Pain radiated from his chest in waves as Turi glared at the huge, dog-sized rat. It was of the second realm and was covered in fungi, which he assumed to be because of its variant species. Regardless, when Turi had attacked it, a cloud of spores had exploded from its body. Turi deeply regretted all of his practicing to mimic human behavior, because his immediate reaction had been to gasp.

Turi knew that he should leave and find more suitable prey, but he was pissed. He glared at the rat from atop a building, and it glared back, practically daring him to do anything about it.

The worst part was that it should be easy for him to kill it, but the spores were interfering with his essence. It wouldn’t move throughout his body properly, and Turi couldn’t simply craft spikes of stone and launch them at the rat.

As he slowly recovered, the rat left, with Turi unable to do anything. Internally fuming and his chest still full of a bit of lingering pain, Turi took to the air to find something that fought more conventionally.

As the wind grew increasingly hostile, Turi finally found something that was more suitable. It was of the second realm, and its variant species hadn’t strayed much from its baseline species, which looked to be a raccoon.

It was the size of a horse, but otherwise looked like a normal, ordinary raccoon. He believed it to be of the second realm only because he had seen it fighting something distinctly similar to the huge housecat that he himself had fought. Its fur had become as long as its own length, but that wasn’t the dangerous part; the fur had moved of its own volition, entangling the cat and leaving it unable to retaliate to its attacks.

Turi stalked the raccoon, using the half-standing building as cover as he flew and hopped in pursuit of the raccoon. Turi had no intention of fighting it physically due to its fur, and so he needed to find a good opportunity.

Finally, it exposed a moment of weakness; it knelt down and tried to wash the essence core in the water. Turi found this amusing, but didn’t let it interfere in his machinations. Three stone spikes shot forward, two of them aimed for its front-right and back-right legs, and the last aimed for its throat.

The raccoon hadn’t even been looking in his direction, but reacted as though it had some sort of sixth sense. Its fur exploded in length and batted the stone spikes aside.

The raccoon looked around, and its eyes narrowed as it spotted Turi. He was out of its reach, and so it turned and started to flee, but Turi didn’t allow it.

His eyes lit up as he pumped essence into them, and its long, thick fur caught fire. The raccoon reacted wildly out of proportions, considering that the fire was nowhere near its flesh, and threw itself to the ground, rolling over multiple times in an attempt to put the fire out.

Turi’s eyes never dimmed, though, and the fire never went out. It spread through the raccoon’s fur rapidly, and soon, it reached the raccoon’s real body.

Turi let the fire go out only now that all of its fur was burnt to a crisp, and was unsurprised to find that the fire had consumed almost half of the essence in his core. It was the main reason that he never used it; it was really, really expensive

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Turi infused his wings full of essence and shot toward the raccoon as it continued to writhe on the ground, slowly putting out the remnant flames. Turi’s thoughts accelerated and he struck in the short moment where the raccoon was on its back, with its underside exposed. His essence-enhanced beak drilled through the furless raccoon, but that hadn’t been the true attack. The moment his beak left the hole that it had made, a spike of ice, formed from the water in the air, plunged through the raccoon’s body and into its heart.

With how quickly the raccoon’s body went limp, Turi was half-convinced that it was acting, but, after poking around for a while, he knew it wasn’t. Turi dug out its essence core and ate it whole, as well as enough of the raccoon to fill his stomach.

By now, the wind was truly bad, and it was beginning to sprinkle. Turi took to the air and flew as quickly as he could back to his temporary base of operations, and arrived at his stone hut just as the rain started to truly fall.

Not feeling tired enough to go to sleep quite yet, Turi improved the stone ‘hut’, which was, in reality, just a stone roof with a single pillar, and made it into a real hut- with several ways out, of course.

Next, he manifested his tome and tried to think of anything more he could do with it. He had already made one of the pages into a map; surely, he could find something else to do with it.

It didn’t take Turi long to find something he wanted; a way to accurately tell the time. Unfortunately, the only way he could think to implement it was beyond his abilities; Turi had thought to subconsciously count every single second and translate it into the time on his tome, but his mind wasn’t that incredible- yet.

Turi would make sure to remedy that, soon. Turi could feel the raccoon’s essence core being absorbed in his stomach even now, and estimated that it would yield him two opportunities to ascend. He was going to use both to ascend his intelligence.

With nothing more to do, Turi simply watched the rain until he fell asleep.

***

When Turi awoke, it was still raining, but it wasn’t the downpour that it had been yesterday. It was a drizzle at best, and Turi knew he could fly in it. The question was if he wanted to, and the answer was yes. First, though, Turi manifested his tome and it flipped to the second page. Just as he guessed, he had two opportunities to ascend, and Turi ascended his intelligence both times. His mind noticeably faster, Turi took to the air and headed for the park, as he hadn’t been there in quite a while.

When Turi arrived only seven or so minutes later, the rain had lessened to the point that he hardly even noticed it anymore. That was good, because it gave Turi a great view of the park.

It was a mess. Mounds of dirt as tall as a two-story building rose into the air, and the pathways were large enough for a medium-sized dog to roam around in. In fact, Turi could see several second-realm beasts doing precisely that; several of which were stone-clad squirrels. He wasn’t sure why so many of them chose to use the variant species of another when they ascended, but it wasn’t any of his business.

Turi landed near the center of the park, where the conflict between ant nests was the worst. Even the most mundane of soldier ants were the size of a rat, and there were plenty of soldier ants that had gone beyond that.

There were at least twenty ants in the second realm that he could see, and it was strange to see the enormous, wolfhound-sized ants plowing through the lines of their enemies.

Turi crushed the bodies of any ants that came nearby, and their cores floated toward him of their own volition. They were smaller than that of the rats their size, though, and Turi would have to eat several hundred of them before he could ascend even once, and crushing bugs with his eyes was far too inefficient to do that.

His curiosity of the park’s condition sated, Turi took to the air and left it behind. Next, he decided to head towards his flock’s meeting place. He hadn’t seen them in days, after all.