The discovery of a living possessed body was the beginning of my interactions with societies and communities throughout my journey. Finding out that I had the ability to control a living being enabled me to blend in with intelligent beings, at the risk that the body I possessed was not recognised by another. I gained the possibility to peacefully communicate, trade and even perhaps befriend beings of different species and nature.

I tried to find any other differences between possessing a corpse and a living body, and after a couple exercises to test my physical and mental capacities, I began to recall memories not of my own; they were the ratman's memories.

Though I was not able to completely access the surfaced memories, I was able to piece together the seemingly random events from the ratman's past as well as extracted several important information from his knowledge. I figured out the location to the ratman's colony as well as basic grammar syntax and vocabulary; I understood their culture and hierarchy with the colony as well as this ratman's personal possessions, relations and habits.

The ratmen, labelled by many as intelligent pests, had identical social traits to tribal and sub-ground dwelling beings. As their name suggested, they have the appearances of rats enlarged to the size of a human child, and they move in a humanoid manner. Their biology are closer to goblins than actual rats, but they have one of the fastest reproduction period out of all intelligent beings, countered only by their high rate of death at birth (if not for such, they would've been no different than actual pests, like the goblins.)

The fact that they are underground dwellers are also quite interesting. They are not blessed with great eyesight, which explains their inability to realise I was possessing the body despite its unnatural movements due to my inexperience in controlling it. Their instincts, as explained previously was more suited to ground-related guerrilla tactics and beast handling. Their ability to hide and burrow were naturally proficient and made more dangerous during the night.

The only reason the group I encountered attacked me during the morning was because they were actually returning to their colony and found me by chance; unfortunate for them in this case. Both greed and the fact that I was close to their colony's entrance caused them to try ambush me, leading to its conclusion.

The entrance to the ratmen's colony was also coincidentally westward, only half the distance back to where I fought.

Deciding that I had investigated enough of this body, I scurried forth towards the hidden burrow going deep underground - entrance to the ratman colony.

The colony, like an ant's nest but with a single large cavern in the centre full of ratman housing, should have multiple entrances and exits, all hidden from plain sight, leading to small checkpoints guarded by several ratman guards. Only creatures as small as a ratman could enter the tunnels, and even when an intruder does enter, at worst case scenario that the intruder is too strong, all they needed to do was to bury them alive as they retreat, later digging out new checkpoints and tunnels to the surface.

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I crawled through the tunnel, made to be turning and twisting to confuse the sense of direction of unwanted visitors. Soon, I arrived at the primary checkpoint.

The checkpoints were also built to be confusing, tunnels leading to all directions and only one tunnel goes towards the main cavern with secondary, and sometimes tertiary checkpoint in-between.

The ratman guards are also dressed very differently than human guards. For ease of retreat, they don't wear armor and any heavy clothing or accessories and only held a single cheap and disposable weapon.

I briefly greeted the guard and seemingly tried to hurriedly communicate a fabricated event about how my group was wiped out by a shade wolf nearby. This got the guard anxious and let me through immediately as he dug out a piece of the tunnel that I came from and collapsed it. I watched everything until the tunnel was completely collapsed and moved on.

With the secondary checkpoint, I told the guard the same thing but added what happened in the primary checkpoint. The guard nodded at my words and allowed my passing after I explained how I lost everything trying to survive; they were all lies of course.

Finally, I arrived at the colony. I walked out from the tunnel that began to funnel outward into a mid-level cliff-edge, allowing me to view a city built through the walls and pillars of the cavern.

The small dwellings on the walls of the cavern were mostly the general population of hunters, guards, gatherers and the likes. The dwellings dug into the pillars supporting the cavern roof were considered royal and high class housing, with the leading ratman living in the biggest pillar at the centre. The rest of the poorly built houses on the ground were equivalent to the slums of human cities, poor state of living and filled with hungry ratmen, but not actually dangerous to traverse for those high in class.

Yes, they have class and hierarchy among themselves, yet so much different from many other beings' classes and hierarchy.

As they are a species low power and high breeding, they value strength among the masses over blood and family. Almost all ratmen living in the bottom are defective from birth or heavily scarred without gains, with only the minority of minorities living there for not contributing to the colony due to intentionally not working. The higher class ratmen are either those heavily scarred with tremendous contributions to the colony or generally strong in strength, with the leading ratman possessing both strength and wisdom to guide the entire colony.

This system, despite the fact that it came from a species called pest by many, was one of the least corruptible compared to others. When I later told others about this system, the majority said it was ironic. I sided with the minority and found it quite natural.

I moved away from the tunnel before others eyed me for blocking the way. The ratmen walked in set directions as the paths by the cliff-edge were tight. Small solid rock bridges connected the edges of the caverns to platforms around the pillars for faster travels. All ratmen including me moving in single files back and forth naturally until we pass each other. The destination I was aiming for was the dwelling of the ratman I possessed.

As an average dwelling, it housed two rooms: the sleeping area and the storage area. A natural bed was made by digging into the wall and placing leaves or fur of beasts each individual ratman hunted themselves. The storage was an open room around the back wall of the main area, safe only by the ratmen's dignity, which correlated to one's class, another reason the slum was at the bottom so they don't steal the properties of higher class ratmen.

Settling into the bed that is now my own, I thought about what to do in the future. With my curious mind, I decided to experience living as a ratman for the time being.