"Put up your umbrellas. Now!" Rudra yelled, his voice sharp and raised.
Noticing the dark clouds looming over their heads, Pandit ji and the others’ expressions turned gloomy. They understood that they were in a precarious situation. Most of them had seen what happens to the people who get wet in the rain, and they didn’t want to try their luck even if it was not entirely a dead end.
Rudra asked Prabhu to go ahead and scout a suitable location. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled out a bag and distributed weapons to everyone, one by one, each forged from monster bone.
"Remember to aim at the neck," he cautioned everyone and climbed a nearby building to see if there was any reaction from the clouds in the distance.
The clouds were becoming active, silhouettes writhing restlessly within. Rudra clenched his fist as unease settled over him.
His worries were coming true. The billowing clouds showed signs of expanding again.
This was not a good sign.
He instinctively felt that the clouds and the disappearing corpses were somehow interconnected, but he had no way to prove it.
Rudra saw Prabhu coming back and, heaving a sigh of relief, he rejoined the group.
"The MRM convention hall is empty," he said.
Rudra remembered the place where marriages usually took place and felt that it was indeed a good location.
It was quite isolated, and it had all the living facilities one would need.
Stepping into the convention hall, his face turned ugly.
Gasps and exclamations were heard from the people in his group, and he could understand their feelings as what they were seeing was not an empty convention hall but a hellish landscape where the floor and the walls were basically a canvas for the oil painting colored in crimson.
Recovering from the shock, he ordered and sent everyone away. "Stay in the dressing room. I’ll keep watch."
Using a tree, he got on top of the convention hall and turned his gaze towards the billowing clouds in the distance.
With a drop of water making contact with his skin, the downpour began.
Rudra looked at his hand, and his brows pinched into a frown. The amount of water contained in the single drops seemed to be larger than in the two downpours before.
A bad feeling arose in his heart, and his grip on the bone spear tightened.
Changes began to appear all around him. The tree he had used to get on top of the convention hall began to grow, rising visibly before his eyes, like the legendary beanstalk that grew toward the heavens when touched by water.
It was not the only tree that acted in such a way. Several trees throughout the town started growing like mythical creatures from Western legends, and even those small plants and crawlers that had only covered a single house began to spread onto the neighbouring buildings, stretching out like a living web.
Changes appeared in his own self as well. A tingling sensation spread throughout his body, and for a moment, he felt lightheaded.
However, he returned to his senses when the bellowing clouds in the distance started to move, and at a greater pace than he had previously witnessed.
The screams of desperation could be heard all over the town, but he watched helplessly as the town was seemingly being devoured by the mysterious entity within the clouds.
"Kik Kik Kik Kik Kik"
Rudra’s attention was attracted by a squeaking noise coming from outside the compound. Before long, his expression turned grim as a rat the size of a fully grown indie dog came through the compound and shot right towards the convention hall.
Apart from the first few days when he heard the barking of the dogs and the purring of the cats, he hadn’t come across other animals. He thought they were all killed by the monsters, but he didn’t think that a rat would survive and become so big.
Either way, he used the growing tree as a support and got to the ground.
Rudra noticed that the rat was running towards the window, which made him think it had got a whiff of the humans within.
He was alarmed by its sensitive nose and threw a rock at the rat as a distraction.
The rat looked at him with its button-like eyes radiating a black hue and ran towards Rudra at an astonishing speed.
Rudra took the steel sand and pointed the bone spear at the rat.
As soon as it got into his attack range, he did not hesitate and swiftly plunged the spear into the face of the rat, ending it in an instant.
He looked at the rat being split in half and muttered, ’’Well, that was easier than expected."
However, he wasn’t happy for too long.
More rats, several dozen of them, stepped into the compound and headed straight towards Rudra.
Rudra’s expression turned Bleak. He knew he couldn’t hold on against so many monsters alone, and he knew he couldn’t run away; his heart wouldn’t allow him to abandon everyone. He considered several solutions, and finally an idea appeared in his mind.
