I used to curse the Heavens and Earth when I was a mere mortal. But could you blame me? My family died, my concubines schemed against me, friends were rare, and everyone sought my wealth. But then, I had a dream; a man riding a fluffy cloud appeared before me, muttered seven sentences that I could not fathom, then bled and died right before my eyes.

  When I woke up, I began to see the world differently.

  --Excerpt from [Redacted], by [REDACTED]

  Harry woke up with a start, drenched in dread that bubbled at the bottom of his stomach, threatening to overwhelm the rat. Then came the sense of Déjà vu that nibbled at the edges of his mind, whispering hints but never full answers.

  It was maddening and only worsened as [Wall] flared up within his mind. Harry looked inside, and blinked at what he saw within his mental space: a wave of blue creatures that glitched in and out of existence rained down on [Wall], endlessly pouring forth from a massive holographic screen right above [Wall].

  Harry knew that screen and those creatures, yet his mind dared not acknowledge them lest something terrible befall it.

  It was an odd feeling, knowing something, yet possessing no knowledge of it all simultaneously. Harry felt like this was another void incident waiting to happen, thankfully, [Wall] could handle it this time, and kept growing stronger as it fought.

  The rain of blue seemed endless, but Harry knew otherwise; it was weakening, albeit very slowly.

  Harry wanted to aid it, but his intuition told him that was a very bad idea; this was an ongoing mental battle, one that could shift at the slightest disruption. Harry didn’t want to disturb [Wall]; he also had no idea how to fight a mental battle, none of his usual tactics would apply here.

  The best thing Harry could do was leave, which was what he did; [Wall] didn’t seem to be struggling, so there was little he could do to help.

  When the physical world snapped back around Harry, he felt a presence at the ‘door’ of the room.

  With a subtle shift, it was flung open to reveal a ridiculously muscular Ratkin; it gave off a great sense of danger, much more than most of the Ratkin’s Harry had encountered so far. Harry could tell that this one was special, as it didn’t have any type of exoskeleton. Harry didn’t know why, but couldn’t help but think it was because the kin wanted to flex its muscles.

  It towered over Harry by a good margin and wore a smug smile as it flexed its muscles, switching between poses that showed even more of its muscles, each one rippling with physical strength.

  Harry thought it was interesting and felt his competitive instincts bubbling within, but suppressed them; clearly, the Ratkin before him wanted to provoke a response, but Harry wasn’t interested in giving him one.

  [You’re smarter than you look, Strange Kn,] intoned a deep, grating voice. Harry’s eyes snapped open and shifted over the Ratkin before him once more, yet he didn’t see its mouth moving, so how did it speak?

  [This is a gift from The Mother, Strange Kin, one that you’ll receive too after your cleansing.]

  The rat beckoned for Harry to follow, turned around, and leaped in the air, latching onto a vine that shot out to greet it. Harry blinked, then followed it in the same manner.

  The vine wrapped around him almost completely, then the rat felt the world around him shift into motion as everything transformed into a blur of darkness dotted by the occasional blob of orange light that sped past Harry as the vine moved with even greater speed.

  It was disorienting but not as bad as the first time; Harry had gotten used to it somewhat. The current speed of the vine was beyond his wildest dreams.

  After what felt like twenty minutes of fast travel, the vine suddenly stopped and unfurled, releasing Harry from its grasp. The rat blinked, then looked around; he was in a completely different world.

  Harry found himself in a vast, dome-shaped space populated by endless rows of neatly organized root seats at the very edges, with a massive orange crystal embedded in the top of this strange space, illuminating every corner of it.

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  The space suddenly shook, and massive root walls rose up to greet the root seats, fusing with them and preventing anyone from below from reaching up, forming a protective barrier of sorts.

  Harry found the design very similar, then it suddenly clicked: this was a colosseum.

  [This is where your cleansing will begin, strange kin, either you live and receive Mother’s grace, or die for your sins.]

  Swishing sounds suddenly filled the air as numerous roots of various sizes moved in, carrying with them countless Ratkin and depositing them gently into their seats.

  Soon, the entire colosseum was filled with Ratkin, and Harry felt thousands of eyes lock onto him.

  He knew they were discussing him with their version of the [Kin link] trait, but he wasn’t permitted to hear what they were saying.

  Harry didn’t mind; the constant buzz of useless chatter would’ve distracted him, anyway. That being said, the rat did observe them; Harry couldn’t help but notice that all the Ratkins present were plump, and without an exoskeleton, they also wore thin, skin-tight gramnets woven from root fibers and wooden rings and chains embedded with crystals and gems.

  Their gazes were lofty, too, as if they saw Harry beneath them and were merely here to see him die or squirm for their entertainment.

  Harry reconized them instantly; they were nobles of some sort, the elite who stood at the top of Ratkin society.

  The colosseum’s walls suddenly rumbled as they shifted, twisting into an oval-shaped gate connected to a tunnel cloaked in darkness so dark that Harry’s normal eyes couldn’t pierce through it.

