Harry darted through the wet, sticky, and unclean stone alley like a black bullet, weaving through heaps of trash and excrement in his path. Behind him was a massive silver rat that looked quite unreal. Its fur flowed like water, and its silver eyes glinted with savage intellect, which made it look quite intimidating when coupled with its melon-sized body and faint spiritual power that flowed off it.

  He was Ballcrusher, the undisputed Ratking of Lu town, a rat with a habit for crushing the seeds of any unfortunate enough to draw his ire.

  A thundering crash reverberated through the narrow alley as Ballcrusher, in a moment of distraction, crashed into a heap of excrement and tumbled into a wooden trashcan, knocking it over.

  Harry briefly stole a glance, clamped down on the spiritual bead in his mouth, and sped up even more, pushing himself to the limit as he disappeared from the scene.

  He shifted right, which took him into another alley that ended at the busy Su Street. Harry wasted no time and quickly covered the distance before sprinting into the open.

  This wasn’t something he’d dare to do normally, but the circumstances were dire; he preferred death at the hands of Rateaters or random passersby than Ballcrusher.

  It wouldn’t have to come to that, though; the moon hung high in the sky, which meant that it was very late, and while the street was very popular, Harry didn’t have to dance between legs to move and avoid being crushed or caught.

  The rat ate up the distance between him and the next alley within moments and continued running, shifting through two more alleys and streets before circling back to the very same alley Ballcrusher had embarrassed himself in and squeezed through a hole at the very end of the alley, covered in heaps of waste.

  Only then did Harry calm down and allow some of the tension building up within to disperse. Inside the hole was a surprisingly large space, littered with apple cores, fruit piths, and the bones of small birds, even other rats.

  Harry didn’t care about that and made his way to the back of the hole, where a bed woven from hay, grass, and a patchwork of silk and cloth garments awaited him.

  He gently lowered his mouth and spat out a pitch-black bead mysterious bead. It was what Harry had risked his life for, it looked even more mysterious now, up close.

  It invoked a sense of holiness within the rat as he gazed at it; everything about it seemed so perfect, from the shape to the way spirituality flowed off it in soothing tides that caressed and kissed the soul, nourishing it.

  It also invoked a sense of primal hunger; something within Harry called for unity with the bead, for the sublimation it would grace him with.

  Harry’s eyes glinted calculatingly; he knew that he was the point of return, he’d already betrayed Ballcrusher and stolen his most precious treasure, nothing he did could redeem him now.

  Things would only go down from here unless something changed. Harry preferred death over submission anyway, this defiant nature arose a few years ago when he began dreaming of things normally impossible to conceive by normal rats: other worlds, past lives, and maddening entities.

  Wisdom awoke within him then and only grew with each dream until he had enough wisdom and intellect to realize that the path of an underling wasn’t quite fas ancy as Ballcrusher made it out to be.

  Food was already a precious commodity and Ballcrusher took the lion’s share of everything when they went on daily raids, leaving everybody else to fight over scraps.

  Harry didn’t want to live such a life when he knew that there was more to life than reading shops nightly; the wisdom and fragmented memories scraped from his otherworldly dreams were proof of that.

  This was especially true for a world such as this; it wasn’t your average mundane world. Gods walked the clouds and immortals slept in the dome of Heaven, manifesting as stars in the night sky.

  There was power to be gained on Earth, too; one just had to have spiritual roots, like Ballcrusher.

  Harry wasn’t as fortunate, though; he was just your ordinary street rat and would’ve stayed that way if it wasn’t for the awakening of his chaotic mind, stimulated and fed by messy memories of numerous past lives, too fragmented to properly grasp.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  His intuition told him that everything would change once he devoured the bead before him, though.

  Harry wasted no time and slurped back up the gathering black bead, swallowing it in one gulp.

  Heat exploded within him mere seconds later, clawing into his bones, skin, and flesh. Pain followed suit, washing over his twitching body like a sharp tide, stabbing into his mind and sanity, fraying them.

  -%%%%%%%%%%%%%

  -Bonding complete-

  -soul interface online-

  -Authority awakened: Predation-

  Reality warped around the twitching rat, and then everything ceased and returned to normal.

  Power exploded within Harry, a strange, twisted, otherworldly power that didn’t belong. It seeped into his mind, body, and soul, mixing itself with everything that made Harry who he was.

  The rat shuddered as his body underwent Earth-shattering changes; his patchy fur withered, cracked, and fell off as new flowing fur tinged with spirituality and a strange power grew in place. Bones cracked internally as they were either discarded or reinforced.

  His entire body rebuilt itself rapidly, transforming into a version of Harry that was at its peak, in both mind and body.

  Harry felt his entire body humming with vitality, strength, vigor, and terrifying speed that far surpassed anything he could think of. Each leg felt imbued with the wind itself, and he felt as if he could outrun light itself at the moment.

  Then, the extreme high faded, replaced by cold rationality and a thinking mind.

