It takes the rodents about ten minutes to reach the living residence chamber. They crawl out of the one only vent opening in the atrium’s ceiling corner that had been used by the preceding slain rats.

Following the same motions, both jump down to the glass platforms of the atrium’s top level and shift their gazes down below, scanning the entire chamber.

The scent of their dead pack mates assaults their senses as their eyes take in the scene of the bloody carnage down below.

Enraged at the loss of fellow rat brethren their eyes land on the likely perpetrator of the killings, the strange biped standing in the middle looking up at them.

It wasn’t something they were familiar with but it did not seem to be too much of a threat from its size. Silver white fur on top of its head, a pale face with black skin and weak small arms, the biped was holding a long black stick.

Both rodents glance at each other, they don’t feel any danger from the two-footed stranger despite their dead brethren. They also barely had anything to eat, just a few bites in the past month.

Whatever this biped was, it was easy pickings for food.

Their hunger overrides their caution and they both jump down to the floor.

Each taking a different side, they move slowly, encircling the boy.

“Two at the same time now huh? Rat A and rat B.”

The rats move in a circular pattern around the boy, maintaining a certain distance. Keeping him in their line of sight, rat A takes a few steps forward while right B moves slightly to the side, creating a coordinated encirclement.

The boy raises his sword and turns his body toward rat B, which is moving to his side, to avoid it reaching his blind spot. Immediately, it stops and paces back while rat A attempts to move out of his line of sight on his other side.

Their movements were in complete harmony with each other’s.

In response, the boy focuses an aura of red and gold energies around his body, raising his strength and speed.

“Yeah, these things are definitely pack hunters.”

Rat A stops its encirclement and crouches down, lowering its head, a clear signal that it is about to pounce.

However, the boy was aware of the impending attack before it had even changed its posture since he had seen its energies spike.

He purposefully doesn’t display any vigilance or caution and maintains his attention on rat B which has stopped its movements and is staring at him,

“Come on you furless fucker, I’m wide open.”

Trying to further bait rat A into attacking, he slightly turns away from it, presenting his back.

This successfully triggers rat A’s instincts and it leaps, aiming for the nape of his neck.

The golden maroon energy enveloping the boy’s body spikes as he swiftly whirls his blade to catch the lunging rat in mid-air, catching it by surprise.

But the strike misses its target because rat B tackles him in a rush as soon as he turns.

It knocks into his side, offsetting his balance, and instead of connecting with rat A’s torso, the blade connects with its right forelimb.

A faint glimmer of blue ignites as rat A’s barrier desperately tries to protect its limb from the slash but the blade flows through smoothly, severing barrier and limb

Rat A's eyes glaze over from pain, causing it to cease all attempts to attack as it passes by the boy's side through the air. Meanwhile, rat B stands up on its hind legs, pushing into him and attempting to knock him over.

It bites into his shoulder with fiery fangs, trying to take a chunk out of his flesh but the suit’s barrier stops it in its track.

Unlike before, the rodent’s strength feels underwhelming.

Rat B’s muscles swell from flowing red energy as it tries to knock him over but the boy withstands the force and kicks it in the joint of its hindlimb.

Its barrier fails to absorb the full impact and some force passes through, cracking its joint. The pain causes it to squeal loudly as it tumbles down to the floor.

Not letting the opportunity pass, the boy rushes in with his sword in a lunging attack but rat B doesn’t stay down, it quickly rolls over onto its feet and scurries away from his attack.

Rat A continues to thrash on the floor from agonizing pain, the large gaping opening in place of its forepaw bleeds heavily, forming giant splotches of blood on the pristine white floor.

Standing with a slight limp, rat B looks at the boy then at rat A, and then back at the boy again.

It turns around and sprints in the opposite direction.

“Oh no you don’t.”

The boy ignores rat A and sprints after the escaping rat B. Watching them move away, rat A squeals weakly, exhausted from the thrashing.

Rat B fires up the golden aura covering its body, concentrating more energy toward the legs as it takes some powerful bounds but the speed burst doesn’t last long as after a few paces it starts limping from pain.

Running after the sprinting rat, the boy observes this concentration and transfer of energy. He focuses and does the same, gathering the tingling sensations of lightness and flowing them toward his legs.

Each step becomes faster and more powerful, their impacts accelerating his speed and propelling him directly behind the sprinting rat.

It takes a quick glance at his advancing figure and the color of its gold aura changes.

The gold in its aura dims while red colors bubble to the surface, spiking and gathering around its legs.

