《Devouring - Progenitor of Evolution》


 Devouring-1

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    Blackness...


    Emptiness...


    Coldness...


    Apathy...


    My last memory blurred in front of my inner eye, and the last thing I remembered were the blows and the stabbings. How I lay there in the side alley, my hands clasped together over my head, my body bent in a fetal position to allow as few attacks on vital organs as possible. The mocking shouts of my tormentors, my... murderers.


    And why all this?


    I had turned eighteen barely a week ago, and was living on the street.... I had begged for money, and with the few coins sparingly bought something to eat at one of the food stores, which already knew me and always looked at me with pitying looks behind... And the passers-by and customers, who for the most part turned up their noses when I walked past them.


    And just as I was about to sit down in one of my usual hiding places in a side alley between two garbage cans to eat the precious good in my hands, I heard the screaming.


    Only then, as I am always the naive and kind-hearted idiot who has to play hero, I intervened when I saw four thugs holding a young woman and in my head all sorts of scenarios were playing out about what would happen to her.


    And what good had it done me? Twenty-seven knife wounds, more broken bones in my body than I can count, and....


    my death.


    And here I float now. Motionless. Or do I even have any limbs left that I could move? I don''t even know anymore.


    I feel empty... Apathetic? Yes, emotionless. I should be scared, right?


    But I... I feel nothing. Simple. Nothing.


    Time passes. There is no light, only darkness. Emotions do not exist in this place, only cold, clear thoughts. Structured and logical.


    I am dead, and I am floating here, in whatever this is.


    More time passes and flies by. Are there seconds, hours, or even years or decades, which have passed? Or even just a moment. I don''t know.


    After all, there is no clock here.


    After a short time, or an infinity later, I see something new in the weightlessness for the first time.


    A light appears. And a dark silhouette is simply there. Black on a light background.


    I can''t tell if it''s a man or a woman. Or a human being at all.


    Suddenly everything blurs and I''m sitting at a luxurious mahogany desk, right across from the person I just saw. I still don''t recognize anything except the black, billowing outline.


    I stare at the figure with interest and tilt my head. After all, it''s the first time since... A long time? That something has happened.


    "Hello, David." Sounds an ethereal voice, which in my lifetime would have given me a proper goose bump all over my body. But now my head only wanders from the right oblique position to the left, and I continue to watch silently and with interest, eager to see what would happen now.


    The situation is like the best movie I have ever seen. After all this time in the Void, this encounter is like an epiphany for me. Pure excitement, so to speak.


    "Hmmm... It seems your soul has lingered a little too long in the interspace. We are extremely sorry about that. We really are. Unfortunately, there is an extremely long queue, and it must be worked through in order, exactly in the order in which the souls arrived with us." Explains the figure, his billowing hands crossed in front of him and lying on the table, while one finger pokes a little on the mahogany table.


    "I''m here to make you an offer that only people with extremely bad luck get from us in several reincarnation cycles in a row."


    "The normal course would be to erase your memories of your last life and enter the circle of rebirth normally. You forget everything, start all over again."


    "Or, thanks to several lives in a row in which so much bad luck happened to you that it actually seems impossible, you accept our offer of misfortune. This means that everything that has happened to you in these cycles, whether you remember it or not, will be offset and you will receive, depending on your karma value, a particularly strong body, a unique ability, or something comparable in your next life. And you get to keep your memories of your last life from earth."


    "But" David, as the figure had called him, felt a penetrating gaze rest on him. "If you accept this offer, you will be reborn by chance into one of the countless beings in one of the infinite worlds. You get your bonus, strength varying according to karma value, and start with all your memories. But where, or as what, is left to the wheel of rebirth and fate."


    And with these words, the figure is silent again.


    I don''t quite know what to make of this. I feel nothing. I really don''t. So I only know that it is wiser to accept the offer.


    I nod.


    I know that the figure across from me is smiling, even though I don''t know how to know that.... Anyway.


    The light behind the figure shines, and it almost seems to swallow the emptiness and darkness around it. It spreads out, and together with the light the table, the black figure, and my existence disappear.


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    I open my eyes. Or at least I try, but something is wrong, because I have no eyes. At least not in the conventional sense.


    Odd... I know in any case that I remember everything. And I can feel again, and I seem to have a body.


    But this body is definitely different. One hundred percent not a human body, let alone a biped.


    I am, a mole? What kind of a bad joke is that? But somehow I have to chuckle inside when the warning slipped back into my memory that I would get a body by chance. Even though I could never have dreamed of a small, blind mole.


    And as if my consciousness was finally fully awakened, a stream of information flooded into my little brain, which was like an upload.


    *System rights are being checked...


    *System access has been granted!


    *Initialization of the system....


    *Soul recognized...


    *Soul successfully interwoven with living being!


    *Energy structure loaded...


    *System successfully integrated with living being!


    [System trait was awarded from the highest level: Devourer].


    [Trait: Devourer]


    Enables the soul to absorb and integrate the special properties when devouring other living beings or objects.


    Adaptations of the host with said properties in physical, mental, or soul possible.


    *Reincarnation finished!


    Ps.: Do something out of this life!


    Um... Okay? Thank you. System, or whoever you are. Or should I even be grateful for that? I mean, a mole, come on.


    But I just thought it was kind of funny on the other side.


    And if I understand this information correctly, which seemed to have installed itself on an instinctive level of my being, then the system along with the trait was the gift I had received.


    The present body seemed to me to be only temporary, if I think about it more sharply. I knew immediately what possibilities were revealed to me through the Devourer trait. Not only did I have this wealth of information thanks to this system, no, with the help of this unique ability I could take on the characteristics of other creatures or magical objects that I devoured.


    The devouring itself did not only refer to the physical possibility to eat, but also to devour mana or souls!


    When I became aware of all this I could not help but be all excited and fidgety inside! Of course, a little difficult with a mole body, the stubby arms and currently still buried a little deeper in the earth.


    Nevertheless, I could hardly wait to incorporate my first properties me!


    Finally ready to go, I used my strong if short arms along with the claws to shovel me further through the earth realm. I had woken up in a small earth cave, from whose ceiling roots hung.


    As a human being in my former life, I would have had more than a little claustrophobia, but fortunately these feelings and emotions simply eluded me as a simple mole. I just wanted to dig! Draw long underground passages, and build my own cave system!


    Wait, wait. No! I want to DEVOUR! Oops, I really need to be careful with these animal instincts, it occurs to me.


    If I don''t concentrate and suppress it, there''s nothing I''d rather do than dig, burrow, and tunnel. But my soul, along with the memories of my past life, pull me out of the animal instinct. Fortunately.


    And so I set off joyfully. Or rather, I dig my way through the earth.


    I always linger briefly at some roots and nibble at them, only to swallow the disgusting stuff in my mouth. In my small stomach, everything organic transforms into a kind of energy and dissolves to merge with my cells.


    After a few hours of aimless digging around, I finally get the first successful message from my system!


    *Root network unlocked!


    Well, they don''t exactly skimp on information here, do they? Fortunately, just as I''m about to make another sarcastic comment about the measly info, I get that tingling in the back of my mind again and the information automatically pops into my head.


    Interesting... Sure it makes sense, but that could be pretty overpowered, right?


    The new ability was quite simple and straightforward. I could now access the entire network of roots around me as soon as I touched a root, tree, or anything else that was connected to the network. From my memories, I knew that trees in forests communicated with each other, that is, they could send short signals through their root network to other trees. And not only could information be exchanged, but food and help could also be sent to sick trees!


    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.In this way, the healthy trees often helped the sick trees, at least in a natural and healthy forest, and could send nutrients to fight vermin or diseases.


    And I myself now also had access to this massive network of forests! I could siphon nutrients, feel the forest, the air and the soil through the connected trees, and even communicate a little with the trees!


    Okay, even though communicating is a bit... far-fetched. Let''s call it rather... ping? I could feel if and roughly what was moving through the forest, what the weather was or would soon be, and much more.


    Quite pleased about this ability, I began to dig up the first time. So far I had avoided this, simply to stay in the earth realm for the time being and to be able to get used to this body in relative safety. And of course to snack on some worms, bugs and roots!


    Sadly, the energy and quantity of the small creatures was probably not enough to give him an ability of these, in contrast to the roots bursting with life.


    But nevertheless, I was satisfied with my yield in the few hours I had spent with it so far.


    As a mole, I somehow had an internal clock, which worked quite precisely, and could therefore roughly estimate that I had spent no more than three hours with my digging.


    And so it went upwards, where the earth became easier and looser, and I could dig even faster, until I pushed through a grassy soil and came out on a kind of small clearing in the forest.


    I could see only with difficulty, and everything was in a washed-out black and white film, but my tactile senses felt the surface, while my nose sniffed the fresh grass around me, which told of wetness and a rainstorm that must have passed along here recently.


    Suddenly, I jerked around as my senses perceived something else. A larger predator was sniffing and creeping along the clearing, apparently looking for its prey. Which could not be me, since I had just emerged.


    I watched the gray wolf, because that''s all I could see with my weak eyes, cautiously as he crept along crouched there and aimed at a point further ahead in the middle of the clearing.


    Only now that I knew what I had to look out for, I felt the slight taps and vibrations in the ground, to which I still had to get used to. A mouse sniffed the air and moved carefully through the grass, unaware that a hunter was already waiting for it.


    Not a meter behind the mouse was a hole in the ground, most likely the burrow of the mouse, from which the small animal had just emerged and was now cautiously walking in the direction of the wolf.


    Fascinated, i watched the spectacle of hunter and hunted in front of me at close range, totally absorbed in it and intent on remaining as still and inconspicuous as possible in my own tunnel.


    The mouse continued to crawl forward, and just as it was about to scurry between a few roots of a tree not a meter away from the edge of the forest, the wolf struck, and a short squeal later the hunter disappeared back into the forest with his prey in his mouth.


    I wonder if this is a mouse nest and the wolf is always indulging in the food source? If so, pretty clever, haha. A little snack paradise of its own!


    Well, but good. After a few more minutes of waiting, I was pretty sure I was safe, and I carefully crawled out of my tunnel myself, crouching down as small as I could in the direction of the mouse burrow.


    I stared down into the darkness, which was dark to me as well, but I could see more than one would think, due to my other much sharper senses, similar to bats.


    A meter diagonally down, actually following a mole tunnel, I felt some movements of smaller mice.


    Greedy once again to take full advantage of my ability to evolve, I slowly crawled forward into the tunnel but careful not to make any frantic movements or noises so as not to scare the small animals.


    I made short work of the mice, which had no chance thanks to my sharp claws, even if I still knew from my memory that moles actually ate nothing so large and rather enjoyed themselves with insects at most.


    And so I sat there, cut the mice into smaller morsels, and ate my fill over the next day. Time and again, I would fall into a tired food coma, only to wake up again and continue munching. Occasionally a rain worm would fit in between the meals, or other insects and larvae, which I had discovered nearby and which had probably served the mice as food before.


    And so my first days in the new world passed quite monotonously, but somehow fun for me, especially when I looked at the fruits of my labor.


    *Cell regeneration unlocked!


    *Lesser night vision acquired!


    *Lesser mobility gained!


    *Lesser flexibility gained!


    All in all, the earthworms had given me probably the most useful ability I could have imagined as a human before: To regrow limbs! As long as I kept my head, everything else could grow back with enough nutrients and time.


    I was also very happy about the night vision, because as a mole I could not see very well, and in the dark I had to rely more on my other senses like touch. Therefore, the night vision was already a clear advantage for my future evolution and development and came from the usefulness directly after the cell regeneration.


    The extended mobility and flexibility I had finally got from the mice, which enabled me as a mole unnaturally faster reflexes, a faster movement and my body slightly more unnatural movements with bones and muscles. For example, I could now turn my paws upwards unnaturally almost one hundred and eighty degrees.


    If I could have whistled, I would have done it now, so satisfied was I with my yield of the first days.


    When I wanted to go out again, of course after another hours sleep, when I suddenly trembled and a premonition filled the clearing. Something powerful had appeared, and it radiated a bloody and malodorous aura, which beat the wolf from before by far. Nevertheless, something was not quite right, because I sniffed a sweet salty smell in the air. The creature that had just entered the clearing was bleeding profusely, and a miasma-mana mixture in the form of a mist covered the ground of the grassy clearing.


    I was already crawling backward, but it was too late, and the miasma wafted into the tunnel, already flowing around my frozen and trembling form. The power that flowed out of the being outside physically and mentally was breathtakingly terrible, and held me in place as soon as it touched me.


    Immediately I knew instinctively that I had to do something when the purple glowing mist-like stuff tried to penetrate my leathery skin. Unlike before, this was the first time I saw something other than black and white! The entire mist glowed ominously and glowed and pulsated in a vivid purple!


    Oh fuck! This is not good!


    I noticed when the stuff penetrated the first pores and I felt how it attacked my cells and directly ignited my cell regeneration, which tried to fight against it.


    My thoughts raced and jumped around inside, looking for a solution. Until I inwardly face palmed myself.


    Sure, of course. Rather react hectically instead of thinking logically.


    And with that, I opened my little mouth and began to inhale! I ate the mist, and DEVOURED the miasma faster than it could float down the small earth tunnel.


    First seconds passed, and then minutes, and later hours, in which I devoured continuously. I inhaled constantly any miasma, and even when I became more and more tired, I did not stop. I grinned inwardly, and was once again amazed at this far too strong ability.


    At some point, less mist floated down, and what had been a flood was now more of a drip, and finally it dried up completely.


    Exhausted and barely able to keep my eyes open, my mole body simply collapsed on the spot, and I sank into a restful sleep.


    I awoke a few hours later, my muscles and bones slightly crumbly, and stretched my little body.


    Shortly before I fell asleep, I had received another message, which I now scrambled out of my head and looked at the information.


    *Complete curse immunity achieved!


    Through the constant absorption and devouring of the miasma, which seemed to come from an extremely strong curse, I had achieved a complete curse immunity, which according to my system information was something extremely unusual. Normally, one would first achieve lesser resistances or the like, but the strength of the miasma had apparently been so tremendous that the devouring of it had led to complete annihilation and immunity.


    I rubbed my hands inwardly with joy and if I could have grinned, I would have done it in this body. So there was only an odd grimace in my mole face, which would look rather creepy for an opposite than to radiate joy.


    Satisfied with my achievements, I sniffed the air and tried to find out whether the air was clean. In the truest sense of the word, and also in terms of danger.


    After a few seconds, I was sure enough, and slowly crawled up the narrow earth tunnel on all fours, until I let my wet nose peek out of the hole and sniffed again.


    The air seemed to be clean, and I could neither smell nor feel anything of the dangerous creature, which made me rise completely out of the earth realm.


    What I saw there would certainly have made my heart sank to my boots as a human, when I looked at the former meadow in the clearing with my mouth open with my black and white gaze. Where grass had grown several centimeters high before, nothing was left but ashes and withered grass, dead roots and so on. Whatever had raged here and had been responsible for this miasma had wiped out all life in many meters around.


    All the more I breathed a sigh of relief and was incredibly glad to have possessed my devouring, otherwise it would have happened to me similarly!


    I turned my chubby body around and looked at the whole extent of the destruction, until I was frightened once again and flinched briefly, which seemed quite funny with my extended reflexes. A mole that could suddenly jump back thirty centimeters in the blink of an eye had certainly never been seen before.


    In front of me was an almost four meter long corpse of a person, or at least what was left of it!


    The creature was huge by human standards, and if I had been able to feel something like fear, I would have peed in my lower legs.


    Dead skin flaked lightly in the wind from the naked body of the creature, and the head seemed to consist more of a bone helmet than skin, while above the temples and at the back of the head of the dead creature was a huge gray deer antlers, which measured in the entire length certainly a meter.


    Well holy shit, what are you for an ugly beast?!


    After a few minutes of walking clearly and emotionlessly around the corpse, I turned my head at a slight angle and stared at the creature thoughtfully. A slight rolling of the stomach suddenly became noticeable, and in contrast to all the previous things that I had eaten, the trait of the Devourer seemed to crave this creature inwardly.


    I could barely control myself from sinking my teeth and claws into the lifeless body like a rabid animal, and just about controlled myself as I took slow steps toward the dead creature.


    Slowly and just so controlling myself, I sank my teeth into the rotting flesh of the creature in front of me, and bit into it. I first thought that I would have to puke at such a corpse, but I was certainly not prepared for the pure delight and the feeling of happiness that spread in my mouth at the first bite!


    The tough blood of the creature tasted like the most expensive honey, not too sweet, with a hint of forest, nature and herbs. It literally melted in my mouth and moved rapidly down into my stomach to be instantly decomposed and devoured.


    No sooner was the first energy of this strange creature devoured and penetrated into my cells, I was overcome by unbridled hunger and my control slipped completely.


    In my madness and gluttony, I no longer noticed what I was doing and a kind of veil settled over my mind, while my gaze and my thoughts allowed only one thing; to devour!


    Hours, and then even days, passed in which I slipped back and forth between sleep and my feeding frenzy, barely in control and not master of my own senses and thoughts. It was supposed to frighten and scare me, but somehow I knew it was the right thing to do. My trait recognized the concentrated power in the being in front of me and knew that every second counted, in which more and more life force was drained and lost forever.


    And so I simply surrendered, but knew that I could stop at any time with all my willpower, if I really wanted to. But I did not do that.


    And I shredded piece by piece the corpse in front of me, ate and bit, cut everything into smaller parts with my claws so that it fit into my smaller mouth, and also did not stop at the antlers and the inner organs of the dead creature.


    The bones and antlers themselves were a problem at first, but were quickly solved when I pulled the energy responsible for the enormous hardness and density out of them and inhaled it, so that I could then devour the brittle parts as well.


    Three days and three nights after constant eating and sleeping without interruptions elsewhere, the being before me was finally completely devoured, and a system message greeted me.


    *Wendigo devoured in its entirety!


    *Wendigo curse of hunger recognized...


    *Curse of hunger completely resisted by curse immunity!


    *Shapeshifter unlocked!


    [Warning! Higher form detected!]


    *Do you want to use your shapeshifter ability to evolve to the form of the wendigo?


