Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

The fall of the first village-bearing beast was like a spark hitting dry wood. I saw a few survivors from the collapsing village-bearing beast leap off of their beast and start fleeing for the woods, many of them holding children or infants as they tried to fight off the harassment of the rats.

Some of them leapt onto other village-bearing beasts. Others fled for their lives, completely ignoring the other village-bearing beasts. I personally doubted that most of the ones who fled for the jungle would survive, unless they had some kind of ability to hide from the rats - but I didn’t have the ability to pay attention to them. All of my focus was devoted on the impact on the remaining towns. With one village-best nearing collapse, the other towns in the clan started to panic.

The warriors and mages of other village-bearing beasts tried to maintain their own defensive lines, but willpower couldn’t create mana reserves from nothing or create new stamina reserves. Our warriors were growing exhausted, and while we were nearly out of range of the rat’s hunting ground, the remaining rats still felt practically endless - and many other defensive lines were starting to buckle.

I shuddered, as I processed what had just happened. A town had fallen. The other defensive lines were showing signs of buckling. I had no idea how long we would need to hold out in order to survive.

The one and only upside was the fact that our town’s defensive lines were holding up better than the others. After all, this town was the one where the hero trainees were currently staying. That also meant that our trainer, with a much higher than average level, was also here - and my healing spells had also proved to be incredibly useful during the battle. Even so, things were dire.

The difference in power between each town was limited, because we were all one clan. We supported each other and relied on each other. No single town was so much stronger than the others that they could weather a storm other village-bearing beasts would crumble under. If one village-bearing beast had already fallen, how much longer could we hold out?

The horde of shapeshifting vermin now numbered in the tens of thousands, and there were more reinforcements pouring in every second. Even if the ones arriving now seemed nearly exhausted, they were still coming - and more were appearing every second. If nothing changed, all of the remaining village-bearing beasts might fall to the vermin horde today.

<Is there anything we can do to actually hold this swarm off?> I asked. Even though Felix had already mentioned we might need to flee, I didn’t want to become refugees patrolling the tundra if we could avoid it. I suspected Felix had at least a few stealth related items prepared for such an eventuality - but it was still better to be part of a clan if possible. Losing access to an ember would basically stifle any future progression, and hundreds of people would die if the front lines collapsed. I didn’t want either to happen.

<I have no ideas,> said Sallia, before I felt a pulse of pain from her side.

<Are you okay?>

<Just got bit in the leg again. I’m surprised the little bastard managed to get through my skin - with my current lineup of physical boosts, my physical resilience should be absolutely ridiculous. I’m probably sitting at over a thousand [Vitality], by the standards of this world’s System. Even so, it feels like they’re getting better at nibbling through my defenses as the fight goes on,> said Sallia.

I frowned. That wasn’t good news. The fact that the monsters had some kind of unknown mechanism allowing them to grow stronger as the fight progressed was a miniature calamity - but I had no idea how the mechanism worked, so I had no way to stop it.

I sent a pulse of healing magic Sallia’s way, then looked at Anise to see if she had any ideas. Anise shook her head.

<I can create a {Fire Wall} using a bunch of my essence, but it’ll only buy us a few seconds. Realistically, given the speed we’re moving at, it won’t change the course of the battle. We’ll leave it behind too fast. Besides, we really need to get out of range of the dimensional rift if we want to be safe. The more space between us and the source of the rat swarm, the better for us. Creating fortifications encourages us to stay in place - exactly what we don’t want to do right now.>

Felix also gazed at the woods, which were crawling with ever-increasing numbers of rodents, and then shook his head. <I don’t see a way to change the course of the battle. We aren’t strong enough,> he finally said. <Even if we use all our consumable items, I’m not sure if we could even slow down the horde - there are just too many of them. If we use all our items and then we still lose the clan afterwards, we would also be in a worse situation than ever before - I was hoping those could keep us alive if we’re forced to flee on our own.>

I felt a sense of suffocating dread start to choke me. Was there no way to save the clan? Was there no way to survive this calamity?

I gritted my teeth, as I saw the horde of vermin begin to overwhelm another of the defensive lines. I sent a few rounds of ice, lightning, and extinguishes at the rats, and ignored the round of System notifications that popped up afterwards. It didn’t matter - none of my attacks had really mattered. Soon, the defensive line buckled, and the defenders of that town began to fall and scream.

Worse, this time, it was the pregnant village-bearing beast that was on the verge of failure. Our clan had hoped that a new village bearing beast could replace some of the losses we had taken during our first extraplanar contact. Now, it looked as if the village-bearing beast was about to turn into a pile of bones and corpses out in the tundra - or at the very least, the people riding on top of the beast were about to be lost.

I felt an unprecedented sense of sorrow as the vermin horde punched through the next defensive line, and then started to rip apart the survivors.

Nothing I could do mattered. The monster horde was too numerous. Even though I still had decent essence reserves, I could feel that my essence and stamina were starting to flag.

Soon, more screams arose from the village. Some warriors fled towards the jungle, while others fled towards the other surviving village-bearing beasts.

This time, I noticed something. The rats that chased after the survivors seemed a lot less efficient than before, and many of them were sluggish. The fliers looked almost as if they could barely keep themselves in the air, while some of the others looked as if they could barely lift their paws. Far more warriors had survived the fall of the second village-bearing beast than the first collapse, as well - perhaps half of the village’s population had survived the catastrophe.

That was a slim comfort, but it was better than the utter devastation that had marked the collapse of the first town.

That slim comfort turned out to be more substantial than I had thought. Many of the warriors reinforced the few remaining village-bearing beasts. My healing magic also drastically restored the collapsing stamina of the warriors who reinforced our village, allowing us to restore the stability of the front lines. Even so, people continued to die as minutes ticked by, and my essence reserves grew lower and lower. Soon, I started pulling at my absorption essence and filtering it through my new Feat to allow me to keep up with my healing. My overall essence reserves dropped to 30%. Then 25%.

Right as I was nearing 20% of my essence reserves remaining, I noticed that the rats were starting to slow down. I could see more rats trying to launch themselves at our village-bearing beasts, and many of them were still successfully taking to the air - but even the ‘fresh’ rats were starting to stagger drunkenly in midair. They lacked the coordination and efficiency that our original assailants had. The other rodents, which had been locked in battle with us for several minutes, were even worse off - they could barely even offer effective threats anymore, since they were so low on stamina and essence. The warriors of our villages were also exhausted, but they managed to dispatch the exhausted rats with ease, due to the aid of their Feats and their years of combat.

Soon, the rodents in the distance stopped dashing after us entirely - it was clear that they were no longer doing much harm to us, just sacrificing themselves to provide us with more embers. Instead of attacking us, they started congregating in a spot just out of view. I had no idea what they were doing, and my soul-sight revealed a sight that was even more baffling. It looked almost as if the rodents were slowly creating a pyramid formation entirely with their bodies, for reasons out of my understanding. It didn’t look like the rodents were shapeshifting into fliers - it looked almost as if they were carving out resting spots in a tree.

My eyes narrowed as I realized that my assumptions weren’t wrong. The rats were carving out resting spots in one of the massive trees. More accurately, they were establishing a nest.

The rats in our vicinity stopped attacking us and started to pull back, since they lacked the ability to fight on. However, the rat nest gave me a very bad feeling.

It didn’t feel as if we had truly fought off the enemy - it felt more like they were taking a temporary break before the next assault began. Furthermore, I had seen rats and giants spread in every direction during the initial chaos. If we were faring this badly… how were the other clans in our area faring?