All the hair on Kazu's body stood up.
Without even looking back, he could feel something's breath just above his right shoulder.
'The rat is trying to bite my shoulder.' Even before that thought could materialise, a small barrier formed millimetres away from his shoulder.
CRACK
The barrier that formed was shattered as soon as it appeared.
However, Kazu had already crouched.
His eyes shot up, towards the rat who was directly above him in the air.
Ethernano surged inside his body, moving towards his leg muscles and his right arm.
WHOOSH
Next instant, Kazu shot up from his crouched position and did an uppercut punch right on the rat's stomach.
THUD
The rat, like a ball, hit the ceiling, bouncing before landing on the ground.
It didn't move.
"That was close." Kazu released the breath he didn't know he was holding.
He then shot an unamused glare at the other two.
"My bad. Cana suddenly pushing me freaked me out." Gray subtly shifted the blame to Cana.
Cana had an apologetic expression on her face.
"It's my fault. If I hadn't freaked out and disturbed Gray, this wouldn't have happened."
'If that thing wasn't a rat, but something faster and deadlier...' Cana didn't let that thought continue.
Her guilt only increased.
"It's fine. Just be careful from now on." Kazu sighed, dropping the topic.
They were still kids, and they were given such missions to gain experience, so that when the real missions mattered, they wouldn't fumble it up.
"Anyway, I don't think rats were this big and this fast... right? Last time I checked, they should be about the size of my palm, if not a bit bigger." Kazu changed the topic.
Cana moved towards the rat. "Yeah, it's my first time seeing such a big rat." She extended her hand to touch it.
"Don't touch it." Kazu pulled her back before she could do that.
She looked back at him, tilting her head.
"Who knows what kind of diseases it's carrying. It's safer not to touch it."
Cana furrowed her brows. "But didn't you just punch it. Right with this hand." She said while pointing at the hand that was holding her shoulder.
Kazu deadpanned. "I didn't touch it directly." He stretched out his hand and showed her his palm.
Cana looked at it and then at him. "What?"
"Touch it."
"Okay?" Cana stretched out her palm and made contact with his palm.
Her eyes widened. "It's hard."
"Huh?" Gray, who was silently looking at them, shot her a confused gaze.
"It's hard and rough? I mean not soft like how skin should be. Is this a barrier? Why can't I see it?" Cana looked at Kazu in amazement.
Kazu smirked. "Well, a feature I had been working on. My barrier magic might not be as versatile as your card magic, but it's not that far away. It lets light pass through it completely. The only way to sense it will be either touching it or having some way to sense ethernano."
"Yeah. Now that I sense it, I could feel a bit of ethernano present all over your body. Neat." Gray nodded.
"Anyway, I think this rat has somehow mutated. It doesn't seem to be using Ethernano, but it still is dangerous if this escapes to the surface." Kazu's eyes turned serious.
Gray nodded. "Indeed. Though this makes things interesting, we will need to inform Master first."
The three of them looked at the unconscious rat for a few seconds.
"So, who's going to go to inform him?" Cana asked.
"Why don't you go? We will wait for you here. Also, do bring some sanitisers or things to sanitise ourselves when we leave this place." Gray suggested.
Kazu agreed with him.
Cana crossed her arms. "I am not going there. I will get tired if I run there, and it will take too much time if I walk. You guys do physical conditioning daily, right? Time to show off." She pointed at the other two.
"..."
"..."
For a second, both of them became speechless.
"Tch. So, low stamina. You are going to drop in the middle of a fight one day. I will go then. Wait for me here and make sure that no other rats leave the surface." Gray said before jumping and directly grabbing the metal ladder before making his way up.
Cana looked at him, going until he was out of sight.
"Now, it's only two of us." She said, looking at Kazu, who was looking at the other side.
"Say, Cana, how many cards do you carry with you?" Kazu suddenly asked.
"Well, generally around a hundred. Though I could make cards directly with my magic, so it doesn't matter much."
Kazu stretched his right hand. The next second, a translucent wall of blue ethernano formed.
