- The City, Once More

The entire city is destroyed! There's bodies absolutely everywhere that have been ripped apart! There's absolutely no life anywhere! I see dead rats everywhere as well, but these rats are the size of wolves!

"What the fuck happened here?"

[It seems that these weaker creatures weren't able to adapt to the mana of the world and ended up turning into monsters, similarly to that fire bear you had to fight.]

"Holy shit, I doubt I'll even manage to find any people any time soon."

[Even if you did, they'd most likely be terrified of you.]

"Y-yeah true. I am most likely one of the biggest creatures to have ever lived. At least on land."

I start walking into the city, passing bodies, wrecks, and burning buildings. As I'm walking through, my sixth sense picks something up in a building next to me. I face towards it and focus on it. It's just a monster rat. I cast an ice spear and shoot it through the building.

[Saxum Rattus (Rock Rat) Killed.]

[Level up x1]

Ah, they give a bit of energy huh?

I keep on my way after that uneventful kill.

It's crazy. Walking through a destroyed city you were just in a few weeks ago. I mean, I've seen stuff like this in video games, but seeing it in person is just insane.

As I'm walking toward a subway station, I see that it's barricaded. Obviously, I decided to investigate. As I'm about a mile out, I see that outside of the barricade are the bodies of several different creatures, which all seem to be based on rats. There's some that are thick and brown like the rock rat, some which are red which I can only assume to be fire rats, and even some that are purple. As I get about half a mile out, my sixth sense picks up a group of humans in the subway. There are some behind the barricade looking at me and shaking as well. I keep walking towards them, obviously not caring that I'm terrifying the absolute shit out of them. As I get closer I hear someone yell out in a shaky voice,

"D-DON'T COME ANY CLOSER MON-MONSTER!"

One of the people behind the barrier has an ice spear pointed directly at me. It's not even as big as one of my teeth. I decide to act after this to play with him some. I cast my own ice spear, making it as big as possible. It's probably about the same size as a bus. I look at him and see that he's completely shaken. I think I took it too far. I decide to try and ease his fears. I evaporate the ice spear and try speaking as I've never spoken to anyone but Ellie and the little dryad as a beast.

"I am no monster, human. I am a Drake! I am the king of beasts! Do not dare lower me to the level of this filth!"

I look to my left and cast several small and thin ice spears, hitting multiple different rats.

[Ignis Rattus (Fire Rat) killed]

[Tenebris Rattus (Dark Rat) killed]

[Glacies Rattus (Ice Rat) killed]

[Ice Rat killed]

[Rock Rat killed]

[Level up x4]

I use the ice spears to lift the dead rats up in front of my face and eat all of them at the same time.

"Creatures like this are below me! Even the fifty two of you in that building wouldn't amount to even one of these! Here is some advice for you. Leave this city. And don't you dare insult me!"

After that, I walk away from the subway. I think my acting was pretty awesome! I definitely sounded like a fucking beast king! All high and mighty! Well, hopefully they won't bother me. I'd like to have someone to talk to, but I feel like the little dryad and Ellie are all I need. I should name the little dryad soon. Or rather I should probably ask her her name! I assumed she'd be like regular beasts or monsters! I'll have to ask her when I get back.

------------------------------

Human POV:

"Fuck. We can't stay here dude, more and more of those rats keep showing up! We may be able to fight them off a few more times but people need sleep man! There's not enough of us that can use these abilities to keep on going! I say we head into the forest because at least we have less chances of running into other people! You remember what happened the last time we ran into another group!"

"Yeah, I know. There's too many of us to move stealthily though! You try to get like 50 people out of a city like this with nothing noticing! Hell, we'd be lucky to get like ten feet out! I say we stay here for just a few more days then maybe we can finally leave! In case you haven't noticed, we've been getting attacked every ten minutes. It'll take longer than that just to pack everything up!"

"Fuck these people! They're all useless anyways dude! They're just using us! Every time one of us dies they don't bat an eye but if a single one of them dies they start accusing us of not trying to protect them! They still just wanna be protected even in a world like this!"

"FUCK DUDE! Just give me some time to think! There's no way we'd be able to go anywhere right now anyw-!!"

Suddenly my body starts to shake as the temperature in the air around me starts to rise. I feel an immense amount of fear piercing through my body as if no matter what I do, everything is hopeless. I manage to lift myself up to the top of the barricade and I see it. A gigantic lizard. Bigger than my house! It's headed straight for us as if it knows we're here. As I'm about to turn to everyone and tell them to hide, I see it look straight at me. I freak out and use my system to conjure up an ice spear.

"D-DON'T COME ANY CLOSER MON-MONSTER!"

"W-what the fuck are you doing taunting that thing dude!"

My friend beside me yells at me. Why the fuck did I do this! The monster looks at me and casts its own ice spear. It casts it seemingly instantly, and it's hundreds of times bigger than the one I cast! I-I can't do anything against it! I'll die if I do anything other than give up, and even then it could kill me just by breathing on me! I got a bigger ego since I was rated E-rank by the system, but I can't do anything! I'm nothing in this world! Suddenly I hear a deep, booming voice that feels like the ruler of the heavens is speaking to me.

"I am no monster, human. I am a Drake! I am the king of beasts! Do not dare lower me to the level of this filth!"