    YES - What a question!


    *New form has been accepted!


    *Initialize shapeshifting...


    And with these words I fell again into a black and deep sleep.


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 Devouring-2

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    Oh god... disgusting! What is this? Arghh.... Headache of Death. Not cool!


    I cursed inwardly and blinked as I tried to get my bearings and the sun burned my eyes. Apparently it was noon and the sun was burning down mercilessly on anyone who didn''t immediately flee into the shade!


    I rolled around and rubbed my eyes with my hands, but had to be careful not to scratch myself with the long dangerous-looking fingernails.


    Wait, hands?! I looked startled at my hands that ended in sharp and slightly curved claws and fingernails! And I had arms!


    Slowly it dawned on me again what had fluttered in before my feeding coma in system news. I had turned into another monster, this wendigo! Were wendigos, if I remembered correctly, not some mythical creatures that had once been humans and had been cursed by cannibalism with an eternal hunger?


    Urgh... I hope I don''t start to want to eat everything like wild and bestial now... Whereby, by the devourer trait I had already always a certain hunger feeling.


    BUT there had been something. I had resisted the curse or not? Hah, I was lucky!


    Slowly, I rolled over and heaved myself up on my knees and hands into a sitting position and plopped down on my butt. I blinked once, twice, three times and stared again in amazement and with my mouth slightly open at my hands, my lower body and my legs.


    I actually seemed somehow... Like a human being. Except for the gray skin. The claws or long curved fingernails. And certainly more! But still, HUMANE!


    I desperately needed to find a reflective surface to see what I actually looked like now. After all, a clear improvement to being a mole. And somehow there was more in me... something deeper, darker, more magical? The whole thing didn''t feel like a simple further development, but embodied untapped potential. How I knew that exactly, I don''t know, but something inside me felt like it was just a tiny fraction of what I could be now with this new body.


    With a wandering glance, I looked around at the place where the dead wendigo had lain before. There was nothing left, and my devourer trait had sucked out even the bones and everything else.


    Suddenly, I looked around further as I became aware of the difference in the clearing and the surrounding area out of the corner of my eye. Where before there had been a really idyllic little meadow and clearing surrounded by trees, now everything was bare and one could well have compared it to a forest fire! The meadow was no more, and I sat in the middle of a dusty and almost ash-covered clearing, while around me only bare and dried-out trees without any green towered into the sky.


    The clear, blue sky was deceptive when you looked at my surroundings, and my jaw dropped at all the destruction around me.


    What the hell? It was all that purple miasma mist, wasn''t it? And I just... ate it? Urgh... I''m so glad I didn''t see that under the ground before, or I would have run away in a panic! And if I had run away and later devoured the wendigo, I would have caught the curse! Ohhhh fuck, how lucky can you be!


    Mentally thanking all the good spirits and gods, I pushed myself up, trembling slightly, still weak on my legs, and stood on two legs for the first time since my arrival here in this world. And it felt so gooooooood!


    How I had missed the feeling! Yes, as a mole it had also been fun, and something new, but I''m used to walking around on two legs, having two hands and a head. Now it just feels soooo much.... better.


    I looked down at my arms and hands again, fascinated, and turned them slightly back and forth in the sunlight, while my light gray skin seemed to reflect the sun slightly, even if it wasn''t like the glittery vampire movies he had seen in many an advertisement in his old life!


    If I judged correctly, I had also grown quite a bit and was now about thirty centimeters off the ground, at least a rough estimate.


    Still excited about this unexpected development, I remembered what else I had unlocked. Something about shapeshifters. Instinctively, I knew again, as if the information had always been there and had been uploaded directly into my subconscious, what it meant.


    I could, not as I first thought with the name, simply take on any shapes, but rather physical properties of everything I ate! This meant that I had achieved a perfect harmony between shapeshifter and devourer, and could now not only assimilate the properties and abilities of all organic or magical things, but from now on also the physical characteristics! So, as far as I know, if I devoured enough humans, I not only gained their properties, but with enough cell samples I could also transform into a human with any appearance. If that''s not overpowered, I don''t know what is. Feels a bit like cheating, but do I care? Nope!


    Next, I checked my emotional side, which I had completely lacked as a mole, and noticed that I actually felt something more, even if it was more delicate and still with a strong tendency towards eating. Whether I developed more emotions when I turned into thinking and more compassionate beings? Or devoured them? Creepy thought! I was actually quite content with it, as it is now. I still knew from my old life, how emotions can degenerate and backfire, and preferred a logical and calculated understanding as I had him now at the time.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    And I don''t even want to start with my hero complex, which had arisen from emotions and had cost me my past life...


    Pah, thoughts for my future self.


    Visibly pleased with myself, I took my first steps forward, which at first were more like stumbling than actual steps, but after a few minutes limping across the former clearing, I quickly caught myself and got used to it.


    Now, to my next goal! So, besides devouring more, becoming more powerful, and enjoying my life of course; finding a water surface and finally seeing what I looked like!


    I sniffed instinctively in the air, and was only briefly startled why I did that, until I perceived various smells. And not only my smell had improved extremely, but also my hearing, that brought me distant rustling and even the quietest wind closer.


    Further away to my right I heard a soft bubbling, which sounded to me damn like a small creek or river. With the new goal and nothing else interesting far and wide to do, I wandered off in the direction of the running water, which I could hear from this direction further away.


    On the way, I passed the dead trees and wondered if at some point I could also secrete such a deadly miasma that simply killed everything in a wide radius around it. Hopefully, of course, in a controlled way, because I didn''t always want to destroy everything living around me. I had a slight jump in my step and drove with my claws experimentally over the bark of the dead trees, and noticed very much to my satisfaction how easily my good five centimeter long claws at the end of my fingers gently penetrated like butter into the dead wood and drew furrows.


    It was really remarkable and I had a childlike desire to try out everything possible with my body and to explore the limits. After all, it was good to know one''s limits, especially if it gave me exactly the advantage I needed in a fight for life and death.


    So I scratched playfully and with great pleasure over the various surfaces that I came across on the way, jumped in zig zag back and forth, tested my jump height, and sprinted short distances to test my speed.


    Overall, it was remarkable how good my sense of balance seemed to be, how stretchy and flexible this body was, and how good and easy it felt to perform any movement, no matter how small or large. When I pressed against stones, I couldn''t do much with my current strength, but as soon as I used my claws, every surface that had been natural to me simply melted away like butter. And I didn''t just mean the claws on my hands, but also on my feet! And the most spectacular thing I found out while experimenting was that I could vary this melting under my claws and thus even crawl up surfaces on all fours!


    I imagined the horror movie posters from my old life, where small children like creatures crawled along the walls and ceilings, and with how much terror I had always felt only at these images. And now? Now I was such a monstrous creature myself! Simply marvelous! I could not suppress a laugh and giggle, and even in my child''s voice resonated a dangerous deep undertone, which would have simply scared me as a human.


    After a total of twenty minutes of running, stopping, experimenting, testing and everything else I had done along the way, I finally came to a greener part of the forest, which had gradually shown fewer signs of the miasma and was now completely gone. A small one meter wide stream greeted me, and I grinned with anticipation at finally being able to see my outside completely. With a quick glance around and checking that I was indeed alone, I took the last steps towards the water.


    What greeted me in the shallow water with only a slight current in the surface made me grin even wider.


    Exactly what I had expected from a real wendigo, and not from this emaciated version on the clearing, greeted me with an evil-looking grin in the water surface.


    My head consisted of a bony skull, which, however, looked like a skin and moved along with my grin and blink, while two white antlers stuck out above my sleepers and protruded a good ten centimeters above my head, slightly turned. My head was not at all human-like and more like a beast bent forward, as was the case with a horse''s skull, and bloody tattoos decorated the white skull from the forehead down to my mouth, which showed crocodile-like round teeth when I opened my mouth as if to bite.


    Just below my head, the unnaturally mobile bone skull ended and merged seamlessly into a light gray skin and from there into my shoulders and arms. On my shoulders, dangerous-looking bony spikes protruded, the top ones seeming to point dangerously forward, and the rest running in a row from both shoulders to the middle of my back, where they became smaller and smaller until they ended in my spine.


    My body itself was more masculine in shape it seemed, especially when you looked at the genitals, and besides the gray skin showed scattered black hair, almost as if a black wolf fur would develop in the future.


    It was just interesting to see me like this and I playfully tried out various dangerous looking poses and grimaces, which would surely make every little child and most adults run away screaming. Especially when I thought about how abysmally creepy my deep child''s voice sounded and the mental cinema, as I crawled over walls and ceilings to get to my victims and to hunt them.


    Did these thoughts make me feel bad? No, not at all, I noticed. Somehow, as I had already noticed, I lacked a kind of emotional, moral and ethical compass. I was what I was. An all-consuming and all-consuming monster that would grow stronger and more powerful with every happen.


    But that didn''t mean that I would walk around stupidly and just kill everyone. I knew exactly that I would have to proceed strategically and cleverly in order not to attract attention. Such a mass disappearance of creatures of any kind in an area would be noticed soon enough if I was not careful!


    I giggled again and bared my teeth. Satisfied with my final performance, I took a few steps back and stretched my new body as I had seen athletes do in the billboards preparing for their competitions. My inner bones cracked and I shook myself comfortably as my muscles, tendons and bones warmed up and relaxed.


    And now it was time to hunt, feast, consume, and see what skills and external changes I could make to my body!


    <hr>

 Devouring-3

    <hr>


    I tore with all my might and my head pulled the tendons and the flesh between my teeth out completely with another yank, which ended in a loud tearing noise. The lifeblood of the stag flowed down my throat and I swallowed loudly and joyfully while my stomach continued to digest and process everything I sent down my throat.


    Some time later and many pleasant shudders reminiscent of ecstasy, I amazingly easily broke the antlers of the stag in two with my jaws and crumbled everything into easy to swallow small pieces in my mouth, so as not to waste even a little of my meal.


    With a loud belch that sounded more like a horrible monster than a humanoid human being, I fell backwards onto my butt and lay backwards on the forest floor with my arms outstretched.


    Soooooo good! Was my only thought as my little tummy made gurgling noises, shrinking steadily but slowly as it digested the whole two hundred kilogram deer. I had grown in the meantime, even if it was surprisingly little compared to all the creatures that I had already digested! My height from foot to head now measured almost forty centimeters, a full ten more than at the beginning of my transformation. But where all the food disappeared to, I could not determine with the best will in the world. Especially when I thought about how many animals and various monsters I had eaten in the last week. Ten centimeters may have sounded like a lot for that period of time, but only if you didn''t think about the fact that I had certainly digested two tons of organic material in the meantime.


    There had to be some kind of transformation inside my stomach, because I couldn''t imagine where all the mass had gone. Maybe converted into mana? Or into a higher density of my body?


    Thinking of all the delicious meals I had eaten, I looked again at my old and new achievements since my evolution into a Wendigo.


    *Bone structure and density massively increased!


    *Cell regeneration strengthened!


    *Cell regeneration increased!


    *Bat wings gained!


    *Sense of smell massively increased!


    *Night vision gained!


    *Night vision enhanced!


    *Hearing massively enhanced!


    *Skin like stone gained!


    *Magic light learned!


    *Mana unlocked...


    *Mana integrated...


    *Mana successfully integrated into body!


    *Body vitality massively increased!


    *Resistance to natural temperatures gained!


    *Fur like iron attained!


    *Body imbued with poison of the aetheric viper!


    *Paralyzing secretion of the red huntsman integrated into claws and fangs!


    *Various shapeshifting options unlocked, depending on the organisms entwined.


    A happy sigh rumbled through the ground for nearly fifty meters around as I recalled my achievements. My voice still sounded like that of a ten-year-old boy before his voice broke, but had a subterranean and creepy depth that vibrated in the surroundings when I wanted it to.


    My once light gray skin was now darkest gray and covered with a black fur that was as strong as iron wire and could scratch the bark of a tree like sandpaper. My own antlers on my head continued to be about twenty centimeters long and protruded in small branches backward from my bony skull, while the tips of the bones protruding from my shoulder and back shone greenish and poisonous and seemed almost black.


    All in all, my body had become massively denser, stronger, and even heavier than before. I could inject paralyzing poison with each of my blows or bites, and my bones, as you could see on my back, could secrete a deadly poison at the slightest scratch.


    Even more remarkable was that the more I devoured other creatures, organic or magical, the more potent the poison of the aetherian viper became. It was almost as if my devourer trait would examine and exploit every biological or magical weakness, the more samples I gave it of the creature or magic.


    So I had had some problems with my first encounter with a lone wolf who was probably not on the road with his wolf call, while my poison worked normally as poison just so worked.


    When I then dedicated myself to the whole eight-member pack, the poison was already much stronger. Of course, the whole thing only worked because I injected a part of myself, the poison, into the other creatures. So my claw blows or bites did not become stronger, but everything that I produced in my body and infiltrated other organisms or magical structures became more and more potent.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    The same was true for my paralyzing secretion which entered the bloodstream of my opponents through the smallest scratches or bites, and the more of something I devoured, the more and stronger it became. When I attacked my umpteenth rabbit, for example, it simply fell over in a shake and twitch and died of heart failure, because I had experiementelly bitten off a whole leg.


    With another rabbit I had, by holding it naturally before, only a small sting of one of my claws used and it was for minutes like frozen.


    Through such tests on totally voluntary test subjects of my choice I could filter out that it depended on the dosage, but at the same time also on the potency and thus how much my devourer trait already knew from my opponent.


    I had also experimented with the other new abilities, such as my bat wings, which I could sprout from my back, or anywhere on my body, on demand. Of course, it was nonsense to let my bat wings grow anywhere on my body, but at first it had been quite funny to wave my arms while bat wings sprouted from the crooks of my arms.


    Unfortunately, much to my displeasure, the bat wings were too weak and too small to carry me, even with wings growing neatly out of my shoulder blades. To solve this, I would have to, instinctively just knowing, get hold of a lot more bats or devour other creatures with wings to create a combination.


    Especially considering the hundred kilograms of weight I now possessed in my child-like forty centimeter body. I was not fat! It was simply the density of my bones, my steel-hard muscles, and everything in total that had not gained in mass but in density in leaps and bounds.


    I sighed once again in contentment as I reviewed all my accomplishments, and a small swarm of mist escaped my mouth as I stared up at the starry sky while the last of it digested in my stomach. The nebula was also something new, but apparently something that older and more powerful wendigos developed. Just as the dead wendigo had exhaled a miasma as a mist, so had my growth also developed this light mist, which I could now produce with someone breathing out. Or not, if I didn''t want to, since this was also an element of shape-shifting that I could control and influence as I pleased.


    Suddenly another thing occurred to me and I pushed myself off the ground with a short jump and landed gracefully with both legs on the ground without any problems.


    If EVERYTHING I produce inside me could infect and harm other organic or magical things, what about my NEBEL? Could I breathe on a rabbit and paralyze it? Could my mist give off poison? Uhhh... Time for another test!


    With these enthuisastic thoughts and another idea I jumped like a playful very creepy child in a jump and run through the forest and looked for my next victim - ehm voluntary test subject!


    My hearing, smell and eyes had improved so much when I had taken on the characteristics of the animals and monsters I was devouring, that after only a few minutes I had made out the first rabbit.


    Joyfully I hung with one of my clawed hands on a tree and dangled quietly like a hunter from the creepiest horror movie five meters above the ground and watched the rabbit, which sat with a kind of premonition and put on little ears in the middle of the grass and had made himself as small as possible.


    Then let''s see how much you like my mouth odor, huh? It went through my head with childish curiosity, when I was in the fraction of a second on the rabbit and nailed it so simply like a leaf in the wind on the ground. With a grin not of this world, I approached the panic-stricken little rodent, whose eyes were almost bulging out of their sockets, and breathed gently directly onto the rabbit''s snout and nose.


    The eyes bulged out a bit more than before, the animal''s little heart raced to bursting point, and then abruptly stopped as it inevitably inhaled the white mist. The heart pounded only once every few seconds, and the eyes had retreated, even though the panicked look in the middle of them had not become one bit less fearful.


    The rabbit had to witness in stiffness what was happening to it and did not know how to deal with it while a deadly hunter breathed into its face.


    Almost three minutes later, about as long as a small prick with a claw had stunned the rabbit, the animal slowly began to move again and wriggled with the last will stronger and stronger, until it squeaked and the heart suddenly stopped, the light in the eyes of the rodent simply extinguished.


    Ahhhh, too bad. Now I need another test specimen for my poison cloud! Oh man... Well, goooooood. What the heck.


    Not a minute later I had found the burrow of the previous rabbit and maybe the partner, or sibling, under my hand. Another breath, this time not white but clearly poison green, came out of my nostrils and mouth, directly into the respiratory tract of the rodent, which breathed in and out in a panic, hyperventilating.


    Only a few seconds later, green veins spread under the skin of the rabbit, which stood out the most in the eyes that were bulging out and until just now still showed red veins, where now poisonous green pulsating ones replaced the red.


    Less than five seconds later, the rabbit twitched and jerked spastically under the hand and died in agony with twitching and white foam in front of the mouth.


    Interesting! So I can also exhale everything and do not necessarily need direct physical contact. Just like with the miasma of the dead wendigo, huh? Although that seemed to be some kind of curse, the principle is probably the same. Horny shit is hot. If I keep growing like this and eventually create mists like this, I can certainly mix them with paralyzing poison as well and paralyze everything in my mist circle! What possibilities...


    Definitely satisfied with myself and all my great new toys, I finally decided to take a direction and wander a little further than I had the previous week. The forest, I had noticed, was gigantic in size and I had not once seen anything other than this forest in the whole week of murdering and devouring. However, I strongly assumed, and hoped, that there were other thinking creatures in this world, other than the few animals and smaller monsters I had hunted so far.


