The titan blinked out of existence, and in its place stood a giant wolf, ten times taller than itself, made of pure darkness, nothing more than a vaguely canine silhouette against a stark white background.
"T̴h̶i̸s̴ ̴f̷o̶r̷m̷,̴ ̷t̵h̶i̸s̵ ̷v̶o̸i̶c̶e̸.̷ ̸I̴t̶ ̵s̴h̴o̶u̵l̵d̷ ̴b̴e̵ ̷l̶e̶s̶s̸ ̶a̸g̶o̷n̸i̷z̵i̷n̴g̸ ̴t̶o̵ ̶c̸o̶m̵p̷r̶e̸h̸e̷n̵d̷." It spoke, its tone intrigued, its voice drilling into both its ears like the scrape of screeching metal, low and rumbling like a landslide, like grinding boulders tempered by a snarl, like gnashing teeth, yet paradoxically like complete and utter silence.
If the previous sound was an incomprehensible cacophony of thunder, this was a comprehensive noise under layers and layers of conflicting elements that made its stomach churn.
A migraine started to pound in its temple as voice and words finally registered, and it whimpered, flattening its body as much as possible.
"W̴o̸r̶d̸s̸ ̸a̸r̴e̸ ̶s̸o̵ ̸m̵e̷a̸n̸i̷n̴g̸l̵e̵s̶s̴ ̸w̶h̵e̸n̸ ̷s̸p̶o̴k̶e̵n̴ ̷t̴o̴ ̸t̵h̷e̸ ̸w̶e̴a̴k̸.̴" The titanic wolf rumbled, and a tendril of shadow extended out of the side of its neck, before whipping towards the trembling wolf at a speed that was completely invisible to its naked eyes, both of which refused to leave the titan's paws, each bigger than its entire body.
Yet instead of the tendril annihilating the wolf, it simply passed through its chest, and connected to its soul, prodding around like a needle. A vague feeling of violation, of terrible, terrible discomfort swept through the core of its very being, and the wolf shuffled, trying to make itself even smaller, hoping that it could just escape the odd nightmare it was stuck in.
Not a nightmare. A simple thought invaded its mind as if it was its own, like a reply, and it stopped thinking, every ounce of its attention focused on the visual aspect of emptiness in front of it, clearing its mind. Yet, the thoughts continued to come.
Impressive, to empty your mind like that while so terribly frightened. You could have been a monk, were you a human like your charge.
Human. The two-leggers were called humans?
Yes, but that doesn't matter. You do not understand the gravity of what just happened. Child of Fenrir, Devourer of The Maw, it has been a long time since I last saw one of you.
The tone was... soft, laced with history and feelings it had never felt, wondrous and expressive in ways mere thoughts and sounds couldn't be.
The being tried to further invade its mind and try to plant something, and the wolf's meager mental resistances raised as it tried to force the being out of its mind and soul, yet the 'battle' inside its mind might as well have been an ant trying to hold back a dragon.
But the being did stop.
Hm. Have it your way. I'll just 'speak'. Its thoughts, whether they were its own right now or not, rung with amusement. Now, allow me to give you another choice. You did the work of one of my guides by accident, without being able to understand what you were agreeing to. That odd rune in your skull prevented me from putting the information of what each choice presented into you, at least not without killing you on the spot.
What that choice was, was to become one of my own. Or to reject the responsibility and opportunity that that man had given you, and forever be barred from entering Oblivion, doomed for your soul to continue reincarnating throughout the cosmos, unaware of your past lives until the very moment your soul detaches from your vessel, only to forget once more the moment you begin again. The curse of life, discarded.
The wolf squirmed, but remained in its submissive pose, its mind swimming with questions that the being saw, but left unanswered, almost amused at the wolf still uselessly trying to force it out of its head.
You are too small minded to even understand most of the words and concepts I'm saying, and I can only shove so much knowledge into your skull without breaking you when there's another influence already in there. Normally, this wouldn't matter. But I will admit to bias. I miss Fenrir's children. They brought me so many...
I will give you a choice, a clear one.
For bringing me this man's soul, saving my Guides the tedium of doing this themselves, for being one of, and the last of Fenrir's pureblooded children, for involuntarily giving me something new to see, you can take this man's toll, a fraction of his soul, and grow your own with it. Additionally, I will give you a little gift of my own, and send you back to the corporeal realm where you belong.
Or, you can commit to the choice you've already made, and become one of my guides.
A vague notion of eternal servitude, the endless march of time, and the power it could gain from becoming a guide, all briefly flashed before its eyes.
A thrum of disappointment passed through the being, and directly into the wolf.
I can see your answer before you even think of it. But you are young, and I'll give you another chance, when your time runs out. For now, so be it. Simply think of me when you die, and I shall welcome you. Consider all this as close to an apology as you will ever get out of a deity. Goodbye, little pup. May you be as great as your origin, should the world allow it.
The faint, near imperceptible tether connected to its soul was severed, and the intrusive presence in its mind and soul faded.
And just like that, the world returned as if nothing ever happened in less time than it took to blink, and the wolf stood frozen in place, barely breathing. For a few minutes, it stood still, terrified, wondering if the titan was still watching, waiting for its reaction, for an excuse to squash it like a bug. Experimentally, it got up on trembling legs, and looked around.
There was something small and squirming in its chest, like a new limb suddenly grown overnight, but beyond that, everything was... alright.
Nothing had changed, the being from before vanished like a particularly vivid nightmare.
Even if it wasn't.
The wolf swallowed, and after only one more moment of hesitation, it got to work on cutting through the human's clothes, hooking its canines into the straps of the mask and ripping through them with shocking ease. A few tugs later, the human's bulky skin-cover was removed and ripped apart, and with one last nervous glance at its surroundings, it bit down on the human's neck.
