Logan felt grim with resolve as he peered at the Rattuspede. After nothing but delay after delay, he was going to finish this. Kill the monster, deploy his last lodestone, complete his Build an Empire quest, and then get the hell out of dodge. Lara, the kids and Ernie were waiting for him. His looming tournament and the Save Humanity Quest were waiting for him.

At this point, the Rattuspede was a cockroach, an obstacle that needed to be removed. If scrambling his brains and forcing blood to gush out of his ears and into his mouth was the solution, then so be it. Logan had dealt with pain before, heck, he'd withstood his skin sloughing off in the perception trial. A little brain scramble was nothing.

And yet, the damn Rattuspede wasn't making it easy. Logan clenched his fists, once again trying to force the hovering sand to latch onto the underside of the monster, only for its mouth and circular incisors to knock them away like sand in a windstorm.

Ding!

[You have defeated a Level 103 Sewage Rat!]

[You have defeated a Level 99 Sewage Rat!]

[….]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have defeated a Level 100 Sewage Rat!]

[You have defeated a Level 104 Sewage Rat!]

[….]

[You have fed the blackhole! Liche Devourer at 40% satiation.]

[You have leveled up!]

[…]

[You have leveled up!]

If nothing else, at least [Liche Devourer] was turning into a slaughter goldmine. He was clearing out the remaining charging sewage rats as if he were forcing them into a meatgrinder, killing one after another. So many that Logan couldn't keep up with the System announcements.

There was one massive problem.

Already, he could tell that the surge of Karma was slowing down, which meant that there were less sewage rats to draw on. The army wasn't endless. Eventually, he would kill them all, which meant that he'd have to deactivate [Liche Devourer]. He'd lose his source of Karma, and [Mimicry Armour] would become useless.

Time was ticking. Logan felt his toes tingling, his muscles clenching, his nerves making him feel light on his feet. He needed to figure this out. Figure this out and finish this.

Meanwhile, the damn Rattuspede was keeping up a constant mental assault.

RELEASE ME, it blasted into his head.

Followed by RELEASE ME, RELEASE ME, RELEASE ME.

Logan was turning his thigh into a shredded mess, constantly bashing his fist against the shard of metal and twisting, tearing his flesh, going deep to the bone. Blood had soaked his torn khaki pants, pooling onto the ground, his skin feeling tacky and dirty. The ache and flare of agony was a constant companion. Not to mention his head feeling like cottage cheese.

Logan spat a glob of blood onto the ground and cleared his throat, then kicked off with his Pink Sock, aiming for a large tree. He scrambled up the trunk and then jumped on top of a wide branch, his shoes providing hardly any grip. In times like these he understood how much value [Mimicry Armour] gave him, from his boots with their grip to his talons. The faster he finished this and regained his armour, the better.

RELEASE ME, RELEASE ME, RELE—

"Fuck off!" Logan bellowed as he twisted the metal in his thigh. You'd think that by now the Rattuspede would figure out that its mental commands were useless and try something else.

The Rattuspede twisted, turning its body towards the sound of his voice. With no clear head and eyes, its ability to see was limited to what was directly in the mouths' line of sight. It had no problem following a scent trail, but a scent could be easily masked. The thing had a serious weakness.

It was up in the air like a cobra, displaying its numerous circular mouths.

All the better for Logan to work.

Well, if the mouths wouldn't let him force the sand to the underside, what if he gave it no chance? Logan had always formed his armour skin-tight, but there was nothing saying that he couldn't give it space, like forming armour over someone wearing ten layers of clothes. If he could keep the sand hovering over the underside of the Rattuspede without letting it touch the mouths, he could harden the sand into sandstone.

It would be an immense mental strain, a daunting prospect. The monster was the size of a whale, and Logan would have to keep the armour on top of the body intact while hovering sand over the belly.

Well, if nothing else, that's what [Life Fabricator] was for. Logan couldn't deploy it against the Rattuspede unless he wanted to subject himself to skill recoil, but nothing said he couldn't deploy it around the monster.

With a snarl, Logan got to work.

***

Hell yes! With a sound of air displacing, Logan screamed as blood poured from his nose, his face nothing but a gory mess. He'd done it! In front of him, the Rattuspede was unrecognizable. A monster wearing a suit! The worm-like body was covered in sandstone, each rat leg encased in its own flexible exoskeleton. Logan had sealed the whole thing. Better yet, although Logan could breathe through his armour, it was because of his faceplate. Logan hadn't given the thing a helmet, anything that was breathable. Essentially, he'd sealed it in a suit that wouldn't let it breathe.

