Shit! Shit! Shit! There are too many rats!

Their rotting corpses fill the tunnel and my vision. I am, however, mostly focusing on all the big rats, or more accurately known the breeding factories for this horde of rats attacking us in all directions.

We are currently standing in the center of an, ‘H’ shaped tunnel with four ways to leave.

Top Right: 7 Large Zombie Rats

Top Left: 7 Large Zombie Rats

Bottom Right: 15 Large Zombie Rats

Bottom Left: 11 Large Zombie Rats

Gothalyn is currently plugging her nose to deal with the foul odor…oh wait, nevermind she’s taking off her shirt to make a makeshift bandana. Giving me full view of her sports bra and toned abs, however, I feel indifferent. I don’t know if that’s because we are about to be in a life or death situation here, but I feel like if I was still completely human, I would still feel something? And I don’t mean my attraction to draining her of blood. But instead, as a past guy who liked girls.

I feel nothing when looking at her skin, but my hunger for human meat.

I recognize that she spent a lot of time to get that figure but other than that? It’s not cute or sexy or beautiful. It’s just skin, fat, and muscle, the same as how I would feel looking at a cow or pig or chicken back as a human.

I begin to mentally salivate thinking about human jerky strips before my thoughts are interrupted by a little zombie rat biting me and swallowing some of my flesh and knocking me out of my cannibalistic stupor.

Ow! You little shit!

In my anger, I activate spearhead, the ability that can be used to pierce through sheet metal on the little rat for biting me while I was thinking about human meat.

My tendril coils and hardens inside my body before shooting out of the top of my body and curving downward, eviscerating the rat as my tendril plunges a few inches into the concrete floor.

However, out of the rat's body, I spot some of my black inky blood inside its stomach starting to move toward the small hole the monster made in my body. The flesh moves its way back into my body, reconnecting with my flesh and changing from its inky black color to a perfect white, blending in as if I have never been bit.

Wait! If I let that rat swallow parts of me and I didn’t completely eviscerate its entire body, my flesh would have exploded inside its body due to my new [Deconstruction] mutation.

I wonder how strong the explosion would be, also that power is kind of strong, now that I think of it. If anything swallows me, they explode from the inside and if I take damage any spilled blood will home in on the wound and almost instantly regenerate it, those pieces of flesh also seem quite resilient to physical attacks as they just split into smaller parts before coming back to my body, but maybe elemental attacks could stop them. I’m assuming if Gothalyn has rock powers then that must mean fire, ice, plant, electricity or any other elemental power can exist too, which would destroy them completely. I have no way to test my hypothesis, but I think it’s best to assume the worst and assume so, curiosity killed the cat but unlike the cat, I don’t have nine lives. I have one, and it’s very precious to me, unlike these little rats coming in droves to their death throwing theirs away.

There are too many for me to just weasel my way out without making significant sacrifices along with the big ones. Gothalyn has been doing this longer than I have so she should come up with a better plan than mine; my plan would be splitting apart and each dealing with one of the four sections of rats.

I tell Kiwi to give Gothalyn the info on where the big rats are coming from.

“There are seven big ones coming from the left in front of us, seven from the right in front of us, 15 from the right behind us, and 11 from the left behind us!” Kiwi tells Gothalyn, while using each arm to point in that said direction.

“Ok. Come. Close.” Gothalyn says as she began to use her rock magic to mold the walls of the tunnel, blocking off half of the big rats, while the small ones seem to keep coming.

‘Go near her, she’s going to close off this part of the tunnel,’ I mentally tell everyone.

‘Yes, Meister,’ Cake responded along with the other two who gave similar responses only with a slightly different name for me.

Gothalyn is currently focusing on closing off a part of the wall, meaning we are down one fighter in the meantime to deal with these little nuisances which will make it harder on the rest of us, unless I use my radiation gas gland to weaken these zombie rats down even further. I don’t even have to enter awkward scenarios with anyone by slapping them anymore since I can just have Kiwi shave off the goop to use as a sort of anti-radiation lotion.

I see no reason not to. I mean sure it might be a little unpleasant for them but I’ll just cure the radiation from these guys once we’re done with these zombie rats and back to safety.

I activate my radiation gas for the first time in a long time, and I feel a power flow through my body, like a roaring engine. My stamina is regenerating faster as my body begins to leak out a thin almost invisible mist of glowing gas, which barely spreads anywhere. However, the rats in that short-range all start to move even more sluggishly than before. I’m able to pick up and murder them all faster than I ever have due to my little nuclear power plant; slowly thinning out the seemingly endless horde of the undead faster than ever before.