    With these thoughts and a slight jump in my steps, I ran off, much faster than at the beginning of my development, and sprinted off joyfully in a random direction. Over roots, along trees, jumping over treetops, and instinctively chasing away every weaker animal and monster that became aware of my bloody aura. As I ran, I thought once again, as I have almost every day since I landed in this world, back to earth. And if I missed my old one, or what new emotions came up that maybe weren''t there yesterday. But nope, nothing new. I was just... relatively logical and cold when it came to my emotions. I knew in the back of my mind that I should be feeling something, other than the joy and pure freedom I was experiencing, powerfully overshadowing everything else. But there was simply nothing I missed. Or regretted. Or anyone else who missed me, except for the few elderly grandpas and grannies who had slipped me food here and there... But other than that? Nothing. Pure nothing, no worries, no scruples.


    My life on earth had consisted of survival and struggle day after day, watching powerless scenarios beyond good and evil, how others had exploited their physical or immaterial power against weaker parts of society. Rapes, murders, mutilations. Just as once one of the blood-hungry gang members in another part of town had cut off one of his fingers because he had stared at him in hunger delirium.


    Did he miss the Earth, his home world? Not in the least. Did he enjoy the mass carnage of the local forest population? No, not quite. But did he find it important to survive himself, in the sense of the right of the stronger? Yes, he did.


    So, even if he didn''t necessarily like the killing of the creatures, for whatever reason, his growth from the bodies of all his prey gave him immense satisfaction and gratification, knowing that this was the only way he could survive in the future.


    So he came to terms with it, emotionally totally unaffected by the fact that he saw other creatures as fodder for his own future and strength. A necessary evil to survive himself. So why should he find it morally reprehensible?


    Suddenly, a familiar smell snapped him out of his train of thought, and a sound of metal on metal, and short screams wafted towards him from further ahead.


    Blood hung in the air, and a desperate struggle was taking place a few hundred meters ahead of him.


    Finally, other people! Or, at least, other intelligent beings who were fighting? I''m not even a human myself anymore. I laughed inwardly, but was full of anticipation to finally see the first real inhabitants of this world.


    On silent soles I jumped from tree to tree, and the only thing that announced my emergence was a quiet scraping and scratching, as my claws effortlessly penetrated the trees and brought my forward momentum to the next tree. The sounds I made at this point were as minimal and soft as a gentle breeze, so I didn''t worry that anyone would normally be able to hear me.


    So I approached the dying sounds of battle in front of me and the trees became lighter, indicating the end of the forest.


    With a final leap and a quiet, imperceptible rustle, I landed in the canopy of the last tree in front of me and looked down at the trampled earth in front of me, which made a five meter wide path through the forest. An overturned wagon, apparently belonging to a merchant with his family and two guards who were no longer alive, was in the middle of the path, while ten dirty-looking and crudely yowling bandits were having their way with the merchant''s daughter, who was being plowed with the last of their strength and whimpering noises by a rude one-eyed fellow.


    When the bandit was just finished, the others, some of whom were still buckling their pants, jeered and shouted obscene approvals at the guy. But what no one saw was the tearful glistening in the eyes of the young girl, who threw herself forward at exactly the right moment, tore out the dagger from the belt of the ruffian and slit her own throat with a single jerk.


    Before the bandit knew what had happened, the naked girl was already lying on the floor, gasping, and after a few moments had a blank look in her eyes, which caused an irritable debate between the human bandits. They argued loudly with each other and pointed accusingly at each other, and mainly at the last rapist, while they were probably angry that the prey had dared to sneak out of their lives just like that.


    Interestingly, this also answered one of my own questions. I couldn''t actually understand a word of what the men were saying out loud, so I scratched the back of my head with my clawed hand, just below my antlers.


    I would like to get to the... extremely morally questionable fellows there, but against ten of them? Difficult situation. From a moral point of view, I was even looking forward to devouring this gang, since they then served a higher good, namely me! Even if I did not find the action of the bandits good or bad, I still knew from my old life that it was not in order. Emotionally, it had left me cold, but in principle, I wanted to somehow like to tamper with them. Just as they exploited other helpless people, I wanted to exploit these men. And their bodies. I chuckled inwardly and rubbed my imaginary hands.


    <hr>

 Devouring-4

    <hr>


    A short swing to the tree on my right brought me closer to the bandits and the overturned wagon, so that the majority of the men would no longer have me in sight when I grabbed the ugly guy who had just disappeared to pee on my side of the forest. I showed my needle-like teeth and grinned outrageously. Who would have thought that I would be so quickly offered an opportunity to "try" the ugly little fellow? But when the heated discussion about the death of the merchant''s daughter was still in full swing, this bandit had only waved disdainfully at the others and said something in this foreign language in guttural sounds. At least it sounded to me so! And had marched directly in my direction! While still other bandits on both sides of the path looked out for other wagons, was the man but considerably stupid so alone in the forest to disappear. I mean, who knows what kind of dangers lurk here! A wolf could come by for a quick afternoon snack, or one of those blood bats. Or even me! And my grin widened even more, even more unnaturally than before and twice as wide as he had ever seen on a human on Earth before, he was sure of it.


    So I sat on the tree as the ugly guy below me marched into the forest and grumbled something to himself and apparently cursed. A short swing later, I continued to sit totally unnoticed on a tree a little deeper in the forest, where the bandit was just fiddling with his belt buckle. Whether he peed here now? Ahh, no. Pah. He must be taking a shit... Urgh...


    With the monsters and animals I had always unconsciously not thought about it, but to see this person now as he pulled down the blood-stained and very dirty pants to lean with his back against the tree and let a shit, it made me a little bile high. I ate many things, but certainly not the feces of other creatures! At least not consciously, disgusting!


    My grin had only slightly weakened and now seemed disgusted consumed, just like my mood and inner thoughts it just gave.


    The pockmarked one hundred and sixty centimeter tall bandit grunted like a pig and had a concentrated expression on his face when the first piece of misery plopped on the floor. I had to suppress my very human gagging in disgust and held my left hand in front of my mouth and briefly looked away. Am I really doing this now while the idiot ropes one down? Honestly, really, truly? Urgh... Is there a better way or opportunity? Nope. Fuck it.


    I tried to block out the strained grunt and the rising smell and, holding my breath, crawled up the tree the bandit was leaning against in his active business, and started crawling down his back upside down. With deliberation and much effort, more mental at what was happening in front of me than physical, I was now directly a few centimeters above the head of the bandit, who was looking down and seemingly proud of his result. Disgusting!


    Without giving it a second thought, and just as the guy below me was wiping his butt with one of his sleeves, my left hand snapped down directly over the bandit''s mouth to stop him from screaming.


    So far I had not had the opportunity to test my strength against other people, but I was very sure that I must be stronger than this fighter, if I was physically very good even against bears and wolves.


    A muffled startled cry, as expected, came from the bandit as my black clawed hand sealed his lips and he grabbed my arm with both arms in panic to free himself. To my renewed displeasure and boiling rage, he smeared part of his business on the black fur of my arm, which in turn elicited another groan from him because he scraped his forearm on my iron-hard fur. I disgustedly ignored the head cinema that just shot through my mind and did not look closer.


    With another crawling step upside down my head came from above exactly in front of the bandit, who stared at me with plate-sized round eyes abruptly filled with fear and once again screamed louder, as if on a spit. I could even imagine with the absolute best will in the world how I looked right now in the eyes of the bandit, how I hung there like the horror version of spiderman right in front of his face and looked at him with a twisted unnatural grin.


    But instead of a kiss as I had seen it in the spiderman scenes on screens, I opened my mouth a little bit and extra slow to show him in full my beautiful little bites. He should finally see very gently, what kind of "kiss" awaited him, so with tongue and teeth. I would devour him, with skin and hair!


    The little guy screamed even more shrilly, and if I hadn''t pressed my hands so hard on his mouth, a cry of alarm would have reached the other bandits by now at the latest. But as it was, I just giggled in my devilish child''s voice and enjoyed the horror show to the full. How the man''s hair stood up in a jerk, how he looked at me with more white in his eyes than probably ever before in his life, how he tried to struggle and tear himself away, his panicked scream. I enjoyed it, just as the guys had enjoyed going down on the girl. I enjoyed my power, how my hand was the only thing holding the bandit to the tree with all the wriggling and frantic waving of his arms, but he just kept rubbing himself bloody on my hedgehog-like fur. I chuckled maliciously and slyly while my other hand slowly ran over the bandit''s forehead with the claw on my index finger, leaving a small trail of blood. Suddenly, another smell assaulted my sensitive nose and I wrinkled my nose as I smelled urine and saw a liquid flowing down the man''s inner legs from the corner of my eye. "If your flesh wasn''t so IMPORTANT to me, I would kill you and leave you right now! What a disgusting little creature you are!" I whispered with a grimace directly into my victim''s face, which probably sounded more like a squeaky and deep thing than an actual voice. I knew how I sounded, but apparently I had made a much stronger impression with my voice than I had ever thought, because the bandit''s bubble was now finally deflating as if the dam had broken. Oh, and I had forgotten about the mist that had been wafting out of my nostrils the whole time I was breathing and was now even flowing down some parts of the man''s face as he talked. With another giggle at my creepy appearance, I finally decided to kill my victim before the other bandits wondered what was going on.


    My right hand became a straight palm, claws slightly curved but all pointing in one direction, and with a single movement my hand sank unresisted through the right auditory canal of my victim, through the skullcap, directly into the man''s brain.


    A short, last, twitch and spasm went through the body of the bandit as his brain was pierced once from right to left by my hand, and not a second later I had a lifeless corpse in my left hand, which now held the body effortlessly upright at the throat in front.


    As simple as I had thought it would be... But to be honest, this one was the smallest and perhaps weakest of them all. And I should not underestimate the number of bandits. As soon as they realize that this one won''t come back, it will get hectic for me... Let''s see what happens. Now let''s clean up this disgusting THING before I can even start to devour it.


    With this short inner confrontation with myself, I crawled on three limbs, while my left hand continued to pull the human by the throat, backwards upwards into the treetop.


    There I tore the clothes of the bandit with quick movements and short aids of my claws from the body and wiped him clean with an extremely disgusted facial expression, while my head was as far as possible from the stench and I only wanted to look out of the corner of my eye, as I wiped the man''s ass downright.


    Not even a minute later, and with the help of a leather pouch with water that I had found on the former bandit''s belt, the guy was cleaner than he had probably ever been in his lifetime. Ready to finally be a real snack for me.


    I started with his limbs, but left the disgusting dirty fingernails and toenails alone as I feasted my way from the outside in. His butt I left disgusted in peace, while I had no qualms even his genitals to eat, because you never know what kind of properties I could get so. Maybe I could take on a human body someday. It would be quite strange not to have biological characteristics like genitals, wouldn''t it? Definitely. So that has to go in, too.


    But I certainly didn''t need the butt, nor the intestines, which reminded me too much of the fresh memories I had witnessed.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Five minutes later, there was nothing left but a bloody piece of butt that led to a large part of the bowel and then suddenly broke off, where I had started to be less picky again.


    A belch escaped my throat and I leaned back briefly in the treetop to give my stomach and the devoured trait time to digest and assimilate everything in peace. It continued to rumble for some time, and just as I sat up in satisfaction, a call came from the road, or rather the earthy path, in my direction.


    Before I could take a closer look at who was coming to look for his mate, the usual messages briefly obscured my view, which I briefly skimmed.


    *Human genes discovered...


    *Human genes are assimilated...


    *Mild human emotions are integrated...


    *Mild human emotions successfully processed.


    *Human body can now be mimicked very roughly.


    *Thought processes of a thinking race have been integrated....


    *Speed of thought processes increased.


    *Internal mana capacity has been moderately increased.


    *Sapient being skills were learned to the lesser extent.


    A flood of information swarmed my head and I suddenly knew MORE. My thoughts, I realized only now, had seemed normal fast before, but now I realized how viscous my head had worked before!


    My head suddenly worked as clear as never before, and a small sting of guilt flew past me as I became aware of what I had seen with the girl and what I had just done. But as quickly as the most minimal feeling of guilt in the world had appeared, it had disappeared again.


    I opened my hands for a test and watched in amazement, as if it were the first time I had been able to open my hands. My nerves, my reaction and even the feeling on my skin felt different. Just more real and more accurate.


    I blinked and another grin came over my lips as I suddenly knew how to swing a sword, a dagger and a club. At least roughly and rather clumsily, but I suddenly just knew! As if I had had these weapons in my hand before.


    Or how to make a campfire, even if I somehow already knew this information roughly from my old life, I suddenly had the MEMORIES in my head, just as if I had already done it all once here in this world. Everyday things flooded my head, even if they were only fleeting feelings and memories, but it made me happy.


    A renewed shouting suddenly tore me out of my euphoria, and I looked down where one of the other bandits, who had previously guarded the road on the right side, had stepped between the trees looking for his buddy.


    Oho, directly the next tasty morsel! Yummy. Was all I could think of after the flood of experiences and new skills, while the man cautiously stepped closer and looked at the pile of poop at the foot of the tree, which was the only memory of his buddy left in this world. Except for the clothes and such, of course.


    This time I didn''t waste any thought on stealth and just dropped silently onto the bandit, who was looking questioningly to the left and right with his sword drawn, almost as if he expected the dead bandit to call out "Surprise!" or "Boo!" from the side.


    But what came rather as a horror variant of a surprise, was a child-like creature from above, which landed directly on the shoulder of the bandit and just as the man raised his weapon in fright and wanted to scream out, a small fountain of blood splashed to the turd on the floor, when the throat was torn open by my right claw without comment.


    A bloody gurgle, followed by a gush of blood from his mouth, was all the bandit could manage just before he went down on his knees and tipped almost dangerously close forward into the remains of his dead friend.


    NOPE! I''m not washing you too! Stay here! I screamed inwardly as I slid down from the dead man''s back and landed on the ground with a soft sound, only for him to pull the man backwards by his clothes onto the forest floor and have him topple over in the other direction.


    With an annoyed grunt, I took an effortless sideways step and dodged the dead man as he hit the ground with a thud.


    Then I should hurry up with this one before the others come too!


    I pulled the guy sideways, now consciously ignoring the trace I left on the ground, around the tree and crawled with the dead weight on one arm up another tree and there between the branches in the treetop. There I cut and tore now more practiced the clothes of the bandit, used briefly a little water from another water hose, and consumed also this fellow in record time until I plopped backwards again on my butt to digest.


    This time it didn''t take long and several angry screams came echoing into the forest from the path, but no other person ventured in between the trees, wisely for them.


    I could not wait this time to digest in peace, and swung me with a small groan and partly full stomach quickly to the front trees to look at the event and the tumult I caused on the earth path.


    <hr>

 Devouring-5

    <hr>


    "I told you to keep everyone within range! Where are the two idiots, Sergon? Albovan the shitter is shitting his pants and just asked me where your two boys are." I spoke to my right hand and frowned in disgust at the thought of being surrounded by so many idiots. No one had seen it coming when the stupid cunt of a merchant''s daughter tried to take her own life and intervened!


    I''m just surrounded by incompetence....


    My heartbeat had fortunately calmed down again, even if I had to pull myself together strongly, not to wring my subordinates'' throats directly, when they had just stared stupidly.


    And now? Now two more of these lazy monkeys can''t be found? Heavens to Betsy again....


    Sergon was just talking to one of the others, nodding and turning to me with a somewhat fearful look, since everyone knew how quick-tempered I could be and couldn''t take bad news well, especially several in a row.


    "Spit it out already, man!" I called out to him as he unceremoniously sent more of his people on the lookout and came sauntering over to him with strained shoulders, as if his feet didn''t quite want to obey him or were too heavy for his puny muscles.


    At the thought, I grimaced spitefully and demonstratively tensed my upper arm muscles. Much to my delight, Sergon and some of the others who looked over cautiously reacted a bit more anxiously and my right hand even had to suppress a twitching of his eyelids, which he only managed half-heartedly.


    "Boss, all we know is that the first one had to go take a shit, and the second one was looking for his drinking buddy when he took too long!" Saluted Sergon almost, standing at attention and tense in front of him. "I''ve sent two more to get to the bottom of this, and our other men are finishing up the rest of the loot so we can leave immediately in case any adventurers are lurking in the woods!"


    I just grunted in annoyance and squinted my eyes slightly, but purposely said nothing while staring at him to build up some more tension and emphasize my next words.


    "Fiddlesticks! The memmen all just wet their pants! How should these arrogant assholes of adventurers know about this raid? They haven''t even found our reinforced camp deeper in the forest yet. No, the two of them have certainly run away, I''m telling you!"


    With this statement I snotted once with pleasure and for everyone audibly loudly, pulled up my nose noisily, and spat an unappetizing looking lump of unknown substance on the dirty path.


    With a sideways jerk of my head, I made it clear to the men to hurry, and stood with my hands clasped behind my back, while my glare watched over everything so that no one would fill his own pockets.


    My men had various coarsely woven bags and stuffed everything of value into them, while others looted the corpses and stripped and pocketed everything down to the underwear of the dead.


    I nodded with satisfaction and could not quite suppress a greedy grin, which even Sergon joined at my side.


    This raid had simply been another stroke of luck, and in contrast to the previous months in which his gang had had to keep a lower profile, almost everything had gone smoothly here. If one disregarded the suicide of the slut once, or the two deserted men...


    I was suddenly about to burst when I heard one of the men, who had just finished his bag, make a gesture to ward off evil omens, when a scream rang out from the forest in the east and made everyone freeze at the same time.


    I immediately turned and circled the overturned wagon, not giving a damn if my boots were stained with more blood from the dead horses and people or not, and squinted intently between the trees.


    My men all had their knives and swords drawn, waiting for my command, while they all seemed to be under stress themselves.


    Just as I was about to open my mouth and order Sergon to go and see what was going on, regardless of whether I would have been a coward not to go and see for myself, something indefinable flew over the tops of the trees towards them and landed with a wet clap on the western side of the wagon.


    The rest of the men ran back with it, completely forgetting the eastern forest, and when the first of his bandits took sight of the unknown flying object, he fell backward onto his butt with a scream and scrambled backward in panic until he was obviously stopped by the overturned wagon.


    "Shut the fuck up you sissy!" Was all that came over my lips when I saw this wretch widened with horror to take a closer look myself.


    When I finally identified the reddish object on the floor, I also inevitably took a step back, but immediately stopped myself and tried not to show any fear of my men.


