Hmmm, how would I want these rats? Do I even need to use rats?

Hmm.

I don’t know, it depends on how the city is structured. Would rats have a better time navigating it than birds? Or ants? Hmm, maybe I should send out some to gather data first.

Yes, that sounds like a good idea.

I couldn’t control them directly though, or could I? I didn’t know, I’ve never tried. Now that I think about it I’ve never tried to do a lot of traditional dungeon stuff, which was interesting. Didn’t hurt to try though, so I shifted my attention back to my wonderful room of experiments below the third floor and began testing.

I spawned in a simple rat and with a bit of willpower prevented any souls from descending from the soul pool. How would I go about this? Did I just-

Suddenly my perspective shifted along with the sensations I experienced. I saw the world from a new perspective, the perspective of a rat. It was strange, feeling the sensations of a mostly biological being again felt odd to me.

My thoughts came slowly and felt muted, movement felt bad and restricting and I had to keep my senses inside the brain of the rat; to prevent cooking it with information overload. I retracted the part of my soul I accidentally sent in instantly, being a biological being felt so limiting, I had no idea it was like that.

I’m not sure how being a human felt but I imagine it would be something similar to the rat, just with a lot of broader limitations. I didn’t fancy the idea though, being a dungeon might have affected my thought process, but I never felt so free. Both mentally and physically, I knew that I could only enjoy this freedom within the confines of my dungeon but that was a small price to pay.

I could do almost anything I want, almost. Space and time along with some other things eluded still my grasp, the humans had the answer though. Hopefully I could learn their secrets and replicate it if I manage to set up a successful intelligence network.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Ha! I couldn’t wait.

Now that I knew that I could control monsters I sent myself in again. I wanted to get used to the feeling of being a rat so I could take over and navigate myself if I wanted to, it was also a learning experience.

Time blurred as I worked, and eventually I was comfortable enough that I didn’t feel a hint of discomfort when I took over.

It felt natural, as if breathing. Goal accomplished! Next, I tried doing the same thing via the status screen in the connections tab and was delighted to see it work. I was pleasantly surprised when it responded to my thoughts and instantly found the thread connecting to the rat I was working on.

This was a useful feature, as I didn’t plan to look through millions of threads just to find a single one.

Now it's time for some modifications!

I couldn’t alter their size too much, maybe only by a little bit but that would defeat the entire purpose of stealth. Instead, I shrunk the rat, making it a bit smaller. Then I wove in an enchantment that would make it very silent, after thinking about it for a while I also made it scentless too.

I wanted to enhance their information gathering abilities to the absolute limit, so I modified the eyes of the rat, upgrading it and its brain to be able to take and process very high-quality images. Then I gave it night vision and modified its ears to be able to capture sounds from a larger distance.

Initial modifications complete, I shifted into it again and felt a massive difference, especially in eyes. I was able to pick up details on the floor that the unmodified rat was unable to see. I could see the far ends of the room with extreme clarity, and I could hear my every movement. The beating of my heart, the flowing of blood, it was amazing and wonderful.

I then spent some minutes familiarizing myself with the changes in the rat’s body before I was satisfied, then I pulled out.

Success!

Now onto phase two of the modifications!

Starting with the hair I wove in an enchantment that would automatically change its color to fit any environment the rat found itself in. This wouldn’t be instantaneous; I took it out to avoid exposing it. I instead opted for a slow and gradual change, I left the option for it to be instantaneous if it was me controlling the rat or if certain conditions were met though.

Ideally, I wanted it to be fully transparent, organs and all but I didn’t know how to do that yet. And that sounded very expensive too, soul essence wise. So I went for the next best thing: Light bending!

I wove in an enchantment that would bend light slightly around it at certain times, the degree depended on the situation. If the rat was on a very important mission, it would get a lot more control over it, but if it was just casually collecting data it would be a passive ability that would be on at times but not always. Next, I made the rat aware of these modifications by installing mental triggers in its head for the active abilities and the toggleable ones. It didn’t have a true active ability yet, but I was going to give it one now.

If any of these rats were to be found and studied, I would be in big trouble, people would connect the dots, the smart ones. So, in order to avoid that I wove in an enchantment that would explode and take the rat along with the other enchantments with it.

This could only be activated by me, and the rat when it was in a situation without any other option. The explosion would be small and silent, I didn’t want it to be loud, too much attention and all.

With that done copied the pattern and named it the Ratmousestalker!