Since the first day I arrived in the colony, I ate, hunted, and slept as the rest, with minimal interactions between me and the other ratmen except for familiarising myself with the cavern during my free times. A pair of ratmen guards invited me to a hall in the morning of the every next day, at least from the body's biological clock, which I was introduced to a new group of ratmen hunters. Supposedly, they are my seven new teammates for venturing outside. I was also not allowed to refuse.

We greeted each other briefly and the new leader Jwanko, who's name translates to 'Light Fang', led us forward. The way outside was similar but the end of the route was different due to the collapsed tunnel I caused. The checkpoints' guards approved of us and led us out, and soon I was under the warm twilight. We were in the direction of north from the previous entrance I'd being through according to my directional senses and it's only the beginning of sundown. There were small rows of clouds at the time and rain-clouds were rolling forth from the south. It was going to be short hunt for the night before we had to return.

I took notice of my hunting group's members as we travelled. The group as a whole, surprising enough, was quite energetic, carefree, yet cooperative when serious. Three of them were brothers, which was incredible as having any single siblings were already a rare thing due to ratmen's rate of death during birth.The other four including Jwanko had exceptional cooperation and trust, which I later found out they had survived together for a whole year, yet another incredible fact when taking consideration on how long a hunting group usually survives - six months tops.

We bagged three preys overall and I dealt the final blow for the second prey, a common forest deer. In the end, they even invited me to drink after our first hunt together because of how great of a hunter I was, according to them. This was my first proper interaction with the ratmen as a ratmen and I didn't miss out on the chance.

Arriving from the enlarging entrance, although there were side-stalls and shops for trading with those who ventured outside, I never knew there were also bars nearby. After I accepted their invitation, I followed them and walked into a mess of a bar.

The ratman bartender was dingy like any other poor ratmen, but he handled the glasses with care. The alcohol was a brew the ratman brewed himself apparently, and based off the others opinions and my body's taste buds, it was pretty nice actually. My new teammates drank into the night much to the bartender's displease. I only sat by the end of the stone counter, hoping he would not include me into my teammate's misdeeds, if they had done so. Thankfully they didn't.

In the end, I was one of the three out of the group that was still conscious. The ratmen who held their liquor walked their separate way with a partner on each of their back. The rest of the group stayed in the bar; the bartender allowed it since we weren't able to carry them home by ourselves.

It was slightly uncanny at first, drinking with the ratmen. However, the discomfort disappeared along with cups of alcohol into the night. I found myself fond of the times I spent with them.

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This event repeated itself for the rest of the week; sometimes less people come to the bar, sometimes even more hunters from another group joined. Once, they even began to sing and dance; I was not one who joined them. The memories I inherited from the original body did not include any of the songs they were singing unfortunately, so I was not able to follow them.

Nevertheless, I genuinely felt the feeling of family from just this week's event alone. Despite their 'strength trumps all' mindset, the ratmen still have an unspeakable bond among comrades who fought together.

The second week began with a rest day; all hunters had one per week. I brought the fur processed from my hunts and looked around the market area of the cavern. Sounds of customers and merchants arguing for a fair trade echoed throughout the place, as haggling was still an effective method to trade according to the ratmen's common sense. It may seem primitive, yet there are still other intelligent beings who haggle in this day and age who are publicly the most civilized beings on the continent. The main cause was the lack of abundant yet purposeful resource that could be used as a mean of currency.

I glanced around at the contents of the stalls and shops. Many presented numerous goods but with most of their items having questionable backgrounds and method of acquirement. A set of human sized armor, a series of throwing daggers with uncleaned blood, clothing with a couple cuts to the back, all goods had to be somewhat suspicious in a certain aspect. I was however, not going to care about such matter. I was not interested in any of these things.

As I walked around the market for a while, I arrived at a small stall as I saw something that first set me to write. A ratman laid out a mat of accessories and other miscellaneous items; two of which, was ink and paper. Of course, the ink was hardly pure and the paper was only parchment, but I was inclined to purchase the two in bulk.

Looking at the two items I purchased, I had stronger feelings to record my actions. As I gave the ratman half of the fur that I had brought, I returned to my hollow of a home with satisfaction.

The moment I took up the makeshift pen I created using one of my prey's feather, I'd already decided what to write. Every night, I wrote a small journal of what I had done that day and hid it under the bedding.

I later formed my first book with each entry of the journal, but that's a story for later.

It was then about two weeks later living as a ratman that I noticed something interesting. The actions and conversations, the mentality and philosophy of these ratmen, there was a feeling to it all that just felt so familiar to me. As I thought about it, the answer soon hit me by the end of the day. Everything I've experienced as a ratman, they were practically identical to the activities and thoughts of humans! From this spark of insight, I began to realise how similar to humans these ratmen were.

Yet, this brought me to another dilemma: 'why are ratmen so looked down upon by the other races?' Was it their differences in appearance? Their culture? This can't be right, since there should be various races of different appearances and culture, and as I've just discovered, the ratmen's culture is almost identical to human culture, especially the human culture in the past. So what separates ratmen from others?

I thought about this question for a long time and almost gave up on answering it. It wasn't until another week that I found my answer from the surface.

The law of the jungle applies to all.