Forty seconds, that's how long it had taken him to take over the rat.
Not good. That would be enough for anything to escape or kill me if it can figure out it's me.
Of course, one vessel obtained isn't enough to make conclusions.
Hadrian spent the next ten minutes getting used to his two bodies and double perceptions. It was disorienting at first, but he surprisingly adjusted fast.
Confident with himself, he did not waste time and moved on to a second rat.
The rat reacted just as the first, running away after sensing something was wrong. Hadrian was prepared this time and within thirty seconds he'd obtained a third rat body.
He went into his soul to check, and just as he expected.
[ Current vessels:]
[ Basic lifeform vessels : 3 ]
Excited, he stepped out of his soul and moved on to the fourth. This one, unlike the first three, got agitated and aimed its malice at rat Hadrian.
They can know where the problem is coming from?
The rat jumped at Hadrian with a squeak. Hadrian was slow to react and it bit down on him sending sharp pain through him.
Hadrian thrashed in panic and sent his other two rat bodies onto the one attacking him. At first, he tried pulling the rat off of him like a human would. It didn't work. He resorted to biting and clawing down on the rat. This only made it more agitated and its attacks chaotic.
Hadrian let go of its fog tendrils hoping it would stop. It didn't.
Having outnumbered the rat three to one however, Hadrian stood above the dead rat three minutes later.
His one rat vessel was heavily damaged and in great paralyzing pain. With a mental sigh, he let go of his control over that vessel. The pain lingered but slowly died down to only memory.
If all my vessels ever get attacked or injured at the same time, I will be in hellish pain.
He turned to look at the other rats. By the thirtieth rat vessel, it was taking him twenty five seconds to take over a rat.
They reacted differently, some would run while some would attack like the fourth. They were still rats, however, and Hadrian easily outsmarted them.
One such agitated rat bit down on his rat tail, tearing it off. A stinging pain assaulted Hadrian, but before letting go of the rat, he focused on the tail trying to think of a way he could manage this.
Sending his intent out, the rat tail began to regrow. At the same time, one of his other rat vessels' tails deteriorated into thin air.
Is this the third attribute "substitution"?
Indeed. He could transfer flesh and essence from one vessel to another.
Excited, Hadrian did further experiments on this. When transferring essence, he could transfer things like energy, stamina and even strength from one vessel to another.
If he wanted, he could concentrate all these attributes onto one rat, his main vessel. This, however, would make his other vessels useless.
But it had taught him something else. How to manage the pain. He could loosen his control to a more mechanical one. This did not make the sensations completely disappear. It only reduced them to about ten percent of the original, or however much depending on how loose his control was.
Mechanical control was also difficult. It was like controlling individual strings instead of simply existing as the rat.
It works for now.
Exploring the sewers, Hadrian found a group of rats eating on thrown out food. His stomachs rumbled and he felt an irresistible urge to join and feast on the filth.
No.
He took steps back. His hunger only grew stronger. His vessels were not dead, and as such needed to be sustained.
I won't let you do this to me.
Eat! Eat! Eat!
Another thought, not his, rang in his consciousness.
Hadrian panicked.
If I stay here too long, I'll completely assimilate into a rat, losing sense of myself. I need a human body.
Thinking this, he made ten more rat vessels, so that they were forty, and using the glimpses of the rats' memories made his way through and out the sewer.
The wind blew on his whiskers, the sounds of a town alive loud in his small ears. The wooden and brick buildings pressed against each other looking like gigantic heavenly structures.
His gaze, one of his gazes, fixed on the cerulean sky. The distant chalky clouds were unbothered, streaked with a warm gold.
I am indeed in the same city. However, it could either be hours or months after my death.
To confirm this, some of his rat vessels scurried through the streets he remembered, heading for that particular inn where he'd died.
He was in the same district and not far off from where he'd been killed.
A small rat stood on a paveway as it looked on to a damaged inn. The passersby paid it little mind.
In front of the damaged inn, which the two Mages had blown through, Hadrian saw three pairs of legs covered under a brown tarp.
He recognized his worn out shoes immediately. Few people stopped to look, most treated it like something normal. A cart drawer accidentally hit the corpse's feet. "Move these already, won't ya!" he shouted before pulling his cart aggressively as its wooden wheels rolled over the feet.
Hadrian's snout twitched, his whiskers pulled back as his paws scratched the ground.
All of you can die.
He'd planned to pick out a vile person first, but it seemed any that walked fit and he wouldn't have to go searching for one.
His tiny paws tapped the mud road as he scurried to cross, weaving through giant legs and moving carts.
He rushed up the damaged inn, entering with five of his rat bodies. The others were in a hundred meter radius of each other. This was the distance, as of now, that he could properly control his vessels.
Any further and his vision would get blurry and dark at the edges. His vessel's muscles would start feeling lethargic and control would slowly slip from him.
Inside the inn, he heard male voices in a shouting competition. One, he recognized, was that of the owner who'd hired them for the day.
"This isn't right." the owner shouted, "I've done everything right by Bagdona. He has to make them cover this."
"You want to go tell them that?" Another voice argued, this one not as deep as the owner's.
Rat Hadrians walked along the cracked walls until he found where the group of men were.
The men all had grave looks on their faces.
"This is everything I had." The inn's owner said with his hands on his hips. This was followed by a long moment of silence.
"The bodies have still not been claimed." someone else spoke up.
"I picked them up off the street. They would have taken bread slices for pay. I doubt anyone is coming to claim them." The inn owner said. "Hire a cart, and take them to the crematorium or dump them in the sewer, just take them out the front of my inn."
Hadrian's anger flared, he'd been observing them through a crack on the wall. He altered his sight to look at the inn owner's essence fog.
His rat eyes narrowed. If a rat's essence fog could be described as a cup of water, that of the inn owner's was like a well. And unlike the rat's essence, this one was a light shade of grey, flowing in restless waves.
Hadrian could sense the potency was much higher than that of a rat's.
This is just a regular human's ?
He looked at the essence of the other men and they were all familiar.
Hadrian doubted himself as he raised his paw and called at the fog.
Minutes passed as the men argued but only wisps had broken off and flowed to Hadrian.
His tiny heart raced.
This can't be. How will I take over human vessels then? Is it because I'm a rat?
Half an hour later, a cart came to pick the corpses up. After handling the cart owner's payment. The inn owner and the other men left, having paid rat Hadrians no mind.
Hadrian was left starstruck in the walls and streets. Suddenly he winced and his rat vessels facial muscles twisted.
A wild dog had bitten down on one of his vessels, breaking his spine, tearing his flesh, sending blood and intestines out of his opened gut. Hadrian immediately let go of that rat vessel.
I have to be careful.
As he thought of his slushed gut, his stomachs reminded him he still had not eaten. This didn't worry Hadrian, he knew some humans were scared of rats just as much as rats were of humans.
He ran into houses and inns causing havoc, on top of one woman's wooden bowl, he danced on the rice though he doubted the woman had seen as she was busy screaming. When the rice was thrown out, Hadrian feasted on it.
Eventually, the sun set. Hadrian had tried taking over more human vessels but failed each time. Their essence potency was just too high.
As one of his rat vessels roamed the night streets, he heard a horrific grating scream. In his small body, he found he could squeeze himself through places and didn't mind finding out what the scream was about. In any case, it was only one of his vessels.
In a moonlit alley, Hadrian's eyes widened. There, in a pool of blood, a woman held a girl tightly as she gave birth.