“It’s about to attack using its legs.”

Observing the changes in the color of the rat’s aura he could predict its actions. It wasn’t very hard to do, red meant attack while gold meant a rush or sprint.

Rat B uses its frontal limbs to push off the floor, gathering all of its attacking red energy into its legs.

It flies toward the boy, its muscular legs coiled into springs, ready to blow his head off.

The rat could’ve taken him by surprise if he hadn’t already known about its attack but he did.

The changing colors had tipped him before the rodent had even begun its attack.

As he rushes into rat B, he changes his trajectory slightly and sidesteps out of the way of its powerful blow.

Its legs whisk past his face and he feels the wind pressure wriggle his cheek. He rotates the sword’s grip in his hands, twirling the blade in a clockwise spin that cuts through the rat’s muscular legs clean like paper.

But the boy doesn’t stop, his senses capturing each moment in slow motion.

He then rotates the grip counterclockwise, twirling the blade in the opposite direction as rat B flies by with a horrified expression. The blade slices through its head.

Along with its legs, the upper part of its skull separates from the rest of its body in midair and it falls on the floor with a loud wet thud.

White mist seeps out of the open wounds on its body and rises in the air.

Like the previous times, one small chunk separates from the rest and floats toward him.

The boy raises his hand and absorbs the wisp.

He feels the rush of power flow out from his core. It felt a little weaker this time, not as potent as before.

“Is it because my body is getting used to it?”

Loud squealing attracts his attention and he turns toward the source.

Looking up at the ceiling, rat A is screaming at the top of its lungs.

“Trying to alert your buddies?”

The boy calls out to the rat and starts to walk over to it.

Rat A stares at him from its side with a single terror-stricken eye but continues wailing.

Once the boy gets near it stops screaming and turns its head toward him.

Perhaps realizing it had no chance to outrun him, it simply bared its fang. Desperately trying to intimidate him away.

“I kinda feel bad to do this but you did attack me first.”

The boy advances without flinching, forcing Rat A to act on its threatening display.

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Its golden maroon aura spikes up as it rushes toward him for a frontal tackle with the full extent of its strength and speed behind it.

In response, he raises his sword and brings down a curved downward slash onto the rushing rat.

It tries to sidestep out of the way of the trajectory but the boy simply adjusts his own motion to match it.

The sword slices through rat A’s belly, severing its spine and cleaving its body into two separate parts. Blood bursts out of the opening of its lower body like a fountain, spraying everywhere in a short burst.

Along with blood, white mist pours out from both parts of its body.

A small part separates and floats into the boy without him doing anything, giving him the familiar surge of power.

He looks at the sliced upper part of the dead rat A, staring into its dead vacant eyes.

These rodents were no longer fast for the boy.

His perception had rapidly changed with each rat he killed. Their blurry movements of flashing gold now seemed slow and predictable.

He looks at his arm and channels red energy into it. It emits a wave of red as the aura engulfs it like a bright flame.

“The glow is denser and brighter than before.”

There was no doubt about it, somehow the white mist was boosting his red and gold energies and in turn, they were increasing his strength and speed.

The glow on his arm was still not as bright or dense as the energy emitted by his sword but it had definitely grown stronger.

He pops out the holographic map and observes it.

Six red dots were about to enter the chamber.

“This might not be such a one-sided fight after all.”

The six rats enter the chamber in a neat pack formation and take positions on the top level of the atrium. Having heard the many alarming squeals of their now dead brethren they were on edge.

From the number of dead and the level of carnage below they had expected to find one of the hive’s darklings to be responsible for the attack but instead they found a small unfamiliar shape standing on the floor in the middle of the bodies.

Like rat A and rat B that had come before them, these rats didn’t feel any danger from the unknown creature but the number of dead was too high to be careless.

All six jump down one by one to the floor as the strange biped shifts its stance, carrying a long black stick in its arms.

Although most of the nourishment they are able to secure is through scavenging, at heart they are pack hunters.

All six of them take their positions, encircling the intruder while it stands in place.

The rats don’t immediately rush in but instead simply surround it, trying to bait it into a response so they can counterattack from its blind spot together.

Their high-pitched chittering melds together into a cacophony of angry squeals and cheeps.

The boy observes the angry rats chittering around him. Although they were displaying threatening behavior, they still kept a certain distance away.

“They’re afraid of me.”

The boy stands ready in the middle of the encirclement, his body engulfed in a golden-maroon aura that is mixed with his gold and red energies.