    In front of me on the earthy ground lay not only the bloodied head of one of the last two men sent into the forest, but it was covered with so much sticky blood that I didn''t immediately recognize what I was looking at until I noticed the two white eyeballs that stood out under all the red.


    One of the other men pissed himself just visibly terrorized in his pants, while another ran over to the western forest and threw up loudly and clearly blubbering.


    As if all this were not enough, the man who had just vomited cried out with a gurgling sound, and when we all looked over, a black creature from my worst nightmares was rushing towards us, while behind him the poor bastard''s head rolled off his shoulders, and a red liquid dripped from the creature''s left clawed hands.


    "Men, to me! ATTACK!" I shouted encouragingly, my own slightly curved scimitar in my right hand, which I held tightly with only suppressed trembling.


    <hr>


    i literally flew towards the men, inwardly humming happily one of the film intro songs i had grown so fond of in my last life, when this had been broadcast for weeks at the premiere and then all around the big theater.


    One of the guys tried to stab me with his slow way and his ridiculously short toothpick, which only cost me a short ducking under it. One or two steps further and I shot forward again, barely spending a moment for the evasive maneuver, until I arrived in front of the presumed boss of the bandit gang and already wanted to throw myself at him with both claws.


    Suddenly, faster than I had thought possible, the scimitar held sideways came hurtling at me from the left, and I couldn''t quite dodge it as I quickly dropped to the ground.


    A hot pain drove into my left arm, and while backing away and re-examining my position, I saw with a brief sideways glance that this little human had indeed caught me and that red blood was now oozing out from between my beautifully black fur.


    I growled beastly, and to my infinite satisfaction, my uncanny deep growl had something so inhuman about it, that ALL of the dirty bandits made an inevitable step back.


    "Don''t let him intimidate you! Together, on it!" Shouted the most muscular of the bandits, the supposed leader, and boldly lunged at me first, while the others immediately followed his example and tried to surround me.


    "Grrr... Humans..." escaped from my throat more in a growl than in a reasonable statement, but was apparently very well heard by all, if one could trust the guards.


    The faces, which had already radiated bottomless horror before, now derailed every normality as the people heard my first speech attempt with the new crude speech organ.


    I smelled again the disgusting stench of another person, who had stumbled briefly while running, and now urine ran down his leg.


    Nevertheless, all the bandits reached my position almost simultaneously, and I had to feverishly find a way out, because despite my advanced development and new abilities, I was sure that I would not be able to fight the rest of the bandits in a bunch at the same time.


    Another pain, this time on my right shoulder, luckily snapped me out of my trance when one of the bandits threw his only dagger like the biggest idiot in the world, and now stood there weaponless. Before it dawned on the bandit what he had just done, I jumped with a powerful sideways step to the right directly into his face.


    Almost half a meter of horror and terror instantly scratched the man''s eyes out and ended his pathetic life in a loud satisfying bloody gurgle as my claws effortlessly drove hissing through his throat.


    I was already grinning smugly when suddenly a wave of fatigue ran through my veins and my limbs exuded a different kind of coldness.


    A hiss of another approaching weapon from behind just barely warned me, and I threw myself to the ground again, only to find that I had slowed down!


    What the bloody hell is happening here?


    The answer came with a heavy boot kick to my left side, which made me hit the overturned wagon with full force and sent several splinters of wood flying in all directions like a sledgehammer.


    "You like my specialty, you fucking beast, huh?!" Shouted the bandit leader manically. And when I looked up with difficulty, I also realized that it was his iron-reinforced boots that had taught me to fly.


    Suddenly, a knife appeared in the man''s left hand, and before I knew it, I was screaming as it pierced my right shoulder and nailed me a little to the wood behind me.


    He flinched again briefly when my scream sounded more like a creepy child than a monster, but caught himself again very quickly and pulled out more knives to thrust them through my other shoulder, stomach, arms and legs with further screams.


    "How do you like that, you bastard, huh? You think you can kill and maim my men?!" He yelled at me as I lay there bleeding and increasingly powerless with multiple knives piercing me. There was a searing pain in my bloodstream, and something must have poisoned me!


    "Even finally noticed what my weapons are poisoned? Fortunately, you don''t seem to be intelligent. And something like you slaughtered my boys???"


    With a wicked and satisfied laugh, he speared me through the stomach from the left with his curved sword, and the sword was even long enough to come out the other side with the tip.


    THAT PAIN! That BASTARD! I cursed inwardly as I wriggled screaming but only further tearing open my many wounds and only exacerbating any damage to my body.


    I noticed how my cell regeneration was working at full speed to protect me from fatal damage, but at the same time made me suffer more and slower pain!


    The rest of the bandits had now also formed up behind the leader and looked down on me with relief, partly spiteful but still fearful, as they looked at me motionlessly.


    "What is that ugly beast???" or "Oh gods help us!" was muttered and prayed as they stared at me in my full glorious sinister manner.


    A tearing pain distracted me from these brief thoughts again as the asshole of a bandit in front of me pulled out his curved sword again extra slowly, this time taking extra care to enlarge the cut with every milimeter.


    Blood gathered on the floor, more than I should have, and even this Sergon swallowed clearly, if I had seen his larynx correctly, when he noticed the phenomenon.


    "I''m going to kill you extra slowly, you fucking bastard.... Because of you, I have to look for new men now, and our base is no longer properly defensible!" Hissed the bandit leader, and came closer to me with his face flushed.


    I screamed again, as the curved sword left my body with a wet velvet, and immediately cut again, very very slowly, from the front into my belly.


    My eyes went black and then white, the pain the worst I had ever experienced, in my previous life and this one.


    I saw myself lying again in the alley, my heroic deed long forgotten, and saw out of the corner of my eye how the young girl I had saved from a terrible fate, gathered her things and at his distraction quickly sought the distance without looking around once for her lifesaver.


    I felt the knives penetrate my body and could no longer differentiate which wounds on my body came from the gangsters and which from the bandit leader, while I screamed like a spit. My lungs had caught fire and were perforated, causing blood to seep into my right lung.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    I coughed between screams.


    Am I dying like this, again? So much for rebirth of the extra class, fuck you all!


    Do I give in so easily? Here I can eat, I can become stronger, if I do not continue to attack so carelessly and stupidly!


    Do I allow this...?


    Am I ready to die for good...?


    Do I not want to live anymore...?


    My screaming had simply stopped, and the bandits were looking at me in panic when I unnaturally did not react to my wounds or the curved sword moving in my stomach as expected. Even the leader gritted his teeth and his eyebrows furrowed as beads of sweat ran down his temples.


    Is that it...?


    NO.


    Never again!


    With a cry, I suddenly jerked upwards, some of the knives on my back still stuck in the wood, while others remained carelessly stuck inside me!


    I grabbed the arm of this bloody hell in front of me, and pulled myself closer to him by his arm, while his sword emerged from my back again.


    I hissed and growled. I WILL FEAST ON YOU! YOU PUNY HUMAN!


    the man got eyes as big as round plates and suddenly tried in panic to first pull out his sword, and then to tear his arm loose, which i did not allow him to do, with my claws in his arm, injecting my paralyzing poison in heaps into HIS blood!


    This time the man noticed how something flowed up his veins and distributed itself inside him, while I did not let go of him and continued to work my way forward.


    Another dagger appeared in his free hand, and I could watch as almost in slow motion the tip moved through the air towards my eyes, aiming to pierce my head and kill me instantly.


    Could I let go of this life just like that...?


    NO!


    And suddenly something inside me, like a kindled furnace, shot through my entire being. My blood burned and boiled, excreted impurities and foreign objects!


    My muscles hardened, my claws grew, and my fur itself became much stronger and more impenetrable. My animal side screamed, wanted to be unleashed, and finally wanted to be let loose on the world!


    Could I really do that...? I had once been a human myself?


    Further such odd human doubts jumped through my consciousness.


    Was it important at the moment, or shouldn''t I rather deal with moral questions and doubts later?!


    YES!


    And all of a sudden something burst out of me, something that had been dormant in me since my first day and existence as a mole, and which only now burst out through the complete acceptance of my being.


    *Achieve final potential...


    [Trait: Progenitor of evolution] unlocked!


    Allows the devourer to shape and change his entire being at will, as long as there are enough biological or magical samples. Properties can now be further developed and evolved by your own efforts!


    Changes can also be transferred to others, depending on the expertise of the chosen feature or characteristics.


    And with this message in front of my inner eye, everything turned red...


    I tore the arm of my human torturer in two with my right claws as it effortlessly cut through flesh, sinew and bone like butter.


    Sounds of my prey were unimportant, and I blanked out everything, concentrating entirely on the kill. All i wanted to do was tear apart, to devour the world!


    The other bandits stumbled backward in panic, but before even one of them had turned around, I raced across the ground with the curved sword in my belly and a frozen dead hand on the hilt, severing the tendons at the back of the feet of all the remaining bandits.


    My wounds no longer hurt, and before I had cut the heel on the last man, the last of the knives fell to the ground and even the scimitar slid down, clattering, right on top of one of the other knives.


    With a bloody grin, my own blood as I briefly registered in my head, I looked at my work and bathed in the cries of fear and help from the wounded people around me, while the leader himself held his severed arm stump and rolled on his back on the floor, the shock apparently not as easy for him to put away as he thought.


    "Weak little people..." came out of my throat again, and it was already easier for me to speak, as if my screams had stimulated my new vocal cords enough to produce clearer sounds.


    Without hesitation, I went about my bloody work, cutting the throats of everyone one by one, until I reached the rapist of a leader.


    "Be glad... You will... live on... in me...!" Came out of my mouth in a hoarse voice, and I knew exactly what effect my creepy bloody smile had on the man before I sank both my clawed hands into his eye socket from the front, and when I had a firm grip inside his skull, snapped the entire head in two like a ripe melon.


    With an almost gentle clap, pieces of his brain rained down on the floor, while other parts ran down his leather cuirass.


    Meal time! And with that, still with a slightly red vision in my field of vision, I made my way over the killed people.


    *Voice cords amplified!


    *Human emotions amplified!


    *Adaptations to Devourer trait is performed....


    *Own emotions can be controlled or completely switched off at will!


    *Male genitals and associated internal organs fully available!


    *Sword fighting abilities enhanced!


    *Dagger skills enhanced!


    *Knowledge of makeshift tools and weapons now available!


    Urgs... I''m overeaten... Was all I could think of as I lay on the side of the road on my back, burping loudly. My stomach itself was almost twenty centimeters protruding, and the digestion worked at full speed to process the remaining human remains in my inner.


    Time for new knowledge!


    The knowledge, as always before, settled in my head all by itself, and I suddenly knew how to handle swords and daggers better, which would definitely help me in the fight AGAINST such opponents, even if the bandits had not exactly been the prime example of exceptional fighting skills.


    Next were the emotions, and fortunately I could vaguely determine to what percentage I wanted to succumb to human emotions, or whether I wanted to turn them off altogether.


    The genitals, on the other hand, were such a thing. Double-edged. On the one hand, I didn''t want to see myself as SOMETHING, but as somehow typically human belonging to a kind of sex, but I wasn''t really that keen on it...


    Well, then I''m a man for now, right? My... soft part, however, I did not want to just dangle around, which is why I constructed it so that I could drive it in and out.


    Another "problem" solved! Yay!


    And the last one? I suddenly instinctively knew how to build crude wooden scaffolding and buildings, how to carve or do other normal things.... Was that useful? I don''t know... maybe someday when I would want to sneak into a human society? Hmm...


    But the most interesting thing of all was the memories of the devoured bandits! There was a fortified camp further west in the forest, exactly in the same direction I wanted to travel anyway!


    So, another goal!


    Before I set off, my stomach as thin as ever, I rummaged around in the loot bags that now lay carelessly everywhere, and decided to fill a leather bag the size of a human head with all the coins and gems I had found. You never know, I might want to go on a shopping spree dressed as a human someday!


    And now fully satisfied, wounds closed, meal digested, I made my way to this bandit camp, where a few scattered bandit snacks left behind were waiting for me!


    <hr>

 Devouring-6

    <hr>


    *Magma veins attained


    *Fire resistance gained


    *Magma resistance attained


    *Magna resistance overwrites fire resistance!


    *Fire immunity gained!


    I hung with one arm on the tree, my claws sunk deep into one of the lower thick branches, and slurped one of the last countless magma worms in through my throat as if it were a noodle dish like ramen, and the worm a long tasty noodle.


    To be perfectly honest... I wouldn''t have expected that myself. I laughed inwardly with the thought and a fiery bloody smile formed on my face, presenting my white knife-like teeth in all their glory.


    After my bandit meal, I had made my way to the western part of the forest on the other side of the forest path to take a closer look at this bandit camp and perhaps pick up a few more human tidbits. And as I jumped from tree to tree, sometimes even testing my new skills and reaction speeds by jumping, running and acrobatics, I saw these odd glowing worms under one of the fir trees.


    As it turned out, they were worms with veins of magma! And like any good gourmet, I had to try this new dish immediately. The worms tasted fiery, but had a spicy hot note, and a hint of something smoky or burnt. Of course I had burned my mouth with my first bites, but as soon as the first worms were digested and processed, I had built up a reasonably adequate fire resistance, and with each successive bite of these good tasting worms, my own characteristics had swelled until I had not only acquired a fair magna resistance, but even a complete fire immunity! Hah!


    And after I had devoted myself to the whole nest of several hundreds of these magma worms, I continued in the direction of the west, towards my actual goal, which I had just set my eyes on at that very moment.


    Apparently, the bandits have proven more craftsmanship than I would have expected them to... Whether some of the robbers had previously had a profession as a construction worker or architect? Hmmm... Well, who cares!


    In front of me was another row of conifers and behind them I just observed the "camp", or rather lightly fortified buildings, met it probably better.


    In front of me was a stone hill, loosely 80 meters in width and 20 meters high, with a 5 meter large cave entrance in the middle, while two stalagtites hung down over the entrance and gave the entrance to the large cave behind it a kind of fangs, which made the hiding place seem much more threatening.


    Directly in front of this cave entrance was a row of sharpened wooden stakes, which, when driven into the ground, formed a fairly sturdy palisade five meters high, with a rectangular gatepost and a heavy wooden door in the middle of the same size that could be swung open.


    In front of this inner palisade I saw two larger tents, in which the normal bandits probably had their sleeping quarters, if one could assume from the one bandit who came out of one of the two tents, sleepy and with his pants half pulled up.


    In the left part, in front of the semicircular inner palisade, there was a pigsty with wild boars, probably gathered from the forest and kept as a source of food.


    And finally, what also made me look so puzzled, there was another and long palisade in front of the whole, which also started in a semicircle on the left side of the stone hill and was connected with sharpened tree trunks to the right again to the small hill, with a square wooden double door in the middle, which surely could be pushed open only with difficulty by a single person. While the inner fence ran perhaps 15 meters from the cave entrance on the left to the right in a semicircle, the outer palisade was a good 40 meters long and a few meters higher.


    The entire enclosure, so that probably no one could rappel or climb down from the hill behind it into the courtyard or directly to the entrance of the cave without problems, was surrounded at the top of the stones by x-shaped very pointed wooden posts. Anyone who wanted to enter the bandit camp over the hill rather than through the palisades would have to make their way over various sizes of sharpened wooden structures, while the wall down to the compound also had sharpened stones all along the walls of the hill.


    While I was looking at the compound of these actually so unkempt bandits with not a little respect, I counted the remaining people I could see from outside the fortified compound, and came up with a number of 5 so far.


    So I would have to take care of 5 more snacks - or robbers. And I think after the leader had been by far the toughest bastard to fight, these weak and partly drunk guys should not cause any problems.


    The cave in the hill itself seemed to be one big cavity, and a sturdy looking wooden house consisting of whole tree trunks and rough wooden boards stood inside on the right side. One of the bandits who must have been in charge of the last puny bunch had just stepped out of the building and had a satisfied-looking sneer on his face as he tightened his waistband.


    I turned my head unnaturally almost 90 degrees to the right while sitting on one of the branches in my fir tree, looking for the best way to get to the camp and the order in which I should kill these idiots.


    Having found a way in my head, I stood up, and the branch under me creaked softly, while I stretched with pleasure and enjoyed stretching and enhancing my already strengthened and grown body. I had grown to a respectable 50 centimeters in height after my last meal of muggers, and my previously creepy childlike scary figure had taken on much more human features as I walked less bent over and sat and stood more upright.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    With a soft thud, I landed on the slightly musty and damp forest floor, and could not quite hold back my grin of anticipation as I ran my blood-red long tongue over my teeth and lips. Although I now had much stronger human emotions, but saw no problem in solving the PROBLEM of bandits lying before me, or to eat, which left my human emotions totally cold.


    Should I get to the point where it bothered me, I could simply turn it down or if it would be too annoying, turn it off completely.


    My eyes glowed blood red, and I dropped to all fours as I sprinted sideways toward the camp without making a single sound.


    <hr>


    Where the bloody hell is the boss? He should have been back by now...


    Don''t tell me that the adventurers have found us?!


    I shuddered at the thought of the torture that awaited me in the city if we were caught. Sure, the nobles in the surrounding countryside were at least as twisted and disgusting bastards as we were when it came to rape, desecration and all, but no one wanted to be on the other end and be the one who was treated like that!


    With a dissatisfied grumble and my until now felt joy, I fiddled with my cord, which tied my pants around my waist, while my magnificent part in the pants was almost directly hard again, when I thought of the horny thing that the boss kept with him in the hut for our games.


    How she had screamed again today! Quite the opposite of the broken things, when we had used them too often and too long, and we could only dispose of them.


    I strolled half lost in horny thoughts and half trying to suppress my pessimistic thoughts through the inner palisade of our camp and clicked my tongue disapprovingly, when Karl was still slightly drunk with his head first on his stomach in front of the tent and had apparently fallen asleep again with only half pulled up pants.


    "I swear, if the boss doesn''t decapitate him, I''ll do it soon..." I hissed in disgust at the sight. Sure, we all liked to drink a lot every night, while women were passed around after the boss had had the first run with them, but Karl was a whole different ball game when it came to unreliability and getting so drunk that you had to take care of him like a handicapped person the next morning.