Logan gave the thing a bright smile, a smile that he suspected resembled a jack-o'-lantern with all the blood sticking to his mouth and chin. An unhinged smile. His hair was standing up, he was covered in blood, and he was walking around with metal sticking out of his leg. Plus, his hair had dried into crusted strands, standing up as if he'd stuck his finger into an electrical circuit.

On top of that, his mental state matched his appearance. He was at the end of the rope of his patience, and he was ready for this to be over. Grab what remained of the barbeque, take the intact six packs of beer, and get back to Lara, the kids, and Ernie.

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That's as long as the thing did what he wanted.

Die.

Gradually, a frown replaced Logan's unhinged grin. He'd chosen this strategy since he'd suspected that the Rattuspede had the same vulnerabilities as an earthworm, but so far, other than increasing its curses and mental attacks, his armour hadn't done shit.

Logan ran his thumb over the stubble on his chin, scratching away a smear of tacky, dried blood as he mulled over the problem.

Ding!

[You have defeated a Level 104 Sewage Rat!]

[You have defeated a Level 100 Sewage Rat!]

[You have fed the blackhole! Liche Devourer at 55% satiation.]

Worst of all, the System messages had started to decrease, and he was no longer feeding the blackhole at such a rapid rate, which meant that he would soon run out of rats. If he could, he'd deploy his [Liche Devourer] weapon and unleash the blackhole, but according to the description of the skill, he needed to wait until the satiation level reached 100%. That meant that he'd need a whole heck of a lot of monster farming before he could deploy it.

Well, it wasn't just lack of oxygen that killed earthworms. It was also heat. The reason they shriveled up and died on pavement after a rainstorm was due to the sun drying out their skin before they could make their way back to soil.

If he could—

Oh hell no.

The Rattuspede had given up on trying to manipulate Logan with mental mind attacks and instead had decided to flee. It lurched towards the sinkhole it had used to climb into the clearing, its multiple armour-covered legs thudding against the ground. It was so large that it bulldozed its way through the picnic tables, crushing wood, bashing aside crushed barbeques.

If it managed to climb into that hole, Logan would have no chance against it! [Liche Devourer] had stalled; Logan had torn through all the sewage rats. That meant the constant strain of keeping [Mimicry Armour] active would soon become an impossibility. If the Rattuspede escaped through the hole, Logan would run out of Karma, forcing him to collapse the monster's armour.

All that hard work wasted.

And if he let it escape, it would return as soon as Logan left. Chowing down on all these people, slaughtering the civilians. Logan wouldn't let it. Not here. Not now.

A vein on the side of his neck bulging, Logan ground his teeth and used [Threshold Shift] to transport himself behind the monster. It was twenty feet away from the sinkhole and scrambling forward like its tail was on… fire.

Fire.

Holy shit! With a surge of adrenaline, Logan mentally rummaged through the contents of his spatial storage collar and removed a lighter, using his thumb to light it. Deploying [Life Fabricator], he imagined that fire blooming into a fireball, a concentrated funnel of heat. He'd used the same strategy back at the cabin, deploying fire to clear out the infected green beans.

Holding his arm up, balancing the ball of fire on his palm as if he were a magician, he removed a handful of diamond dust from his spatial storage collar, using [Mimicry Armour] to reform his exoskeleton around his left hand, then sculpted his talons, making them into sharp hooks. He needed every bit of Karma to keep the armour around the Rattuspede active, but this was a trickle of Karma. Surely, a trickle would be enough?

Logan felt more blood gush out of his ears; he shook his head like a dog, and then bit his lip, using all his mental fortitude to push forward, ignoring the pain from his leg, and a head that felt like sloshing stew.

Stay back, human pig suit! Samantha will leave! Samantha wants no fight with you!

A likely story.

With a growl, Logan balanced the fireball over his right hand, letting it hover, and with his talons on his left, stabbed the back of the Rattuspede's ass. It squealed, blasting his head with a mental attack, but Logan had already collapsed the sandstone around his grip, leaving a hole the size of his fist. It would defeat the purpose of keeping the armour sealed around the monster, but that wasn't why he'd made a hole.

It was time to turn the armour into an oven.

Logan dug his shoes into the ground, slipping and sliding against the damp earth, yanking with his talons and keeping the Rattuspede from falling into the sinkhole, while at the same time, he forced the heat through that fist-sized hole.

