With the swing of my blade, the head of a rather large dog-sized mutated rat beast flew off its body, and its body went stiff, then it crashed onto the floor, spewing thick black blood.

  'How did this thing even manage to sneak up on me? A rat, though mutated, was still ultimately a rat and my dignity wouldn't allow me to die by the hands of a rat, mere vermin!'

  While out back scavenging for things to fashion into a medium sized chest, a voice in my head suddenly told me to look around and to my utter shock, there it was, crouched low as it attempted to sneak up on poor me, eyes glinting with a savage predatory light. I almost wet myself on the spot, but, adrenaline kicked in faster than fear could, and I drew my bone machete, ignored the pounding heart in my chest, and taught it who was the boss.

  'You know, it had quite a bit of meat on it, now that I think about it.'

  It was true, this mutated rat was slightly plump, particularly its belly and legs, one could tell with a single glance that they contained quite a bit of meat, even with all the fur and mutated tissue covering it.

  'Could this thing even edible?'

  'Obviously no, but that's not the point here, the point is that it has meat! And, with your power, that meat can be converted into any other type of meat you desire, you dummy!'

  I know...but, you know what, my thoughts are indeed correct; the source should not matter to me, as at the end of the day, my cheat doesn't take that into account unless I want it to. Still, why was this thing bleeding so much? Even after a full minute of me decapitating it, the thing still hadn't stopped bleeding, and a veritable pool of thick black blood had formed around its corpse.

  [Slightly Acidic Mutated Rat Blood:

  Mutated blood that has slightly acidic properties due to the wild but continuous mutations of its blood cells in the past.]

  Actually, this might be useful as a weapon, I couldn't just let it go to waste.

  Thinking as such, I hurried back into the house, grabbed the large empty pot, and edited it to be impermeable to both myriad river water, and the slightly acidic blood. Then, I grabbed the whitened out myriad river water wood, and edited it to work with this blood, too. Then, I made it malleable, bent it into a C shape, stuck one half into the pool of blood, and the other with the outlet in the pot.

  In an instant, it turned crimson red, and the blood began pouring in slowly. By the time the rat was done bleeding, the pot was nearly half and when I repeated the process with the initial spray of acidic rat blood, it reached the half mark.

  'Truly a mutant; it was probably producing all that blood as a sort of defense mechanism, so that if it got badly wounded, it would spray out and thoroughly wash the perpetrator, burning them up in the process.'

  I shuddered at the mere thought of such a thing happening to me; I really needed to be more careful about everything in this world, as even the rats could either kill or permanently disfigure you. Granted, with my cheat, I had a larger margin for error, but that didn't mean I should be reckless, at least not until I've become overpowered. Until then, I'll remain a coward who treated even the weakest foe as the strongest threat.

  'Better to be safe and sound, than dead and sorry; that's my motto.'

  Pulling out of my thoughts, I returned to reality and carefully moved the pot of rat blood back, placing it right beside the pot of myriad river water. Then, I went back outside, and began contemplating how to utilize the body of the mutated rat below me.

  'Should I cut it up right here, on the floor?'

  'Bro? Have you seen the so-called floor? It's a paradise for all things nasty and vile, things that should not be in the human body! Now, I know you have a cheat, but, it's you we're talking about here, the odds of you accidentally ingesting something so lethal that it instantly kills you is very high.'

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  You know what, I'm not even going to argue with that; it was true, I wasn't the sharpest tool in the kit. Sticking to my motto, I pieced together my version of a rack to hang game on, then, I used a piece of wood to fuse over its legs, merging with the wood on the rack to hold it firmly in place as it hung upside down, dripping even more acidic blood into a repaired wooded pot I grabbed out of the heap of discarded wooden things.

  As for its head? I took it up very carefully, and stuck it on one of the spiked hooks of the rack; I'd process it later as it barely had any meat on it.

  As I pulled out my bone machete, I couldn't help but muse about how different life for me was now; I was no longer in my old world, and the new world forced new actions and thoughts into my head, ones that I wouldn't even dream about before. Could one person change so much in such a short period of time? Wait, was it a short period? I really didn't know; the absence of a sun, moon, and a sky made it really hard to keep track of time.

  What felt like mere hours to me could be days in reality; I really had no way of telling.

  'This place is no different from a rat's nest; perpetually cloaked in darkness that rarely saw light, where human beings turned on each other, consumed each other, and lived and died for the most useless and superficial things or reasons.'