Like its fangs weren't even there, its gums very suddenly impacted rapidly cooling skin, and for a moment it panicked, thinking it had somehow lost its teeth and didn't notice. It recoiled, and watched the red gashes where its canines had ripped the human's neck to ribbons from the motion. Just to be sure, it ran its tongue over its teeth, and with its worries assuaged, it bit down once more, ripping chunks of meat out of the human's neck and into its gullet. In less than a minute, it snapped its spine like a twig, dragging the head to hold it down between its two front paws.
Five minutes of crunching bone later, it threw its head back and gulped down the last spinal disk attached to the head, and got to work on the body.
Realistically it knew it should be beyond full, puking its guts out from overeating. Instinctually, it knew that it shouldn't be gorging itself so much after starving for its entire life. Yet, even as its teeth tore apart the human's rib cage as if it was barely there, and started ripping out organs, it simply couldn't be sated. A shiver of primal pleasure ran through its body, and something in its mind stirred, churning and bubbling and hissing in its ringing ears.
Its mind and body both howled for more, so the wolf continued, uncaring of how utterly impossible it was for it to single handedly consume a human whole. Its biology was closer to the rat than it would have expected, with the lungs, heart and intestines being roughly in the same area.
Yet, it gave that thought nothing but a passing consideration before it rammed its snout into the human's chest, and started devouring every organ of its upper body, intoxicating crimson bathing its tongue, soothing its parched throat, filling it with energy. After it had consumed the heart,the flesh and collarbones, it turned down and shoved its snout into its intestines. Gripping them between its teeth, it began to pull them out.
In and out, over and over until its neck started getting sore from the motion, until finally, a pile of bloody intestines was laid out next to the human's hips, and with one sharp tug, the intestine pulled on the stomach, and the human's organs collapsed as any semblance of structure and order was abandoned from losing their base. Livers, flesh, small and big intestine, it all blurred together into a euphoric ecstasy as it binged on the flesh of a man that was alive mere moments ago.
For another ten minutes, it simply devoured everything mildly squishy looking before it, only barely remembering to hurriedly glance around for any prying eyes.
Twenty minutes later, it was halfway down the human's spine, licking and devouring every tiny chunk of bone and meat that the human had, its tiny snout and even smaller teeth struggling with the bigger bones and muscles of a human large enough that it could have curled up into its chest cavity and taken a nap in it.
Its stomach churned, so full it should have burst ten times over, yet its belly had barely moved, an odd sensation of discomfort and exertion being the only thing that changed about its insides.
The scent of tangy iron and death hung thick in the air around the chem-scorched cobbles of the alley.
Another fifteen minutes later, it finally got to the legs, struggling to pull them out of their odd extra skin, which was disgusting and made its stomach hurt. Its ears were ringing, a faint, repeating whistle rhythmic to the drumming of its heart slamming into its ribs. As its mind screamed to eat, eat, devour and consume without a care in the world, its frustration grew, until it eventually decided to just tear the extra skin off with its teeth like before.
The bulky, lead-lined boots and shin guards were caked in burning river fluids, but it didn't care, clamping its small jaws around the shin and raking its teeth through the metal with only a mild feeling of strain, like cutting through half-melted meat.
But its canines were too small to pierce through the thick metal, and the more it raked its canines through it, the more jagged it became, and the more sharp pieces of metal pierced and cut its gums when its teeth nearly effortlessly sank to the base.
With a snarl of frustration, it moved up to the thigh, gripped one of the exposed leg bones, and started violently thrashing side to side, hoping to dislodge the leg from its confines. Its razor-sharp front teeth only managed to cut off its bulbous tip. It stomped a paw, licking its chops after it hastily swallowed as it tried to figure something out. After staring at the other end of the legs, it dashed to the human's ankles, and tried to indulge the howling lust for food.
As its canines sank and hooked into the metal where some moving bits allowed the human to move its paws properly, a sound suddenly cut through its surroundings, and as if a burst pipe had covered it in cooling fluid, it went cold, freezing with its jaws stretched apart almost to the point of its bones snapping out of their place around an incredibly bulky, and incredibly heavy foot that it was somehow lifting as it raised its head.
"Renfred! You stupid, bumbling fucking gambler shitpit cunt! Where the fuck are you?!" A gruff human voice screamed from just around the corner, and the wolf stood in place dumbly as it turned to look at the deafening roar, its fur standing on end with such intensity that it almost hurt its skin.
It had to run, to hide. The human sounded furious.
The small, squirming limb inside its chest bubbled and writhed, responding to the wolf's overwhelming fear, but in the split second between the human's shoulder coming into sight, and its internal panicked screaming to hide in a place without a hiding spot, something clicked deep in its mind, body, and the limb it suddenly knew was its very soul.
A sensation like when it got shocked by the sparky water spread through its body, yet instead of pain, it brought satisfaction, like the sensation of an unused muscle finally making the neural connections necessary for the wolf to use.
How the wolf used the new 'limb' was less than useless. With nothing but the panicked thought of 'hide', it spread out of its chest in an instant, sputtering, dissipating and breaking, some parts of the feeling washing over its fur while others lost contact and dissipated in the air.
As if in slow motion, the two legger turned the corner, and froze.
Across a short, L shaped alley whose cobblestones were utterly soaked in blood and tiny bits of viscera, only about as wide as two men were tall, a small bloodsoaked creature with wide, gleaming pools of hazel stood. A limb covered in lead almost as large as its own body hung out of its overstretched jaws that had clamped onto the metal, covered in flickering, chaotic spurs and bursts of pure darkness, looking at an equally frozen human who stared back in muted horror.
