As Benny continued following the tracks, he reached the end of the trail. He could sense numerous movements beyond what he could currently see. Something stirred out there, as natural as the breathing of life itself. He made steady strides forward, listening and stopping when necessary, his eyes darting everywhere to spot anything out of place.
He reached a point where the sounds became stronger than before, meaning he was close to whatever was making them. It sounded like a human city on a busy day, with constant back-and-forth movement. But there were no human voices spoken, only the sounds of rat language chirping busily like birds dancing in the sky.
Hidden in a bush, he crawled instead of walking until he reached a point where he could finally see what lay before him.
It was a bustling scene of rats going to and fro on somewhat paved streets. Instead of human-like houses, there were structures built from a mixture of earth, wood, and everything natural around them. They weren't like some old hobo's shack. These were proper houses for rats.
In the streets were a mixture of rats, some with no clothing and others that did wear garments. There was disparity, just like in the human world, in wealth distribution or whatever these monsters called wealth. There were also families of rats moving here and there, having conversations only they could understand.
"What the insane clusterfuck is this?" Benny thought. It looked like a human city, except it was populated by rats.
This was something familiar and creepy at the same time. It was a kingdom just for rat monsters. "My goodness, what have I stumbled upon?" he thought. "How would I even conquer this? This is just too fucking insane."
He was literally sweating while hiding in the bush, continuing to watch as the rats moved about.
Then he noticed something. There were rats wearing armor and carrying spears and swords. Right now, they were escorting a bunch of naked rats out of the city.
"Hmm, look what we have here. What are they doing to their own kind? Bullying perhaps? Do rats even have that concept?"
So he decided to follow those being escorted out.
After a few minutes of walking, he realized they were heading down a particular path. This was the same path he'd taken to get here.
Interesting.
After a while, the rats were forcefully shoved toward where the dimensional rift was located. Some words were probably exchanged, as there was a lot of rat noise below.
He was positioned in the tree canopies to avoid his scent drifting down to the noses of these highly sensitive bastards.
After that, the rats were gone. He waited a good while until those escort rats returned to the rat city. If he could describe it, the city looked like a spiraling tower of slums. It had wooden walls, but from his vantage point, since the city was in a valley, he could see what was happening below. He was at just the right angle to remain undiscovered, hidden in whatever bush he'd found.
Now, could he even go back on his own to the labyrinth? He pressed his hands against the dimensional rift, feeling the familiar sensation of slipping through from before. It was weird and quite unexplainable, but it meant he had a good sense that he could pass back through without needing a rat.
So he went through to find the rats that had passed. He had this thought: why did these bastards even bother entering this barren place? He had to find out what they were foraging for inside the labyrinth and what the labyrinth meant to them.
The contrast was striking. Here was this thriving rat civilization with its own social structures, guards, and what looked like some kind of exile system, yet they still sent groups into the dark, dangerous labyrinth. There had to be something in there they needed, something they couldn't get in their abundant forest home.
Maybe it wasn't about food at all. Maybe the labyrinth served some other purpose for them. Religious? Political? Or maybe those naked rats being forced through weren't foragers but prisoners being sent to die in the labyrinth as punishment.
The implications were staggering. If the rats had their own complex society, their own laws and enforcement, then everything he thought he knew about these "monsters" was wrong. They weren't just animals. They were people, in their own way.
Which made his plan to "conquer" their nest a lot more complicated. He wasn't just planning to clear out a monster den anymore. He was potentially planning to commit genocide against an entire civilization.
"Fuck," he muttered as he stepped back through the dimensional barrier into the familiar darkness of the labyrinth. "This just got a whole lot more complicated."
But he still needed to survive, and if these rats were using the labyrinth for whatever purpose, he needed to understand what that was. Knowledge was power, and power was survival.
Even if that knowledge was making him question everything he thought he knew about monsters and men.