The whole day was spent preparing for the upcoming fight, traps were being set and the walls in the alley were being built.

Jordan hoped that he can fight the rats and the next day "visit" the camp he chose, Jordan managed to locate most of the camps in the city thanks to the flying beasts but he chose this particular camp for various reasons.

First, the security of this camp is quite loose and there shouldn't be any real problem.

Second, there is a lot of "prisoners", who should be more than grateful for being saved, and it should be easy to use that to control them.

But Jordan was racing against the time, there is a chance that some other force takes care of the camp, or that there is someone with a high rank of mutation and great aptitude for strength or mana. With his, at best average aptitude Jordan should make a move as quickly as possible before someone manages to acquire personal power beyond what he can handle. ´the aptitude is very vague at best, no one should have the same aptitude even if they are the same species... still, the only thing I can do about that is to work hard..."

Currently, Jordan´s best quality was his body that was at the peak of the second rank while his mana staggered a bit behind, and with his average species talent for body and mana he has to take action as soon as possible so that his opponent doesn't get chance to develop.

Jordan has quite the number of beasts under him and is confident to take on even middle-sized settlements but once everything stabilizes and the angels awaken more humans and also teach the humans how to hunt the beasts the situation will get much worse.

The beasts can evolve but their potential is much worse than that of humans when you add it all together, the sooner Jordan acts the better, and after he establishes some sort of his own stable outpost with humans or any intelligent race then he can take it easy for a while.

But progress must be made! If not he will just be forced to serve some demon who didn't stop in growing his own strength, and that is something Jordan wants to avoid at all cost.

Jordan checked several times on the simple wall the goblin workers made and was a bit dissatisfied with it, in the end, he decided to make the wall 0,75 meter (2ft) tall and 1,5 meter (5ft) wide, the wall was made from ruble that came from the houses around, few swings with his war hammer and there was more than enough material.

The plan Jordan had for tonight was risky, he will be in a small alley and if the rats overwhelm them most of the beasts and goblin will probably die, Jordan himself is confident in running away from the rats but still just in case he prepared an escape road through the canals.

It was surprisingly easy to prepare the escape road, Jordan just took off the lid from the canal in the alley and checked where he can escape from it. It would be a stinky escape but better than death.

One more thing Jordan worked on was a basic spell that was prerecorded in the magic tome, the spell was second circle one and was one of the easiest ones, if simplified it was just a stream of an element that the caster chosen for the spell, the stream of the said element will last for several second, it could be used like a flamethrower or short-range blizzard, the disadvantage was big mana consumption and the short range of about 2 meters (6ft). ´If I go all out I should be able to cast the spell for about 5 or six times... but then I would be pretty dried up, better to save up the mana if possible´

Jordan spend several hours preparing the ritual for burning the image of the spell inside of his mind, the ritual was quite simple he needed only A3 papers that he soaked in beast blood and then let dry, repeat 3 times and the materials are all ready, then you draw a circle that contains the instruction of the ritual with liquid mana.

That took Jordan a bit of time and completely exhausted his mana, he had to replenish it by drinking few liters of elemental beast´s blood to replenish some of the spend mana, and then was only left drawing the rest of the spell inside the ritual circle. The whole process was quite complicated but it wasn´t all that hard and in the end, it went better than Jordan anticipated, and so Jordan successfully made the ritual to remember the spell.

But this ritual will get progressively harder in the higher circles, the complexity will increase quite a bit.

Jordan poured a bit of mana to the bloody paper and the paper began to burn with blue fire while Jordan was looking at it without even blinking or closing his eyes, the fire was intense but didn't feel hot at all on touch.

But it was much worse for his brain, it felt like the fire was burning inside his head, Jordan continued to look at the ritual and after several seconds the spell finished engraving itself into Jordan´s mind.

Jordan sweated a bit from the mental pain and closed his eyes, two blue-colored circles were stacked on one another inside his mind, the first one was a full circle filled with words and symbols while the other one was just several centimeters (inches) thick? Well, it looked like that inside his mind, it was several centimeters thick circle stripe that went around the first circle.

Overjoyed Jordan went outside and tried out the spell, the element Jordan chosen was water more precisely ice, he thought about the fire but if possible he wanted to preserve the corpses for food, the number of hungry throats under him kept increasing so he must think about the future.

Jordan activated the spell by touching the image of the spell inside his mind with a bit of mana, Jordan felt the mana leaving his body and forming before his left hand, that's where he chose the place for the spell to take effect, in about a second the spell was fully formed and then stream of white mist erupted from the Circles, everything that the mist touched was frozen solid, the ground the weed even the unfortunate fly, the stream of mist lasted for about 3 seconds and then ended.

Jordan observed the frozen area and looked at how strong was the freezing power, to his surprise it was quite strong, nothing like hitting with all his strength but it will be handy, the best thing about the spell was that together with the element the spell sends also a small amount of mana that fuels the element for several minutes even after the spell ended so the damage was bit overtime.

