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Predator (6)- Unlucky Kin (2/5)

  We’re but specs of dust in the eyes of Heaven, unworthy of favor or the path above. That’s okay, though, I will forge my own path, twisted and broken as it may be. Mortals were never made to become Gods, Heaven wanted us to walk an immortal path, filled with wisdom and tranquility. But that’s boring! Wisdom? What garbage, that’s just a fancy way of saying brainwash, notice how all immortals seem to be the same? To plunder and distort is my Dao, in madness I make my abode, where I drink and remold the conceptual structure of Heaven!

  This is my version of wisdom!

  –Excerpt from the flesh codex, Autobiography of [REDACTED]

  -Trait upgraded: Wooden Exoskeleton (1)→Wooden Exoskeleton (2)

  -Please select an upgrade option:

  -Wooden plates(0): Gain the ability to grow wooden plates that disperse force.

  -Shock absorbing (0): Gain the ability to absorb force.

  -Splinter hairs (0): Gain the ability to grow tiny splinters that function as hairs.

  Harry rubbed his whiskers as he pondered the upgrade options before him; he never expected to get such a lucky role on one of his least favourite traits. Following his intuition, he dumped 100 units of biomass into [Wooden Exoskeleton] instead of [Iron Stomach], which was what he initially wanted to upgrade.

  Looking back on it, Harry wondered what had gotten into him; he barely used [Iron Stomach] since his power did all the eating and digesting for him, so it made zero sense to invest in it at the moment.

  It was a good thing he came to his senses last minute and listened to his mind and intuition rather than his heart.

  Splinter hairs were the least useful upgrade to him at the moment, so he removed that from his mind and gazed at the remaining two. The shock-absorbing upgrade was good, but the wooden plates upgrade was even better, so Harry went with that.

  Crimson power flared, seeping out from an unknowable place within him and into the black wooden exoskeleton, carving tiny interlocking wooden plates before vanishing. Harry inspected them; they weren’t very pronounced and were hardly visible, but that made sense; it was only a level zero upgrade, after all.

  Harry was left with a measly fifty units of biomass after, which he promptly invested it into the [AGI] stat, raising it to 20.

  A great ethereal fire consumed him, forcing Harry to drop to the ground as it blazed within his body, burning away excess fat, tissues, and lingering impurities. Harry’s body became more streamlined, and his limbs shrank, becoming long and slender.

  Harry shakily rose on his hind legs before dropping on all fours, lifting each one to inspect in amazement.

  Power brimmed within, the power of speed.

  The rat’s eyes glinted wickedly as he probed the ethereal links connected to his mind, managing to isolate and trace one to a few hundred meters ahead of him.

  Harry grinned and vanished.

  ∞

  A long, black, and slender armored rat sped through the outskirts of an unnamed forest, weaving through obstacles and around trees as if they weren’t there, eyes glowing with desire, surprise, and purpose as it moved.

  Harry felt great. Everything moved in slow motion for him, and a sense of absolute freedom filled him as he moved.

  It was exhilarating, it felt right, so much so that Harry never wanted to stop speeding, and he wished he could feel this way forever. The rat rapidly ate up the distance between him and his targets until he spotted them: two plump but highly armored rat-like creatures that resembled the first creature but with distinct features.

  One stood at the base of a massive tree in the middle of yet another clearing, guarding the other as it dug up the ground furiously. The one that stood guard was a tall and stout rat, rippling with muscles. Wooden plates grew around his neck, chest, belly, and legs.

  The rat’s paws weren’t armored, but Harry soon found out why; they were thick and filled with bulging veins and had thick and long fingernails that gleamed with wicked sharpness.

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  Harry’s heart pounded furiously; he never expected such a fearsome foe to appear.

  A head-on confrontation with such a mighty foe seemed unwise, but Harry still had the upper hand; they hadn’t sensed him yet.

  [Adrenal Burst] activated in full as Harry sent a boost to his [STR] and [AGI] stats, rising them to monstrous levels, especially his [AGI] stat, which was already quite high.

  Harry moved like a clap of heavenly thunder, vanishing from the spot he once stood and reappearing a few meters ahead of the fearsome skin. He lunged forward, mouth stretched to the absolute limit as he shot off like a bullet, one with teeth strong enough to bite through iron.

  The Kin Rat shifted, but it was already too late; Harry chopped down around his armored neck like a clamp as he moved, ripping out a majority of it before crashing into the tree behind the rat with a heavy thud.

  He shook his head and refocused back on the Kin Rat as a sense of deadly crisis filled him. Harry vanished from the spot just in time to avoid a shower of blood-sodden spikes that rose from the ground.

  The rat’s pupils dilated, becoming nothing more than beads of darkness as Harry pushed his mind to the extreme. One eye shifted to his left, capturing all the information it could on the fearsome Kin Rat.

  It was badly hurt; half of its neck was missing, and the top half of its upper body was drenched in rapidly drying crimson blood. Its eyes were bloodshot and unfocused, and it swayed like a blade of grass in the wind, weak and without a proper foundation.

  The other Kin Rat was nowhere to be seen, which made Harry feel uneasy, and he wanted to check where it was via the [Kin Link] trait, but time was of the essence.

