Following the map, the boy stops just outside the entrance of the residence living chamber. It was connected to a large multi-personnel cafeteria and a recreational area as well so there were three great rooms connected to each other, separated by automatic doors and long passageways.

The passage to the recreational center and cafeteria was through a door inside the residence living chamber.

The gray rats were on opposing ends, one was somewhere directly behind the door doing whatever it was these rats did while the other was in the recreational center.

“Ok this is good, don’t want to take them together.”

Welling up red energy into his arms and sword until they were both flaming red, the boy steps close to the door.

It opens silently and he walks into a spacious atrium with multiple levels overlapping each other.

Light emanates from bioluminescent panels embedded in the walls.

The living quarters were arranged throughout the multiple levels, connected by sleek transparent walkways.

In total, there were three levels.

The entrance to each room was made of some kind of smart tinted glass that made it impossible to peer inside.

On each level, there were platforms suspended in the air with clear space above and below them. They probably acted like elevators that carried personnel from the base floor to their designated living level.

The boy checks the map.

A red dot was directly across the atrium on the other end, inside one of the resident rooms on the base floor.

“These damn rats are acting like they own the place.”

The other one was in the recreational area according to the map, both areas were separated by doors and passageways.

“I can’t imagine these rats having clearance to this place so they must be using some other way to get about.”

Not wanting to alert the rat of his presence the boy moves silently.

“I will need to take it by surprise. They are way too fast for a direct fight.”

As he draws near to the rat’s position, he sees that the glass door of one of the rooms has a hole in the lower half.

It was just enough space for a child or a demonic rat to crawl through.

He avoids taking a direct path in the hole’s line of sight but instead takes a curved route, quietly approaching it from the side.

His muscles tighten as his body readies for the upcoming conflict.

Adrenaline courses through him but he remains calm, his mind rushing through similar encounters in his past life.

“One by one, I’ve done this plenty of times before.”

He silently positions himself beside the opening of the broken door and raises his sword with both arms, taking a striking stance.

Using the sword’s tip, he gently taps the wall near the door on his side.

The rat had been sleeping peacefully.

The pack matriarch’s and some pack mate’s scavenging had been bountiful and it had received two full mouthfuls of flesh.

Although nowhere near enough for any other living creature, it was more than enough to sustain the rodent for more than a month.

The keywords being enough to sustain. If meat were to pop up right now in front of it, the rat would devour it in a heartbeat, living or dead.

Along with possessing a metabolism built to survive these harsh plains of festering darkness the rodent and its pack have found one of the safest havens in these lands.

Somewhere the dark hive couldn’t hunt them.

Due to their small stature, they were the only ones who could get inside this haven.

This is why when the rat hears a faint tapping outside its resting place, waking it from its sleep, it feels curiosity more than fear or anger.

It yawns and stretches casually, flexing its deformed bony limbs before trotting over to the entrance.

It fearlessly extends its upper body through the hole to take a peek and is met with a fast-approaching blade.

Instantly the creature’s gold energy ignites, covering its head in a golden aura. The energy speeds up its perception, slowing down the motion of the incoming blade.

Although caught completely unaware, the boost in the reaction time provided by the golden energy gives it enough time to react.

In milliseconds the rodent musters up more energy from within its body, the golden glow enveloping its entire gray body.

As the sword is about to connect, the rodent blurs into a swift-moving golden mass and tries to crawl out from underneath the strike.

It successfully makes it out alive but is engulfed by a searing pain coming from its lower left limb.

The blade had cut through its left hind leg.

The boy looks at the grotesque figure thrashing around on the floor, Its amputated leg twitching alongside it, bleeding profusely.

He lifts his sword up for another strike and tries to rush in but his slow and clumsy movements give the rat ample seconds to react.

It manages to blur out the way as the boy awkwardly slashes downward, leaping and rolling a few paces away.

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“Fuck…..It dodged so quickly.”