The wolf broke first, hastily putting a paw on the leg in its mouth and kicking it out of its jaws that couldn't stretch further with a shriek of rent metal, and without even a snarl, it turned tail and ran so fast it had trouble not slamming into the walls of the alleys around it with every turn. It didn't know for how long it ran, it simply kept going until the shouts of the human in the alley faded, and then the sudden burst of strength it had obtained during its feeding frenzy started draining out of its body, until its limbs started buckling, barely managing to correct itself before it went off tumbling into a wall as a ball of thrashing legs. Yet, it continued running, albeit slower and clumsier.
Eventually, it saw a square shaped hole into one of the metal walls, where some sort of patchwork repair had taken place and promptly failed again, and it dived in without a second thought.
A giant mass of cables covered in some bendy material embraced it like a mattress, and despite its previously terrible experience with wires and sparking stuff, it couldn't help but appreciate the warmth of the pipes above its head, the cooling blood covering the entirety of its upper body rapidly crusting on its fur and freezing its skin.
With a mild shiver, it licked its bleeding gums, and after several lengthy minutes of no danger coming, it relaxed, its panting tongue lolled out and dripping blood onto the crimson-painted cables.
It shuffled its body deeper into the mass of soft cables until it wasn't visible from outside, emotionally and physically exhausted beyond what it thought possible. The moment its eyes closed, it rested, [Restful Awareness] rapidly bringing it back to some semblance of consciousness.
You have opened the Unique Path: [Hound of The Keeper]
Do you wish to follow it?
The wolf's lucid dream presented a choice, and the wolf focused on the symbols, trying to better understand the choice before it with all the caution and fear of an animal not wishing to confront something as dangerous as the being of darkness again.
Visions flashed and swirled before its eyes. The rough concept of The Keeper, sitting in its incomprehensible realm as it contained Oblivion, countless little threads connecting its soul to puppets who flashed across the wolf's world, and traveled through their chains to present souls to be cast into the rift of nonexistence, taking their toll. And one of those threads extended down to the wolf, yet it was no tether nor restraint like the others, but rather, a connection. And through that connection, the Keeper would accept a trade. The wolf could expend some soul to channel the essence of Oblivion through its own soul, and expel a weaker, dilluted and finite version of it.
The visions flashed, and the wolf saw itself hurling a small sphere of pure nothingness through the chest of a human with nothing but its mind, leaving behind a round, cone-shaped hole as the sphere rapidly diminished, until it exited through the human's back, barely the size of a tooth, and shot off into the distance. Another scene depicted a spear rushing through the air, the air around it whizzing by so quickly that splinters of wood split off and dissapeared.
And just before it slammed through the wolf's head and skewered it, a large, roughly circular film of undulating darkness quickly formed in front of the wolf, the blanket of darkness diminishing into a paw-sized hole of nothingness as the spear simply dissapeared into it in the blink of an eye, before fading away to nothing, a tiny bit of soul returning to the wolf. And finally, it saw itself use the odd thing it had done before, when the human surprised it, but flawlessly.
It took the essence of nonexistence, and like tearing its fur off, took away its echo, a harmless darkness that covered the wolf like a second coat of fur, turning it into a being whose footsteps brought no sound as it stomped on thin pipes without even a whisper of banging metal. And then, with fine control the wolf could never manage right now, it saw itself dashing around the lower canals as nothing but a vague shadow, barely visible by only the fact that it was moving at all.
Just as it thought that, the vision changed, showing how it looked when it stood stock still.
Or rather, it felt like that was what was being shown, because even the wolf couldn't figure out where its body was supposed to be in the vision, until a black bump on top of a nearby pipe several feet off the ground suddenly got up on its legs and walked off into the darkness.
The instant the vision ended, the wolf accepted with a sense of giddiness and awe it had never felt before, its tail wagging in its sleep.
-You have obtained the Unique Path: [Hound of The Keeper]
-You have Leveled Up. Level 0 → Level 1.
-You have unlocked Attributes.
-Attribute Points Available: 1
-Base Attributes:
Strength ( +0 )
Speed ( +0 )
Dexterity ( +0 )
Endurance ( +0 )
Perception ( +0 )
Resolve ( +0 )
Intelligence ( +0 )
Soul ( +0 )
The wolf focused on each word to parse their meaning, but the moment it understood that 'Endurance' meant something like a combination of physical toughness and stamina, it instantly chose it.
Endurance ( +1 )
The symbols continued moving across its dream-sight.
- Acquired Skills:
You have gained the Skill [Mental Resistance - Level 1]
You have gained the Skill [Soul Perception - Level 1]
You have gained the Skill [Mana Perception - Level 1]
You have gained the Skill [Mana Manipulation - Level 1]
You have gained the Skill [Echoes of Oblivion - Level 1]
You have gained the Skill [Bloodrush - Level 1]
-[Mental Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 1 → Level 28
-[Corrosion Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 4 → Level 5
-[Restful Awareness] has Leveled Up. Level 3 → Level 5
-[Iron Stomach] has Leveled Up. Level 3 → Level 4
-Acquired Titles:
Witness of Divinity: You have seen a being of divine nature in their own realm, a tiny glimpse into the truth of the world itself. Your illuminated gaze pierces through any and all falsehoods.
-Acquired Traits:
Timid (1 / 5): You have fled from danger equal or lesser to yourself multiple times. You are slightly faster when fleeing, and are slightly slower when attacking.
Scavenger (1 / 1): You eat the unwanted remnants you can find rather than what you can hunt, trade, forage, cultivate, or steal. You are harder to notice when intending to scavenge.
