Level 223?! Holy shit, holy shit!

Logan blinked rapidly as he tried to process what he was looking at, a heaviness expanding in his core. He'd encountered Pied, an immortal over level 1,000, so this wasn't his first time he'd had to deal with someone way out of his league, and yet, a monster that high leveled? Fuck, this was taking him back to how he'd felt facing down the Queen Serpent. How the hell had this thing managed to level up so quickly? He knew there were millions of rats in New York, but did that explain it?

Well, there were also millions of people.

Although Hawthorne and Emily had done their best to save as many as they could, the civilians in the park were a drop in the bucket juxtaposed against the overall population of the city. And unlike Pied, Logan didn't think he could reason with this one.

Why had it waited this long to attack? It could have burst through the ground while Logan had been fighting the rats and taken advantage of the chaos. It—

There was a clicking noise from the monster, an insect tick tick tick. Yikes, it sounded like the buzzsaw of a cicada turned up to eleven.

The Rattuspede sprang up in the air, lifting itself like a cobra while its rat legs dangled from the sides like a stuffed animal without stuffing. Its beluga whale-sized body cast a shadow on Logan and the soldiers, towering over them. The underside of the monster was full of mouths, what looked like suckers. They were too numerous to count and the size of manholes. Christ, all this thing needed to do was fall on top of everyone and it would crush them to death!

"Oh shit!" screamed one of the soldiers. He unloaded his gun, shooting directly into the massive belly. The bullets ricochetted, spraying the sides of the complex.

"Fuck, sergeant!" shouted another as he followed suit, his brown, short spiky hair standing up—blood crusted. His face was covered in blood splatter and gore. "I can't identify the thing's level! The System gave me a bunch of frigging question marks!"

"Oh crap, it must be over level 200!" said another.

Emily ran a trembling hand through her bangs, her lips thin and bloodless. She glanced from her men to the civilians, torn with indecision. Half of them had scattered, some already falling into the sinkhole to turn into mush as the Rattuspede crushed them against the sides of the pit as it crawled out of the hole. Others ran away like a scene from Godzilla, their faces panicked, eyes bulging, not seeing anything in front of them, their only thoughts on escape.

And although the army unloaded on the monster and aimed directly for those gaping mouths, it wasn't doing shit. They might as well be shooting concrete; the bullets weren't breaking the monster's skin.

At a certain point, bullets were useless. Although Logan wasn't immune and a bullet could make its way through his exoskeleton, shooting him dead to rights with no armour wouldn't kill him. Annoy him, yes, but not kill him.

This thing had leveled up to the point where it couldn't even feel the bullets.

A thousand soldiers might have made a difference. Might. But they didn't have a thousand soldiers, and they were running out of ammo.

Emily took a deep breath, her expression defeated. It was as if she'd aged ten years. "Put everything you have left against this thing!" she commanded. "Hold the line!"

Zachary adjusted his black headband, rustling his sweaty blond hair, his mouth pinched. "This thing'll wipe us out in seconds, Sarge! Seconds!"

Her mouth looked brittle. "Do what you can! We're not leaving these people to die."

Dean, the soldier from the clunker, craned his head up at the looming monster, his eyes narrowed before he swivelled in a circle and stared up at the top of the wall. Logan's Wisteria Spike Vine was still at it, spearing charging rats and going to town. "There's suicidal and then there's being smart. There's nothing better I'd like to do than kick some ass, but I'm not an idiot, and neither are you. If we stay here, we'll die, and the civilians die. Let's lead a retreat, get them through the wall. That'll give them a chance, at least."

Zachary laughed, a short, sharp bark of disbelief. "Just where are we retreating to? Our only avenue of escape takes us through that fucked up, freaky creation that man birthed." He gave the Rattuspede a wary, frightened look. "It's a trade off between the mutant on the wall and this creepy-ass thing. And what the hell is it doing, anyway?"

Good question. The monster hadn't attacked yet beyond crushing the people who had fallen into its sinkhole. Instead, it continued holding its odd partial attack position, half in the air, displaying its underside and all those mouths. The mouths were immense, so big that one could swallow Logan whole. Round and sucker-like, they had sharp incisors in concentric circular rows leading to a pink inside. Hell, it looked like a warped version of a sea lamprey's mouth!

Ugh, those things were creepy as hell.

Worst of all, it had no head, at least nothing that Logan could see. Instead, the front resembled an earthworm covered in rat fur. An immense earthworm the size of a whale. Ugh ugh ugh.

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As Logan watched, the mouths twitched, circular rows contracting and detracting, in and out, as if the mouth were a frigging nose and it was sniffing everything underneath it. To be so overpowered and large, it could have burst out of the ground at any time and killed the hell out of the civilians. Logan couldn't help wondering yet again why it had waited so long.

Because of you, was blasted into his head.

Logan winced. Unlike last time when the thing had been communicating with him surreptitiously, trying to keep under the radar while it manipulated him, this time, the words were so loud it was as if it had blasted them into his ears with a bullhorn. A trickling of unease made the hair on the back of his neck raise. With his heart racing, he grabbed the shrapnel sticking out of his bicep and twisted. Oh shit! Logan hissed, biting his lip, his eyes watering.

There there, said the Rattuspede, swaying from side-to-side like a cobra in front of a snake charmer. There was a sharp, stringent odour coming off the thing, similar to the rotting garbage reek of the rats, mixed with the copper smell of blood. There's no reason to hurt yourself. Samantha doesn't want to cause you pain. Samantha doesn't want to hurt you.

