James tried not to stare at the ratlings while they ate their meal. Watching rats eat bugs and toads was one thing, it was an entirely different matter when said rats could speak and had decided you were their parent. At least they had agreed to let him try and cook their prey, except for David of course because why wouldn't that child want to do something weird just to annoy him-

  No, remember James, he's not actively trying to be a brat. He's just more cynical and attached to his bestial side than the others.

  Cooking had been easier than expected. He had quickly dug an open oven into one of the walls of the lair, including a little chimney that instead of going to the surface did a few loops before going to one of the main tunnels, a little trick that still allowed them to get rid of smoke while hiding their position. None of the sewers' residents had shown the intelligence to track down their position from smoke alone but you could never be too safe.

  The oven, which James had designed after old brick bread ovens due to the lack of electricity, was large enough to hold all of the cockroaches and the toad that he, David, and Foudre had hunted down. Of course, an oven without heat was pretty useless, and so a fire had to be made. He quickly infused a broken discarded lighter with his shadows, creating a small device that produced black flames. They worked exactly as regular fire would, except they apparently never ran out and James could affect them too with his shadow manipulation.

  A couple of improvised stakes infusion later and, after a short while in the oven, they had gotten roasted cockroaches. The toad had spent some time over the fire too but since David and Lucille were the only ones willing to eat it it was left mostly raw. Hence the present situation, where the two were silently devouring the amphibian while their siblings shared the cockroaches. James was very happy he couldn't eat anymore for once. Or at least he didn't need to, and while he was willing to test out whether or not he could something he didn't want his first meal in this new world to be a toad or a cockroach, especially ones that came from the sewers.

  Aaand now he didn't have anything left to do. His meeting with his two newly-hired henchmen was still a little way off and the ratlings were eating and training right away didn't seem like a good idea. So, what could he do to pass the time? Well, there was one thing he used to do...

  Surfing the internet.

  Now, the question was what could he do... Check out this world's memes? Some more research on the local wildlife? Figure out how was the government of Zalcien handling the treatment of non-humans?

  Oh, what about that forum? HardCored, was it?

  James joined in on the mass leaving - that was a mouthful. Seeing good old internet chatting had done wonders for his mental health, kinda like how watching cartoons with the ratings. It helped bring back some form of normality. He also learned some new stuff, which is always a nice plus. Really, the only odd thing was that 55-63-0 guy. Sapient robots had to be expected in this world, he had even seen some articles about it and one made a brief appearance in Captain Cyan's show. Weird speech, ominous warnings, or even straight-up trolling were also to be expected on the internet, so although surprising seeing someone writing in binary wasn't that odd.

  The weird part was that James had perfectly understood what 55-63-0 was writing.