Khiii
A swoosh, a scream, and the sound of a head falling to the ground.
An infinite symphony of slaughter.
Mitch had spent the last three weeks doing nothing but sleeping, eating, training the rats, killing ants, and relieving his needs.
He lost count of how many he had killed after the first thousand ants. Yet, it was futile.
Regardless of how many ants he killed, more kept popping up.
Although he kept culling their numbers, he couldn't actually kill any queens. Last time, he succeeded because most ants had rushed to get reinforcements. Additionally, it had been in the early days of the ant nest.
He had tried invading once during these few weeks, but the queens' chambers had become larger, with more ants in them.
As such, the number of queens kept increasing.
In other words, the ants were birthing workers at an exponential rate.
Mitch's makeshift sword had long since started dulling, and his body was riddled with minor wounds. Before they could heal fully, he would get new ones.
He knew that continuing the stalemate would result in him losing, but he had no choice.
Defending and growing the rat nest was much more important than cleaning up the ants.
Besides, he didn't know if this was the only ant nest that was supersized. He couldn't expend all his energy and risk getting permanently injured for just one nest when there might be another one nearby.
In the end, it turned into a losing battle. But that did not imply it was futile.
The endless fighting had given Mitch tons of experience with his new body.
He had already been an experienced fighter because he played games on Tellus. However, that did not mean he could use his new body in the most efficient way possible.
Furthermore, he learned that him mutating his muscles was not the be-all-end-all. He could still train his muscles the traditional way.
Which was exactly what fighting the ants did.
So although he had barely progressed in Devouring, his prowess and lethality shot through the roof.
Mitch was certain that he could rush into the ant nest and kill a few queens unscathed, but the box with the rats was limiting his choices.
He didn't want the ant to find the two pregnant female rats.
Turns out, two females had gotten pregnant during the first few days. As three weeks had passed, their giving birth was due any moment.
Hailey did not get pregnant. There was nothing wrong with her; she just did not join the others in their mating activity.
However, she had started conversing with Mitch.
Of course, she couldn't speak the same language as him, but she did understand what Mitch was saying. She would then gesticulate to Mitch what her answer was.
From what he could gather, Hailey considered the males in the box too mentally behind her to mate with.
Although Mitch wanted Hailey to carry the royal lineage of rat society, he had to agree with her.
While she had the intelligence of—if not above that of—a human, the other rats were worse than apes.
That was also reflected in the amount of Mynt they provided. Over the three weeks that Mitch had wandered with the rat mischief, Hailey had become even more devoted to him. That change was reflected in her status page.
[Name: Hailey (Brown Rat)]
[Power System: Devouring—Body Strengthening (19%)]
[Mutations: Advanced Gyrification]
[Faith: Fundamentalist]
Not only had the temporary tag disappeared, but she had even become a fundamentalist, a level higher than devout.
If the rat with the brainwashing dreams gave a source of dirty, artificial faith, then Hailey's prayers were like fresh spring water.
And best of all, the quantity was not lacking whatsoever.
Of course, Mitch doubted that every single rat would be able to reach this level of purity. And that was okay.
He would make up for the lack of quality with sheer numbers.
"You are becoming more and more deranged, Mitch," Katherine complained. But they both knew she wasn't serious. After all, she had been singing his praises a few days ago for coming up with such a devious plan.
He shook his head and walked away from the crimson battlefield, making his way towards the wooden box.
At that moment, he suddenly felt another source of Mynt appearing. And then another. And a few more.
A total of eight sources had suddenly appeared, shocking both Mitch and Katherine. But the reason for their shock was a bit different.
"Even newborn rats can become believers?"
"The rat babies are already dreaming?"
The answer to both those questions was a resounding yes.
Anything could become a believer. Even a sentient rock could start praying to Mitch. The only requirement was for it to have any semblance of thoughts.
The fact that unintelligent rats could become faithful led Mitch to this conclusion. Although he too was surprised that newborn rats could become believers, it was for an entirely different reason.
The idea with his Divine Dream blessing was for the rats to receive prophetic dreams, slowly brainwashing them into becoming his followers.
That was why he had targeted the acetylcholine receptors. Because dreams occur more often during REM sleep.
He was confused because rats on Tellus didn't experience REM sleep before they were about ten days old. And because rats have a gestation period of about three weeks, any and all new sources of Mynt would imply it is a newborn rat.
"Could it be that their evolved brains make them start dreaming the same day they are born??"
The answer would come in the form of a hundred more streams of faith within the hour.
"Doesn't this mean that the rat you released has bred with over a dozen females within an hour?"
Mitch suddenly stopped walking. If it weren't for his exoskeleton not having sweat glands, he would be drenched by now.
"I just hope that inbreeding doesn't become too big of an issue for the rat nest."