    Our newly appointed pig breeder, meanwhile, was taking care of the recently caught wild boars to my right, where we were lucky to have found a whole family of 9, which had only cost us the life of one unimportant person! Of course, the wild boar mother had fought for her young, but we had simply sent the poor bastard forward, and while he had bravely died for we could take care of the nasty beast and thus bag the 9 little wild boars.


    The other two people remaining in the camp were just tiredly patrolling the left and right sides of the outer palisade.


    I stretched in the cool morning air and breathed in the fresh misty haze of the forest as I rubbed my eyes and gleefully let out a long yawn.


    "First, some breakfast..." I mumbled and strode over to Karl, who unfortunately also had the cooking area by the campfire. I contorted my face in disgust to a grimace of disgust as I even perceived an acrid and pungent smell that crept into my nose, when I immediately saw the vomit next to Karl.


    "What the fuck has that fucker been feasting on? That looks like blood, bah! "


    I settled down on the opposite tree trunk as far away from him as possible and took the ladle in my hand to stir the still warm broth over the fire.


    One bowl and a few movements later, i was spooning my broth with unfamiliar pieces of meat and vegetables in it, and i just couldn''t take my eyes off karl. Something was nagging at me and I just couldn''t figure out why I kept looking at the sleeping idiot, even though he more than slightly disgusted me.


    He had probably stepped out of the tent, thrown up while he was fiddling with his pants, only to fall right back asleep. It''s not like this hasn''t happened to him before, but what exactly is this creeping feeling that something is wrong with the situation this time?


    I mean, he''s just sleeping in his vomit? He''s sleeping...?


    I abruptly dropped my bowl on the floor as I stood up, not even noticing the last of the contents running warmly down my pant legs. "Karl?!" I shouted now in near panic as I hurriedly ran over to him and dropped to one knee. Carefully and with a bad premonition, I grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around.


    A cry rang out in the camp and of all things it came loudly from my throat! Startled and horrified, I scrambled backwards and away from Karl, from the corpse! He was indeed lying in his puke, but instead of sleeping, someone or something had torn a bloody gaping hole in his throat and killed him.


    "We''re under attack!" I yelled out as I hoisted myself to my feet, still scrambling backwards slightly, and quickly looked around for the other bandits in the camp when I heard no sounds of agreement or other screams.


    I turned around with a heavy stomach and saw the other two guards, who had just been patrolling, also lying lifeless and at unnatural angles on the ground, as if they had collapsed on the spot and a puppeteer had cut the strings of life.


    In confusion and pure panic mixed with a good portion of fear, I turned around to the inner palisade and was about to run to bring myself to safety inside, when a wet breath touched the back of my neck. "Who is attacking?" Came in a smoky but still very human voice, had it not been for the aura and the smell of death and blood, which wafted with the breath over my neck and up to my nose.


    When I turned around trembling, death sitting in the truest sense of the word in the neck, my eyes widened with unspeakable fear when I saw the creature from the depths of hell standing in front of me, which looked at me with a bloody wide grin and tilted his head questioningly.


    A kind of wendigo creature not a meter tall stood in front of me, and before I could think about that again a warm foul-smelling liquid ran down the insides of my thighs, a hot pain exploded in my chest. I looked down at myself and saw how a black hand with long, slightly curved claws slid straight out of my chest at the level of my heart, and the last thing I saw just as my body toppled backwards was how the horrendous figure with a long, blood-red tongue licked the blood off his clawed hands.


    <hr>

 Devouring-7

    <hr>


    I licked my fingers and claws with relish and my long tongue licked the last of the delicious red juice, which threatened to drip onto the floor and be wasted.


    Of the former 5 bandits, or human scum as I called them in my mind, only dried rust-colored spots remained on the floor.


    My hunger again satisfied after such a short time, I stood upright, and noticed to my delight that I had actually grown again a few centimeters more and now measured almost a meter while I was standing. I looked down at my body and saw that my black steel-hard fur had become a little softer, almost like those fluffy cacti that seemed soft, but were still sharp and painful. One breath later, with a heavy poisonous mist rolling down to the ground and dissolving there, I turned around and took a closer look at the camp this time.


    The wild boars would do my hunger extremely well, and maybe I should take over and also capture different monsters and breed for different purposes? Actually not a bad idea, especially if I can not go hunting for some reason or would like.


    I strolled slowly as if on a sightseeing tour in the direction of the wooden enclosure with the wild boars over. The double doors of the outer palisade were still firmly closed and locked from the inside with a beam, while the single gate to the cave entrance was still open and seemed to stare invitingly at me.


    A quick echolocation later on the way to the enclosure also showed me once again that I had indeed eliminated and eaten all the last survivors, at least all those who had been here, while my face contorted into disgust when I saw the abused woman inside the wooden hut on my radar.


    "At moments like this, I''m glad to have human emotions again, at least in part.... Sons of bitches all of them!" I cursed aloud as I got the victim''s condition mapped. Now a little more discontented I trudged on and was already standing in front of the wild boars and looked at the young animals, which were eating leftovers and all kinds of berries and vegetables of different freshness.


    Satisfied that everything here seemed to be in order without my further action, I turned around and marched to the currently probably most important target in the camp; the woman.


    Through the inner palisade and with my head slightly bent back, I couldn''t help but admire the entrance to the cave, which really looked like the open mouth of a beast, with the two stalagtites as fangs protruding menacingly from above.


    The entrance to the mound was just under 5 meters in diameter and behind it stretched a slightly damp and mossy cavern with various open or mostly closed storage boxes and chests. To my right, starting directly at the entrance of the cave, was the front house facade of the wooden hut and a door with a heavy but rusty padlock to prevent entry or escape of the possible occupants.


    A short scraping and hissing later, and the padlock fell in two halves with a dull but loud sound on the floor, while I retracted my claws slightly again and the door swung open inward. I was greeted by a rather cozy interior with an excessive amount of furs and some valuable objects like jewelry carelessly scattered on various surfaces, almost as if this room was meant for relaxing and showing off.


    In the center back, a five meter long corridor led to the end of the cabin and two smaller rooms on the left and right led to the two bedrooms, as I had already seen on my radar. The right bed was empty and luxuriously furnished, with expensive silk sheets, feather-filled pillows and a mattress with an unknown material inside, while the left bed reeked of urine, sweat, and sexual activity, and a completely naked woman lay on it with lifeless eyes, staring at the ceiling while she was chained by her feet and arms to iron chains.


    I stood in the doorway and stopped when I saw the woman in front of me, and a renewed disgust came over me. Disgust not for this woman who had suffered all this and much more, but for this human scum who tortured and abused others for their pleasure. If I hunted myself, then to devour, to eat, and for my further development. But for some reason, my insides twisted around when I thought of causing unnecessary suffering when it was not appropriate or necessary.


    And seeing this woman lying there with bruises and various injuries awakened an animalistic rage in me that I had only experienced when I had given in to my rage at the bandit leader. Not that I cared about this woman in particular, and I would eat her like all other beings, but this unnecessary brutality simply sickened me.


    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.I walked forward on quiet feet and a second later stared down from above at the woman lying on a poorly stuffed straw mattress, legs and arms wide in an x-shape and various fluids mixed with blood running down between her legs.


    Shaking my head and looking into the empty eyes, I saw exactly that this being in front of me was already more than broken and would never recover mentally, so my next act was more than just a benefit for the poor disgraced creature.


    With two very clean and very smooth blows I almost tore her head off her shoulders, while my other hand pierced the heart of the woman, and she immediately breathed her last as well as I could.


    "Sons of bitches..." I whispered in a now clear masculine voice, bristling with power and bouncing off the wooden walls. I knew that my appearance was becoming more and more like that of a human man, except for my bony skull, the claws, the antlers, and the bloody runes on my head. So actually only my body itself... Okay, not even that, there is still the steel hard but soft looking midnight black fur. Hmmm... Oh anyway.


    A short time later, and my human emotions for the act itself completely switched off, was of the woman herself also nothing more existent except the smells and bloody stains on the dilapidated straw mattress.


    With a sigh and my emotions at just under 50% activated again, I looked around the house a bit and then looked into the various boxes to see what I now owned so everything. The bag with all the valuable belongings of the bandits and the robbed merchant joined the other jewelry in the front room.


    I would take this bandit camp, and with my acquired building skills, make this place my own.


    Since for now, hopefully, I didn''t need to be afraid of being discovered, if I could believe the bandits, then this place would quickly become even more dangerous when I was done with it. The bandit raid was easily two hours away from where I was now on human feet, and this place was just perfect for a base of my own.


    The former room for the prisoners I cleared completely empty and with some tests a fog swept through the whole house, which extinguished odors, removed blood and impurities and simply acted like a highly effective neutral smelling soap. The bedroom itself I left as it was for now, of course also after a cleaning, and the front room also remained as a trophy collection for valuables as it was.


    The storage boxes inside the cave, which thank god did not branch off deeper with further corridors or side rooms, were filled with materials, skins, dry food, various more or less valuable materials and various metals.


    Why and how the bandits had wanted to sell all this was a mystery to me, but I certainly wasn''t complaining about it, should I ever have the opportunity to trade in a civilized city and start whatever with a considerable start-up capital.


    I planned to apply my self-produced poison, first of all mainly aimed at humans, everywhere on the sharpened wooden stakes at the palisades, the traps around the hill and also the sharpened stones on the way down to the camp itself.


    This should put everyone out of commission should anyone dare to attack or sneak into my home. My poison was not strong, but the paralyzing factor in it was incredibly potent, and would put intruders out of action for several hours or even a day, depending on their resistance, if I had calculated it correctly.


    Satisfied with this, I began to take down the tents and stow them in some empty wooden crates inside the cave, while I stacked everything too dirty and rancid in a large pile in the outer palisade ring and then gradually burned it in the campfire.


    Satisfied with my work and nothing to indicate the previous inhabitants, I sat down on a chair at the entrance of the cave and watched the sunset that was just happening over the treetops on the horizon.


    Hrhrhr, the first time since my awakening in this world that I sit down relatively civilized...


    The unnaturally wide grin and my long fingernails, which just scratched my chest, but immediately made all human-like immediately nullified and I first chuckled softly and then suddenly laughed from the bottom of my heart.


    This life here was better than I had previously thought, although even the entry as a mole had been more fun than I had ever had before in my old life! Not to mention the enormous freedom, the power and the potential to grow even more, to do and be whatever I want...


    Tomorrow, after a comfortable portion of sleep in my new bed, I would think about what I wanted to do with this camp, my new home, what I would be able to tame and catch, and what measures I wanted to install for defense or for any hobbies.


    But until then? Enjoy the sunset...


    <hr>

 Devouring-8

    <hr>


    I jumped up and the claws of both hands hissed through the air, splinters of wood flew away in an explosion and I looked around for the attackers.


    "Tsk..." Came a loud snap across my tongue, annoyed that I had carelessly turned one of the few chairs in my new home into sawdust. And why? All because of a stupid, human nightmare! Fucking shit once again.


    I had dreamed about the murder of my human body from my last life, apparently another side effect of the human genes I had absorbed. And instead of just having stupid and useless emotions, I have to give myself nightmares? Pffff... Annoying.


    50% human emotions still seem to be too much of a good thing, then just 30%. No desire for something as pointless as nightmares. Dreams? Okay, if they are beautiful. Pleasant. But everything else is a waste of time, especially if I destroy everything around me when I wake up!


    If I had woken up near something alive, I would have killed it instantly. Or if I have to spend the night in a city sometime? Should I then devastate the hotel room as well?!


    Who the bloody hell needs nightmares, and what are they good for? Especially over several lifetimes! Ridiculous. Simply ridiculous.


    But before I get any more upset, I''d better start thinking about what I could devour today! Laughing and immediately in a good mood, I went to the wild boars, to look at how the enclosure was built to be able to build more of them and to catch more different animals for my breeding!


    <hr>


    With shaky legs, I swung down from my white horse and almost fell over when I landed with both feet on the path, so wobbly did I feel at that moment.


    A scene such as I had rarely seen in my career as a soldier unfolded before me. We were sent in search of the long overdue merchant who usually came by once a month at the sunny time of the year, bringing new goods from the capital of the kingdom to our remote little town. The man was extremely punctual, and for the past year had always brought along his daughter, whom the mayor''s boy had been keeping an eye on.


    When the mayor had sent us off, just because his son had yelled and screamed, who, by the way, everyone in the small town hates with a passion, as spoiled and brutal as he is, no one thought of finding something like this.


    And no matter what had happened here, what was left behind testified to a brutality and a simultaneous clarity about the remaining of the victims that could only make you dizzy. Blood, spread over a radius of almost ten meters, had been sinking into the earthy soil of the forest path for at least a day, and only the wagon had remained. Nothing that testified to the bodies of the people or even the horses could be seen far and wide. Drag marks of any kind were also missing, and whatever had raged here after the raid, for a raid it had been at first quite clear when you saw the arrows and the fallen tree trunk, had completely consumed all flesh.


    Only the blood sunk into the ground and the flies attracted by the smell in small swarms, were still to be seen. Questions were raised, and the soft whispers of the fighters who had accompanied the soldiers echoed over the silence. The fabrics, the furs and many of the other valuable things and everyday items were still to be found in the overturned wagon, while all jewelry and any currency except a few scraps in some trouser pockets were completely missing!


    Almost as if the beast had grabbed the valuable stuff after its gigantic and bloody meal and disappeared without a trace. Without a trace, because none of the other veterans, soldier or hunter, found any trace of the beast. Only a few odd, small claws pressed out at extremely irregular intervals could be seen here and there in all the blood. Some of my colleagues suspected a harpy, or some other extremely large bird creature, had attacked the bandits in flight when they were finished, and then eaten them all.


    That would explain the irregular imprints. But what monster could do such a thing? And feast on the whole lot of them! And what monster in the bloody hell would also take all the glitter and valuable?!


    Shaking my head and keeping my stomach in check, in contrast to two of the newcomers in our troop who were currently throwing up noisily at the edge of the forest, i looked for eye contact with my longtime friend, the forest hunter Tran.


    He also looked over at me at that very moment, and judging by his green face, he had a lot more trouble not throwing up than I did.


    I walked over to him, careful not to step in any puddles of blood, and patted him gently on the shoulder in an encouraging and compassionate way. "Don''t worry about it..." I whispered to him as I got a little closer and tried to talk to him unnoticed. "Whatever did this has been gone for a while.... And even I almost vomit at the sight of it.... So." I left the unsaid at the end unspoken so.


    He shook his head with a facial expression that expressed remorse, disgust and compassion, the latter the death of many good people in our kingdom, and stared at me. "Do you know... I wouldn''t even be surprised if this was NOT a fucking monster, but another one of the macabre games of the nobles or some other son of a whore who gets pleasure from mutilating and slaughtering others..." A short pause for breath, a quick glance at the scraps of clothing and dismembered leather armor that lay everywhere. "But Ian, I''m not sure anyone from Triell would have the balls for that. Not even all these bastards together would be able to... And whoever or whatever did this would teach even all these human abominations the fear of their lives. THAT''S what I believe." And his gaze lingered on me, sad eyes that had seen too much shit in life themselves staring directly into my own.


    "I know what you mean, old friend..." I muttered, looking down at my bloody hands, which had inevitably come into contact with the red substance while searching the remains of the wagon. "Let''s check again for traces, and then pack up and report to the mayor.... And back in Triell, send a quick messenger to the king."


    Turning around, I whispered something else, more to myself, but I knew Tran could hear me just fine. "But at least the merchant''s daughter doesn''t have to end up in the dirty hands of the boy as well..." And more images, a whole series of images, came to my mind. Of all the victims and screaming children, the mutilations and games that the mayor''s sick son had played with his victims until we found them.


    No one could prosecute the boy, since he could only be charged by the royal family itself due to his father''s contacts and his status as a nobleman, but they did nothing in such remote areas or dismissed it as rumors.


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.One last look back at the forest hunter who was shaking his head. "Tran, I think we need to put this quest out for B level adventurers or even A."


    <hr>


    I knew I was unwanted.


    I knew I was ballast.


    I knew that my family would be much better off without me.


    And I knew that I had been an accident. Something that should never have seen the light of day in this dirty and unfair world.


    And yet my parents had gotten me. In a quickie, they had always said disparagingly. My older siblings, an older and nicely dressed sister and two older brutal brothers, had treated me accordingly.


    My mother had beaten me, said I was responsible for the fact that she was no longer so pretty.


    My father sometimes drank and dragged me through the mud to make me work everywhere in the small town. In inns where I was supposed to wait tables, wash dishes, make beds, clean and scrub. At the butcher''s I had to clean the waste, the intestines and the shit. At the furrier bring urine and wipe. Drinking from the animal trough until I almost burst, and then letting myself pee in a bucket in front of the other children at the furrier. A urine whore, they called me, laughed at me, spat at me.


    Only some of the soldiers, who did not look at me lustfully, showed pity. But one of the nice soldiers said to me one day that they could not do anything, because my parents had all the rights to do with me what they wanted. So according to the law of the mayor.


    And the mayor himself always appeared friendly and sincere in public, but I knew about the fear in the streets, the children without parents, the homeless, as they whispered.


    The mayor''s son was a real monster, and his father let him do whatever he wanted. He even supported him monetarily and protected him again and again.


    Children of different ages disappeared. Not only homeless and living on the street, but also from families.


    Some were found, often mutilated, with a void in their eyes or out of their minds. Insane or even more than just dead inside. Or only corpses remained, which was most common.


    And me? I didn''t even have a name... Only the one that the people gave me. Urine dispenser, urine whore, filth, useless piece, worthless garbage. And so much more, which I no longer perceived.


    And today? Today my family had realized that I cost more than I brought in. The food waste and leftovers that I was given were dirtier and moldier than what pigs got, that much I had seen. I was only allowed to wash outside in the rain, which did not happen very often in this area.


    And all this had led to the fact that I was sold after 9 years of my dirty life.


    Sold to an organization. A community, which was represented in the whole kingdom, as far as I had picked it up somewhere. Feared, but always on the lookout for test objects, so they said. Unlike the mayor''s son, however, they paid in advance for the children they took in.


