《I'll be happy as a monster》 Chapter 0 : Prologue *tang tang* The sound of rattling steel stair echoed. In the darkness of the night illuminated by the soft light of the moon, I forced myself to climb the stair toward my house on second floor. In these whole apartment, the only tenant was me. Inserting the key and opening the door, I''m assaulted by stuffy smell like the smell of dirty wet cloth along with damp warm air. at least it''s better than the freezing cold air outside, thinking that I went inside. I rid the snow on my coat and head then threw my bag and coat to the old sofa, I went to bathroom and washed my face. I saw my own face reflected by the mirror. A dull face with messy long hair, long fringe covered the right side of my face. I used my hand to set aside the fringe, hidden behind the fringe was burn marks that covered my right half of face. "Damn, it really is hard to look at." I said that as I let down my fringe again. I went to the kitchen and took out a can of beer from the fridge. I sat on the sofa and drank the beer. The cold beer travelled from my throat to my stomach, leaving good taste in it''s trail. One can was not enough so I grabbed another one. First was one can, then it became two, three, four, and the number kept increasing. I stopped for a moment at my eighth cans, maybe because of the alcohol I began to reminisced. Abandoned at the orphanage as a three years old child with burn marks. Looking at the other child being adopted while I alone remained. The struggle I did after leaving the orphanage. My mood worsen the more I recalled my past, so I stopped and finished my eight can of beer. I went to grab another beer, but it was the last can. Driven by my desire for beer, I wore my coat and went outside to buy more beer. In the dark night snow fall from the sky slowly. Shoving my hands to my pocket, I walked down the stairs. But because of the snow, I slipped. Loosing my footing, I rolled down the stairs and hit my head. Ah, I haven''t had enough of drinking. That was all I could think of. I lied on the cold floor but I could feel warm blood was leaking out of my head. My eyesight darkened, I wonder if this was how dying feels like. I closed my eyes for eternity. //////////////////////////////////////////////////////::::://///////////////////////////////////////////////////// "...... I." Hm? "....... Oi." ....is someone calling me? "Oi, wake up. I know you can hear me." I opened my eyes, and a shadow in the shape of a person with no facial features other than mouth was the first thing I saw. "What the hell!?" I screamed and tried to run away but I couldn''t feel my legs. I couldn''t feel my arms and body either. I looked downward and saw nothing but white ground.Eh? Why can''t I see my body? Am I floating?While I was confused, the shadow grinned.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. "If you''re looking for your body, just give up. You left your body when you died." Eh, I died? Oh yeah, I remember falling from the stair and hit my head pretty bad. Then is this heaven?I looked around, the place was huge without anything. Both the sky and ground was white stretching with no end. In this whole space there was only me and the shadow. "No, this is not heaven. This is my private space." Wha? Did he just read my mind? "Yes, I did." .......... Could you not? It''s rude, you know. "Sorry, but it is something I do unconsciously. And restraining myself would be too troublesome." No, please do it. "Well, just put it aside, I have something to say." Don''t put it aside. "First, some introduction, I am a god. And I called you here when you died back at your world." I see, I wonder why you called me, are you going to reincarnate me to a different world like in fantasy story? "It''s good that you''re quick on the uptake. Yes, I''m going to do that." ......... Really? I was just joking. Can I ask for a reason? "A reason, is it. Well, more like it was just on a whim." whim? "Yep, I accidentally saw you died and thought it would be interesting to see you reincarnate to a different world, like those novel in your world." Wow, so brazen. "What? Then you don''t want a second life? You might have a harem in the different world, you know?" Thank you so much, benevolent god, for your gift of second life. Yes, I want a second life. Not like I was aiming for a harem or anything. Yes, what I want is a second life! "Who are you making excuses to?" Waa! Please stop reading my mind! "Never mind that, so let''s start the transfer." YES! "Calm down, I know you want a harem but let''s take care of something first." Wha?! W-what are you talking about? I-its''s not like I want a harem or anything! "..... Your tsundere act is disgusting, you know that?" .... Uuh. "No more nonsense, before you transfer I want to let you know that other than