Although he had been in active combat situations countless times in his past life, he hadn’t killed anything with a sword before. Also, the blade was too heavy for him to use effectively even with his red energy.

Tipping heavily to the left while attempting to stand, the rat looks at the boy with bloodshot eyes.

It opens its rodent mouth, exposing huge curved and misshapen fangs, and inhales deeply.

Realizing what it's about to do, the boy sprints toward it while raising his sword for another strike but doesn’t make it in time.

The rat gives out a sharp loud squeal that resonates across the entire atrium before leaping away from the boy’s charge.

The boy quickly realizes the implications of the squeal.

“Fuck! That must’ve alarmed the whole pack. I have a short window of time before the other rat in the recreational area reaches here.”

He looks at the rat and finds it glaring at him with rage, panting from the exhausting pain.

He focuses red energy into his sword and lunges toward the rat for a piercing stab.

Despite being heavily injured with a missing limb, it casually moves out of the way with quick and efficient movements.

The boy stops and quickly turns his body towards it. Utilizing his lunging motion, he tries to swing the sword in an awkward horizontal slash to hit the rat.

Using its three limbs the rat crouches low to avoid the slash and then once the sword passes overhead, it leaps toward his face.

As they collide, the impact sends the boy down on his back with the rodent on top, trying to bite his head off.

His sword flies out of his hands and lands on the floor a couple of paces away.

The rodent’s fangs flash with red energy as they go for his throat but when they make contact with his skin a spark ignites.

The fangs collide with his suit's protective blue barrier, covering his skin.

He felt the rat’s fangs scrape against his skin, unable to puncture through.

Igniting his arms with every bit of red energy he can muster; he punches the right side of the rat’s skull.

The glowing red blow slightly tilts the rat’s head but most of the impact is absorbed by its own protective blue barrier, startling the boy.

He immediately uses his left arm to land an uppercut from below the rat’s chin. Its head bounces a little but the blow does not break through the blue shimmer covering its head.

“It’s not just me, the rat has a blue barrier too!”

Ignoring his blows, the rat opens its mouth again, focusing all of its energy into its fangs.

The fangs blaze with fiery red energy as the rat brings them back down on the boy’s throat, determined to chew through his barrier to reach his delicious flesh.

The boy tries to push the rat back but its strength was in an entirely different class.

Not even feeling the pushback, the rat reaches down to snap at his throat, clashing with the suit's protective barrier.

The suit’s barrier strains to keep the fangs from tearing his neck.

He feels the pressure tighten against his throat and punches at the rat's head and bony body but all of his blows deflect off the its protective blue barrier.

“My punches aren’t strong enough to break through its barrier!”

The rat’s protective blue barrier was shining brighter than the red glow covering his arms but at the same, his suit’s barrier was shining much brighter than the rat’s blazing fangs.

They were both struggling with the other’s defensive barrier.

Feeling the rat's jaws squeeze his throat, the boy sticks a finger out of his closed right fist and jabs it straight into the rat’s eye.

The finger does not penetrate its eye through its barrier but it disturbs the rat enough that it stops chewing on his neck.

It yanks its head away from his finger which gives the boy an opportunity to kick at its body from underneath.

Red energy quickly flows down the boy’s body and into his legs as he kicks the rat with both legs.

The strike resonates across the blue barrier covering the rat’s body but does not break it, however, the momentum pushes it off of him, which is what the boy had wanted in the first place.

The rat tips off balance because of its missing hind leg and slams down to the floor on its left side.

Not wasting a microsecond, the boy immediately rolls over and crouches into a sprinting position, aiming straight for the sword.

“I can’t hurt it without the sword, I have to reach it!”

The boy’s desperate wish to reach the sword subconsciously ignites a flicker of gold energy from his legs.

The rat scampers onto its three feet and pounces on his crouching figure.

Feeling power welling in his legs, the boy dives toward the sword in a burst of speed, narrowly missing the rat lunging behind him.

Infuriated, the rat erupts into a bright golden fire. Using the muscles in its three legs the rat bursts into an explosive dash chasing after the boy.