Great, another monster who referred to itself in the third person.

"Then what do you want?" asked Logan.

For you to leave, crooned the Rattuspede, that bullhorn volume lowering as if it had turned down the radio. Samantha has no fight with you, Idiot user. Samantha wants you to leave. Leave and you will have no trouble from Samantha!

Logan narrowed his eyes. "And if I leave, what are you going to do with these people?"

Samantha will FEAST. Feast feast feast. So succulent, so juicy. Human meat is such a delicacy, all for Samantha!

Behind him, the soldiers were arguing, Emily wanted to wait for reinforcements to arrive, the others wanted to take their chances and go through the wall. Hell, by trying to protect them, Logan had accidently trapped them in this death trap. Then again, if they escaped the wall, they'd be in the same situation as before. Logan could hear the constant ping of spears as the Wisteria Spike Vine attacked the surging rats. If Emily's army and the civilians managed to escape, they'd be slaughtered.

He needed to lure the Rattuspede away from the civilians, lure it into the clearing and away from the wall.

Silly human, hissed the Rattuspede. I can hear everything you're thinking, stupid, stupid man. I know you're thinking of fighting me. Wrong choice! Samantha will crush you. Why fight me when I'm giving you a chance to escape? That's the decision of an idiot.

So that's the reason it hadn't attacked. It had wanted Logan to leave so that it could kill everyone in sight. That meant that it had to fear him. If it didn't want to fight—

The Rattuspede blasted a sigh into his head. An annoyed, long-suffering sigh. Samantha doesn't fear you, human. Samantha is lazy. If I can get rid of an annoying pest without expending effort, then I'll do it. But just because Samantha is lazy doesn't mean she COULDNT CRUSH YOU LIKE A BUG.

Shit shit shit! Logan screamed and held his hands over his ears. It felt like his brain was on fire, his scalp feeling tight, a ringing noise in his ears. His nose gushed blood, his mouth tasting like copper. Up above, the Rattuspede let out that same tick tick tick noise, but this time it was jacked up to a hundred, its circular incisors flexing like saws.

"That's it!" shouted Emily. "We're leaving! Soldiers, line up the civilians, provide covering fire as we lead the way out!"

With a growl, Logan stabbed the shrapnel deeper into his flesh, holding back a whimper of pain. He didn't think the Rattuspede was influencing him, and he'd been hoping that increasing his constitution stat would fight off its mental effects, but if it could attack him mentally, he was outclassed.

He'd fought massive monsters before and came out on top. The stinky snail, the plastic blob. All of them gave him trouble, but he triumphed in the end. And yet, all of them had been lower leveled than Logan, or close to his own level. Logan was level 173, but the Rattuspede was level 223. That was 50 levels above him! Logan had his stealth player status going for him, but whose to say that this thing's mental capabilities wouldn't make them ineffective?

Well, there was only one way to find out.

Deploying [Threshold Shift], Logan jumped in front of Emily.

She gasped and tightened her grip on her gun, but Logan didn't give her a second to react. Grabbing her arm, he pulled the end of her rifle away from his chest and pointed it at the ground. "Don't go out through the wall. The vine is fighting off the rats, spearing them and keeping them out of the complex. If you go out there, you'll be walking into a worse rat swarm than here. Give me a chance to fight this thing. I can't promise that there won't be casualties, but I can promise you that your chances will be better than outside."

Emily gulped. "But—"

He had no time to argue. Her words were cut off as Logan deployed [Threshold Shift] once again, this time teleporting behind the monster. The movement jarred the shrapnel sticking into his bicep, and Logan ground his teeth in reaction. But by this point, that pain was a hell of a lot better than whatever the Rattuspede had done to his mind.

Logan shook his head, feeling something inside of his eardrums slosh, then cracked his neck. Willing out a handful of diamond dust and sand, he deployed [Mimicry Armour] to sharpen and lengthen his talons on his left hand, then gripped his sword in his right.

Logan had jumped from one area to the other in less than five seconds, and the monster hadn't had a chance to react. It had barely moved; its click click click continued as it faced the soldiers and the civilians.

Here goes nothing. It had been a while since he'd wondered about the outcome of a fight, but this time, he was uncertain of success. Fifty levels above him wasn't a small thing, and in this new world, it could be the difference between life and death.

Logan had two things at his disposal that might give him a leg up—his high attribute scores due to the True Grit Rings, and his epic skills. [Life Fabricator] and [Liche Devourer] were his ace in the hole.

But first, he needed to get this thing's attention and lure it away from the others.

Kicking off with his Pink Sock, Logan launched himself into the air, the wind whipping his facemask, his sword in one hand. Black fur covered the back of the Rattuspede. Its spine flexed like an earthworm, bulbous flesh to the sides, but it was absent of armour. No mouths, no teeth. That had to be the most vulnerable area.

Logan let out a shout as he let gravity do the rest and slammed down on the thing's back. Balancing as if he were on a trampoline, he dug his boots into its hide and then used every ounce of strength and agility at his disposal to stab the thing with his sword.

The sword clanged against the Rattuspede's hide as if he'd hit solid metal, making a horrible scratching sound. It had made no dent. Not even a scratch!

Silly human, the Rattuspede cackled. With a thrust of its long, sinewy body, it turned on a dime, its tail snapping and sending Logan flying.

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