Mischief of Rats!

Rowan walked into the next room with the same stuffy feeling as before he had absorbed the souls, but for some reason, the stuffy feeling that he had felt in the previous room before the battle with Ox persisted and left him feeling weird. The next room was lit up and a short man that Rowan had met before was standing in the center of it. "Ah, you must be the scout for the Zodiac gang. That's what you were doing there, watching the fight."

The short man had small features and eyes that were no bigger than buttons, while his facial hair was twisted and standing on end so that it looked like whiskers. He nodded at Rowan as he flicked his wrist and two daggers appeared in his hand. "My biggest regret, without a doubt, was showing Tiger that video of you fighting Garda. Everything that has followed has led us directly to this point because we thought that you would show fear towards us, that you would not want to go to battle with our whole gang. I knew you were powerful, but at the time you had not killed any humans. You decimated Pig and Rabbit, and left them for dead and that zombie finished what you started with the rest of our men. I was scared ill be honest, then father Azure gave me the same enhancements and suddenly, just like the rest of my family, I was under the impression that we could remove you from play and take you down for taking my brothers from me."

Rowan could not help but pity this man, both parties had been thrust down this path out of nothing more than inconvenience, he was blamed for the death of those gang members but he had tried to not kill them, he just got distracted and a zombie finished the job. "You all kidnapped my friend. I had no choice but to come here. Now everything I've learned from that point on is a different story. Did you not question how it was that this Azure fellow was able to make you so powerful? Does it not defy logic that a week ago I could have spit on you and split you in half and suddenly you are capable of doing real and actual combat with me, and you think it was a couple of potions that allowed you to do that?"

Rat looked at him, confused, when a screen lowered itself from the ground. Tiger appeared once again with a scowl on his face. "Rat, that's enough talking. You are supposed to be killing him. Cut out all the chit chat. Rowan finally looked up at Tiger that he had ignored this whole time. "As his second, you know the truth of what he's doing, don't you? Why would you agree to this?" Tiger got a downcast look in his eyes at Rowan's words as he stared at him through the screen. He could only shake his head, "Truthfully I did not know originally, I only found out recently but we are a gang we are supposed to do bad things to get ahead, its kinda just how we operate is it not, so what's one more sin."

Rowan shook his head at him. "Bad is no longer the term that can be used for something like this, this goes into the realm of pure evil,do you…."

"Enough!"

Tiger cut him off and yelled as the screen began to recede but not before Rowan was able to hear his voice again, "This conversation needs no other ears, especially not from my siblings, it can continue if you make it all the way to me." Rowan could only sigh "Come then Rat, meet your fate." Rat got red in the face but he said nothing else, he knew what he was supposed to do. He dashed forward in a zigzag pattern as he closed the gap in a second and plunged down with both daggers. Rowan turned his body sideways, and both passed by him as he took a step back and head-butted Rat in the face, past his outstretched arms.

Rowan had noticed that his berserk gene had been responding oddly since the moment he started with ox and now again with Rat. It was almost like it was offended that these fake tier zeroes dared be in the presence of a true tier zero and think it made them his equal. He had to suppress the urge that was rapidly growing in him to tear them limb from limb, but as he absorbed more souls, the rage only got harder to control.

He had done a good job containing himself, but right when he dodged the blow it was like something in him had snapped. He felt so sincerely disrespected for no reason at all other than the fact that despite some cool abilities, the zodiac gang could not fight for shit.

They had no technique or true capability. They were raw power complete with special effects, but none of them would be able to give his berserk gene a battle worthy of it calming down, or at least Rat wouldn't. Rowan never even turned the weathervane back out of its cloud band form as he gently reached forward in the gap left by Rat's down-stroke and while he was still stunned by the headbutt. His hands lightly touched Rat's shoulders and all of a sudden he tore downwards and completely removed them from the sockets. There was a sound like someone trying to tear a phonebook in half that ended in a sickening pop as Rowan used pure physical strength to pull his arms from the socket.