It was back to visualization. Logan couldn't use [Life Fabricator] on the monster, but he could use it around it. This time, he visualized his suit of armour turning into material that had been cooking in the oven. Of sandstone that radiated heat, directing the heat onto the skin of the Rattuspede like a boiler.

STOP! STOP! SAMANTHA DOESN'T LIKE THIS.

Logan hissed, gagging as a pool of blood trailed into his mouth, his esophagus on fire, as if he had a bad flu, turning his throat into razorblades. With another stab to his thigh, he loosened the Rattuspede's mental grip and went back to frying it in earnest.

Ding!

[Mimicry Armour is level 5!]

A smell emitted from the armour hole, a combination of wet earth roasting in the sun and burning garbage, followed by the crisp reek of burnt hair. There was a creaking sound like a barrel rolling over end-to-end as the armour on the back of the monster fused with the hide. The shrieking continued, an assault on his ears, nothing but pain that sounded like a cat dying. It was working!

And yet, he could already tell that he was getting close to Karma deprivation. Logan brought up his Karma score with a sinking stomach:

1200/3600.

1150/3600.

1100/3600.

Oh fuck! At this rate, he'd deplete his Karma in less than a minute! He'd cleared out the sewage rats and he was no longer pulling in Karma from [Liche Devourer]. And yet, he was making progress with the Rattuspede, but if he had to collapse [Mimicry Armour], all that progress would be for nothing! Logan hated to do this; Karma was something that he'd stopped prioritizing days ago, but he could see no other solution.

It was either this or let the monster go.

Like hell was he letting it go.

Doing the mental math while a clock in his mind was ticking was taxing, but he needed to make the right decision. He only had two choices. Increase his wisdom or intelligence attributes.

Each intelligence attribute translated into six Karma points, whereas his wisdom directly impacted his Karma regeneration rate. He'd leveled up 7 times, which gave him 35 free attributes. If he upgraded his intelligence attribute, he'd give himself an extra 210 Karma instantly, jacking up his 3600 Karma pool. Intelligence and wisdom both had a 35% static boost, giving him even more of a bonus.

In the long term, increasing wisdom made more sense, but he needed instant results here.

Logan made the changes:

[Intelligence: 446]

[Intelligence: 447+]

[Intelligence: 480]

With the 30% boost from his [Fabled Creation] class and the 5% boost from his Forerunner title, he'd increased his Karma pool to 3,888. That might be just enough.

With renewed concentration, Logan poured fire into the Rattuspede like he'd just lit firecrackers on the fourth of July.

***

Ding!

[You have defeated a Level 223 Attacking Rattuspede! Extra experience granted for defeating an enemy above your level.]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[….]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

With a feeling of immense relief, Logan collapsed [Mimicry Armour], letting the sandstone turn back into sand and rain down around the Rattuspede's corpse, and then with a wobble, plopped to the ground in an inelegant heap. Hissing, Logan removed the shard of metal from his thigh and willed it inside of his spatial storage collar, then removed a bottle of water and dumped it on top of his head, letting the blood and dirt trail down his hair and face.

Logan looked down, peering at his clothes, and then promptly winced. Usually, his armour provided protection, taking the blunt of the impacts during battle. This time, his clothes had gotten the worst of it. His pants were torn, showing large flashes of his upper thigh, the lower pant nothing but a bloody mess. His shirt was in strips and layered in sweat.

Still, despite the shoddy state of his clothes, he could admit that the encounter with the Rattuspede and the sewage rats had worked out to his benefit. He'd leveled up like crazy and [Mimicry Armour] had gained two levels. In fact, he could see that armour heat technique being useful in the future.

On top of that, he'd perfected a way to fight back against mental attacks. Hopefully, next time he'd be fighting against a person or monster lower leveled who wouldn't be quite as challenging, but still, causing himself pain was an ace in the hole. Something that someone like Logan who had [Idiot's Paradox] could take advantage of in the middle of battle. After all, if he didn't have [Idiot's Paradox], there was no way that he could have maintained his focus one-on-one against someone while subjecting his body to agony.

No, most people would be shit out of luck.

Logan stared at the remains of the Rattuspede as he realized what the corpse represented. It represented an end.

He'd done it. Finally, he was finished. Free to finish his quest and return to the cabin, free to leave New York.

Logan got to his feet and then with a blink, willed the Rattuspede's corpse inside of his spatial storage collar. If nothing else, Ernie could make use of it. And if that didn't work, he could put it up for sale in his personal market.

There was only one thing left to do.

Deploy his lodestone and finish his Build an Empire Quest.

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