you there are other that were summoned to another world. And you will eventually fight some of them." Really? Can''t I just avoid them? "Whether you want fight them or not is your choice, but some of them will fight and try to kill you regardless what you do. So I will give you some ability to defend yourself." You mean a cheat? "Yup." Really?! Can I become OP? "If you use the cheat well, you can." Awesome! "Don''t be too happy. The ability I will give you won''t make you OP from the start." Eh? "You can and will become OP but with time and effort." Can''t you just give me something that will make me OP from the start? "Sorry, if I do that I won''t have any fun looking at you struggling." You just want to see me struggling, damn it! "Well well, just calm down. Beside I can''t give you any overwhelming cheat even if I have one. It''s the rule." Is there really a rule like that? "There is." Then what cheat will you give me? "First is the staple of fantasy story [appraise] and [language comprehension]. I''m sure you know what [appraise] is, so I will skip the explanation. Be grateful, my [language comprehension] is unique and a lot more powerful than others. The [language comprehension] will translate all languages you hear or see into something you know, even if it were the language of animals, ancients or even divine languages." That''s awesome! Isn''t this a really strong cheat already? "Now, for the cheat that will make you OP." I have been waiting for this! "Your cheat is called [Dominate], it is an ability that allow you to assign points you get every time you level up to your stats, rather than automatically added." What, that''s it? That''s my cheat? "It may sound simple but it doesn''t just do that. As for it''s other functions you need to discover it yourself. I have said what I need to say, let''s start the transfer. " W-wait, I still have something to ask. "Oh, by the way, you will forget about your name but don''t name yourself, okay. Well, off you go. " W-wait! Just like that, my sight was blinded by light as I was transferred to another world. Chapter 1 : New Form and First Battle After being blinded by the light, I opened my eyes. What I saw was an old room. Inside the room there was only wooden table. The room was full of dust and spiderweb. The wall of the room and it''s roof was worn out and felt like it could crumble at any moment. is this a giants house? The wooden table is huge. I''m not even half the height of the table''s feet. I looked around the room before I found a piece of shattered mirror and saw my new form. I was speechless. I stared at the mirror and did some funny moves. Raising my hand or paw, trying to smile, moving my tail and even jumped. So, it''s not that the furniture was big. It was me who was small. Yep, this is my new form. Standing at about fifteen centimeters in height with twenty five centimeters in length. Blazing red fur, four paws as hands and legs with retractable claws, pointy ears, fire occasionally came out from my mouth, whiskers on my my face, completely black eyes, burn mark covering the right half of my face and a real attached red tail. Yep, I am a cat. A red cat. No, I''m really small, more like a kitten. Being reincarnated as a cat from a human was, frankly, disappointing. But it was better than nothing, I guess. Being given a second life was already good enough. As I was in a different world with a new body, first, I got to saw my status. Since there wasn''t a start or triangle button, I called status in my head and a game-like status display appeared in front of me. My status, I wonder how strong I am. I''m getting excited! Name : unnamed Species : Fire Kitten (Common) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 01 LV : 001/100 HP : 25/25 MP : 05/05 STM : 40/40 ATK : 3 DEF : 2 MGC : 1 MND : 2 DEX : 1 AGL : 7 Points : 3 Active Skills : Appraise LV01 Passive Skills : Languages comprehension LV MAX Dominate LV01 Pyrokinesis LV01 Resistance Skills : Heat Nullification LV MAX Title : Otherworlder Harem Seeker Why am I unnamed? I obviously had a name. My name was..... Wait a sec, my name? What was my name again? This is weird, I''m sure I have one. Wait, didn''t that god said I would forget my name? Yeah, he did, didn''t he? Right before I was transferred. And he said not to name myself, didn''t he? Why did he say that? Well, whatever. No use thinking something I don''t know the answer to. No matter what, he was still a god. I''m sure he had plans, right? ........... Right? Throwing the name problem to the back of my mind, I focused on my stats and skills. My status was lower than I thought. What is this (Common) beside my species? Other than the three skills I got from that god, I only have two skills from my new body. I knew that I needed to start from the bottom, like those MCs from fantasy novels. But still, to experience being thrown to the bottom of the food chain myself was quite depressing. This points, is this something like in game? Hmm..... Let''s try adding it to defense. My low defense was really worrying. There was no mouse and this display didn''t have a touch function, so I tried imagining adding one point to my defense. Ohh! It rose! My defense rose! From two to three! So, I just need to imagine it to control the display, huh? That''s convenient. For the rest of the point, I''ll distribute it later. This concerned my survival. I needed to be careful on how I manage my stats. I glanced at the title column..... Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. ..... Okay, I won''t lie anymore. I really do want a harem. I mean, a harem is the eternal dream of man, right? I know you want me to be honest, but do you really have to write it in my status? What if someone see this? It would make things awkward, you know. Forget it, let''s just hope no one could see the tittles column even with appraise skill. ....... But, at least, this proved that I''m cured from my old disease....... I returned to my skills column. Other than the three skills I got from god, I didn''t know about the other two skills. Pyrokinesis, if I''m not wrong it was a power to control fire with the mind, right? I opened my mouth and breath out powerfully, while imagining a dragon''s fire breath. BWOOOSHHH!!! what came out was exactly a breath of fire like a dragon''s, albeit a little small. It range was about thirty centimeters long. After I stopped my fire breath, a machine-like voice rang out in my head. "You have learned [Fire Breath]!" I was ecstatic. I looked at my skills page and I found [Fire Breath LV01] written there. My tension blasted through the roof. I could learn skills! The feelings of learning new skills and, more importantly, the feeling of breathing fire was really awesome! Driven by my high tension, I tried to cover my body with fire. Since I have [Fire Nullification], I''m sure fire wouldn''t hurt me. Ummmm! I imagined fire covering my whole body. I tense my body up, my tail was perking up. After a full minute of imagining and tensing up, it happened.... BWOOOSH! A little spark appeared on my head, before turning into a small fire and spread all over my body. My whole body was on fire! Even though I was currently burning, I didn''t feel anything. As expected, it was thanks to my skill. The machine-like voice once again rang in my head. "You have learned [Fire Clad]!" Yes! Another skill, get! I cancelled [Fire Clad] and returned to normal but I suddenly felt a little tired. I looked at my stats and found my stamina bar had dropped from forty to thirty. So, rather than MP, it uses stamina? Does that mean it''s not magic? Oh well, I would figure it out later. For now, let''s explore this place. I walked out of the room. Thankfully the door was opened, not completely closed. If not, I would have to burned a hole through the door. The next room was worn out like the first room, but it had more furniture in it. Like a chair, a table, a torn carpet, a stairs to upstairs, and a door that seemed to lead to outside. Curious, I climbed the ladders to upstairs. But the moment I reached the second floor, I regretted to even think of going upstairs with every fiber of my being. Why? Oh, nothing big. There was just this huge spider clinging to the ceiling of the second floor. What the hell is that thing?! It got twelve legs that were massive and long, black and red stripes in color, the whole body was filled with hairs, the eight eyes were shining red, and it''s fangs were dripping with some kind of liquid. If I found a spider like this living in my house, I would burn down the whole house along with it. I tried appraising it but what came out was just it''s name, Demon Spider. Yep, it splendidly live up to it''s name. I tried to go back without alerting it, but just my luck the old wooden stairs just had to make noise at the worst timing. When my hind legs touched the lower stairs, it let out a screeching sound. The spider noticed the sound and discovered me. It didn''t waste any time, it immediately shot out it''s web like a net and tried to pull me towards it. I just got my second life, like hell I''m gonna let it end so soon! I activated [Fire Clad] and web that coiled around me burned to ash. I deactivated [Fire Clad], ran down the stairs and went out the door. I''m seriously grateful that the door was not completely closed. The outside was already at dusk, the sun was setting. I didn''t relax when I out of the house, I surveyed my surroundings and found that this was actually an abandoned village. I only saw about ten houses and forest surrounding the village. Plants and weeds was covering the whole place, looks like the village had been