Rowan swung one of the appendages and uppercut Rat with his own hand but without being properly connected to a body Rowan was completely unaware that the daggers that he originally pulled out stayed firmly in his grip so the uppercut plunged the weapon through his jaw and left the blade protruding from his head. The vermillion color had almost overtaken Rowan's eyes at this point, but he took a deep breath as it faded and was ready to walk away and leave Rat's twitching body in the same place as he walked forward. Expecting a door to open, which was right when he realized that he had not gained any exp from the kill. It was right then that his hair all stood on end and his storm armament acted to protect him, but failed to as the two massive teeth that were approaching his head cut through them easily.

Rowan ducked right as a massive mouth snapped shut where his entire head would have been. He glanced up at Rat, who now looked like a rat bound in human flesh. He was armlessly grinning at Rowan before he used a skill, [Swarm]. His body shattered like someone had dropped glass from thirty feet up but instead of him being dead, he broke into hundreds of thousands of rat skin-covered rats. His voice seemed to come from everywhere all at once. "Rowan Raid, when boss Azure asked me what I would like to be better at when he was helping me out, there was only ever one thing that I had in mind. I wanted to be able to survive."

Rowan could feel the rats crawl across him as they bit and tore at his storm armament and, in turn, it would send out a bolt of lightning in retaliation that turned them to ash. The room became a light show of sorts as Rowan's armor acted as an industrial grade bug zapper and the rats were the bugs. He poured mana into his armor so that it could continue defending him as he thought of a plan. Weathervane left his wrist and swapped into the rain form and began to replicate above them towards the top of the room. He held two in his hands, and then the process continued.

The blades became a tornado once more, and it was like the whole room got placed in a blender. There was so much blood that Rowan could no longer see his target. He waved his hand and made a chair from extra wind blades and sat down in front of the spectacle. "I can say honestly that I did not expect this, but in turn I don't think that you can keep making these clones, so let us see exactly what the case is here. Which of the two of us lasts longer? I can promise you that it will be me without a doubt, but feel free to live in this torment until you are ready to die."

Rowan was content to sit there and watch the show since Rat had not responded, but once again he had that nagging feeling that he was now under the impression that he got whenever souls were agitated nearby. He was not looking forward to the uncomfortable feeling that was gonna come after this if it worked. [Call of the Fairy King]. Rowan watched as souls tried to extricate themselves from the rats; there was a soul to control each hundred of them and it allowed Rowan to see that Rats soul was mutated just like Ox. It looked like a black rat , but its tail was covered in faces and each time he needed a new controller the souls would dislodge from the tail and control a group of rats while before he used call of the fairy king they probably returned to the tail but this time around they instead turned towards him and was absorbed into the vermillion falcon.

Less and fewer rats began to be born and all of a sudden, Rat popped into existence perfectly fine. His face was now pale, but there was something else wrong. Rowan, taking the souls from him, had destabilized him somehow, and this was the result. He reached his hand forward like he was reaching for help. He was unfortunate to have to face Rowan. He was not someone who would just succumb to a swarm tactic. Rat's skin began to fall away, starting from his arms, his face elongated back into a rat shape but the rest of him slowly fell away from his bones leaving a bleach white skeleton in a puddle of what used to be Rat.

His soul looked relieved as it flew from the skeleton and joined the other souls that Rowan had amassed at this point. Rat had brought him more than 100 souls as he directly gained another 1000 points into his stats. His skin had cracked in some places and Rowan realized the discomfort was because his stats had grown so far past his mana space that it was causing it to wreck his body. Cracks formed up his skin and towards his eyes, but stopped as a lightning symbol that was stretching towards his eyes, giving him this mystical look.

He took a deep breath and the bonus to his strength worked against the mana, threatening to burst him like a grape as he healed most of the cracks, leaving just the lightning shaped cracks towards his eyes that were too stubborn to heal. Rowan made his way towards the now fully open door towards the next room. He should not have many enemies left. He would end this and get Camille to safety and then go rest and do something with these souls.