    But unlike the boy''s victims, none of them ever came back from the clutches of this organization.


    Assassins, the black hand. Their name was whispered in the streets behind closed doors.


    And one of these black-clad assassins, definitely a woman in stature if you observed her gait, was carelessly dragging me by the hand behind her.


    Her hand like a vice around my bony wrist, a force I only dreamed of, in my emaciated body that drifted closer to death than to life.


    A blow, faster than lightning, or at least without me seeing it coming, hit me with a force on the cheek, and I crashed head first into the muddy puddle at our feet.


    My jaw, which until now had miraculously never been broken as one of the few bones in my body, cracked and I felt searing pain force silent tears into my eyes.


    Road dirt, rain and tears mingled and ran down my cheeks as my cheek and underlying jaw sent waves of familiar pain through my fragile body.


    I looked up, too powerless and dizzy to do more. Two angry eyes stared me down, and I couldn''t even flinch or flinch, so empty did I feel.


    I was almost dead, and I was a slave. A slave all my life, only now officially sold and bartered away.


    "What are you staring at, you little bitch?!" Came an angry voice from under the black cloth that covered most of my current tormentor''s face.


    I continued to stare, void, powerless, into that angry twinkle of a pair of eyes. She had brown eyes. Standard, like myself, if the rain puddles hadn''t lied to me.


    The vice of a hand reached down and within a second I was dangling in the air, my feet no longer even touching the ground, only the two eyes in front of me, which kept turning away as my body twisted uncontrollably left and right. Like a wet sack, if I noticed the comparison correctly.


    A second vice, oh no, hands, shot out and grabbed me by the chin until I looked the angry woman directly in the eyes and my body no longer turned away. Why was she so angry? Had someone stolen something from her? Or hurt her? Had someone wronged her?


    I didn''t understand, couldn''t understand what she wanted from me, or why she was so furious.


    Was one angry at an object? Was that even possible? I didn''t know, because I had never owned anything myself. Even the two clothes on my body, a pair of rough woven pants and a much too large dirty shirt, belonged to my parents. Or stop, now my new owner...


    Was she my new owner? But then why was she so angry? I did not understand.


    "...Are you even listening to me, you little cunt???" The woman hissed at me now, and I looked at her confused.


    The strong grip on my chin loosened, and suddenly the hand flew up again, only to stop right in front of my face.


    "Calm down... Calm down... It''s worthless, and you''re just supposed to deliver it. Nothing more. Anything else will only lead to a punishment. So, take a deep breath and exhale. And do what you were told to do..." The woman whispered to herself, and I was even more confused.


    Was she also a victim of the mayor''s boy? These were, if at all, only insane and no longer master of their senses.


    I was put back down on the floor, more friendly than before, but immediately she felt herself being dragged behind again, exactly as before.


    I did not understand. But soon it was over. If no one returned from this place where I had been taken, then soon I could finally close my eyes, and hopefully I would be allowed to die....


    Because I had never been allowed to die either. A waste for all that had been done for me, my family had always told me. I should be grateful to be so spoiled, they preached to me.


    But now? A glimmer of hope! Could I finally let go? To drift off into nothingness... the black nothingness that I had seen so many times before, but that had always been taken away from me just before I reached it.


    I knew it was death. The peaceful death, the only thing I longed for, what I still wanted. What I ever wanted. Because that was all I was allowed, and everything was taken away from me as soon as I possessed it.


    Only the murmur of the angry woman in front of me with her hand crushing my wrist brought me out of my thoughts.


    "Novice games... initiation... ritual... hunt... Prey, first kill..."Was all I understood from the low murmur, but the last shred spoken filled me with childlike joy! Joy, that it was really soon so far.


    Finally... Salvation...


    <hr>

 Devouring-9

    <hr>


    6 months and 23 days later...


    I stepped out of the thicket of the forest, straight toward my own home. A hedge of closely planted trees greeted me, where once there had been a rough wooden palisade of sharpened tree trunks, now replaced by a natural boundary. The trees, as if by magic, or because I had helped, were all almost the same size and measured ten meters in height, which was about the same size as the largest trees in the surrounding forest. This meant that the trees would not be noticed from afar, should someone climb a tree further away and look at them from above.


    I went directly to the middle of the living tree palisade and climbed in short and powerful movements over the tree, instead of using the hidden entrance, through which I could otherwise carry bulky stuff into my home.


    I lingered briefly on the treetop and took a deep breath, closed my eyes and simply enjoyed the smell of my work of the past months. Fresh dew, rich earth, diverse animals and so much more greeted my sensitive nose, all of it immediately associated and familiar to me.


    A heartbeat later, I opened my eyes again and let my gaze wander over the small clearing in front of me. The animals hesitated briefly and fell silent, knowing that the hunter and master was at home. The inner palisade was also no more, and the former cave was now no longer visible to normal eyes. The courtyard was twice as large as before, and only the enclosures and the large stone-fenced campfire in the middle testified to my presence in this place.


    I had built in the last months enclosures with small shelter huts, each with a water trough and food bowl, with a sleeping place for the breeding animals.


    In addition to the wild boars, which had already had several new young and multiplied strongly, I had now captured something like chickens, rabbits, goats and even wonderfully singing magic birds. All but the latter were represented in the clearing and the yard had two large fenced enclosures on the left and right sides.


    The wild boars and rabbits multiplied furiously, and were a good meal for me when some days I was too lazy to hunt and busy with other things. Especially because in a radius of several kilometers the game and the animal population of the forest had greatly decreased thanks to my presence, and I left the remaining wildlife in peace so that the ecosystem could recover. However, my hunts took me further and further out, which was not necessarily a bad thing when I looked at all my new skills and recalled them.


    *Human gene mastered


    *Wolf gene mastered


    *Wild boar gene mastered


    *Rabbit gene mastered


    *Treant gene mastered


    *Magic Hummingbird gene mastered


    *Goats gene mastered


    *Bat gene mastered


    *Mole gene mastered


    *Lava worms gene mastered


    *fairies gene mastered


    *Living wood gene mastered


    And these were only the genes that I had mastered by consuming so much. I could now squeeze myself into different human forms within a few seconds, be it a small innocent girl with puppy eyes, or a strong and over two meters tall muscular man.


    I could transform into a tree and strike with my branches at lightning speed, thanks to the treants I had eaten. Spit lava, or simply make my skin or veins glow.


    See in the dark as if it were day, or send out ultrasound to probe miles around and have a permanent radar on my mental map.


    And said radar, after I figured out how to look at all my genes, was displayed in the upper right of my field of view as a frayed mini-map, updated every second as my ultrasound updated the map of the environment.


    I had found out that I possessed a kind of overview, which I could simply call up with my will, and which displayed everything to me in a foreign but nevertheless understandable language. Not directly in front of my eyes, but rather in my head.


    Devourer - Progenitor of evolution


    Age: 7 months


    Mastered genes:


    Living wood, fairy, lava worm, mole, bat, wolf, goat, treant, boar, rabbit, human, magical hummingbird


    Acquired skills:


    Shapeshifting(S), Transform(S), Sword Fighting(D), Dagger Fighting(E), Night Vision(S), Mana Sight(A), Poisons(S), Reading(B)


    Resistances:


    Physical(A), Magical(B), Fire(S), Lava(S), Water(C), Ice(D), Earth(B), Illusion(A), Blood(A), Poisons(S).


    Simple, easy, and exactly what I wanted.


    And the designation that adventurers also used, as far as I heard and knew from the few devoured unfortunate adventurers, was F for the weakest level, up to A as the highest, while S stood for "Sage" and represented the mastery. There are supposed to be two levels above that, but I couldn''t find anything more than rumors.


    <hr>


    At the same time, in a different place...


    I had existed.


    In the vaults of the black hand, in a small room. With an uncomfortable bed that until now had given me permanent back pain, a gray porridge every day and water to keep me alive.


    The heavy iron-reinforced prison door with a small hatch at the top had locked me in, and there was rarely contact with other people. Whether it was someone who brought me the food, or often looked snidely and poured it down, or one of the servants who emptied my chamber pot, but sometimes spilled it slightly on purpose.


    And one day the same hooded woman, I had recognized her by her gait and body shape, had brought me a picture book, which she had thrown on my bed without comment but with a malicious laugh, and then turned around again without a word and disappeared just as she had come.


    The picture book became my most valuable treasure from that day on. As macabre as it was in my subconscious, it was somehow my possession, even if I knew that in truth I did not own it.


    And even though the content was cruel, and depicted a sheep girl happily skipping across a green meadow, only to be hunted, tortured, dismembered, and other unspeakable things done to her, this picture book brought me variety and color in my gray existence that I had endured down there.


    But all that stopped when a stern gray-haired man told me to eat a few days ago and threw me two pieces of gray clothing. It would start soon, he told me. The mayor''s son was already looking forward to his initiation rite, he told me. And left again.


    I had existed.


    Until that day, I had somehow just existed.


    And then this message came, and it had burst out of me that night. I had cried myself to sleep, all the things I had heard and witnessed about the mayor''s boy playing out before my eyes. Why had he been taken into the black hand? Were his deeds welcome here?


    I had cried and sobbed, and the picture book came to my mind. The things that the sheep girl had to go through after being hunted down and caught.


    And now I was to be hunted, the man had told me at the end. By the most horrible and brutal person in the small town.


    That night I ceased to exist.


    A spark arose, a glimmer that told me that I had to escape. That I had to experience the worst if I did not escape. Unspeakable torments would follow, things that in the picture book or from the descriptions would not come close to what I would then have to experience with my own body.


    And so I had cried myself to sleep.


    A few days later, the glimmer had grown into a small flame, and when the gray-haired man picked me up, he had grinned smugly and contentedly.


    And now I had been abandoned. I stood at the edge of a path, a trail through the forest, and was supposed to hide, to run, to try to escape.


    They encouraged me to escape from the mayor''s son!


    And so I ran, not questioning the point of it all. With my 10 years, because I had had birthday sometime in the last month, I could not understand why they had fed me for months, and now just before even roughly packed and bathed. Although the bath had been more of a rough immersion in a cold water basin, and the person who washed me and scrubbed me rudely.


    But now? Now I should try to run, hide, and not get caught! Was I that lucky? Had someone taken pity on me and helped me to escape?


    I did not know.


    But the flame inside me was burning, and my legs were burning even more, my muscles had not been used to the stress and strain for a long time, perhaps because they had never been.


    So I ran into the forest, no direction taken, and just tried to get as far as possible.


    Seconds passed, and soon became minutes.


    I didn''t know how much time had passed, but as I ran straight ahead, not even thinking that I was making too easy a target, I heard a noise behind me.


    Heavy boot steps, as they had always worn by my father, slapped evenly on the forest floor, always in the same rhythm. I didn''t dare take a look behind me, because the danger was too high that I would fall again over one of the countless tripping hazards of the forest and fall down. Branches, roots, stones, uneven ground. So much that had let me fall over and over again since I started running because I was careless and inexperienced inside the forest.


    Suddenly the footsteps behind me had stopped, and I heard nothing again.


    Had I imagined that? Am I hallucinating things?


    I didn¡ät believe so, because they had told me several times, that it was a hunt. Even if I just had tasted freedom...


    And I was to be hunted, even after I thought I could escape and someone helped me.


    My aching and sore feet carried me on until I stumbled, fell to the forest floor, and scraped both knees again on a protruding root.


    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.A short cry of surprise sprang from my lips, and I quickly sealed my mouth with my hand while I panicked and looked for my pursuers, or THE pursuer.


    But no one came, and I exhaled my held breath slowly, relieved not to be caught yet. I felt over my two knees, and hissed suppressedly but still loudly, as the pain of the two open wounds pulled up my legs.


    And as if it wasn''t bad enough to be sweaty, scared and full of self-inflicted open wounds and bruises everywhere, something cold settled on the back of my hand.


    Something cold and wet. I stared at my hand and, as if in a trance, lifted my backhand closer to my face to see what had dripped onto my hand.


    And another cold, wet something landed on my reddish nose, and I squinted at it to finally realize that it was an isolated stray snowflake.


    "Oh no..." I whispered helplessly, oblivious to the seasons down in the basement of the Assassins'' Guild and in the dark as the months passed. It was snow season, and the months of ice, as they called them here. The sun season and its months were over, and in the ice season the ground froze and snowstorms came and went.


    And now, of all times, during my escape, even the weather had to throw a spanner in the works. I felt like crying, but I couldn''t sit here moping for another second; I had to keep going.


    So I stood up with difficulty and with aching limbs and bones, slightly shaky, and ran on, in a slightly different direction than before. My feet were like lead, and did not want to be lifted properly, which ended more in a running slurp and constantly increased the danger of falling again.


    In one of those waking moments when I was thinking about not falling, something stabbed my left calf, and a surprised squeal escaped my lips unintentionally.


    I didn''t have time to get distracted and couldn''t look to see what had hit me, but suddenly had a rush of sweat. Whether this was caused by the wound on my calf or by the sudden reappearance of the boots that followed me again and trampled clearly closer and louder somewhere behind me on the forest floor, I did not know.


    Sweat beaded my head, my back and everywhere else on my body and flowed down after a few seconds sticking under the gray clothes on my body.


    A hiss in the air, a buzz, and a thud in my neck, and a pain exploded in my nerves. I stumbled, and just managed to catch myself on a birch tree next to me before I fell.


    In the meantime, the snow had grown so much that more and more flakes were hitting my face, and even the wind was increasing, blow by blow, in a biting cold.


    Suddenly I felt something that didn''t belong there.


    A warm and humid wind blew at rhythmic intervals down my neck, and goose bumps shot down my spine. My shoulders tensed, and I swallowed hard when I knew that this must be the breath of a person behind me.


    I stumbled forward, and my right foot caught at that very moment in the root of the birch tree that had just supported me, and I fell painfully in a sideways twist onto the cold and lightly snow-covered ground.


    My gaze recognized two pairs of black boots, which went on in elegant black pants.


    Was it now...?


    Inevitably, as if I had no will of my own, my head and gaze wandered upward along the body of my pursuer, for what else should this person be. And I saw my worst nightmares come true.


    A sweetly smiling boy, only a few years older than myself, grinned kindly at me. But behind the eyes it flashed maliciously and dangerously, and I knew the face all too well from afar.


    "Gotcha!" He declared, still smiling the same as before, as if his face was frozen in that grimace of a smile. How he managed to do that despite moving his mouth to talk was beyond me.


    I just looked at him with widened and panic-stricken eyes, like a frightened deer when it had been surprised by the light of a torch.


    "Don''t be afraid, my sweet!" Came the sugary sweet and clearly lied words from the mouth of the monster in front of me, but my body clearly no longer wanted to obey me properly. "I have given you two... substances injected. One is a light variant of a paralyzing poison, which makes you react more slowly and strengthens your senses. And the other?"


    He reached out his black-gloved hand and gently grasped me under the chin like a fragile doll. "The other is a magical concentrate that allows me to give the orders!"


    And suddenly his other palm flew out of nowhere and smacked me full broadside in the face. Exactly on the place of my jaw, where the woman at that time had broken my bone and this had never healed properly until now.


    I cried out in pain when the bone fracture broke open further than the first time, but could not move and could only open my mouth to scream!


    The hand on my chin immediately grabbed and clawed painfully into my rough, cold skin. With a jerky movement he pulled my head towards him, and the other hand I suddenly felt painful in my hair. He grabbed my long brown hair and yanked it back so that my head tilted painfully upward, looking him directly in the face.


    I cried in pain and sobbed, but could not do anything else, because something inside me had snatched control of my body.


    " Atta bitch!" Followed his statement, and a contradictory feeling spread inside me, as if my disgust and animalistic fear were fighting inside me with an ecstasy that wanted to overwhelm me with feelings of happiness.


    Tears ran down my face, and my facial expression kept changing from fear, panic and pain to a kind of lust for more. My body didn''t know what was happening or what to do.


    "Hrhrhr... How I love that confused, panicked, lustful look!" And with another tug on my hair, and a firm grip on my chin, something warm pressed down on my lips, pushing its way between them. Something warm, wet explored uninvited the inside of my mouth, and I knew immediately what was happening. Fearful and yet somehow paradoxically excited by it, I could only stare into the eyes of my tormentor, who stared back at me and savored my reactions.


    "Ahhhh, this poison is just AWESOME!" Hissed the young man when he had released his mouth from mine with a smacking plop.


    His hand wandered unbidden into my cleavage and grabbed me roughly by my still growing breasts, pinching roughly and hard into my nipples which had become hard due to the snow and...


    Tore with a jerk my top in two. I swallowed again, heat and shame shot into my face, and my cheeks glowed. I could not move my head and my body and hide my exposed, and he looked at me like a hungry wolf.


    His other hand came out of my hair and grabbed my back, and came out with a very familiar whip. This variation had even been used by my father sometimes with me, when I had no more work to do outside for a few days, and consisted of several leather straps that were knotted in front. With enough momentum they left red welts and with frequent use also cracks in the skin.


    He stood upright again, and without me being able to do anything, my body disobeyed me again, and also stood upright like a puppet with puppeteer, my arms left and right trembling and weakly stretched by me.


    "That''s it. I''ll show you what it means to obey me!" And before I knew what was happening to me, he tore down my pants with his other hand and exposed me down below as well. My shirt hung in tatters and covered nothing around the front, and now my pants were also hanging on the floor.


    I had often had to endure something like this with my siblings and parents, and sometimes they had also played "piggy pig" with me, in which I had had to follow them on a leash around the throat... Naked.


    I had not felt shame in this sense for a long time, but no one had ever stared at me as lustfully as the mayor''s son was doing now.


    A visible bulge built up between his thighs under the black fabric, and he noticed my fear-filled look down, whereupon he grabbed his crotch obscenely with his free hand. "Already horny for it, or what?" He asked me in a hoarse voice. "But you''ll have to wait a little longer for this reward, sweetie!"


    A whip cracked through the icy forest, and the leather straps slapped my skin against some resistance, and I let out a loud scream, which ended in a whimper. I knew it was over. I just wanted to die...


