Awakening

Lucas opened his eyes and saw a dark space with nothing present there. He could freely move in the space, but still, there was nothing to be seen here.

Lucas finally concentrated on feeling his body and sighed in relief when he realized he could sense his body, but the odd thing was that even if he could sense his body, he came to know that all the functions of his body had stopped.

The heartbeats, the digestion, breathing, every process.

After realizing this, he immediately tried to leave this space but could not even create a ripple. Lucas panicked as he couldn't escape, but just then he saw a small embryo in the dark space.

After looking at it carefully, Lucas realized that the embryo was growing at a visible rate. But just at that time, Lucas was shocked to see that he himself was changing his shape and becoming smaller. He didn't know what to do. But the strange thing was that he did not panic. There was a feeling in his heart that all this was proceeding in the right direction.

Time passed by. Finally, Lucas saw a white rat in front of him, having red eyes staring at him. Lucas suddenly realized that this was the same rat he had killed, but that was not all as Lucas came to know he himself had turned into a white rat.

But there was no time to think about what was going on as he saw the red-eyed rat run towards him and started attacking him. Lucas wanted to dodge but couldn't as he was not familiar with this body. The rat didn't show any kind of hesitation and directly bit Lucas's rat form's neck.

Lucas was shocked as he faced a similar feeling of dying once again, but just at the last moment, he felt a suction and again saw a red-eyed rat looking at him from a certain distance.

Lucas was shocked as he realized that he had died but was again reincarnated, "I have to defeat this rat, or this process will go on forever."

The battle started. Lucas died and was reincarnated again. Time passed by. Finally, Lucas's rat form was now biting the red-eyed rat savagely in a desperate attempt to kill it.

The rat's eyes finally became lifeless, and Lucas, whose body was filled with bloody scratches, finally saw a helical stair appear in front of him.

Lucas's injured rat form weakly started climbing the stairs, and as he climbed, his body started to change again into his original form.

As Lucas took the final stair, the last white hair on his body turned black, turning him into his previous being completely. But even though there was no change in his physical body, his mentality had changed a lot. "A mere rat, I thought I could kill it, but only after dying so many times did I realize that it was not a mere rat but a living being similar to a human. Hahaha, so foolish of me to take it for granted that the rat's value is nothing in my eyes. Only after becoming a rat did I realize life...

Lucas's mindset had started to change. He felt a soothing calmness moving around his body. This was a feeling of enlightenment, "Why am I trying to become powerful? To be happy, to be invincible, to be immortal. But I already achieved all these in my previous life. Then why am I trying so hard again?"

After shaking his head, Lucas then saw a small helical strand floating in the air at the end of the stairs. He touched it, and

Crackle! Crackle!

Lucas could feel his body changing at the cellular level. "Seems like my body is evolving by making upgrades taken from the rat's DNA."

After the light emitted from the floating DNA finally faded away, he saw words floating in front of him,

Existence level: 1

1/10 lower level species harvested.

After the words faded, everything became clear in Lucas's mind. "Now I get it. It is not immortality I aspire to. It is the feeling of progress that I love, the constant evolution."

"Being immortal is perfection, but perfection can also be described as a stale state with zero progress. Hahaha, it was so easy to understand. I was so foolish. Hahaha. But now I am starting anew, and the path I will take won't be the same anymore."

A spark could be seen in his eyes. Lucas didn't know why, but his instincts told him to jump from the stairs down, and he did so.

Just as he was reaching the end of his jump, he felt a suction force again.

Lucas opened his eyes and realized he was back in the real world. He stood up smiling and then turned towards the remaining animals with a devilish smile.

"One taken care of, nine more to go."