It wasn't that Mitch hadn't tried his hardest until this point. He just didn't have the opportunity to use any loopholes.
That changed when Katherine recommended taming dogs.
As a pro gamer back on Tellus, he would be disappointed in himself if he didn't make the most out of this piece of information as he could.
"Will you try taming dogs?" Katherine assumed, and for good reason. Dogs are very easy creatures to tame and are incredibly loyal when they finally are tamed.
The faith these creatures could provide would be substantial to Mitch.
"No, I will not. There are two problems with dogs. The first is that they breed too slowly. I need a thousand legios that would be willing to give their lives for me just to survive. How many dogs would I need? Tens of thousands, perhaps even more."
Mitch walked over to the egg and started lifting it onto his back.
For being as large as him, it was surprisingly light.
"The second issue is that there probably are no dogs in this world yet, only wolves. And do not even get me started on taming them."
If even ants gave him so much trouble, how would he be able to gain the loyalty of a bunch of wolves?
"Then, what are you going to do? You don't have all the time in the world, you know?" She didn't understand what Mitch's plan would be.
He had already told Madeline that she didn't need to fulfill her mission for a while, so surely he had a plan in mind.
"Rats! I will domesticate an army of rats."
Rodents, the best friend of any researcher. In his 20 years of finding a cure for cancer, Mitch had come into contact with—and more importantly, trained—hundreds of rats.
"They are the perfect substitute for legios at the moment. They are deceptively smart, age quickly, and mate like crazy. Best of all, I am very familiar with taming and training them."
Of course, he had other reasons as to why he would use rats, but he refrained from mentioning them at the moment.
"They might be smart, but that is just relative to their size. In reality, they might give you even less Mynt than wolves or monkeys would. Are you sure it's okay?"
She would usually joke with Mitch, stating that he was a sewer dweller for liking rats or something similar. But Katherine was genuinely worried about whether this plan would work or not.
Mitch just shrugged his shoulders and decided to not speak. The best way to prove something was with results.
He held the egg in one hand and lifted the rest of the ant corpses with his other two functional arms and then started walking.
Now that choosing which animal to tame was done, he just had to find them.
Admittedly, he had never tamed a wild rat before, nor did he know how a rat nest looked from the outside.
However, he was familiar with the tracks left by rats.
The smell was distinct; their tendency to chew on trees was too. Even their droppings were something Mitch could distinguish because of his years of experience.
He picked any berries, fruits, and nuts he could find and placed them on a makeshift plate made out of bark ripped off of a tree.
He came across a few animals every now and then, like rabbits, deer, and even the occasional snake. However, stomping the ground with his monstrous strength a few times was enough for them to scamper.
Not letting himself get sidetracked, Mitch focused intently on completing his goal for the day.
Eventually, he came across a river.
"Finally, water." He hadn't drunk anything since incarnating, and his throat was starting to feel parched.
Although it had only been a couple of hours since then, he had been very active during that time.
He placed the objects in his hands onto the shore and dunked his head into the water.
A cool sensation surrounded his head, dispersing any sleepiness he was feeling.
Having woken himself up properly, he raised his head and started taking a few sips.
Tweek
Mitch had finally finished drinking when he heard a very familiar sound across the river.
'A rat!'
Seeing the creature he had been looking for a few meters away from him, Mitch was unsurprisingly ecstatic. However, he didn't do anything rash.
He wanted to find as many rats as possible to start his cult with. So, he just waited until the rat too had finished drinking and started making its way back home.
Mitch left his things by the riverside, not wanting them to affect his nimbleness.
Keeping a couple of meters distance between him and the rat, he followed it like a dog.
In the end, the rat jumped into a burrow beneath a tree and vanished.
'That's probably the nest.'
Katherine agreed. "Indeed, it should be. And a big one at that. Just looking around, I barely see any vegetation around here. Even the leaves have signs of being eaten."
As she said, it was basically desolate. There were no plants, no moss, and barely any leaves on the shrubs and trees.
Having determined where the nest was, Mitch now moved on to his next goal. He walked back to the river and brought his things with him back to the nest.
Now fully prepared, he tried baiting a few of the rats out.
Among the fruits he found there were apples. He took one of them and started crushing it with his hand. He then placed some of the smaller pieces on the ground, making a simple trail out of the nest.
While waiting, he used his strength to dig a medium-sized hole in the ground, intending on keeping the caught rats there until he tamed them.
After waiting for some time, a few rats started surfacing from the hole. They were pushing each other and competing over who could eat all the apple pieces the fastest.
Unbeknownst to them, a large bug had crept up from behind.