The wolf mentally went through all the changes and roughly understood what had occurred as it swept through them, its mind unable to read the text but deriving meaning and information from them regardless.
[Bloodrush] was essentially that sudden boost of strength, endurance and speed it had gained when it started trying to eat the human's legs, something that could be activated with a thought, lasted for maybe half a minute, and the wolf had to wait for a while to be able to use it again.
[Mental Resistance] was... some type of mental wall that would block things like 'The Keeper' from delving into its head, assuming they were a couple million times weaker than it.
The skills with 'Mana' or 'Soul' in them only provided it with definitions and ideas so abstract and strange, it couldn't make heads or tails of them, only that they were about seeing, and moving whatever 'Mana' and 'Soul' was.
It kept 'reading', and paused when it finally understood what 'Timid' was describing, after a few moments of focusing on it.
Was the human who was roaring and screaming equal to it? Or lesser? The idea was ridiculous, simply by dint of size. The human had towered over it, twice to thrice as wide and four to five times as tall, covered in thick extra skins and plates of lead. But the odd symbols in its mind were what had given it its newfound vigor, the very reason it was even alive right now.
If something had the power to help the wolf like that, not only was it friendly, it probably knew better than it did by a longshot. Additionally, the way the creature of darkness had planted information in its mind was oddly reminiscent of how it kept getting definitions and random tiny bits of knowledge in its mind, and even more reminiscent of the way the odd symbols of its mind kept seemingly pulling information out of the aether and into its brain.
So, maybe… maybe it could kill a human in a fight?
But why would it risk such a thing? There were more than enough other creatures in the nest for it to eat if it could even entertain the idea of attacking a human. It felt like it could definitely defeat one of the giant rats now, at the very least, so it would start there.
Its thoughts drifted back to the words, wishing to refresh its memory, and the information spread itself before him at the mere hint of its intentions.
-Species: Wolf
-Name: None
-Path: [Hound of The Keeper] Level 1
Base Attributes:
Strength ( +0 )
Speed ( +0 )
Dexterity ( +0 )
Endurance ( +1 )
Perception ( +0 )
Resolve ( +0 )
Intelligence ( +0 )
Soul ( +0 )
Available: 0
-Racial Skills: [Pack Hunter], [Quick Learner], [Devourer]
-Acquired Skills:
[Pain Resistance - Level 17]
[Infection Resistance - Level 7]
[Poison Resistance - Level 12]
[Corrosion Resistance - Level 5]
[Disease Resistance - Level 4]
[Magic Resistance - Level 4]
[Mental Resistance - Level 28]
[Electricity Resistance - Level 2]
[Restful Awareness - Level 5]
[Tough Skin - Level 2]
[Iron Stomach - Level 4]
[Mana Perception - Level 1]
[Mana Manipulation - Level 1]
[Soul Perception - Level 1]
[Echoes of Oblivion - Level 1]
[Bloodrush - Level 1]
-Acquired Titles:
Witness of Divinity: You have seen a being of divine nature in their own realm. Your illuminated gaze shatters all illusions, and pierces through any and all falsehoods.
-Acquired Traits:
Enduring (1 / 5): You have felt the chill of death multiple times, and survived. You are slightly tougher.
Timid (1 / 5): You have fled from danger equal or lesser to yourself multiple times. You are slightly faster when fleeing, and are slightly slower when attacking.
Scavenger (1 / 1): You eat what remnants you can find rather than what you can hunt, forage, cultivate, or steal. You are harder to notice when scavenging.
Many of the things listed were small improvements it wouldn't have even noticed or paid attention to had it not checked using the odd symbols and the info they gave it.
It still had no idea what soul, mana, and 'divinity' were, and trying to focus on 'Echoes of Oblivion' provided nothing but hazy images of moving darkness rather than the detailed visions of before, but it was enough for it to feel at least a little aware of what was going on with itself.
The second it had finished seeing what had changed, the process of deconstruction started, the human it had eaten being picked apart in its stomach and mind both.
Information flashed, embedded and collected, full of holes yet more than enough to understand to some minor degree of depth of how a human body worked. Where to strike, what the weak points were. Their olfactory senses, the range of vibrations that their ears could pick up.
Dozens upon dozens of names flashed past and into its mind, interlocking functions unwrapping and stretching for it to better see how they functioned.
And it was in awe.
The human brain's mental acuity was over three times better than its own. Their sight was roughly three times better, their sight range longer and with the ability to see new colors the wolf had never even seen before. It had some vague notion of green, light yellow, and light blue, but that was all it could really see beyond varying shades of shadow. Humans could see so much more.
That wasn't all. Their joints allowed for so much flexibility. They could twist their arms around in ways the wolf couldn't even dream of without something important snapping and breaking. The way their chest was structured allowed their arms to spread, and if the wolf could replicate that, or find some way to make its own paws do the same, its sideways maneuverability would be incredible. Its own body was built for rapid forwards movement, but if it could incorporate their pectoral muscles and arm joint structure into its frame somehow, it could have amazing mobility in all four directions. The secret was in the shoulders, but it didn't quite know how to replicate that on itself without sacrificing forwards speed.
But if it combined the best aspects of its paws and the hands of a human, it could climb and manipulate things so much easier. It could even use their devices, like ladders and the metal grips they used to drop down to the canals without it having to risk its life or waste half a day to descend. Not to mention it could use its claws to actually attack rather than just using them to gain traction on the ground when it ran.
Yet, when it entertained the idea of adding any of those useful features, it became aware of what it was adding them to.
Its own body.
It could examine itself now. It could see all the badly healed fractures, the infection that had rendered its left ear useless permanently. It could see the utterly indestructible material its teeth and claws were made out of, yet not its composition, or how to recreate them. It could see some of the things that made its body so incredible, yet at the same time, so horribly vulnerable. Even compared to a human.