[You have gained 4 Biomass]

[You have gained 8 Biomass]

[You have gained 6 Biomass]

[You have gained 12 Biomass]

The gas itself is actually not doing as much as I hoped for, it’s simply too weak to do anything other than cause rats irritation as they start to uncomfortably shuffle toward me. If I was to compare my gas’s amount as it is right now, compared to the volcano we escaped, it’s night and day. That volcano had enough radiation spewing out of it to melt Cake’s hardened carapace from a mile away, while mine can irritate the skin if you stand about a meter away from me.

However, even if the gas isn’t really helping out all that much the little nuclear generator inside my body producing this gas is giving me more than enough stamina to make up for the gas’s lackluster effects.

We all continue murdering the hundreds of incoming rats and slowly but surely big mama zombie rats begin to pop up from around the corners. Gothalyn still needs some time to finish the wall, so in the meantime, we need to deal with mother rats coming from both sides along with the thousands of small ones.

My gas has started to spread around the tunnel, causing more small rats to slightly weaken but also spreading to Kiwi, Cake, and Gothalyn, however, none of them even acknowledge my gas. Which somehow ruins my self-esteem in my abilities as none of them even recognize it, even if that does mean that they aren’t taking any short-term damage. Cinnamon is currently flying around swooping down and plunging her fangs into zombie rat after zombie rat, my gas affects Cinnamon even less due to her ability to flight.

*shink*

As soon as Kiwi spots one of the big disgusting rats she transforms her four arms into two large sharpened scythes and she activates the newest abilities she gained from her latest evolution, Scythe Dash and Abdomen Slicer. Kiwi’s abdomen flares open exposing two more blades that pop out just enough to allow her to effectively cut things with them and a pair of mantis wings spread and flex pushing a wall of air behind her giving her a powerful speed boost. Kiwi quickly crawls along the ground like a green speedy cockroach slicing and dicing dozens of zombie rats. Kiwi leaves a wake of blood and bodies split in half until she meets the disgusting mother rat just as ugly as the other. Kiwi jumps into the air before the large rat and flexes her wings to right herself mid-air giving her a better angle to its head. Kiwi winds up her arms before bringing them down like an plane propeller, spinning sideways in a circular motion as she slices straight through the rat's thick rotten neck.

‘How did I do, Maistear? When can I go to sleep?’

‘You can go to sleep once all these rats are dead,’

‘Really?!’ Kiwi ecstatically begins to take riskier moves to kill them faster with fervor, I usually don’t see from someone who would rather sleep than do anything else.

‘Make sure to dodge!’ I mentally send to everyone but aimed at Kiwi.

‘Yes, Meister,’ Cake responded instead of Kiwi.

I turn my focus to Cake currently wrangling with another disgusting mother rat abomination, this one clearly getting more mutations in the breeding department as it carries more goopy eggs filled with baby zombie rats that connect with to its body in a grotesque manner, reminding me of an image of Trypophobia, however not fake and so much worse than any person could conjure up using software.

Cake moves through the slow-moving horde of undead rodents as they try and fail to bite through her hardened legs, they eventually start to climb up only to get chopped in half by Cake’s claw. Cake is like a moving tank except much cuter than a machine. Cake comes to face to face with the large rat and the massive rotten rodent lunges at Cake mouth agape ready to clamp down and chew on Cake. Which it succeeds in doing, however, Cake’s carapace and shell don’t sustain any damage other than a few scratches and she locks the rat in place and pinches and rips off pieces of its rotten flesh and popping the eggs tearing its body apart until it flops to the ground dead and Cake slides her upper humanoid torso out of its gaping mouth covering her in its saliva.

The wall separating the front from the back is nearly halfway done already, which once completed would cut off the larger horde of mother rats that from behind us - allowing us to escape.

Another large rat enters our tunnel as we try to separate the two sides and this time, Cinnamon tries to take on the rat.

‘You. Smell. Tasty.’ Cinnamon mentally says as she spots the large rat.

Could Cinnamon win against an undead mother rat? I think so. If Cinnamon dodges and counterattacks correctly and thinks smartly about her actions she will be fine, however, I don’t think her salivating from her tongue dripping drool down upon the undead below foreshadows a very calculated fight.

‘Cinnamon, you are only allowed to fight the little ones. Stay away from the big ones we will handle them.’

‘Yes, Maifear,’ Cinnamon replies with a hint of sadness over not being able to eat quite possibly the most disgusting creature on this planet.

I honestly wonder how Cinnamon would react to actual good-tasting food, would she hate it for not being foul enough or love it with all her being?

A question for another day, when I have human food to give Cinnamon.