The rats slowly close in on him from all directions, shrinking the encirclement.

Infused with golden energy, the pupils of the boy’s eyes dart left to right, capturing the rhythm of the rat’s energies.

His body remains calm and still, poised ready to slash at any rat unlucky enough to enter his range.

The rats around him periodically rush into a feint attack before leaping back, trying to startle him into a reaction.

However, the boy doesn’t react to any of their fake attacks.

“As long as the color of their energies isn’t spiking red, they’re not going to attack. Stay cool.”

He understood the game the rats were playing. Wolf packs back on earth used similar tactics to disorient and tire their prey.

He wasn’t your average prey that could be taken down with such tactics.

Using the rat pack’s strategy against them, the boy stays perfectly still, not even showing a twitch or a flinch.

He was baiting the rats into making more aggressive displays, enticing them to come closer while keeping a strict eye on the flow of their energies.

The strategy worked and the rat’s encirclement shortened bit by bit and their feints drew nearer and nearer.

Some snapped at his legs and arms while some fake charged him before immediately scurrying backward into the pack’s security.

Throughout it all the boy stood completely still, like a statue, observing them carefully.

His refusal to back away from their aggression was goading them into escalating their combative displays.

One of the rats on his left side gets too close and enters his range.

The boy reacts instantly, his movements resembling a red and gold whirlwind as his blade flicks through the rat’s neck, decapitating its head.

The speed is so fast the rat and others around it barely react.

The entire pack falls silent as the rat’s head hits the floor and rolls over to the boy, blood shooting straight out of its headless corpse.

“One down, five to go.”

White mist rises out of the body and a small piece flows into the boy, giving him another boost but he keeps his focus fixed on the remaining rats surrounding him.

The rhythm of their energies had begun to change.

From light gold to scarlet red, the auras around their bodies change colors, as they growl at the boy.

“Uh oh, looks like shit is about to hit the fan.”

The rats erupt into an angry chorus of chittering and squealing as they lunge at the boy from all sides.

Abandoning all semblance of tactic or strategy they rush in, their fangs and claws burning red from an infusion of red energy.

The boy observed them in slow motion as his energy sped up his perception. They had all attacked similarly except for the one on the right. All of them were rushing in on foot while this one was pouncing through the air.

“The one in the air can’t dodge.”

Now in complete command of the energies coursing through his body, the boy breaks his stance and moves with lightning-fast speed.

He rotates the grip of his sword into a horizontal position, pointing the blade to his right. Then he concentrates both gold and red energies to his legs and bursts into a powerful side dash in the same direction as his blade.

“I don’t have to take the attack of the entire pack, just one poor fuck.”

Blade raised and steady, he rushes into the pouncing rat, passing between the two rats on its sides, and stabs it in its center mass. The rat's eyes bulge out of their sockets as it realizes what has just happened but it’s too late.

The boy twists the blade in the rat’s torso and pushes it up into a quick upward slash that cleaves the rat’s head and torso in two.

By the time the rat’s body hits the floor, it had been long dead.

The rest of the pack flounders on their feet to adjust themselves against the sudden change in his position.

With one dash he had killed another of their pack and broken through their encirclement.

A wave of panic passes through the four rats as seeds of doubt sprout in their primitive little minds.

“Two down, four to go.” The boy says as he flicks the rat’s blood off his sword, absorbing its white wisp.

The golden maroon auras of the two rats closest to him ignite in a fiery blaze. The spike in their energy notifies the boy who readies the sword in his hands.

Both rats propel toward him in a high burst of speed that is faster than anything he has witnessed from the rodents up till now.

It was impressive, but their speed didn’t change anything for him. No matter how fast the rats were, if he could see the rhythm and colors of their auras then he would always be able to tell when an attack was coming.

When rats thrust into his range, he unleashes a horizontal slash with the full force of his power behind it.

The first rat’s eyes catch the wide arching swing but its own body fails to react in time. The sword tears through its body without losing momentum and continues swinging toward the second rat.

This one manages to react in time but is unable to move fast enough to completely avoid it. The blade slices through its right forepaw but it manages to stagger back to the safety of its comrades.

Blood sprays out of its sliced wound, marking a red trail leading from the boy to the remaining rats.

The injured rat lurches between the other two rats and huddles behind them. It starts grooming the gaping wound on its arm, frantically trying to stop the bleeding.

“Three down, three to go.”