A single layer in its ribcage? Why do that if its body could have another set of flexibly movable bones underneath the gaps just to ensure its organs were safe from small stabby things? Why was its stomach so important yet so exposed? Why was its spine so… fragile? Why was its tail so useless? Why was its natural lifespan so horribly small compared to humans?
The questions piled on and on as it mentally checked itself from top to bottom, and eventually it noticed something, a new growth running down the insides of its snout, slowly but surely. The antennae it had wished for. It was just starting, the nerves being constructed by its body, inert and only foundational, until the proper receptors in its brain were constructed.
But the visible confirmation that all the bits of this process had a true point, a real impact on its body, chased away the bitter anxiety of a body whose imperfections were all laid bare and criticized. However, as it mentally stepped back from viewing the fine details, it noticed something else.
Another bit of floating information in its mind. A jumbled mess of flesh, fat, organs and crushed bones, floating in nothingness, waiting for the wolf to tap into.
And tap into it, it did.
With as much caution as possible, it looked to the 'hormones' its body produced, and found the thing that caused it to grow, aptly named 'growth hormone', along with another more complicated name it couldn't quite grasp yet. It used the human's bones to make its own better. Stronger and heavier, if only by a little bit. It assigned the human's flesh and organs to be quickly digested, and gently nudged its body to produce a little bit more growth hormone, enough to grow bigger just a bit faster, but not enough to cause complications in its body, one that it wasn't entirely knowledgeable about right now.
Caution above all else.
It used some bits of cartilage to reinforce weak joints, some bits of flesh and blood to replenish that which it had lost from its bleeding mouth, and after some serious deliberation, tried to do something a little more complicated.
Adding more tendons.
If it was understanding the information before it correctly, tendons lead to increased muscle mass, vastly increased strength, and it was something its body could do naturally, completely on its own, rather than something the wolf would have to irrationally worry about crippling itself with if it did something wrong.
It took a long, long time, even in its dreamspace, but it eventually managed to mold a functional shape in its leg bones and joints for the new extra tendons to run through, with heavy, heavy assistance from the odd presence in its mind that made the 'text' symbols appear. Of course, it was just a sort of direction more than anything else, and the physical changes would take a while to appear, but it was a great start.
Those changes complete, it returned to its previous grafting procedure, and quickly chose to have its eyes be more humanoid in structure but not appearance, enough to be able to see more colors, see further and sharper and still maintain its superior night vision by keeping the reflective lining behind the retina. It thinned the nictitating membrane around its eyes, and made it denser instead, both to reduce the blur in its vision, and to not lose the extra protection the membrane provided.
It thought long and hard about the human brain, yet it was just too complex to feel safe picking it for itself with such little information. That, and something warned that it would have to change both its size and current skull structure to accomodate a brain of such complexity and size.
Besides, what if it ended up feeling, thinking, and acting like a human while stuck in the form of a wolf?
Even if it wasn't stuck in the form of a wolf, it liked being a wolf, for all the good its species did it. It didn't want to be a human, neither in its brain nor in its body. So as tempting as it was, it felt like it just didn't know enough about the structure to apply it to itself without breaking or making something terribly wrong.
The eyes were surprisingly simple, but that was about all it could really use right now, besides their excretion system for cooling themselves off. Excreting fluid to cool themselves off using air currents was an interesting design, but unless the wolf could figure out a way to be able to turn it on and off at will so it wouldn't accidentally boil or freeze itself to death by messing around with its body's poorly understood heating and cooling mechanisms, there wasn't enough information for it to work off, and its mind was already heavily struggling to understand everything it was being jammed full of, even with the odd floating symbols helping it so much. If it was awake, it got the feeling that not even a fraction of this would have been possible.
But why did it perfectly understand how cockroaches worked after having only one bite of them, despite the comparable complexity of their forms, yet the human body that had taken almost an hour to consume was… vaguely interpreted, but not yet understood?
Despite eating them, the amount of material on them was barely equivalent to the human's fist. Six whole cockroaches were barely big enough… to...
Six.
It was the number.
It understood cockroaches perfectly because it had eaten six of them, or so it thought. The exact number was half-forgotten, and it did not particularly matter the specifics, but it understood what it needed if it wanted to survive, and maybe even thrive.
It had to get smarter, stronger and bigger. It had to eat more humans, which it could only feel comfortable doing if it could at least double its current size. Maybe triple it?
But then it would be too large to pass off as just another canine, and the bigger it was, the more attention humans would pay to it, making it harder to hide, blend in with the other canines, and maybe even make them recognize it on sight if they caught it eating one of their own.
So… why even fight?
The human had succumbed to the poison, and died without the wolf even having to do anything.
If it could somehow make its own poison… or.. No, venom. But the only way to make it would be to eat extremely dangerous, poisonous creatures, wait for its body to create the venom glands, and find... some way to put that poison into the humans, and then wait for them to die.
Too… unrealistic. And scary, and risky. And lots of other things it didn't quite have the words for.
An ambush… it could work. Jump out of nowhere, bite a hole into their glass-mask thing, and wait for the human to die again. An ambush would be its best chance… but still dangerous if it screwed up.
It's only safe course of action was to keep running from danger using the 'Timid' and 'Scavenger' traits, until it could find another lucky break, and grow big enough to start fighting and hunting humans.
It had to be smarter. If humans could make such incredible things with only three times the intelligence it had, it could only dream of how much more fluid and effortless it would be to use its 'Devourer' ability when it understood the human brain structure enough to mimic it. Among… well, everything else. It had no illusions about its intelligence, and the floating symbols definitely helped it understand its place.