The drake then proceeded to cast multiple thin, yet incredibly hard ice spears and send them crashing into the building beside it. The spears come back out unscathed and with 5 different rats on them! One of them was a Dark rat which is nearly an E-rank monster! It killed it with one hit! F-fuck! I fucked up!

The drake lifts them up and eats all of them in one bite like they're potato chips! It then looks back at me and continues speaking with its booming voice,

"Creatures like this are below me! Even the fifty two of you in that building wouldn't amount to even one of these! Here is some advice for you. Leave this city. And don't you dare insult me!"

After that, it continues on its way, leaving us behind. I turn around and address all of the people following me,

"We're leaving!"

————————

[Rat monsters x23 killed.]

[Level up x7]

These little shits give absolutely no energy anymore. I've been in the city for about an hour now, but I haven't seen a single human since that subway station. I decide to comb through the city for about a day straight as even though these rats don't give much energy, they're still better than creatures with no magic at all. Hopefully soon every creature on Earth will have some degree of magic at least. I really don't want my progress to be stalled at a drake. I want to become a dragon!

[That may come sooner than you think, some areas of the Earth already have C-class monsters wandering around. For example, there is a mountain nearby your current area that was completely washed in mana, causing multiple creatures to gain incredible amounts of magic power. I'm not sure what exactly lives on that mountain, but I know for a fact there is at least 1 C-class monster living there.]

"That'll be our next stop then. At least it's not too far away from where I am. I don't wanna travel the entire world to get stronger. At least not yet, I can't even fly. What rank am I by the way?"

[I've created a status screen for you, would you like to view it?]

"Yes! That sounds awesome!"

-----------------------

[Status:]

[Name: Adam Lowell]

[Race: Drake]

[Title: Beast King, King of the Starter Forest]

[Level: 11 / 50]

[Class: C-rank World Boss]

[Domains: 1]

[Mana Heart: 1st - 3 rings, 2nd - 0 rings]

[Inherent Magic: Transformation]

[Modifications: Body Augmentations +4, 6th Sense]

------------------------

"What's this 'Domain' thing?"

[Your domains are areas where you are considered the ruler of. For example, the starter forest.]

"Okay, now what about the inherent magic thing?"

[Inherent magic is magic that does not belong to one of the rings. These are instead laid directly into your heart, becoming part of you. Hence the name 'inherent magic.']

"Ah okay. That makes sense I guess. How exactly would I go about unlocking other rings?"

[You can either do them the easier way, which would be unlocking them through the modification system, or you can do it the hard way and try absorbing the mana and directing it to form a ring around your heart. While the types of unlocked magic may be unknown to me, I do at least know that each ring gets progressively harder to create. As of right now, your mental capacity could probably let you create two more rings, possibly three.]

"What if I were to use my mod points to upgrade my body augments more?"

[The body augmentation modification includes the parallel thought modification as well, so that would in fact help you and it would cut back on the modification point cost, allowing you to unlock different skills instead of using them to create rings. Especially considering the price of getting the next ring created and at the dim stage is around 50 modification points.]

"Jeez, yeah I'm gonna use my brain with this one. Do I just circulate the mana around my heart in the shape of a ring?"

[Indeed. It would help to be some place rich in mana, for instance back at the world tree or in that mountain range I talked about before.]

"That reminds me, I never asked where I am? I know I lived in Colorado before, but what state am I currently in?"

[You are currently in Washington.]

"Ah, is that so? I've always wanted to go to Washington. After having been here I can see it's quite beautiful! Though, Colorado is pretty gorgeous itself."

[Fire rat killed]

"Oh yeah, I'm a world boss? What does that entail?"

[Being a world boss is just to say that you are the very top of the rank set before it. For example, a Fire rat in New York City is the F-rank World boss. World bosses also give immense amounts of energy to the person or beast that kills them. Quadruple the normal amount.]

"Ah I see. So, I'm the strongest C-rank huh? I don't have much to fear then!"

[Except B-ranks, A-ranks, Etc…]

"True, but fuck you I wanna feel strong!"

[I'm afraid systems cannot engage in sexual intercourse.]

"It's a figure of speech."

[Noted. Fuck you.]

"Hehe there ya go, Ellie!"

[Vita Rattus (Life Rat) killed.]

[Level up]

"Finally I got another level up! It may be time to leave the city! This place is absolutely awful!"

[It doesn't help that the creatures you're killing are at most high F-rank.]

"True, I guess it's time to tackle the mountains. But before that, I wanna go back to the world tree and create the next ring."

[The next ring will be the Earth ring, so I highly recommend going and getting it to at least the litten stage.]

"Since we're kinda doing an info dump, enlighten me on the stages of the rings."

[All rings start off in the 'dim' stage, at which point it is very difficult to determine the color of most of them. The next stage is known as the 'litten' stage, as it's the stage where the color starts to become apparent. The stage after is called the 'bright' stage, where the ring is about as bright as a torch's light. The last stage is called the 'glowing' stage, where the ring is as bright as the sun. So from worst to best, Dim - Litten - Bright - Glowing.]

"Alright, so when I get the next ring I should train it at least to litten stage? In that case, i'll try to get it to at least bright so that I'm more than prepared."

With that said, I start making my way back out of the city I've named the "Human Deathtrap" and back towards the world tree in the starter forest."

…

[Renaming "Human City" to "Human Deathtrap"]