abandoned for a long time. ...... No, this village was not abandoned. This village was wiped out. I found a human head skeleton right beside a barrel while a human body skeleton lied near it. When I looked closely, I found more skeletons that seemed to be human''s. I looked at the black marks on the houses and road, that were blood marks. I felt dread, I ran toward the forest. This village is dangerous. Who know what kind of things living in the village. Not to mention, what if the thing that wiped out the village were still in the village. I shivered. "Meat, eat." Before I managed to enter the forest, something appeared in front of me. It was a rat, although it was a bit bigger. It was the size of an adult cat, no, it was bigger than normal cat. Why is the animal in this world have to be so big? I appraised it and just like the spider, only it''s name appeared, Forest Rat. You mean I would fine more of these rats in the forest? Give me a break. But it is better than staying here with the spider. "Eat, meat." The rat only said that over and over again. Damn, I really can understand what it say. This will be useful. The rat ran toward me, I didn''t know whether the rat was stronger than me or not but I''m sure I could at least win against one rat. The rat pounced at me, but just before it touched me, I used [Fire Clad]. I jumped and caught it in the air, the rat shrieked in pain as it furs and flesh burned. While in frenzy, the rat scratched and bit me, it hurt really bad. We fell down and separated, the rat was rolling in the ground, trying to extinguished the fire on it''s body. I didn''t miss my chance, I walked near the rat and burned it completely using [Fire Breath]. Unfortunately, I still don''t have enough power to kill it using my claws yet. "You leveled up!" I ignored the voice, deactivated [Fire Clad] and ran into the forest. I was exhausted, using [Fire Clad] and [Fire Breath] really drained me. Not to mention, the wounds I took. It really hurts for my small body. I found a small hole beneath a tree, after checking that it was empty and didn''t seemed to be used, I went in. I licked my wounds, before falling asleep from exhaustion. Thus ended my first day in different world. Chapter 2 : Food and Level Hit by light from outside, my eyes opened. I yawned and stretch my stiff body. After sleeping, my wounds have close and scabbed. As expected of a beast, albeit still a cub, I have quite the recovery ability. But, although my wounds have closed, my HP still not recovering. My stamina only recovered to half after a whole night sleep. Well, I did almost used up all my stamina yesterday And my stomach rumbled incessantly. I guess, I would recover after eating something. Now that I thought about it, I hadn''t eat anything from yesterday. Today, I got to search for food, or else I''m gonna starve. But first, I need to allocated my points. Name : unnamed Species : Fire Kitten (Common) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 01 LV : 005/100 HP : 10/25 MP : 05/05 STM : 20/40 ATK : 3 DEF : 3 MGC : 1 MND : 2 DEX : 1 AGL : 7 Points : 14 Active Skills : Appraise LV01 Fire Breath LV01 Fire Clad LV01 Passive Skills : Languages comprehension LVMAX Pyrokinesis LV01 Dominate LV01 Resistance Skills : Heat Nullification LVMAX Tittle : Otherworlder Harem seeker Oh~ I''m level 5! That was fast. Was the rat that I defeated yesterday actually pretty strong? Or was it that I''m just too weak, so I leveled up faster? No matter, my level increasing fast was a good thing. With this my road to OPness didn''t look so hazardous anymore. Yosh, target for today was to search for food and try to level up as much as possible! To did that, I need to allocated my stats carefully. Hmm... What to do with this 14 points? my first thought was to upgrade my def first, as long as I could endure my enemy attack, I should be able to burned them to ash with pyrokinesis. Okay then, let''s use 7 points for def! Now, what I''m going to choose for offense? Physical or magic? Let''s go with physical, since I didn''t have magic and my magic stat was lower than my atk stat, I should go for physical attack. And I personally liked the image of beating my enemy with raw power than magic. Then for the other 7 points, I used 2 for atk, to make my attack stronger. 3 for agl, so I could dodge more easily. 