"How many cards can you make with your reserves?"
Cana closed her eyes. A contemplative expression appeared on her face. "Well, I never needed to worry about that. I could make hundreds pretty easily. So, I never came to know the upper limit."
"Well, now you have a chance," Kazu said, and the next second, multiple big rats collided with the barrier.
"The Fuck?" Cana flinched. However, this time, she didn't pounce on anybody.
Kazu frowned. "Where did you learned to curse?"
'Isn't she like a 9-year-old?'
Realising that the rats couldn't break the barrier, her expression relaxed. She shot Kazu a confused look.
"What do you mean? Don't you use this all the time?"
"..."
Kazu blankly looked at her. 'So, I am a bad influence...'
"What?"
"Nothing. How about you throw your cards and take care of them? I will make openings in the barrier just before your cards touch it."
Cana nodded. "Fine. I hate rats anyway." She said before taking out her cards. The first thing she threw was the card at the rat Kazu had knocked out.
Kazu threw her a confused look.
"What if it suddenly becomes conscious. Will be so annoying." She said before throwing her cards at the rats.
As Kazu had said, those cards passed through his barrier smoothly.
'Instinct magic is quite convenient.' Kazu smugly thought.
Just like that, in less than a minute, all the rats were lying dead.
They stood there for a few minutes when a second wave of rats came. This time, their number was nearly in the hundreds.
"How many rats are in the entire sewer?" Cana had a surprised look.
Kazu's face grimed. "Seeing that we have been having rat problems and such detail wasn't told to Master yesterday, this mutation must have happened overnight. Luckily, they haven't figured out how to leave it, but it's only a matter of time. In the worst-case scenario, we might be facing thousands."
'I hope the master recognises the danger of the worst-case scenario.'
"I am back. Holy Moly!" Gray landed on the ground and was shocked at the number of corpses piling up on the other side of the barrier.
"It's quite shocking that such beings were beneath the city. It will be disastrous if even one comes on the surface." Kazu glanced at a blue-haired man beside Gray.
A purple bullet hit the rat corpse on their side, igniting the entire thing and burning it till nothing was left.
"You should have isolated this thing, too. Their corpses could cause various diseases while left out in the open. First, sanitise yourselves. I will burn the rest of the corpses." Macao said, moving closer toward the barrier.
"Okay." Kazu and Cana compiled and started sanitising themselves with the materials Gray had made.
"What did the master say?" Cana asked.
"He said that all the sewer exits will be blocked till we clear this. He sent this old man to act as a body decomposer." Gray said, pointing his finger at Wakaba, who had already done with burning hundreds of bodies to ash.
"Who are you saying, old man? I am just 27." Macao retorted.
"Almost triple my age." Gray shook his head.
"Anyway, you guys did a good job. Your barrier magic is good for stalling them till the attackers neutralise the threat. How are your reserves?" Macao asked Kazu.
"At this rate, I could maintain it for around 7 hours. Though if the number reaches thousands, then 3 hours." Kazu said after some calculation.
"Amazing. This will be a piece of cake." Macao smirked.
The quartet moved for a few hours, clearing thousands of rats.
"I didn't know there were so many rats in the city. All mutated. What do you think the source will be?" Gray asked.
"It's probably that one of the rats is going to mutate under ethernano. Then it probably infected other rats through intimate contact, and like a chain reaction, this happened." Macao suggested.
Cana pouted. "And I thought, some evil wizard or something was doing that."
"Haha. Too unlikely." Macao shook his head.
After clearing another wave, they moved towards another location.
RUMBLE
Suddenly, the ground shook.
"The fuck?" Gray's eyes widened as he looked at the behemoth rat. Its head reached the ceiling, easily dwarfing any of the rats they had seen till now.
"It could use mana! Be careful." Macao warned.
The next second, the rat lifted his paw and punched Kazu's barrier.
CRACK
Like glass, the barrier cracked like paper.
The paw, without any interruption, was heading towards Cana, who looked at it in horror.
***
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