The rest of the day Jordan spend practicing with his new war axe, the axe was just like the hammer about 1,5 meter long and weighed close to 15 kilograms, from one side was the blade and from the other spike just like the hammer, same for the material, it looks like the weapons he bought were mass-produced as the handles were identical but they were of quite high quality so it was fine.

Jordan chose the ax for tonight's fight as cutting dozens of rats at once sounds better than smashing one hopeless rat and making a rat smoothie.

The rest of the afternoon quickly went by and Jordan looked as the sun began to hide on the horizon, for the last time Jordan checked everything in the alley where six of the goblin warriors waited, they had hand axes and machetes in their hands, there was also Sunny and four-phase 2 beasts and about 30 phase one beasts, rest of his subordinates were guarding the library in case something happens, also there wasn't all that much space in the alley.

Behind the improvised wall, all the previously said beasts were waiting, Jordan and all his cat beasts were outside the wall, they will serve as bait and will bring any group of rats they find, and then they will help inside the wall, Jordan didn't believe there was only one group of rats that caused all the trouble, yes there should be one big that caused the most problems but several smaller one were most likely to appear as well.

The sun went down and slowly night came, the cat beasts slowly run off and Jordan looked around anticipating the battle.

It didn´t take all that long and the first few rats appeared behind a corner, first it was only a few of the rats but more and more rats appeared, and soon several hundred rats were there.

Jordan ran at them while activating his spell he named freeze stream, the white mist spread and completely frozen dozen of smaller rats, the size of the rats was from 20 centimeters high and 50 long to 1 meter high and 1,5 meter long, that is without their tail.

Jordan did want to save the mana but he also wanted to see the spell in action so he used it in the end.

While in the enemy ranks Jordan also swung his war-axe at the closest big rat he could reach and cleanly decapitated it, it was only a few seconds and the rats were already starting to close upon him. Jordan ignored the scratches and shallow bites and ran as fast as he could toward the wall and jumped over it.

The rat's tide followed Jordan and the fight began, while screeching the rats thrown themselves against the improvised wall and tried to get to the beasts and Jordan, just like that all the rats were climbing the wall only to get crushed and sliced, Jordan stood on top of the wall and was just swinging his war-axe left and right, if any of the rats got behind him he left his beasts to take care of it and from time to time he would pour a bit of mana to his horn and affected dozens of the rats some were intimidated and some even tamed those that were tamed then proceed to change sides and got torn to pieces almost instantly as they were right in the way of the other rats.

It took about half an hour but all the rats were killed and a small pile of bodies formed itself before the improvised wall.

Jordan leaned against the wall of the houses from which the alley was formed and a drunk bit of blood from one of the bottles he prepared for today, there is going to be much more fighting so he made sure to be prepared as much as possible, just as Jordan was waiting he heard screeching from everywhere around the city. "that isn't good"

Not even a minute later all the cat beasts returned and hid behind the improvised wall "that's really bad"

Jordan couldn't see any rats but the atmosphere he felt was worse than a thousand words, it was the silence before the thunder.

In another minute the rats returned and this time in thousands, Jordan couldn't even see the end of the tide that was coming for them. "GET READY!"

The streets were filled with rats, the rats just continued their mindless attack, they had no fear or self-preserving instincts, before the improvised wall new wall appeared, this one from the rat corpses.

It got so absurd that the rats had to stop the assault from time to time and haul the corpses away, it looked like the rats have some minimum intelligence, but every time they cleaned the corpses the battle continued.

At some point new enemy appeared, this time there were even rats in the size of a car and something that looked like ratmans, when Jordan looked all over the tide his confidence dropped down. ´maybe I should have waited a bit, for better opportunity…´

Wounds continued to appear, the flesh was being devoured by both sides and slowly the night progressed.

The fight was long and hard, many of Jordan´s beasts died and piles of bodies formed on the sides of the alley, the rats tried to go from the roof but that was blocked by the cat beasts, and in the end, what saved Jordan was his taming/intimidation ability, now after his second horn grew he could use it every five minutes so he did just that, every time any of the big rats attacked, Jordan would tame it or at least intimated it and them and make it attack the opposite side.

But that wasn't all, at some point there were even rats that could use magic and those sent several fireballs toward Jordan´s group and even killed some of the beasts so Jordan broke through the attacking rats killed them, and then returned, that stunt cost him many rats bites all over his legs.

It was at best an hour before the sunlight and Jordan was heavily breathing, finally, they killed most of the rats.

Jordan fell on the ground totally drenched in blood, there was now a small blood pond about 5 cm (inch) deep inside the alley. All the beasts that survived were laying down including Sunny who looked ready to hibernate.

´fuck... I need to do it properly´ Jordan dragged himself to the biggest rat he could find and ripped its heart out and then he ate it, he did the same to some other rats until he could feel the energy that made him active beyond reason, there was still much he has to do to take care of all the rats.