<h4>Chapter 517: Of Rats and Demons</h4>


    Once Kat and Kamiko reaffirmed their convictions to kill it with fire… only if strictly necessary of course. Things moved on somewhat. They still had to wait a while for Sue to recover her energy but nothing else was said. They were all using this chance to also recover mentally from the series of fights they''d been through. It wasn''t much but Kat liked to think it helped her at least.


    Once they were sufficiently recovered, they set out again, and it wasn''t long till they found a new set of patrol rats. Sue dealt with them quickly as usual and they headed on. It was after one more patrol rat massacre afterwards that led them to a new set of Guard Rats. It was still just the four though, and now with more practice, they didn''t think it would be a big deal.


    They were right. Kat, now that she was paying proper attention and remember her tail was a weapon in and of itself, was able to take down her two rats much quicker then she had in the past. Kamiko was no slouch either, learning more about how the Guard Rats moved their bodies and used that information to get in even more cuts between the Guard''s strikes.


    They moved on from them, killed more patrol rats, another set of guards, and then, ended up with a slightly moreplex problem. Now they had to deal with six Guard Rats. Three each. They also just barely managed to hold off attacking them for a moment when they spotted some patrol rats.


    They all backed up and Sue dealt with them. Once that was done, they set up to deal with the six rats, which luckily seemed to be the limit. The tunnel wasn''t really equipped to handle six Guard Rats standing side by side anyway, so they imagined the fight wouldn''t be too much harder then the two rat versions.


    They were right. Between the cramped space, the pair''s newfound knowledge of how the Guard Rats liked to fight, and Kat''s still growingbat experience, the six were not nearly as big of an issue as Kat had feared slightly in her mind. Kamiko felt herself perfectly capable of fighting them, and was proven right. Sue made sure to point that out. Multiple times.


    The fifth time she rephrased it though, Kat bounced back at her fastest speed and ced an arm over Sue. The other demon froze, thinking she''d done something wrong, but felt no aura pressing in on her as punishment which made her confused. That is until she saw that Kamiko was walking backwards slowly as well.


    Kat, with Sue in her arms, and Kamiko backtracked for a full five minutes to get away from the opening they saw before letting out matching breaths of air they hadn''t realised they''d been holding.


    "What''s going on?" asked Sue with a? quiet, serious voice.


    "We found what''s behind this…" said Kamiko softly while staring back at the path they''de down.


    Kat nodded slowly to confirm this even as she tried to go over the image in her mind. "We need a n… I''m not sure how to deal with it all. I know at the very least it will involve quite a lot of fire…"


    Kat thought back to what she''d seen. It was only few a brief moment, as Kat had quickly sped her mind up to its maximum before walking backwards with, what at the time, had been an agonisingly slow pace. She silenced Sue just in case they could be heard but that brief nce hadn''t told Kat enough to know if they''d even care.


    The first thing, was of course the room. It looked like a massive amphitheatre, with glowing crystals lining the ceiling and the edges of some tunnels. Kat was a little surprised that she didn''t notice the light earlier. It had a number of tunnels leaving the area, and that was just from what Kat could see out of the tunnel they were already in. It was likely there were even more tunnels she couldn''t see, and the impression this was a slightly bigger deal then they might have originally thought was growing.


    Still, that wasn''t a problem in and of itself, tunnels were all well and good, but not dangerous in and of themselves. Even with the small ramps of stone that allowed for tunnels to cover more than just the floor weren''t a big deal, they looked carved, they could be nothing else. It lent credit to the idea that even the tunnels were carved ad not just natural caves.


    The ones doing the carving, were of course a veritable army of patrol rats. Evey surface was covered in them. Even as they marched out into the tunnels the sheer quantity coating the floor never seemed to dwindle. The really creepy part though, was that even in the brief nce Kat saw, they weren''t a mess. They were all packed as tight as they could possibly be, and BREATHING in sync. Kat didn''t exactly like the implications of that.


    If the army of smaller patrol rats weren''t enough. The Section of ten Guard Rats certainly didn''t make things any more favourable. They also didn''t seem to be entirely standard as far as Guard Rats went. They were all just slightlyrger then normal, standing a head taller then Kat… IF you included her horns.? They also had slightly distinguishing features.


    The first had whiskers, a few others had scratch marks or patches of their fur cut out marking them as unique. Whiskers felt more important, and stood ever so slightly taller then the rest. Not obvious, but very noticeable when they were right next to each other, standing still as statues but with eyes gazing out at the crowd. Of course, the fact they didn''t seem to react to the demon''s incursion at all raised the question of how good those eyes could be.


    These Guard Rats were also more crystal then the others, with their heads being covered with thick vein like lines of the stuff that was working its way downwards, stopping at various ces on their bodies. Whisker''s had crystal growths all the way to its legs, and the second most crystalline had lines up to where its belly button would be on a human.


    As impressive as intimidating as they all seemed to be, there were two more beings in that room, and neither of them were things Kat was looking forward to fighting. The more dangerous looking of the two, was something Kat had mistaken for the back wall when she first saw things. Now that she was looking over the short scene in her mind though, it was clear that wasn''t the case.


    The back wall, which Kat had thought devoid of tunnels, was no wall at all, but a giant crystalline rat, easily dwarfing the giant rat they''d fought before in size. It''s tail alone, once Kat recognised it for what it, looked to be as tall as Kat herself, and twice as thick. She couldn''t see how long it was, but she doubted it was stubby.


    The crystal rat didn''t seem to have any biological features visible, but the crystal structure it was made of grew cloudy quickly with a glow to it that even Kat struggled to look through. If it had organs inside its body, or not, was a mystery for now.


    The final being in that room, was what Kat and co were likely after. Compared to the Guard Rats and the Crystal Rat, it… no SHE looked positively tiny, though stillrger then patrol rats of course. The obvious thing marking the being as female was the face… or at least the half that had been frozen by crystal.


    The rat women looked like a big scoop of her had been taken out and reced with crystal. She was ''missing'' half of her face, most of her left arm, and the upper left portion of her chest. The only part of her on that side that wasn''t crystal was a creepy looking eye that seemed to be constantly bulging out of its socket.


    The rest of her body was much worse off. While it appeared the ''woman'' had rat ears to start with, now she had fur on the right half of her face, and her nose, at least half of it, was extending into something not quite a snout. The mouth on her was moving up to meet it, but it clearly didn''t know what to do.


    She had rags that barely covered anything and had seen better days. They were more dirt then cloth and provided her barely a sliver of modesty. What they most certainly didn''t manage… was to hide her distended stomach. It was huge, and immediately noticeable. Covered in fur and with a strange red glow inside of it, Kat suspected she made the rats there, considering when Kat looked into the room she was throwing up live rats just like the Giant had been previously.


    *We might need Stone for this. I''m not sure we can take on this room ourselves.*