I step in to take on the undead behemoth rat in front of me. I would use the same grenade strategy as last time, but I used them all on the first one I fought, which means I’ll need to use something else. I don’t really want to touch it, but it’s unavoidable at this point. I decide to use a mixture of Flesh Flash and Anti Gravity and kill it by using speed combined with a spike. I put my plan into motion and grip the ground before flinging myself floating an inch off the ground. I quickly fly through the air and extend a spike from my tendril plunging straight through the rat’s head causing a message to pop up, I haven’t seen in a long time.

[You have successfully taken over a body]

Are you serious? This thing?!

I instantly feel a connection with the huge disgusting mass of flesh like I’m puppeteering the body as if it were a doll. I can connect my senses with the rats if I wanted to look using the rats' vision or smell using its half-torn apart nose due to my attack. It’s a very unusual and somewhat useless power to have; that I can borrow its senses.

I’m actually incredibly surprised that worked, I swear I’ve been seeing that stupid failure message so often that I have actually started to shy away from attacking the head. I also hate that it had to be one of these big disgusting rats that had to be one of the creatures I borrow the body of. Still, I’ll try to use this to my advantage.

Hmm? This thing has a lot of pheromones I can control too, I’m guessing it's used to control the smaller undead rats? I wonder what will happen if I start to mess with these?

Lets, find out! You disgusting spin-offs of biology.

I start to increase the calm pheromones emitted, which I assume has never once been used in this rats life. At the same time, I decrease the aggressive pheromones, which this thing has been pumping out forever. I doubt these things have the intelligence to think about changing these from anything other than agressive.

All around me the undead rats stop shambling toward Kiwi and Cake and instead just sit there with blank stares, losing all motivation to attack anything.

‘Meister has tamed these creatures! This is so exciting, Meister, what are you going to do with them? Cake asked as she tore apart another mother rat coming from the other direction while looking in my direction.

‘Are you going to make a bed out of them, Maistear?’ Kiwi gave a suggestion.

‘No? I just wanted them to stop fighting us. So, we can focus on the bigger ones,’

“Finished” Gothalyn says as she finishes the wall, cutting off half of the supply of rats before turning around spotting me atop a rat as all the rats around me sit still not moving.

“...” Gothalyn stares at me with a blank expression.

“I pacified them?” Kiwi repeats the sentence.

“...of course,” Gothalyn responds, before some more large mama rats turn the corner.

The pheromones they spew out counter-attack mine causing the rats to continue their slow march toward my allies. I prepare to fight the larger rats and take a swing using the rat claw I’m possessing causing the enemies' loose rotten skull to rattle. However, the rat makes no attempt to attack me even after I attack them and even seems to also start to produce the calm pheromone causing a chain reaction to begin to form on this side of the rock wall. All the remaining dozen or so mama rats start to calm down and produce the pheromone meaning that not only are these guys immensely stupid but also very easily influenceable.

I stab another one of the large rats that turned the corner with a spike to test the calming effect and the compact car sized undead rat doesn’t do anything. It just stands there accepting whatever I do to it like a robot.

Well, this should be easy, then? They aren’t even bothering to attack us. We didn’t even need the wall, actually, we should probably break it apart and kill the ones on that side, too. If we can spread this effect throughout the tunnel, we could easily get a thousand or two biomass in total from these rats alone, not to mention the insane number of levels we would all get.

I explain to everyone including Gothalyn how I am pacifying all of the undead by using their own pheromones against them. I also run the idea of demolishing the wall Gothalyn just spent this time building up to kill some more rats by using this cheap strategy.

She agrees and as me, Kiwi, Cinnamon, and Cake all begin to massacre the rats on this side of the tunnel, Gothalyn tears down the rock wall she made, spreading this calming effect even further throughout the sewer system.

[You are now level 19]

[You have maxed out your material storage at 250/250]

This is great! Now, what do I upgrade? Hmm! What is this!

[Your subject Cake has maxed out, Hermine Shell, and as such you may advance a mutation upgrade; You may choose, allow Cake to choose or randomize.]

[Hardened: (+)

[Strength: (+)

[Weight: (+)

[Your subject Kiwi has maxed out, Prayma Forelimbs, and as such you may advance a mutation upgrade; You may choose, allow Kiwi to choose or randomize.]

[Sharpness: (+)

[Twitch: (+)

[Strength: (+)

‘Maifear. What. Do. I. Upgrade?’ Cinnamon asks as I spot her undulating sack of blood filled to the brim with the fluids of these undead rats — clearly visible through the shadowy black fur.

Apparently, I'm not the only one with an upgrade.

I don’t know whether me making these kinds of decisions is entirely the best option? ...But, I’m sure I can make solid enough decisions for them. Yeah, I’m decently intelligent, I can make life-long decisions that will affect them for the rest of their lives by myself.

...definitely.