It was much smarter than any animal should be, but not smarter than any human.
For the remaining time of its rest, the wolf posed countless questions and clarifications to the floating symbols, most of which were ignored
When the wolf woke up, it was to the sound of approaching humans. Its eyes shot open, more than well-rested, and it quickly sank low on its legs, crouched and ready to bolt out of its hiding spot and run.
Its single ear strained to listen, and it quickly deliberated whether it should flee instantly or try and hide first.
Then its eyes lowered to the small, but noticeable trail of blood that led directly into the hole of metal it'd dashed into, and it decided.
With but a thought, it activated [Bloodrush], planting its front paws on the lip of the vent it had entered through, and kicked with its back legs to leap out onto the alley.
Behind it, in the distance, it heard the faint sound of humans conversing, but their volume was muted, their growls subdued and sounding… irritated, more than scared or threatening. It didn't dwell on it much, and simply rushed away, its eyes gradually widening as it realized just how good it felt.
Rushing through the metal maze with all its might, it let out a happy bark as its tongue hung out the side of its mouth, slowly but surely turning its sprint into a trot as [Bloodrush] faded, until it decided to stop completely, and examine itself.
Although it could see very little with its eyes compared to what it could see when dreaming, it did note that its bones and joints were a little less defined than yesterday, no longer like sharp angles that jutted out of its sides but…
Well, more like blunted angles that jutted out of its sides.
It did have to resist the urge to chase its own tail though. It didn't feel bendy enough to reach it anyway.
Still, it was ecstatic, and despite the ravenous hunger, it felt more than satisfied. It could barely feel any ticks on its fur anymore, its skin seemingly growing too tough for the insects by the combination of [Tough Skin] and the Endurance attribute. There were still a couple of those large ones, but once it found a rough enough spot to scratch them out of itself, it would be free of the pests, finally.
There was also a sense of long-lost safety in the fact that it actually had the strength to run away now. It did reprimand itself for running for longer than necessary, but it was a fairly mild self-criticism, as it had no idea how good those humans would be at tracking. They had a terrible sense of smell, but their eyes were great.
It resumed its walking, looking up at the towering structures of iron above itself, stretching on and on until the smog rendered it unable to see the ceiling of the cavern, giving them the illusion of reaching into a smoke-drowned sky.
Pipes and masses of wires ran between the structures and through them, giving its surroundings the sense of a maze in the truest sense of the word. One stretch of cobbles was a tunnel with a roof of pipes that opened into a multi-layered series of hammocks made of cables that went up endlessly, then a sudden drop into an open coal chute, and a pathway on the side that led to sparking cylinders, and it continued with no sense of direction or logic but number plates that the wolf could find no pattern or direction in.
The only signs of organic life was the rare human, covered completely in their extra skins and glass masks as they checked wires, carried things into the buildings, or were running around with some kind of humming, glowing device, moving it up and down the exposed bits of machinery they could find.
Interspersed through all this, were the even rarer humans who climbed up and down the structures without such a suit and just a mask, banging and clanging and fiddling away with every bit of their nest structure they could find, hanging hundreds of feet in the air and climbing about like insects, dots of moving black in the incomprehensible and seemingly useless maze of machinery.
There were still a lot of humans down here, but in comparison to the nest above them, they might as well not even be there. Even in the slow half hour walk it took to get back to the canals, mainly using the glowing marks in the distant cave walls and months of experience, it barely saw two dozen humans altogether.
It was a welcome change in pace, even if the air there hurt. It hurt a lot less after the symbols helped it, but it still burned, and even though it knew that being around this place would keep leveling its poison and magic resistance skills, it wasn't particularly keen on staying more than necessary. It would hunt around for a few scraps, then start making the journey to get to the level above, where rats could withstand the far milder levels of poison in the air, and it might even find a dead human again, with any luck.
Its level of success was not exactly staggering, but the difference was more than obvious.
The Scavenger Trait had severely understated the effect it would have. The dumber creatures, like the glowing flies, barely even noticed it, even if it shoved its snout into their prey and suddenly dragged it away. Stronger things like the predators near the tops of the rivers still easily saw it, but as long as it was simply moving about with the 'intent to scavenge', creatures of a lesser nature barely saw it.
In one particularly risky experiment, it tried to see how close it could get to one of the glowing predator vines before it noticed the wolf, and quickly realized that checking how its trait worked definitely didn't count as 'scavenging'. It would have lost at least an entire toe had it not activated [Bloodrush] in a panic to jump back.
Still, the amount of actual food it could find without having to worry about every tiny little squirming or frothing thing? It had doubled. And feeling a bit more confident than before, it even found some melted blobs of skin and flesh that were those black, winged creatures that it saw and heard squeaking around up high on the pipes, and ate them, only mildly regretting all the burning liquid in its throat. It would probably not get anything useful out of them besides filling its stomach, so ruined they were by the fluids, but any food was good.
It hurt and its throat felt raw from the liquids on the fliers, but it had a feeling all the excess flesh waiting in storage could heal that minor injury overnight. Maybe it could restore its ear too, but it was so close to its brain and the structure was so small and complicated that-
The wolf paused.
There was no real difference between one ear and the other, besides the side of its body they were on. It could just… copy what was on the right, and use the human's meat to create it.
But how would it get rid of what was already there? The injury itself was healing, the infection done and receding, but now it had an ear that was on the border of being dead flesh, taking up space on its precious head when it could fit something better there.
After a few minutes of deliberation with no answer but wild, unintelligent theorizing, it gave up, and spent a few moments trying to re-orientate itself as it hopped up on the edge of the canal, its feet thanking it for finally being on semi-flat ground once more. Managing to find a spot to peek at the walls of the cave and the blurry glowing things on them, it compared the distance and realized it was closer than it had thought to the spiraling stretch of chaos that led to the upper levels.