    My flame, which I had previously believed would help me, had betrayed me. Made me believe in false hopes. Convinced me that I could escape.


    And now I found myself in the clutches of this perverted monster, who felt like inflicting pain on me and wanted to do many other things to me.


    More screams echoed through the approaching evening, only slightly suppressed by the snowdrifts that blew around us, and occasionally interrupted by the resounding lashes.


    My skin was burning and hot. I felt... good. And yet terrible, aching, cold. The poison inside me was still fighting me for dominance, and the desire for more pain and torment was struggling with said pain, cold, shame and fear.


    Suddenly, my mind had already shut down, something touched me between my legs. Roughly, imperiously, and with pressure. Something pushed... into me! My eyes widened again and my lips trembled, greeted by the lustful boy in front of me, who had rosy cheeks and was licking his lips. His other hand was in my crotch!


    "You will scream to feel more pain WHILE we do it together!" He told me with anticipation hiding behind his voice as his body came closer. His filthy mouth pressed right onto my ear, creating a hot yet tickling sensation on my neck, "And you will beg...-"


    ''No...!'' my voice was trapped, not being able to leave the chest where it had been placed in. I couldn''t believe something like this was happening to me, it all seemed like a nightmare but I knew better. His hands touching my arms made my skin crawl in shame, his obnoxious laughter that echoed through the dark woods and the life flowing out of me as the thin strand of hope I once had, was nothing more than a faraway dream. All of this was too real to be something so easy and futile like a bad dream.


    ''Why...'' I couldn''t understand why something so horrifying had happened to me.


    Was it my fault? Was it his fault? Was it God''s fault?


    Tears ran down my warm cheeks before falling into the dry dirt, humidifying it alongside the coldness of the night. It was then that, suddenly, the darkness and the large oak trees surrounding me started rotating, over and over again. I could feel my consciousness beginning to fade and I prayed that it would happen right now. I didn''t want to feel anymore of this torture. I just wanted it to stop.


    Unexpectedly, I feel something leaving my numb body and, a couple of seconds after that, a thick, warm and smelly liquid fell on top of my body, adorning it as if it was the winter snow. ''Is it... over?'' a new strand of hope was created, making me wish for a moment of rest, for a moment to heal, for a moment to breathe.


    And suddenly the world exploded around me.


    My body, which had just been standing frozen in place, shivering in the cold of the snow, slumped to the forest floor as a warm, thick, smelly liquid ran down the entire front of my body.


    It was immediately warm because the liquid was steaming in the cold! My eyes had reflexively closed, and I opened them again, staring at the forest floor at my bare feet. The color red filled my field of vision, and my hands, which I just looked at in bewilderment, were as red as everything else I saw.


    Slowly, carefully, I lifted my head and froze again.


    This time not by a strange might, but out of bewilderment, when I found the remains of my tormentor lying slightly above me diagonally against the tree. His corpse, for what else could one call the remaining piece of flesh, was slipping down the tree trunk in a red streak.


    A branch cracked to my right, and my head, still not understanding what had just happened, or who had saved me in my distress, slowly swung over to the source of the sound.


    A pair of green eyes, human in all but color, stared back at me.


    The snowstorm had increased further, and all I recognized was the two meter tall black form of a creature, a kind of skull mask, red glowing runes engraved on the bone, and beautifully branching antlers protruding from the back.


    The mouth was slightly open, revealing razor-sharp and jagged rows of teeth, while a greenish thick mist flowed out of the mouth and rasped on its way down to the ground. The snow and wind had seemingly no control over this particular mist.


    I... smiled.


    The creature snorted. The eyes briefly flickered a more intense green.


    I was glad. I was grateful. Whatever this creature was, it had saved me from worse. And I gratefully gave myself up as a meal, for it had saved me from hours of agony.


    A shaky and grateful smile was the last thing I could manage, and then collapsed on the forest floor, exhausted, with heavy cold limbs and a grin on my face.


    <hr>

 Devouring-10

    <hr>


    If I''m honest, I didn''t expect that.


    The young thing lay asleep in bed, and I watched, leaning against the door frame, as the little person''s chest slowly and gently moved up and down. No visible nightmares, no twitches, no signs of experiencing a restless sleep.


    Simply put; Weird.


    The girl appeared inconspicuous, brown eyes, brown shoulder-length but matted hair. The only thing that was certainly not normal, or maybe it was, were all the scarred welts, bruises and other injuries including poorly healed bone fractures and joints. At least that were the things I could sense when I used my trait "Progenitor of evolution" on her body.


    And by far the strangest thing was the way she looked at me.


    Without fear. Like being her savior. Okay, the latter was perhaps easy to understand, given the situation in which I had found her again. And with the slimy scum of humanity.


    Or was the race even called human? Questions about questions... Not even this odd group of B adventurers, whom they had apparently sent in search of the monster of the robbery, had wanted to answer my questions. Before I feasted on them.


    Maybe she can answer some of them for me, huh. That would be helpful. Especially if she should react so unimpressed by my shape even after waking up. Would be the first time! A throaty half-man half-monster laugh escaping my throat, while the wood behind me crunched and creaked.


    Oops! As much mass and density as I''ve gained, maybe I shouldn''t strain the poor house. Hahaha.


    And I woke up the sleeping princess. I chuckled to myself, tapping one claw thoughtfully and expectantly on the spot where my human nose would actually be if I weren''t standing here in wendigo form.


    But i just felt so COMFORTABLE in this form!


    A moan snapped me out of my thoughts, and I crossed my arms in front of my black-haired chest, while my tilted head looked down intently at the fragile thing in the room.


    With my two meters, and on desire in the meantime also more, if I wanted to reach more mass but renounced body density for it, I had reached a quite imposing stature and could measure myself with the tallest people of my former life.


    The girl groaned again, and a slightly scarred, pale and callused hand came out from under the blanket to run over her still sweat-soaked face before her glued eyes slowly opened.


    She struggled with the crust that her overworked and strained eyes had porduced while she slept, and gave a soft whimper as she moved her head a tad too quickly.


    "W-where..." Came a croak over her parched and cracked lips, followed by what was probably an equally dry tongue running over her lips, only to wince as she scratched over the bloody cracks of her lips.


    Why I had left her alive in the first place? Out of curiosity.


    If she did not meet my expectations and disappointed me, despite her interesting performance in the forest, then she would also end up as a meal between my teeth. Hrhrhr...


    Back to what just happened in front of me.


    Two pale brown eyes stared at me, still not fully awake, unfocused, and with sleep residues at the edge of the eyes clearly visible. The hand, which had just rubbed over the eyes, remained suspended in the air.


    No further sound came from her lips. But in contrast to other creatures, I also felt no trembling or smelled this annoying urine, when many of the humanoids in my presence wet their pants.


    Only a pair of brown eyes that became more and more awake, and rigidly as well as silently looked into mine.


    My head moved from the right inclined position to the left in the opposite tilted position, and not even a blink could be seen on my face. But on the other hand, a very, very fine grin!


    So intriguing! It went through my head, as this small creature in front of me, with which I could definitely compare myself from my old life before the reincarnation, continued to look back silently but intensely interested!


    When the girl saw my gruesome grin and her gaze wandered from my eyes in my bony skull down to my pointed teeth, her eyes only lit up more, taken with the deadly tools in my mouth.


    And as if that had triggered something, her gaze wandered frantically over my entire body, as if someone were drowning and wanted to quickly drink the saving liquid. And how she drank my form! At all obviously dangerous places, like my claws or the antlers, she lingered for a few seconds with her gaze, only to wander on.


    Forgetting the bed completely, her sickly and emaciated figure moved forward, pushed the thin bedspread aside, and shakily stood up on her scraped feet.


    The next step made her fall, and she scraped her barely scabbed left knee on the wooden floor, but except for a brief pain-filled wince that flashed across her face, she got up again and took her next shaky steps toward me.


    How I reacted? By watching, of course. With the greatest interest and curiosity!


    My grin grew by a hair''s breadth, and apparently enough to intensify the glint in the girl''s eyes as she fixed on my face and took another step between the bed and towards me.


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.She tumbled another time, unfortunately on the same knee as before, but didn''t let it get her down. Stumbling was just as trivial and moot, her whole focus on me.


    And so, after only a short time, she stood in front of me, her luminous, almost fanatical gaze up at me, her head bent back, staring.


    I blinked once. Simply to see if it would free her from her rigidity, because blinking was not really necessary and was only left of my old human self.


    And lo and behold, her right arm lifted shakily, and her trembling palm moved toward my stomach area. About where she was at the level of her head, too. While she continued to watch me with fascination, and I returned her gaze.


    Just before her palm touched my black and exceedingly hairy pointed fur, my grin widened a bit more.


    She registered my reaction, and when she finally touched my fur in several places with her scarred and callused palm, her eyebrows twitched upward. She took her hand back a little and turned it around, looking curiously at the fine little drops of blood that were forming by the hundreds on her palm.


    Well, if that isn''t some pain tolerance, holy shit. I chuckled, and my chest rose and fell, while a light laugh ran through my body.


    Her hand remained in front of her face, but her head looked back up at me when she saw and heard my amused chuckle. A childish grin appeared on her face, mirrored by my own cheerfulness, while her gaze wandered back and forth between her now clearly bleeding hand and my face.


    "Hello!" it came again with a croak over her dry lips, and for the first time something like shame showed on her face, when with clear difficulties this simple greeting came forth.


    I let my gaze linger on her face and stared deep into her eyes, my chuckle long since under control again. I knew that my eyes now glowed red and changed between a rusty red and an intensely glowing blood red, depending on how I felt or what my intention reflected.


    My mouth opened and the girl was able to look into my throat for the first time, but again remained quiet. "Hello, little girl." Came back my own greeting in perfect human tongue.


    She blinked once, and then several more times, as if waking from a trance or dream. She appeared joyful and suddenly even more taken with it. "You can s-speak!" It came over her lips, but she had to clear her throat once and swallow saliva as she spoke, as her parched vocal cords momentarily failed.


    Her hand was about to jerk forward and embrace me, despite her still wobbly knees, but she thought better of it when she apparently remembered her bloody hand.


    Arms down again, she ran the fingers of the other hand curiously over the bloody palm and only briefly distorted her face again at the first pain, but immediately afterwards used to it.


    "Do you have a name?" Came the next question full of curiosity, her head again turned towards me, but her hands still busy with what she had started.


    Unbelievable. Not even a hint of trembling or fear? No stuttering, nothing at all. Hehehe...


    "Hmmm... So far I haven''t needed one..." Came my answer, when for the first time I had to seriously think about whether I had a name in this world. I didn''t want my old one anymore.


    "You can call me... - Devi?" Came out of my mouth more like a question, and I looked up at the ceiling for a moment until I nodded slowly to myself and looked back down at the little human girl with satisfaction. It was vaguely reminiscent of the name from my last life, but at the same time was simply the abbreviation of what I now embodied. "And you?"


    For the second time in an extremely short interval, another kind of pain flitted across the face of the fragile being before me. "I-I..." And she stammered. Not from anxiety or fear, but from uncertainty as to how I could smell it.


    With rosy cheeks and a different kind of shame that I knew all too well from before, she looked sadly to the ground. "I don''t have a name of my own..." she whispered, and a tear rolled down her bony cheek to drip from her jutting cheekbone onto the floorboards.


    I was... amused. Yes, despite the emotions she was going through, and had gone through, I was entertained. An opportunity arose before me, and I could only laugh in the face of fate!


    I shrank.


    The floorboards beneath me creaked slightly as the more concentrated weight and shifting of weight made itself felt. And the girl in front of me, now at eye level, looked at me with big wide round eyes dumbfounded.


    "Then - would you like to have a name of your own?" Came from me in a very self-aware shuddering smile across my bony lips.


    She stared back. My question had not quite reached her brain.


    Realizing what I had asked her, and seemingly very aware of the possibility and what it meant to be given a name by ME, she nodded her head up and down frantically.


    I already knew what I would call her. And at the sheer enthusiasm of the girl in front of me, my grin only widened unnaturally, while my eyes lit up ominously blood-red, and my blood-crimson on my skull even joined in.


    "Then... your name shall be MARY." I proclaimed her name loudly and firmly. "My little Bloody Mary!" Mary nodded with moist eyes as she tasted the name on her tongue.


    And as if the universe, the gods and whatever else fully agreed, a small blood-red rimmed message popped into my field of vision, accompanied by eerie sounding fanfares.


    A living contract with [Blood Slave: Mary] has been successfully signed by both parties!


    Blood Slave: A blood slave is bound in body and soul to the will of the master. A blood slave is immortal and cannot age unless the master of the contract willingly allows it.


    <hr>

 Devouring-11

    <hr>


    An unspecified time later in another place....


    A man stormed into the room with bloodshot eyes, a black-clad woman close on his heels.


    "Is there still no news of my son''s whereabouts???" Shouted, almost shrieking, from the visibly enraged and slightly crazed man as he brought his two fists down with force on the heavy maple wood desk, almost knocking over the small inkwell that the man sitting behind it was actually writing with.


    The quick-tempered man visibly and audibly gasped loudly, while the other man behind the desk sighed loudly and clearly and put the shimmering black and blue writing pen back into the holder provided for it. "No, mayor. We have been searching for your son for months now, and have been unable to find any traces or remains of the boy. It still looks like he ran off with the girl."


    The mayor, as if he had been struck too hard on the chin, slumped backward in the chair and stared at the floor, exhausted and confused.


    The woman who had entered behind the mayor and hurried after the man shook her head in disgust and bowed her head slightly in the direction of the man behind the desk. "Excuse me, master... I couldn''t stop him without getting physical..." It came out slightly ashamed and between clenched teeth, looking at the foot of the desk and not daring to look at the threatening guildmaster.


    "It''s okay, sweetie... We don''t want anything to happen to the mayor... Quite the opposite of you, later. I await your presence in my chamber." Came back the cool and emotionless answer, and chased a shiver of fear and fright down the young woman''s spine, accompanied by a small amount of ecstasy.


    Whenever she made even the smallest mistake, whether her fault or not, the guildmaster would "punish" her in private while he took his perversions out on her. At the beginning, as a novice, she had felt only pain and fear, but over the years of service and various tinctures he had given her, she had developed a certain lust for it.


    "Yes, master!" She managed to say in a voice that trembled only slightly, and continued to pull herself backwards out of the room, bending slightly, and closed the door in front of her, careful not to turn her back on the man in the slightest.


    Lower servants and subjects had, according to custom and also in the nobility, always to remove themselves backwards from the presence of more respected persons.


    A sigh escaped the black-clad young woman, and she ran shaky hands through her long, shiny black hair to smooth it out. A kind of tick she had developed over the years, whenever it had come to such situations. "For god''s sake... It was just my turn yesterday..." Came a low murmur from her mouth as she marched down the dark underground corridor of the Assassins'' lair.


    Meanwhile, in the room of the guild master of the local assassins.


    The mayor had already regained his composure and stood up on shaky legs, as drunks often stagger, and took another step toward the guildmaster''s desk. A crazed look and a feverish gleam in his eyes.


    But before the man could do anything, he suddenly froze.


    A black billowing mass of smoke and shadow enveloped his raised right arm, with which he was about to strike the table again, and a dangerous glint answered him in the gaze of the man behind the desk. "Enough!"


    Loud and ominous, in an authoritative voice, the assassin guildmaster held his fevered and delirious gaze. "I have said several times in the past weeks that we will keep you informed! Didn''t I send someone to inform you just last week? And you DARE barge in here like this?!"


    Meanwhile, visibly trying not to make the mayor''s head shorter, the guild master hissed at the mayor. "ONLY because you bring more trouble with your connections to the royal court, if you suddenly disappear, have i gone along with your theater so far! But now it is ENOUGH! We''ve already lost a handful of acolytes and even two fully trained members of our organization in the search when the search was widened!"


    "And all to find your son of a whore! Who probably ran off with that young bitch to have his way with her in the middle of nowhere!"


    The mayor himself knew about the seriousness of the situation and healed his mouth, but inwardly boiled when he heard the name of his son from the mouth of the guildmaster in front of him. Gritting his teeth and clenching his fists so much that it stood out white, he was standing on the spot listening to the man''s clamor.


    "And then you dare to almost ruin hours of work by almost knocking over the inkwell on my table! Get out! Out of my sight! I''ve sacrificed enough people to the search and allowed your antics." Roared the guild master now at the end, and even a little saliva flew out of his mouth so angry he became at the end.


    The shadow that the mayor''s arm had bound dissolved, and the assassin master made a dismissive hand gesture like one would make at an annoying dog to shoo it away.


    The mayor, by now seething with rage, gritted his teeth and spun around in place, strutting out of the room with quick strides while hissing something quietly in anger. "It''s not over yet...!"


    The guildmaster himself, as soon as the door closed behind the hurrying mayor, dropped into the chair with a click of his tongue, and a lustful but evil grin spread across his face. "At least the bastard gave me the opportunity to find another reason to let off steam on HER, hrhrhr..."


    A pleasurable lick of his tongue over his upper lips, and he turned back to his writing tasks, with thoughts, however, already at the perverse games in the evening.


    <hr>


    The assassin guildmaster hurried down the hallway toward his chamber, a sizable bulge clearly visible in his crotch. He was looking forward to seeing the young thing he had chastised and educated over the years since she joined his branch here, pumped full of medicine and drugged with love potions, so that by now she would let him do anything to her, no matter how borderline or crazy it was.


    With a slight jump of expectation in his step, he marched down the corridor, only slightly lit by torches, until he stopped in front of a heavy double stone door decorated with gold. Ornaments of various typical types of weapons used by the assassins, such as daggers, short swords, bows, poisons, small crossbows and many other masterfully crafted handicrafts adorned the two doors.


    With hands trembling slightly in anticipation, he pushed both doors open with a flourish and entered his personal chamber. The young woman, dressed in black lingerie, was already lying still on his large canopy bed, while next to her was a rolling table containing various torture tools and bondage utensils.


    "There you are, my little dove!" He spoke in a hoarse tone and walked with pleasurable slow steps towards the large canopy bed, while behind him the stone doors fell heavily shut with a rumble. He opened his right hand and out of nowhere a small vial with a purple liquid materialized in a white haze. "I also brought your favorite potion."