Rudra went back to the dressing room, and his appearance caught everyone off guard. The Pandit ji, the spectacled man, and the others immediately kept their distance from Rudra as he was completely drenched by the rain, and they didn’t want to test whether they could live after making contact with the rain.
Rudra ignored the people’s thoughts and immediately focused his attention on Prabhu and Laila.
"A horde of rats is attacking us. I’ll handle them; both of you follow my orders." His briefing was short and straight to the point.
Hearing Rudra’s words, Prabhu was deeply scared, and Laila showed a look of caution.
Rudra asked them both to go to the entrance and guard it while he stood before the window, the place where the rats were trying to breach.
The next instant, bone-scraping sounds were heard, and everyone huddled in a circle with fear. Even the Pandit ji silently chanted a mantra while closing his eyes.
Rudra focused on the point where he felt that the rats would break through, and sure enough. A small, needle-sized hole appeared on the wall, and it soon expanded to a size large enough for a dog to pass through.
A rat very similar to the one he had defeated before appeared in his eyes, and letting out an angry squeak, it headed straight towards his legs.
(Swish!)
The sound of air being torn apart was heard, and the rat was split in half.
Unfortunately, right behind the one he killed, two more rats appeared and rushed to his sides.
Rudra was caught off guard. He didn’t think the rats were smart enough to attack him from two different directions, yet here he was. To make matters worse, a large rat struggled through the hole and came charging toward him as well.
Rudra felt a huge threat from the rat and took a step back. However, realising there were people behind him, his expression turned determined, and the grip on his bone spear tightened.
Aiming at the rat that was lunging at his right leg, he first swung towards the right, killing the rat in a single move, but the rat on the left pounced on him and bit into his leg.
"Gah."
He bit his lip in pain, but he couldn’t deal with the rat as the larger rat was right upon him.
Gritting his teeth, he turned his pain into anger and swung down the bone spear with all his might.
The fleshy body offered some resistance, but it wasn’t enough to stop his rage-fueled slash. The head split in half, and he was finally able to handle the rat that was gnawing through his flesh like it was some sort of delicacy.
Rudra used the butt of the spear to knock the rat off his leg and stomped on it as hard as he could.
Blood was pouring out of his leg, but unfortunately, he couldn’t tend to it as more rats rushed through the hole.
This time, he became more cautious. He didn’t give the rats a chance to split apart and kept swinging at anything that came through.
His left leg was feeling numb, and looking down, too much blood had flowed out, and a puddle had formed under his foot. Thankfully, the wounds seemed to have closed.
Time ticked by, and more rats appeared inside the dressing room, and he had a few more injuries on his body.
He couldn’t help but regret not letting Prabhu or Laila get some fighting experience, but there was no time for regret right now. ’I must have those two participate in combat as well,’ he thought in his heart and kept swinging at the incoming rats almost mechanically.
’Thankfully, they’re still dumb.’ He heaved a sigh of relief.
Everyone looked at the strong back of Rudra with awe and also with a complicated expression.
They were relieved that they did not have to fight the rats but at the same time worried about what would happen to them if Rudra fell.
Prabhu thought about going forward to help, but in the end, he was worried that his assistance would only end up becoming a hindrance for Rudra and stopped himself. Lila also wanted to do the same, but she didn’t know whether, instead of helping, she would get herself into trouble, causing more trouble for Rudra.
It was only Lingaraj who was even remotely helpful. He carefully pulled back all the rat corpses out of the way so that Rudra wouldn’t trip over them or be hindered by them lying at his feet.
Rudra didn’t know how much time had passed, but seeing that the rats had stopped coming, his shoulders slumped. Subsequently, a wave of exhaustion washed over his body, and his knees buckled.
"Brother Rudra!!!"
The last thing he remembered before going unconscious was the panicked shout of Prabhu.