  His eyes snapped onto the dying Kin Rat, glinting with decisiveness as he moved. Harry opted for a different approach this time; instead of lunging on all fours, he stood on his hind legs and leaped off, covering the distance between them in one massive leap.

  He slammed into the staggering Kin Rat like a bolt of black lightning and immediately began hacking and slashing away at its face with his sharp claws, pausing intermittently to bite out huge chunks of bleeding flesh, which he promptly swallowed.

  The Kin Rat screamed, but Harry was having none of it as he called upon his strength and bit down on what remained of its throat, cleanly severing its neck as his supernaturally sharp teeth cleaved through its bones.

  Harry felt his authority flare up, but he ruthlessly crushed it and began scanning the vicinity with the [Kin Link] trait, searching for the remaining Kin Rat. His eyes came to rest on a tree beyond the clearing, then at the base, which was filled with a variety of common bushes.

  His eye saw nothing unusual, but his trait [Kin Link] insisted that his prey was there, hidden among the bushes.

  It was a trap. Harry knew that if he rushed in, he’d get hurt, but the consequences would be far worse if he delayed; the Rat Kin wasn’t stupid; it likely could communicate through the link it had with its fellow kin and help was likely on the way, it just had to buy enough time.

  Harry couldn’t allow that to happen at all; such a thing would put his life in great danger. The rat dropped on all fours and sped off in that direction, halting halfway as his intuition screamed at him to run, but Harry was a tad too slow.

  The world seemed to slow down as the soil beneath Harry’s feet split open to reveal a large and unnaturally sharp brown wooden spike, followed by hundreds of smaller ones only a few inches long.

  Harry knew that he couldn’t escape the possibility of being injured, but his intuition told him there was still a chance of coming out alive. Harry called upon every ounce of energy within him to twist his body around, grab the leg of a startled Kin Rat that was above him all along, and pull it behind him with his enhanced strength, using it as a living meat shield against the sharp spikes.

  The world went dark a second later as Harry was engulfed by a literal mouth of spikes, and muffled wailing echoed throughout the vicinity as the Kin Rat got ruthlessly shredded by a contraption of its own making.

  Harry fared a lot better; he managed to avoid being shredded and impaled by the larger spikes, but he still wasn’t in the best shape. Black blood leaked from his abdomen, chest, and left arm, and his right eye socket was without an eye and leaked a thick, clear fluid constantly.

  Huge sections of his exoskeleton were cracked and had broken off spikes sticking out of some places.

  Despite the pain and awful state he was in, Harry couldn’t help but grin weakly; he’d won.

  The suppressed authority flared up madly, manifesting as a long, serpentine crimson mouth of flesh and misaligned teeth that shot out to devour the hole-ridden Rat Kin beside Harry and the one in the clearing before returning.

  -Predation was partially successful-

  -Trait acquired: Kin link (-) [Strengthened]

  -Trait acquired: Wooden Exoskeleton [Strengthened]

  -Trait acquired: Sharp claws (0)

  -Trait acquired: Fast clotting (0)

  -Trait upgraded: Wooden Exoskeleton (2) →Wooden Exoskeleton (3)

  -Upgrade automatically selected: Wooden plates(1): The wooden plates grow more pronounced and their effects are enhanced.

  +1500 biomass

  Power flooded Harry, raw, unbridled power so strong that [Wall] shook violently and faint cracks appeared on its metaphysical surface, but they rapidly healed as the trait flared up to suppress the raging tide of crimson energy raging within Harry’s metaphysical body and mind.

  The rat‘s vision swayed as the metaphysical battle raged on; the corrupt and twisted memories underneath rose to meet the twisted crimson energy of predation, throwing themselves at it uncreasily until the energy was beaten back into complete submission.

  Harry gasped for breath as his mind spun, everything felt fake, unreal, and he felt his mind slipping into the embrace of sleep, but he knew that if that happened, he’d be dead. The rat called upon his [Wall] trait and felt an icy chillness invading his mind, washing away the extreme exhaustion he felt and imbuing him with enough rationality to think.

  Harry instantly shot off, ignoring the burning pain from all over his body as he moved through the forest, leaping over shrubs, bushes, and under vines, leaving a thin trail of thick black blood in his wake as he moved.

  Harry knew that the forest wouldn’t be safe for him in such a weakened state, even if he found a ‘safe’ place to hide, with the upgraded [Kin Link] trait, it would only be a matter of time before he was tracked down.

  His chances of survival were significantly higher outside; he didn’t know why, but something tied all Rat Kin to the forest, forcing them to stay inside, so he wasn’t worried about them tracking him down once he got out.

  It was almost like a command, constantly repeating itself within the depths of his mind, but it was useless, though, as Harry wasn’t a Rat Kin and he had the [Wall] trait backing him, coupled with an immense willpower.

  This allowed him to easily ignore and smash the insidious mental suggestion, which only seemed to grow stronger the further he went from the heart of the forest.

  It didn’t take long for Harry to leave, merely a few seconds; he leaped over one last shrub and crashed into a sloped hill before allowing himself to roll down. Then, he picked himself up and continued sprinting, eventually vanishing into a thick field of grass right at the edges of the forest.

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