After an exhausting three hours of walking uphill at a snail's pace, it found a fallen gear covered in rust leaning against a dented wall, and slept underneath it.
The process of deconstructing the flier began, but it provided it with nothing but a vague notion of where its organs might be, and a name.
A bat.
When the wolf woke, it was to the faint scent of copper. Its nose seemed to have healed enough for it to at least be able to smell itself, and its fur absolutely reeked of blood. And despite the abundance of blood it was ingesting from the human, it was extremely thirsty, its throat dry and its body begging for some actual water rather than the thin slime that blood was.
There weren't many places for someone or something that wasn't a human to drink water from. In fact, its best chance was to find some leaking pipes, and lap up the water that formed underneath them.
After another hour or slowly trotting up a very vaguely defined path through the iron jungle, presumably made by the humans, it began slowly recognizing its surroundings and took a dip into a little crevice that was so tight even its thin body could barely squeeze through, and found what it was looking for, a perpetually leaking pipe that it had stumbled upon when looking for a safe place to sleep.
It had to stop and stare for a moment at the tiny green things flanking the puddle of water. After curiously sniffing and pawing at them, it deemed them safe. After licking up every drop of water it could with its unfortunately still numb tongue, it pushed its snout against the iron, trying to get one of its eyes as close to the odd green thing as possible.
Small as it may have been, it was definitely strong, because it seemed to have snaked up and pushed the iron plates out of the way to grow… out of where?
After observing it for another five minutes without any sort of sudden revelation to its origins and nature coming to its mind, it simply got up and walked in circles in the little alcove where the pipe ran through, alternating its stare from the humans' strange nest to its own legs, still skeletal but no longer to the point of it looking absolutely grotesque, where it could see its tendons poking out through its thin fur. It felt great, but that was only by comparison. It had no delusion that compared to even most of the other kin in the human's nest, it was weak, and still entirely too thin.
It was going to fix that.
Moving was a chore, however, even if it moved in small circles. Its fur was so matted by filth, blood, and melted together by the times it had to rush through the burning river on the few occasions it had drawn the attention of the more dangerous beings of the canals that it was simply too… inflexible, pulling at its skin with every motion like the plating of a cockroach but without any of the defensive capability, just heavy and annoying.
Thankfully, its sense of taste was still numb at best, which it wasn't planning on fixing anytime soon, deliberately directing the human's flesh to become its own and turn to better tasks. After a self-cleaning session that left its tongue feeling raw however, it realized that it would probably have an easier time just… cutting through its fur.
It was really hot in the canal area anyway, and the only time it ever got cold was if it was wet, or simply too starved to produce its own body heat efficiently. So, using its front teeth with the utmost caution, it got to raking its teeth through its fur like a human would a razor, mentally noting to prod around the [Devourer] skill with the symbols' odd visions to see if it could make itself more flexible. It could probably figure it out on its own given time, but frankly, it had only a vague idea of what it was doing, and it feared that making itself too flexible would end up making it less… solid.
Like its joints and bones could snap out of place when it didn't want them to, making any impact suddenly dislocate important bits of itself outside of where they should be. It sounded a little odd in its head, but its logic didn't feel wrong, so added flexibility was something to be looked into, but not jumped into.
Its thoughts were interrupted by its front teeth accidentally shaving off a thin layer of skin as well, and it yelped in pain as the injury registered, jumping back to its feet.
Confusion overcame the wolf, having thought its teeth's newfound sharpness couldn't be used on itself for some reason. Its bleeding leg was only a mild concern at the moment, only giving it a couple licks to clean the wound and get it to start healing.
Experimentally, and extremely slowly, it prodded one of its canines with its tongue…
And nothing happened. Oh it was pointy, extremely so, feeling like the tip of a needle more than the teeth it was used to, yet it refused to puncture its tongue, no matter how hard it pressed down on it, even when trapping the very tip of its tongue between its razor sharp front teeth and squeezing. It hurt, but that was it. It didn't make any sense.
Bewildered, it turned to the pipe of water, having only now remembered that its teeth could cut through metal since the symbols appeared. But the pipe was far too large for the wolf to sink its teeth into, so it turned to a simple corner covered in swirling bits of metal that seemed to serve no purpose, turned its head, and bit.
Without even the slightest hint of pushback, its teeth sank into the metal, and raked through it with a similar amount of effort.
Spitting out the remnants of broken iron bits out of its mouth, it returned to focusing on its tongue, pressing it into its canine with the intent to pierce it a bit and draw blood.
Two things happened at once.
Its canine went into its tongue just a bit, then stopped, resistance registering suddenly.
And something about the puzzle of the situation clicked into place through the haze of pain as the wolf hung its bleeding tongue out of its mouth.
It could control how its teeth worked with its mind.
Rolling its tongue back into its mouth, it turned to a support rod nearby, about as thick as its waist, and turned its head with open jaws, focusing on having its canines not pierce or cut through the metal.
And slowly but surely, as it closed its jaws, the metal was unaffected, its teeth raking against it uselessly.
It tried again, with the idea to pierce but not cut, and its teeth sank in as if through air. Experimentally, it tugged, and it didn't move even the slightest bit, its teeth firmly stuck into the iron. Then, it focused on having its teeth cut through a little, and with a mighty pull, it slowly began to cut through the metal. Satisfied, it focused on its teeth cutting through completely, and yanked back, feeling not the tiniest shred of resistance as its teeth just phased through the metal, leaving deep wounds into the support rod.