  The rat had to enable [Thermal Vision] to see what was inside; it was another Ratkin, though one vastly larger than Harry, and appeared as a beacon of heat in Harry’s sight; its thermal signature was off the charts.

  The Kin suddenly leaped into the opening, allowing Harry to get a good look at it.

  It was monstrous in more ways than Harry could describe. It didn’t resemble the typical Ratkin; it moved on all fours and had an extremely long tail that split into two gleaming bone spikes at the end. Its body was covered in a thick, interlocking chitin exoskeleton. And serrated white bone spikes rose from its back rhythmically, as if in tune with some hidden mechanism within the creature.

  Its head was another thing to behold; it, to,o was covered in chitin exoskeleton, but not all of it; there were gaps in the plates that allowed the Ratkin to see, eat, and presumably smell things.

  Harry felt his authority salivating the longer he gazed at the creature, and he could barely control it from seeping out of him and into the surrounding area.

  The kin before him didn’t look dangerous at all; Harry saw it as a trait banquet–a meal to feast upon and emerge stronger.

  [Meet Ignor the Vile, a sinner like you who decided to consume his own kind to fuel his twisted bloodline, kill him to move on.]

  Harry burst into motion, leaping from the spot he once stood and into the air in an attempt to sneak in a surprise attack on his foe. That turned out to be a mistake, though; Igor’s tail became a blur of white and black as it whipped towards an airborne Harry, slamming into his exposed chest with an audible crack, instantly knocking him out of the air and onto the colosseum’s floor.

  The ratkin was upon him before Harry even had the chance to recover, shifting as it prepared for yet another tail attack, one far more lethal than the last.

  The spikes on the end tensed, then came together to form something akin to a bone spear, one that shot toward Harry’s chest with an even greater speed.

  Harry’s mind sped up as his eyes became shifting beads of inky black tinged with hints of crimson as [Adrenal Burst] activated, working in tandem with the rat’s brain to shift the available boosts to [AGI].

  The world slowed, and Harry shifted from his position just in time to avoid being impaled by the kin’s tail.

  Then, he sacrificed all of his [ROID] and some of his [STAM] to trigger the [Roid Trooper] upgrade.

  Harry’s frame ballooned in size as strength surged through him, causing his body to shimmer with golden light that congealed into millions of tiny golden runes that slammed into his muscles, granting them otherworldly strength, for a rat, at least.

  His hand shot out, grabbing Ignor’s retreating tail and pulling it towards him with a slight grunt. The Ratkin hissed in outrage and shock when it found that its tail wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard it pulled.

  It hissed once more, and spiritual waves burst from its frame, and Harry suddenly found that he could no longer easily hold onto Ignor’s tail; it had grown stronger, somehow.

  Harry’s hand suddenly shot out from his side before slamming into a section of the tail that had the least armor, cracking open the chitin plates there with ease. Then, his claws extended, and Harry swiped down hard, slicing through the soft flesh underneath like butter before pumping it full of venom.

  Then, Harry used his sole free arm to grab onto one of Ignor’s tail spikes, snapping it in half before the tail broke free from his grasp.

  Ignor looked at its bruised and bleeding tail, then at the broken spike, and roared in outrage, but that roar quickly transformed into a startled yelp of pain as Harry leaped atop its back and grabbed one of the bone spikes there, snapping it in half before stabbing it into the hole it came out of and began wrenching it.

  The Ratkin hissed in pain and shifted crazily, slamming itself into the walls madly in an attempt to shake Harry off, but the rat didn’t even budge. The rat had firmly anchored himself to Ignor via the wrenched-open hole on the Ratkin’s back, so Ignor’s efforts to remove him only made the damage more extensive.

  When that didn’t work, the Ratkin attempted to use its tail again, whipping it over its body in an attempt to slap Harry off its back.

  And it worked, but not how Ignor expected it to work; Harry violently pulled his hand out of the now bleeding hole on Ignor’s back and used both of his arms to grab onto the Ratkin’s tail, then used his legs to warp around the rest as he opened his mouth wide and bit down on the section that housed the remaining bone spike, chewing right through it and into the soft and delicious flesh of the Kin.

  Harry didn’t have much time to savor the taste, though; a cry of pain escaped from the Ratkin’s armored mouth as it slammed Harry and its tail into the walls of the colosseum, but he had no plans of letting go just yet.

  He sank his teeth even further and began pumping the section full of his venom, not stopping until he felt his venom glands crying out in protest.

  Blood spurted from the wound like a crimson fountain, drenching Harry in the stuff, but the rat couldn't care less about that; the only thing that mattered was victory.

  Harry expected Ignor to hastily retract its tail now that he’d let go, but the Ratkin did no such thing.

  Harry understood why as soon as he shifted his attention over to it; it was lying on its back in a pool of crimson blood that glistened under the glow of the crystal above, frothing at the mouth and shivering intensely as its chest heaved erratically while its eyes danced within its sockets, in total chaos.