The last two able-bodied rats stare at the boy with terrified eyes. This strange biped had wiped out half of their attacking squad in no time at all.

The earlier wave of panic escalates into full-blown terror as the rats realize they are going to be sharing their dead siblings' fate.

In just a few short moments, they had gone from hunters to prey in their own haven.

The boy catches the pure gold spike in their auras and accurately guesses that they were about to escape.

He channels his own energy for a burst of speed and shoots after them just as they turn around to sprint.

The two rats make a beeline for the vent with the boy sprinting after them. They zip past the injured rat which hadn’t caught their change in plans.

Startled by the sudden motions, the injured rat jumps a few feet off the floor in a desperate attempt to get away from danger but the boy simply jumps after it.

He readies his stance as he flies while the rat tries to awkwardly squirm out of his way in the air. As he passes the flailing rat, he delivers a light arching slash that cuts through its torso.

The rat’s head, its left shoulder, and a big chunk of its chest separate from the rest of its body and fall to the ground just as the boy lands and resumes sprinting after the two escaping rats.

“Four down, two to go.”

White wisp flows out from the dead carcass and flies into him as he’s running, completely overtaking his speed. His aura visibly grows a little denser as it absorbs the white wisp’s energy.

“These wisps increase the total flow of energy inside my body.”

After absorbing the wisps of four dead rats, it was crystal clear.

The volume of his aura had grown rapidly and its color grew denser whether it was red or gold.

At this point, it was easily denser, larger, and brighter than any of the rats.

“The more volume your aura has the greater power and speed you have.”

Since the volume of his aura was denser and larger than theirs, that meant his strength and speed surpassed theirs as well.

The two rats felt slow in his perceptions as they desperately sprinted away from him.

He effortlessly catches up to the rat that’s trailing behind the other.

“And to think these fuckers seemed so fast at first.”

The panicked rat stops in its tracks and immediately turns around to feint attack, trying to create another opportunity to escape but the boy zips past it undeterred, slicing its head off in one smooth motion.

“And that’s five. One more to go.”

The final rat has made it back enough to jump to the transparent platform on the level above.

The boy increases his speed even further and launches into a running high jump, reaching the same platform.

However, the rat doesn’t stop and quickly scales the wall further up to grab onto the transparent platform of the top level.

Concentrating an upsurge of golden energy into his legs, the boy pushes off the platform and rises up in the air beside the rat just as its front claws latch onto the platform on the top level.

It stares at him with wide eyes as he executes a light one-handed slash that cuts through its neck and both extended arms.

He then drops back down to the lower platform along with the dead rat’s separated body and head.

The head and its corpse fall with a wet thud, splashing and coating the transparent platform with blood.

A separate trickle of blood spills down from its cut forelimbs that were still clinging to the ledge of the upper level’s platform.

The boy stares at the bloody dead body with white mist seeping out. As the final wisp enters his body, he turns around to survey the large atrium.

The scene resembled that of a massacre.

The grey furless rats’ body parts littered the smooth polished white floor. Blood pooled in the middle, forming a puddle around the bits and pieces of organs that had spilled out of the slashed-open rodents.

The chamber’s soft light shaded the butchery site, illuminating the remnants of the violence that had taken place.

The boy takes in the gory scene.

The sight was oddly reminiscent of the warzones he had been a part of in his past life.

Burnt pieces of people lying around, houses littered with blood-soaked bodies, puddles of blood, and organs decorating the walls. He had witnessed many such scenes in his past life.

Ironically this bloody mess was the first familiar site he had seen in this world.

“What does that say about me.”

Putting the thought out of his mind, he waves a palm in front of him, summoning the holographic map.

There were no other red dots near or moving toward him. The remaining eight dots were all holed up in a place titled purification chamber on the map.

The boy steps onto the transparent parapet of the platform and drops down to the floor. As he lands, he barely feels any impact on his legs.

“That ten-foot drop felt like taking a single step down a flight of stairs.”

During the course of this fight, his aura had grown by leaps and bounds.

He could feel the energies bubbling inside his body, ready to burst out at the slightest twitch. A far cry from before when he had to concentrate to feel them.

He slowly walks toward the atrium’s entrance, stepping through the pool of blood and over the surrounding dead bodies.

The chamber’s soft lights shine a dim light over the rats’ dead eyes, making him feel like they were still following him with their gazes.

“Their dead stares aren’t that different from the ones on earth.”

The boy contemplates the thought as he steps through the entrance door, leaving the massacre in the chamber behind.