Then, with as much caution as it could muster, it focused on its teeth cutting through anything except its skin, and found that it could cleanly shave its fur off with no issue. After a few more minutes of experimentation, the wolf got back to its grooming, mentally pushing some extra bits of the stored flesh to heal its tongue and foreleg.
Half an hour later and with over half of its body feeling like it could finally breathe, it trotted out of its little metal alcove, occasionally stopping to lap at its leg wound. Shaving its fur had definitely done it no favors in the sense of appearance, it noted, as without the extra bulk of it, it looked even more like a thin layer of leather stretched tight over a skeleton. The extra bulk it was slowly getting from the human helped, but it was still slightly disturbing when every movement was clearly seen through its own skin, like its leg tendons tensing and relaxing with every step.
The majority of its backside was still unshaven, and its head and shoulders were too, for obvious reasons, but it couldn't deny that it had been a great idea. Without all that extra baggage, it felt a couple stones lighter, which certainly helped with its stamina.
Eight more hours of walking, interspersed with many short naps, it came across a small pipe that was full with the sound of rushing liquid. Trying to see if it could wet its head and back enough for the crusty fur to soften or get cleaned, it approached the thin pipe, only about as large as its muzzle, and hooked a canine into it.
As it smelled the foul scent of the canals, it quickly removed its tooth from the metal and retreated as the pressurized water exploded out of the hole.
Yet it was still just water, if extremely foul smelling.
Deciding to risk it, it walked to the rapidly growing puddle on the floor, and dipped a toe into it.
Absolutely nothing.
Half an hour of rolling around on the ground and rubbing its face against everything it could find, it shook itself free of all the liquid on its body, taking the opportunity to get rid of the few remaining ticks and other things remaining on its back by rubbing against some metal wire fence.
And finally, after another hour of walking, it was finally out of the maze area, the path before it quickly simplifying into an extremely wide rectangle that led to the floor above, around which were…
A startling amount of humans.
Its steps slowed as it watched the humans curiously.
Humans tended to go into the giant towers to descend to the lower levels, so there were rarely any people hanging around the entrance to what might have been the most toxic place in the nest. And if it wasn't the tower, they'd use some boxes being pulled up and down along some thick wire to make shorter trips that didn't land them straight to the bottom.
It couldn't help but worry that maybe they were there to hunt it for eating one of their own.
Humans were odd creatures. Some had horns, some had soft, peachy skin, some had tails and scales, some were smaller and had green skin, usually being led around by some bigger humans, some even had a mixture of all of the above from what it had seen, but the one thing they always seemed to carry with them when they'd get ready to hurt something, was an inanimate object. Some long pointy stick, some sharp piece of metal, maybe some of those glowing devices, or some long, oddly glowing sticks with crystals on the top.
And almost every single one of these humans were absolutely covered in extra metal coverings and having some sort of weapon hanging on them or in their hand as they conversed.
With mildly trembling legs, it stalked forward, but besides a few odd looks, nobody seemed to be actively looking for it. A little more confident, with hesitant but quick steps, it moved forward, swerving its head around as much as possible to ensure no sneak attacks, [Bloodrush] hovering around the forefront of its mind to be used at a moment's notice.
Besides some curious looks however, few paid it attention.
Until someone who was in that group of "few", loosely raised her hand in its direction.
"[Control Beast]." The woman said, her tone oddly curious as she tilted her head of light blue hair, wearing some form-fitting extra skins and carrying some sort of curved wooden shield on her other hand.
The wolf stopped in its tracks instantly, its eyes bulging as it felt a strong, foreign compulsion to follow the woman. It turned a little, its mind pushing [Bloodrush] to the forefront as it tried its best to resist the insistent desire- no, the need to follow the human's orders.
"C'mere, little guy." The woman - presumably, the wolf wasn't close enough to smell her scent and confirm - cooed, quirking her lips upwards from more than two dozen feet away, yet the wolf heard her nonsensical human speech and understood what she meant regardless.
As if bewitched, its legs carried it forward, and as a moment passed, it struggled to find a reason to resist the human's influence in the first place. This… this felt right, somehow. Perhaps out of sheer stubborn-ness however, it kept doing its best to resist, until it remembered it had [Mental Resistance], and with a mental order for the skill to rise to its full power as it should have done the moment it had gained the Skill. The human's hold broke like cut strings, and it turned, activating [Bloodrush] as it fled at full speed.
The woman let out a surprised gasp, as did some of the humans it dashed between, and just barely, it heard her parting words.
"That dog was Awakened!" The woman excitedly barked out, and the wolf saw out of the corner of its eyes as almost a dozen humans all armed to the teeth simultaneously turned around to look at it, their eyes wide, another dozen looking around curiously for where the wolf was.
Not looking back, it dashed through the streets with all its might, sending its claws the intent to pierce through the stone just a tiny bit to add more traction to its gallops. Some humans barked at it as it dashed through, under, and between their legs and coats, but besides a single dodged kick, none tried to stop it.
Five minutes later, it ducked into a tiny set of stairs that wrapped around someone's home, rushed up the thin pathway that led up to a place of yellow light, and found itself into one of those open, circular areas surrounded by buildings where humans gave each other things. It turned around to look for any angry human pursuers as it panted, and finding no danger at its heels, it relaxed, finding a relatively untouched and unseen corner behind a cart to sleep in.
It didn't like to sleep around humans, but with its [Restful Awareness] skill and their general apathy towards beings like itself, it could at least take a short nap to let its limbs rest up from the abuse they'd endured during its escape. As long as it didn't make more humans mad by breaking their Skills with [Mental Resistance], it should be fine.
It slept in peace, surprisingly, despite the constant clamor of its surroundings