  It was sad, in a way, but, what was I going to do about it? Nothing, that's what; honestly speaking, I only cared about myself, and until I could guarantee my safety, comfort, and well-being in this place, that wasn't going to change. But, say I manage that, and decide to attempt to change a few things, what then? It certainly wouldn't be easy, or clean; from what I've seen so far, the powers that control this layer were willing to do anything to achieve their goals, even killing off their trusted subordinates.

  Imagine what would happen, then, if they ever learned of the things I could do, wouldn't they turn the place upside down, stopping at nothing until they found me? So, unless I had a way to ensure absolute loyalty, or prevent people from even mentioning my name, I wouldn't attempt to change anything at all.

  'Sigh, life sure is complicated, I must say, especially when one involves the human heart.'

  Shaking my head with a sigh, I focused on the task at hand: butchering the mutated rat before me.

  Honestly, I had no idea where I should start, as I've never butchered something in my life. At one point in my teenage years, I used to think meat came from the supermarkets, and that animals were raised within them. So, I moved to the side, and carefully slit open the belly of the rat, and almost vomited as a shower of organs mixed in with a funky yellow scent washed out, staining the entire rat a sickly yellow white and leaving behind a dreadful scent that clawed away at my nose.

  I didn't even bother to inspect it as I slammed my skill into it, transforming the liquid and organs into a light gust of air, and I was finally able to breathe in peace again.

  'What the heck? I knew it! Darn it, if even a bit of that liquid had touched me, it probably would've hurt like hell.'

  I wasn't sure if such a thing like that would happen again, either; so, I just had to be cautious. Honestly, it kind of killed my motivation to continue, but, what could I do? Motivation only comes and goes anyway, only discipline is truly eternal. With such a mindset, I forced myself to continue, carefully inspecting its insides and the various parts and organs, well, what remained of the anyway, cutting and cleaning away anything that didn't say meat, flesh, or bone.

  Before I knew it, I was done, and thankfully, didn't encounter any more stinky surprises. Now, a nice pile of meat, flesh, decent size rat bones rested beside me to the left, on a fused together plank, each separated into their own respective pile.

  [Contaminated rat flesh pile:

  A rather sizable pile of highly mutated rat flesh, freshly removed from the body of a recently deceased mutated rat beast, too bad it's been contaminated.]

  [Contaminated rat meat pile:

  A rather sizable pile of highly mutated rat meat, not recommended for consumption, especially after so many nasty things used wind express to find their way into it.]

  [Pile of mutated rat bones:

  A rather sizable pile of various mutated rat bones, stronger than regular rat bones, though not by much, they are significantly larger, however.]

  'Is the air I'm breathing in right now this deadly? Did that mean I'll eventually develop some unknown infection or illness by simply breathing it in long enough!?'

  'No no, don't rush to conclusion, if that was supposed to happen, it would've happened already; this new body of mine grew up in such an environment, if I had come here with the body I had in my old world, then maybe, but that wasn't the case.'

  But, even so, it was rather unfortunate that all my hard work got contaminated so easily. But, on the bright side, I learned something new; this floor was so dirty that even the air could kill you. The information only deepened my desire to leave even more; staying in such a nasty, miserable, and ugly place wasn't good for one's mental health, at all. With a thought, the contaminated meat pile transformed into a pile of pork jerky, jerky that's very resistant to contamination, too, without compromising on the taste of anything else.

  And as for the flesh? I turned it into leather, specifically cow leather, and elongated the bones, made them more durable, and stronger. Then, I carried them all into the house, placed them underneath the bed for the time being, and hurried back outside, rapidly moving through the piles of wood until I had enough burnt plank bits to transform into a chest.

  [Skill: View Information (2) > View Information (3)]

  [Skill: Edit Information (2) > Edit Information (3)]

  Finally! It only took like what, 60 years? Why were they leveling so slowly to begin with? It really didn't make any sense to me; the early parts of a skill should be the easiest to level, right? Then, it gets progressively harder as the level and limit on it decrease, but here, it seemed as though that concept was being flipped around.

  'None of it makes sense right now, but, be grateful! Remember, you don't know how this cheat came to be, or what is behind it, how it works, or even if it's alive!'

  True, true; one always had to look at the bright side of things in life, even in the dark, this was my second motto. Though it had some clear faults, who knows, I might grow powerful enough with it to unearth its secrets, and fix the faults.

  That'd sure be nice, but I had to survive and get out of here first.