the place, and you went all ’say hello to my little friend’ on them and just mowed down their leadership."
Kalli rolled her eyes, but noticed a few of the students who had been nearby were looking away, like they didn’t want her to know that they agreed with him.
"What is it that your family does anyhow? If it’s not too personal?"
Kalli wondered how to answer that. In this world, she had no family that she knew of. In the old one, she had none that she would willingly speak to. Instead, her coworkers were her family.
"Investment management," she explained vaguely.
That was the official classification of the business that she worked at before the enforcement fleet had turned the entire district of the city into rubble.
From behind her, Kalli heard Sergeant Sanchez laugh.
"See, that’s not helping their impression. We got the boss, he was down in the tunnels like you suspected, and you could get to it either from one of the stores, or through the side tunnels.
We blocked them all off so we don’t have a repeat of the incident.
We also got rid of the breeding dens, torched them all, so it should cut down on the number of Rat Demons in the neighbourhood."
"Good work. Come get your rewards, and we can start locking down the Academy for the evening. Just make a rotation with more students on it."
"Two people per tower on each shift would be best." Sanchez agreed.
That way, if one was distracted or needed to use the facilities, there wasn’t a blind spot.
"Go ahead and work on that. I will make sure that everyone has their rewards. I don’t know if there is a time limit to claim, but I don’t want anyone missing out if they reset at midnight or something."
As soon as she stopped speaking, Kalli noticed something very strange next to the wall.
"Uh... what is that?"
Everyone near her turned to stare in the same direction, and they all frowned.
"What is what?"
Did they not see the giant glowing purple portal?
"Never mind. I must have been up too long, I’m seeing things."
She was still seeing things, and she could examine them with the System Interface.
{Pending Dungeon Portal} Spend 100 System Points to permanently unlock a portal to the Rat King Dungeon. Level 1 Easy Mode training instance, for 10 heroes. Maximum drop tier is [Uncommon].
Kalli stared at her Interface for a moment, wondering whether it was worth opening. 100 points was a lot. But if they got supplies from doing it, or even System Points, it would be totally worth it in the long term.
She was also rolling in points after they had collected a bunch of new students.
{System Points} 347
{Dungeon Unlocked} 100 Points deducted
The portal shimmered in her vision, and all the students gasped as it appeared in front of them.
"The Rat King Dungeon? Is this like a repeatable quest to go kill that boss? What sort of luck do we call that? Good or bad? Does it reappear in the city if we don’t kill it?" Reggie asked.
"I don’t think it will come back. I think that by killing it and wiping out all the other rats around it, the team ended the threat, and the System is rewarding us. To me, it says that it’s a training instance.
Which implies that we’re supposed to send teams in to practice fighting."
Reggie frowned. "Which implies that things are going to get worse, and if we don’t train now, we’re not going to survive."
Kalli poked him in the side and whispered. "Keep the inside thoughts inside. Don’t demotivate the others. Half the kids they just rescued are on the border of panic already, and they don’t need a reminder that there are worse things out there than just rat demons."
"Right, sorry."
More of the students were gathering to stare at the portal, and the questions were starting. What had come out of the mission? Did they get gear from doing the quest, other than the completion reward? Did they get experience toward System Points?
In short, would it be worth going in?
Kalli was fairly certain that it would be. The System seemed to be trying hard to help them. But until someone got brave enough to go in and try, they wouldn’t know for certain.