Hyperaware of everything happening around him, the boy feels the rat rushing behind him.

Reaching the sword, he puts one palm down on the sword’s grip without breaking his high-speed motion.

Using the placed palm and his fast motion as leverage he kicks both feet off the floor and raises them in the air.

With his body now upside down, he uses his legs to twist his body around.

Then he lands softly into a crouching stance, lifting the sword with the blade pointing at the rat as it leaps toward him.

The boy’s energy touches the sword and it ignites into a brilliant scarlet shade that glows much fiercer than his arms.

Flying right toward the blade, the rat focuses its own red energy into its frontal claws as it attempts to knock the sword out of the way.

As they both connect, the rat’s claws give a flicker of blue light before seamlessly passing through the blade, separating from its frontal limbs as if they had never been attached.

The rat has realized its folly too late and pathetically attempts to twist its airborne body out of the way in a last-ditch effort.

The sword easily slices through its blue protective barrier and into its torso as it flies in, severing its body into two parts that fly past the boy’s sides, coating him with blood.

Panting from the struggle, the boy glances toward its sliced-off torso.

The rat thrashes around with its amputated front limbs for a few seconds before petering out.

Exhausted and dying it peers toward the boy, staring into his eyes as its rapid breaths slow down with each passing moment.

The boy stares back impassively.

“Don’t look at me like that. It was you or me.”

The rat lasts for a few more seconds before the life fades from its eyes and its breathing stops.

As soon as the rat dies something supernatural happens.

A glowing white mist flows out of the sliced torso like a formless cloud.

A small part of the mist breaks off and flows toward him.

Completely exhausted, the boy backs away from the encroaching wisp.

“*pants* Is this….some new…type of fuckery?”

He tries to avoid it, backing and side-stepping away from its trajectory but the wisp follows him like a magnet that was drawn to him.

He extends a hand out to swat it away but it just flows inside his arm.

“The hell is this….!?”

His words are cut short as he feels a sudden rush of strength and energy. Both his body and sword suddenly grow a lot lighter compared to before.

The rest of the mist twists and turns in the air, before dispersing into the surroundings.

The boy lets one hand off the sword’s grip and tries to lift it with just one arm.

Although it takes a strained effort and he can’t maintain it in the air for long, he is successful.

Next, he grabs the sword with both arms and gives a few slashes in the air. They are cleaner and sharper than before.

The sword’s weight had gone from overbearing to manageable.

It wasn’t just a feeling; his strength had actually increased.

“What,,,just,,,,happened? Did the…..mist? Let’s think about that later, I have to get out of this room quickly. These rats are way stronger than I thought, this was a horrible idea.”

He turns around to scamper back to the entrance but a loud noise interrupts his actions. It was a loud clanking coming from the ceiling.

He looks up to see a second rat quickly climb out of an air vent in the corner.

Jumping onto the top level it gazes down, its focus diverting between him and its dead pack mate sliced in two.

Slowly opening its mouth, it lets out a loud high-pitched squeal that is similar to its dead packmates.

“Yup, that's my cue to leave.”

He turns around and sprints toward the atrium's entrance door, hearing the loud squealing stop, but only manages to cover a few paces before he feels a fast-moving motion lunging for his back.

He immediately stops and dives to his right as the rat zips past his body, leaving a trail of golden blaze in the air.

The rat turns around and growls at him with its fangs bared as he slowly stands to his feet.

He had been closer to the door than the rat had been to him but it had still managed to reach him so easily.

If it weren’t for that strange feeling alerting him to the impending attack then this rat would’ve successfully tackled him down.

It takes an immense amount of effort to break out of these rats’ holds.

Walking on all fours, the rat slowly approaches the boy with its fangs bared. Golden energy encompasses its entire body as it readies to pounce for his throat.

“Too late to escape now.”

The boy raises his bloody sword in response, readying his own stance.

“What? Your friend was already like that when I got here.”