  Harry never expected the power hidden within the bead to be so…extraordinary; the changes to his fleshy body paled in comparison to the majesty and limitlessness of the authority that resided within his soul.

  He sprinted over to the rotting corpse of a fellow rat; this was once a friend of his, who nearly sold him out to Ballcrusher after he found out that Harry took more food than he usually did from the food burrow last week.

  Needless to say, he didn’t get very far before being dealt with by him. Harry called him Dogbelly when he was alive because he had the special trait of being able to eat almost anything; that was how they met. he was subsisting off trash and animal waste when Harry captured him and delivered him to Ballcrusher, who took a liking to him.

  Harry suppressed his disgust and called upon his newly gained authority, Reality seemed to warp around the rat as a faint, blood-red glow manifested above him in the form of a maw lined with teeth and innumerable eyes, dripping with hate and greed.

  It lunged on the decaying corpse and began devouring it rapidly, finishing within moments.

  -Predation successful-

  -Trait acquired: Iron Stomach (0)-

  +1 biomass

  A strange force washed over Harry, specifically his stomach, twisting it in ways he couldn’t quite understand, and then it was gone.

  The rat dashed over to a piece of foul-smelling cloth, picked it up, and stuffed it into his mouth, blinking as it seemed to dissolve and flow into his stomach, which began to rumble slightly as it got to work.

  Harry blinked. He felt no sense of revulsion or discomfort; in fact, it felt quite nice.

  The rat’s eyes glinted when he realized this, and he began devouring everything within the hole, especially the remains of the animals he could find. Those didn’t give him any traits, though, which left Harry feeling a little disappointed.

  He didn’t mind, though, as he was feeling quite full so he headed to bed and curled up into a ball, falling asleep almost instantly.

  ∞

  Harry found himself in a strange place; there was no land or buildings around him, or sky for that matter, just a vast, seemingly endless space, bereft of anything but massive, smoldering humanoid creatures, shrouded in dark light that lashed at his sight.

  They were arranged in a circular pattern around a massive floating tower, haphazardly stacked atop each other.

  The tower itself was interesting, it looked to be made of stone but not quite, it flowed like water and danced like the wind and was shrouded in holiness, so much so that Harry felt like kneeling where he floated.

  Above it was an even stranger scene, one that looked like something ripped from a madman’s nightmare and grafted into reality for all to see; a vast golden throne floated above the tower, so immense that Harry’s mind gave up on estimating its size. It embodied the concept of holiness and emitted terrifying fluctuations of golden energy that warped reality around it, manifesting as drifting moats of light that further enhanced its holy look.

  On the throne sat a God with a body forged from the blood of stars and garments woven from the fabric of reality itself, so immense that he suppressed the concept of size. That wasn’t the strangest part, though; the belly of the God was wide open and covered in claw marks, and golden ichor flowed like streams and organs rained from within, painting a rather maddening sight that left Harry’s mind and sanity reeling.

  Reality shifted, and Harry woke up.

  ∞

  A palm-sized rat with fur that glinted like polished obsidian and flowed like water blurred through a waste-filled alley, deftly overcoming any obstacle in its path. If one looked closely enough they’d notice that this rat was no ordinary rat; its eyes shone with spirituality yet it wasn’t a spirit beast, at least not quite, something else lurked within, something more sinister and primal.

  The rat was none other than Harry; he was itching to test the new body gifted to him by his authority and was currently moving toward the edges of Ballcrusher’s vast territory.

  He eventually reached the end of the alley, took a sharp left turn, skimped over a dilapidated wall, into an abandoned building, and leaped out of a broken wooden window, landing in another alley.

  This one was quite different, though; there was hardly any human waste, only rat droppings and countless holes that led to rat burrows.

  This was a slightlymashed alley, one of Ballcrusher’s least important alleys due to the low traffic and location; it wasn’t located near any major business or street, and it was particularly hard to get to due to its location, which made it perfect for Harry.

  Not many of Ballcrusher’s underlings lived here, either, despite the numerous holes. It was all the work of a single rat, one called Iron Teeth.

  Iron Teeth wasn’t your typical rat; he had vastly superior teeth that never got dirty and could chew through just about anything. He was an integral part of Ballcrusher’s plans, up until steel teeth was born, things only went downhill for him after that.

  He lost his status as an important underling and got kicked out, Such was the fate of anyone who lost their usefulness in the eyes of Ballcrusher. The only reason Harry managed to stick around for two years was because of his wisdom and intellect, he had nothing else back then.

  He chose Iron Teeth because he was an easy target; he was alone, without any backup, and frail, the only thing he had to be careful about were his bites.

  He was also one of the few solo rats within Lu town, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Bloodcrusher didn’t tolerate independent powers and would ruthlessly wear them down to either bring them under his fold or remove them from existence.

  Harry walked forward slowly deliberately dragging his claws against the ground to create a loud scraping that reverberated throughout the small hole-filled alley.