Elemental Cats

Like Toz had expected, he easily made it back to where the Rat King had diverted from its set course. He had even managed to increase the distance between himself and the Rat King with the help of Mindle and Lucy attacking it.

Since they barely weighed anything, especially Mindle, it didn't matter if they rode on top of Hugh's limp body while they threw out various attacks to try and stall the Rat King. Although the projectiles and hindrances of fire barely affected the Rat King despite the differences in the types of fire Mindle and the Rat King wielded.

Lucy's shadows also barely affected the Rat King. Blocking its senses didn't do much since it only needed to continue straight ahead for at most a second until the darkness dissipated. Using the Rat King's shadow to grab hold of its feet also didn't do much since even with the large shadow, the Rat King was strong enough to almost instantly break free.

But with Lucy and Mindle working together, they managed to slow it down a few times, giving Toz some more space to work with. They also managed to further irritate the Rat King.

Nil would have helped, but after both setting up traps and building a cannon and the arrow, he was running low on mana and would need some time to recover. Although conjuring those things usually didn't take much mana, since the arrow had to withstand Mindle's explosion, he used more mana to make it extra durable. Since Lucy and Mindle could handle it, there wasn't any desperate need for Nil to force himself either.

The extra distance between Toz and the Rat King that Lucy and Mindle had managed to create was easily used up after he made an abrupt turn to the right as he discovered the Rat King's old tracks on the path to Yellow Sparks. The Rat King naturally took the closest way instead of following in Toz's footsteps.

With the Rat King's teeth snapping shut right behind him, Toz couldn't wait until they reached the series of traps he and Nil had arranged.

After the fight between the Rat King and Hugh, Toz was pretty sure that while not all of the traps would be effective against the Rat King, a few of them would be pretty devastating.

The first trap was one of the traps that proved to be less effective. It was a bola launched along the ground meant to tie up the Rat King's feet and delay it in case Toz and Nil need more time to finish the more serious traps or escape if they have to.

After the bola, a few similar traps aimed at delaying the Rat King followed. A pitfall with a trapdoor. Snares and gadgets meant to trap the Rat King's feet or tail. Walls that when the Rat King got close slammed up out of the ground into its face.

Most of the traps were hastily made, and not meant to severely injure the Rat King. That became apparent when the Rat King just burst right through the snares. The trapdoor got sent flying. And the wall was slammed back into the ground.

Simple and rushed traps would obviously not do much to the Rat King except put it a few more meters behind Toz as he deftly avoided the triggers to the traps. Or Toz just didn't weigh enough to set them off, and he ran right over them with the Rat King chasing from behind.

All the traps Toz and Nil had laid out were spread out in a shape similar to a horseshoe but upside down and with the curve of the figure extremely thick.

The Rat King would enter the semicircle, and if it tried to change directions, it would encounter more traps unless it retraced its steps quite some distance. But the first few traps were proven to have been pretty useless. And thus, the Rat King would continue on through the traps.

After the first layer of traps was where the real obstacle course started. Now it would be too late for the Rat King to turn back since it was surrounded by traps.

Toz led the Rat King through the field of devices meant to maim and kill.

A set of pillars shot out of the ground on both sides of the Rat King. Between the two pillars was a thin metal wire that, while it looked delicate, was strengthened with enough mana to not break even when the Rat King charged right through. Instead, the wire, combined with the force of the Rat King's movements sliced off the Rat King's front legs, making it tumble to the ground and burying its snout in the ground.

Or it would have been the ground if it wasn't because of the trap that was buried there. Similar to a bear trap, a couple of metal boards filled with spikes and a joint in the middle snapped shut over the Rat King's face. Although the sheets were large, they didn't reach up to the Rat King's eyes, unfortunately, but the spikes pierced the skin on its nose, and forced the mouth shut hard enough for the Rat King to bite its own tongue.

The Rat King didn't expect the traps to suddenly go from fragile enough to break with a glance to being so sturdy that the Rat King couldn't even budge them without getting injured.

Although the combination of traps easily disabled the Rat King and prevented it from moving, the legs were only sliced off because the Rat King wasn't focused on reinforcing itself. And while the spikes pierced the skin on its snout, it was only enough to make the Rat King bleed.

The legs burned and disappeared into the Rat King's body after turning into smoke. With its forelimbs restored, it tore off the attraction on its face, leaving bloody gashes that looked gruesome but healed in a few moments.

After suffering even more at the hands of the human it was chasing after, the Rat King somehow got even angrier. And while it would have hesitated to waste more mana chasing after Toz, it also realized that the traps it went through held mana in them that it could use. Although it wasn't enough to compensate for the expenditure of restoring two legs and a snout, it removed any hesitation the Rat King held in continuing the chase.