    The bottle in his hand was an aphrodisiac that the assassin guild sometimes used on certain missions and was freely available to him as the local guild leader. Magic, and therefore magical objects, were rare in this world, and only one in a hundred thousand inhabitants was born with a magical talent, and even that ranged from pathetic to world-class. Only because he was a guild master himself and ran this branch, he had a spatial artifact in the form of a simple ring that could be used to store and keep a certain amount of items.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.A few steps further and he found himself in front of the bed, his pants already off. "Don''t be so coy, sweetheart. I know you want it too!" He whispered hoarsely to her, and dismissed her silence as shyness or fear, as she had so often shown again and again. With a vice-like grip, he grabbed the young woman by one of her bare ankles and pulled her towards him with a jerk, giving a fuck whether he hurt her or not, as it was always part of the evening''s pleasure.


    But unlike usual, the young woman in lingerie remained completely silent, and not even a yelp sounded. Something shiny was at the head of the bed where she had just lain and he had pulled her to him. "What the bloody hell?" Cursed the man as he leaned forward to take a closer look at what was wrong with his toy as his decades of training and survival instincts screamed for attention.


    He rolled away to the left side of the bed as something whizzed past where his head would have been a moment ago. Cursing under his breath, he rolled to the floor and reached down into his two leather boots to pull out two shiny green hidden daggers and set himself up in a fluid motion toward the attacker.


    Contrary to his expectations, however, there was no scary opponent in front of him, but a small brown-haired teenage girl dressed in black assassin garb with two throwing daggers in her hands, just emerging from the shadows on the right side of the room.


    "What the fuck, is this some kind of joke? And who let you in, little brat?!" He spoke angrily to the girl, more upset that he had been disturbed in his evening activity than that he was afraid of the intruder. As a professional, he had immediately realized that his bedmate was no longer among the living when he saw the bloody puddle under her head and smelled the scent of blood in the air.


    Contrary to his expectations, the girl did not answer and walked toward him with an expressionless face, only a cold glint in her eyes indicating what she was about to do.


    Only one thought flashed through the guild master''s mind at the sight. *Which of my competitors sicced her on me?!*


    When he noticed this professionalism in the girl, which actually only assassin veterans radiated.


    Suddenly, his attacker disappeared from his field of vision in a flash, and only his many years of experience allowed him to promptly dodge with a roll forward to immediately throw himself with both daggers in his hands and still without pants on the girl who had stepped out of the shadows behind him.


    Metallic sounds of steel on steel echoed through the room as both opponents attacked in perfect maneuvers, parrying, blocking, and dodging. Shadows billowed from both sides, trying to gain the upper hand in a magical test of strength, shadows materialized, and to a normal human observer it would have looked as if two black shapes were teleporting through space all the time.


    "You stupid whore! Who sent you?" Shouted the guild master, as he crossed his blades with the girl for the hundredth time, inwardly more than astonished how such a small and fragile thing could keep up in strength with an adult man.


    Instead of an answer, only silence greeted him, and suddenly something dripped down from his left cheek, followed by a pulling pain. In his brief inattention, she had thrown one of her throwing daggers with pinpoint accuracy, and had his reflexes not reacted as he had trained, it would have cost him his left eye at best.


    With an angry yell, but still in control of his emotions, the man lunged at the attacker with renewed energy and strength, finally pushing her back piece by piece. Taking advantage of the girl''s brief stumble, a poison-green blade materialized out of a hazy mist to land directly in the teenager''s right thigh.


    A painful hiss escaped her, and she again retreated a bit further into the defensive. The dagger was coated with a paralyzing poison of a manticore, which in an adult human would enter the bloodstream in a few seconds and paralyze the limb where the poison had entered.


    Surprisingly for the guild master, the little assassin''s right leg slowed down, but the usual paralyzing effect was completely absent. "What in the name of all the dark gods are you?" He hissed angrily at the waste of the expensive poison in her direction, while he continued to build up pressure and chased her further and further through the dormitory.


    But the impairment in his attacker''s thigh was enough for him to knock first one of the daggers out of her hand, and only a few seconds later the second. The girl, by now visibly breathing more heavily and struggling with the poison in her bloodstream, retreated on one knee to the wall from which she had first attacked, and her previous stoic expression had given way to a mask of pain as she breathed heavily in and out.


    The guild master, visibly relieved and overcoming his surprise, walked slowly toward his attacker. "Hah, whoever sent you, you stupid bitch. You''re easily thirty years too early to compete with me." Although he had been cursing inwardly the whole time, wondering how it was that such a young woman could keep up with him until he had gotten the advantage with the manticore poison.


    "And since you just snatched my playmate for tonight out of my clutches, you will simply replace her. And after that, I''ll get rid of you like the dirt you are. Or what did you think you were going to do, challenge me here all by yourself?!" He laughed maliciously and now full of anticipation again, when he realized that he would fully enjoy the pure terror of this young girl.


    Only a few steps away from the young girl sitting on one knee in front of him, the guild master suddenly faltered as an amused glint and contemptuous smile came to his lips. The girl was still breathing heavily and sweating, but had raised her head and was looking at him with that defiant look.


    "Who says I''m alone, you scum?" Came out of her mouth in a melodic young girl''s voice as she propped herself up on her knee.


    As if on command, the shadow in the right side of the room suddenly billowed, directly behind the girl, and a three meter high shadow formed out of nothing. The guild master stopped, and even his heart faltered momentarily as two glowing green eyes emerged from the shadow, followed by antlers covered in bloody runes and a bony skull. A beast from the worst nightmares, breathing green mist that slowly fell to the ground and gently enveloped the girl below, and with a substance dripping claws.


    A millenium beast, a wendigo, but a more evolved species than the guildmaster had ever thought possible.


    "W-what the abyss...?" He stuttered as he involuntarily took a step back, and only then did his fighting instincts take over again and he shifted into a tense fighting stance.


    An unearthly sound, a scratching, and something unnatural came out of the skull of the monster in the form of a voice. "Little human... The only filth here is you... And the only thing you''re good for is being devoured by me." At the sound of this emotionless voice, fear and sweat beaded all over the guildmaster''s body, and before he could form a single further thought about the situation or what was being said, his entire field of vision spun.


    He suddenly saw the ceiling, and then the canopy bed with the dead young woman in it, and suddenly the floor in front of the bed, which was approaching with considerable speed. A wet splat, and everything was black.


    <hr>


    "Not bad, Mary. But for opponents like him, I need to devour more assassins and similar fighters, and work their skills into your body..." I said to my little companion, who was still staring at me, breathing heavily, but overjoyed. An enthuistatic nod followed my words.


    "Then let''s clean this place up.... I''ll take care of the bodies, and you collect all the important and valuable objects. Start with the spatial ring on the right hand of the guild master. It will certainly make everything else easier to transport..." I gave my order, and walked with heavy but preternaturally quiet steps towards the two corpses, while my little blood slave set off to execute my command with fiery zeal.


    <hr>

 Devouring-12

    <hr>


    In the here and now...


    I stared into the void, and to an outside observer, it would look like I was staring into the back left corner of the room, directly at the closet of the -former- assassin leader. But in contrast to foreign observers, Mary only looked at me neutrally, long since accustomed to the fact that I occasionally heard "the voice of the world", as she titled it. Because that was exactly the system messages that I constantly received for the inhabitants of this world.


    The voice of the world was something extraordinary, and only kings, heroes, and exceptionally gifted or strong personalities had access to it, according to legends, and "heard" this voice. No one spoke about it, and if the myths and stories were to be believed, this so-called voice was perceived differently by everyone.


    For myself, perhaps through my reincarnation, it showed itself in a system that looked very similar to my former world. Characters like on a monitor, some kind of game, or programming.


    Mary still didn''t know much about me, but I had enlightened her about some things, so that she knew why I acted the way I did, and why I stared into the air as I do now. I continued to refrain from my reincarnation itself, or knowledge that did not contribute to the matter at hand. My past was nobody''s business, and I had spun a short but unremarkable story about my origin, in which I had slept for a very long time, and only recently awakened again in this world and in which I had become a stranger.


    And so my companion obediently and all by himself rummaged and sorted through the possessions of the dead assassin branch leader, while I devoted myself to my "voice of the world."


    *Mastery of poisons increased!


    *Shadow Walk increased!


    *Shadow Control increased!


    *Shadow Manifestation increased!


    *Lightning Step attained...


    *Shocking Touch attained...


    *Conductor gained...


    *Conductor greatly enhanced by internal abilities!


    *Lightning Creation gained by combination of internal abilities...


    *Mana Veins fully developed and completely integrated!


    *True Sight gained...


    *True Sight fully integrated into the peripheral system!


    Undoubtedly, this so-called "voice of the world" simply reminded me one-to-one of the commercials of VR and AR games, in which people could immerse themselves and experience strange worlds full of magic and medievalism, while leveling up and reinforcing and customizing their character as they saw fit.


    My eyes wandered over the enhanced abilities I had gained by consuming and devouring all the assassins left in the Hideout, and all the new traits I had suddenly gained by combining old abilities.


    My greatest growth had clearly been in the area of magic and gaining my own mana, when I had killed the first novice assassins in the forest who had been sent out in search of the missing young woman.


    Of three young men, not the least less bad and brutal than the mayor''s son, I had killed two painlessly and without hesitation, then devoured them before the eyes of the bound and gagged third boy. I did not even have to resort to torture, so eagerly had the remaining one told everything he knew when I had subtly advised him to do so if he did not want to be feasted alive. With the fresh and vivid images of his eaten buddies before his eyes, he had tremblingly told me all the information about the inner structure, at least as much as he knew and had been allowed to know within the organization itself so far.


    And so I had also waited for the other fully trained assassins, killed them, devoured them, and of course nibbled on them beforehand. I was no longer human, and had certainly had no qualms about torturing these wretched worms to get information.


    But to have to watch as I first feasted on their fingers from the hand, and then the hand and the whole arm? Or just bit into the leg and tore out large pieces of skin, flesh, bones and tendons, only to chew and swallow them with relish?


    And so I didn''t have to resort to conventional torture methods at all. Especially when I think about it, I was quite happy about it, because I had so no real knowledge of torture...


    The surprise had overtaken me after devouring the second professional assassin, when I had suddenly felt a painful thrust in my entire body, curled up on the floor, when my entire interior boiled, glowed and hurt so much, as if strands of lava flowed through my veins.


    And lo and behold, after a few minutes of unspeakable pain, the messages had reached me that I now possessed mana veins, and something like shadow mana along with skills had devoured and digested within me. And so, for the first time, besides my own supernatural abilities, I had possessed something like magic. Shadow magic, to be exact.


    I could now, even if it was a bit awkward at first, control and manifest shadows, force them into the physical world and do things with them. Or jump from one shadow to the next without them having to be connected. Making weapons or armor out of them, strengthening my claws with them, or even combining my own abilities like poisons and more.


    And the most interesting thing was when I started to test my transformation ability on my little Mary. I had made it clear to her beforehand that I had never done this before, and explained my idea to her. And she agreed without batting an eye.


    When I changed and adapted her body and inner structure, partially implanted my own achievements in very being, she had writhed in pain and the tears had flowed in streams. But had she even made a single sound? No. She had clenched her teeth so hard that even blood was dripping from the corners of her mouth when I had finished the procedure.


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.And so she had trained with her new skills. Her eyes had shone wetly when I had told her what I had given her, what her body had become. And she had hugged me! Just like that, without warning, without saying anything before or after.


    Hugged, briefly trembled, but continued quietly and silently without saying a sound. And then? Then she had started training! Days, weeks, and then months, while I also experimented further and explored the environment piece by piece and expanded the camp.


    Mary, with her reinforced bones, unassuming but iron-hard skin, mana veins and shadow abilities, along with combat skills and resistances, exerted herself again and again, often collapsing on the spot in the courtyard of our home, and waking up the next morning in her own bed after I had carried her there.


    And in between all that, while we ate our meals together, she told me everything she knew about this world, and what she thought I might have missed in the last hundreds of years. She didn''t know much, but what she told me broadened my horizon immensely.


    Mana, and with it magic, was so rare that only one in a hundred thousand inhabitants of this world was born with magical abilities. These could range from puny to legendary, and every little bit of magic was highly revered and immediately harnessed and used by kings and rulers.


    And Mary? Had now simply been turned without much of a hurdle from a normal little girl, she didn''t even know exactly how old she was, into a magic-slinging death machine. By me.


    Without being very surprised, from this point on she had only worshipped her master even more and done everything that I didn''t even ask for. She trained harder than most adults, took care of cleanliness and order, and assumed a kind of personal maid position at my side.


    She had learned to cook, even if I took my meals fresh and just recently killed if possible, prepared herbal teas with different effects, and learned to use and process my toxins produced by me and secreted by my body. She cleaned, cleaned up, and was always immediately in the jump, as soon as I ordered something.


    And so the months had gone by, and we had finally gone to the city after a long time of observation and preparation.


    I, from shadow to shadow, and she dressed as an assassin with the stolen clothes of the young novices, adapted to her body. Of course, for the first time, I could have changed my form to that of a human man and thus entered the small town unnoticed, but I wanted to hold this back for a quieter time, when an eradication of the local assassin order was not imminent.


    So we gathered information, observed, and waited. Until today, and struck.


    And when I looked at the room here, then also very successful! A wicked chuckle came over my lips at the last inner thought, and Mary looked up briefly from the pile of jewelry and partly magical items that lay spread out in front of her in various sorted piles.


    An understanding flitted across her face, and her eyes shone briefly. She turned back to her previous task and returned to her part.


    A few hours later, we were sitting together in a large, expensively furnished hall at a long wooden table. I was sitting in the biggest chair with a much too large backrest, probably imitating a throne, and Mary was sitting at my side. We had food in front of us, which she had cooked and thrown together for us in the kitchen of the order.


    Even though I did not feel *HUNGER*, since I had devoured dozens of bodies only a few hours ago, I still enjoyed the various flavors that Mary had gathered for me and had prepared successfully again this time.


    The spoils and everything valuable, from books, expensive jewelry, magical items, weapons, armor, and much more, were well stowed in two spatial artifacts.


    An amulet, masterfully crafted after a black crow feather, dangled around my neck, and within it almost all the valuable and useful items we had found and gathered.


    Meanwhile, an inconspicuous and almost black ring glittered on Mary''s ring finger, exactly the same ring that the assassin leader had once worn, and in it some weapons, armor and useful items that my young blood slave could put to good use in battles and missions. And of course some coins and jewelry.


    Due to the shadow manipulation of the assassins, we had had no problems finding even the best secret stashes and safes, and had completely emptied the entire hideout.


    "...And then, after leaving a few friendly surprises for the next visitors, we will lock up this place for the time being and go home. I need to look at all the books. And also, the bastard''s young mirror companion had interesting lightning abilities, which I''ll pass on to you. We should look into those as well." I just finished my explanation, as we had been talking in a purely businesslike way during the meal about our yield and mission, and I had Mary referee what she had to improve about herself in order not to repeat something like with the guildmaster of the assassins in the fight again.


    She just nodded and returned a simple neutral, "Yes, master," while sticking her fork in her mouth and chewing on a piece of steak. Looking at her like this, you would not recognize her in any way as the small, scrawny and almost starving girl that I had made my companion a few months ago. She sat upright, devouring the expensive food without emotion, rosy cheeks, bright and healthy hair, and a look on her face that shone with hardness and determination. The complete opposite of the young girl of that time.


    When we were done with our meal, I walked through the hall and the kitchen, boredly touching any objects that were left, stowing away any furniture, kitchen utensils, and anything that wasn''t nailed down.


    The hideout was swept clean, not a single object was left behind, and only some modified traps at the entrance with special poisonous surprises we left behind, and closed the cellar vault in the back room of the house on the surface, which served as a facade for the entrance to the shelter.


    My spatial necklace weighed heavily around my neck, since this amulet offered many times more storage space than the small inconspicuous ring on Mary''s finger, but at the same time only reduced the weight of the objects and items stored in it by just under 80%, and did not completely lift it like the ring did. I knew all this from my new skill, True sight, which I had acquired by assimilating the new and old skills, and could tell me about objects and their properties with a glance if I wished. Or even the strength of other creatures compared to my own.


    With a final click, the heavy, magically reinforced latch inside clicked into place and we marched away, me disappearing into the shadows with a single step, and Mary with the black hood pulled deep into her face.


    On the way out of the small town, finally back towards my, no our, home, I looked at my overview again as I swam through the shadows.


    Devourer - Progenitor of evolution


    Age: 13 months


    Height: 307 cm


    Mastered genes:


    Living wood, fairy, lava worm, mole, bat, wolf, goat, treant, boar, rabbit, human, magical hummingbird, shadow mana, lightning mana


    Acquired skills:


    Shapeshifting(S), Transform(S), Sword Fighting(A), Dagger Fighting(S), Night Vision(S), Mana Sight(A), Poisons(SSS), Reading(A), Human Tongue(A), Shadow Walk(A), Shadow Control(A), Shadow Manifestation(A), Lightning Step(B), Shocking Touch(B), Conductor(S), Lightning Creation(A), Mana Veins(SSS), True Sight(S)


    Resistances:


    Physical(S), Magical(S), Fire(S), Lava(S), Water(C), Ice(D), Earth(B), Illusion(A), Blood(A), Poisons(S), Lightning(A), Shadow(S)


    <hr>

 Re:Write released (From my other Novel)

    The RE:Write is released now :)


    https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/97328/shattered-realms-the-origins-rebirth-a-litrpg/chapter/1879239/chapter-1-the-end</a>


    If you are interested in reading more about Avan, but from a fresh perspective (But exactly how I planned it out before) then jump over to the new story.


    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    2 Chatpers out now. 3rd coming soon.


    More tomorrow and then daily. I will collect a big backlog for any weird case of me not being able to write.


    And yes, I am kind of ashamed it took soooo long to finally continue. But life is life. Even now I am having new situations in my life I need to take care off. But how we would describe it in Germany:


    "Life¡äs not a Pony farm" Haha