1 each for dex and HP, dex for aim and HP for making me a better tank. Yosh, My stats was looking better! Name : unnamed Species : Fire Kitten (Common) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 01 LV : 005/100 HP : 10/30 MP : 05/05 STM : 20/40 ATK : 5 DEF : 10 MGC : 1 MND : 2 DEX : 2 AGL : 10 Points : 0 Active Skills : Appraise LV01 Fire Breath LV01 Fire Clad LV01 Passive Skills : Languages comprehension LVMAX Pyrokinesis LV01 Dominate LV01 Resistance Skills : Heat Nullification LVMAX Tittle : Otherworlder Harem seeker With this, I''m sure I could beat that rat a lot easier. As for the spider, If I could dodge it''s web attack and burned it''s nest with it along, it should end as a victory for me. Finishing my stats distribution, I head out from the hole while paying attention at my surrounding. I need to be wary at all time to survive here, I didn''t want to die without knowing what hit me. I strolled the woods, I tried not to make any noise as I walked and I walked near bushes so I could hide anytime. After a hour of walking, I found an apple tree. Albeit hard and falling a few times, I managed to climb the tree and obtained an apple. Before I took a bite, I appraised the apple. Just to make sure what I ate was a real apple or some thing else. The result was an apple, the same as the rat and spider, only it''s name appeared. I need to raise my appraising skill level. After eating a couple of apples, My stomach felt full. And my stamina fully recovered too, but my HP still haven''t recovered. With full stomach, I went down the tree and walked to search for enemy. In my walk, I appraised everything I could see, whether it''s a stone or leaf. Thankfully the appraise skill didn''t use MP or stamina, so I could use it without care. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. After appraising things about a hundred or so times, my appraise skill leveled up! "Appraise skill leveled up!" "You can now see description for things you appraise." I tried appraising a rock and beneath the name there was a string of words. Rock Just a normal rock. Yosh, it worked! I appraise the bushes in front of me. Bush Just a normal bush. I saw a herb-like plant in front of a tree, usually a plant that grew near tree was either useful or poisonous. I appraised the plant, hoping for healing herb. Kousu herb A herb with healing properties. Can be eaten raw, crushed and rub it on wounds, or used as potion ingredients for maximal effect. Very bitter. Jackpot! I ate the herb but I almost spit it back out because of the extreme bitterness. I endured it and finally swallow it. The bitterness and the grassy smell still lingers in my mouth, I opened my stats and found that I recovered 5 points of HP. What the hell!? It only recovered 5 points! You mean I have to eat that herb five more times to be at full health?! I crushed the other kousu herb and rubbed it to my wound, but my HP didn''t recover. So, the only way is to eat it? No way! I had to searched a way to negate that bitterness, eating it five more times would wilt my tongue! I walked again, but I''m not searching for enemies but for water. I needed water, I really wanted it right now, to erased the bad taste in my mouth. It''s been two hours since my search for water, I haven''t found any water source but I did found edible and poisonous mushrooms. Hore mushroom Edible. A bit spicy. Luug mushroom Poisonous. Caused paralysis if eaten Ugo mushroom Poisonous. Caused poisoning if eaten. I''m truly grateful that my appraise skill level up. If not, I''m going to have a really hard time. As I walked, I heard a scream from ahead of me. I went toward the scream, but I went slowly and carefully so I could back out at any moment I felt danger. As I near the scream source, I heard the sound of water. I grew excited but I still wary, because many danger could be found near and in water. Not to mention, I just heard a scream. I found a river but I also found a bunch of rat from yesterday, I hid inside a bushes and looked at the rats. I appraised one. Forest Rat Big omnivore rats that lived in forest. Lived and hunt in groups. High reproductive ability. Edible. There were five of them, and they were crowding something. When I got a good look of what they were crowding, I almost yell. The rats were eating a human. I could only see the boots and legs, because the five rats was crowding his body. As the rats were busy eating, it was my chance to ambush them. For the corpse, I knew this was not something to say but, thank you for distracting them. I''ll at least took revenge for you, by killing them. A plan formed in my mind. I ran out from the bushes and activate [Fire Clad]. The rats were too preoccupied on their meal, they didn''t notice me. I rammed one of the rats, only then the rats noticed me, but it was too late. I used [Fire Breath] and managed to hit two of the rats near me. Three rats were rolling in the ground with their body on fire. I ignored the other two, they won''t dare attack me while I activated [Fire Clad], they won''t risk getting burned. I ran to the one I rammed, I turned it to ash using [Fire Breath]. I did the same for one of the two rats rolling on the ground. For the last rat, I gouged it''s throat with my fangs. I need to bit multiple times because of my small size. The blood on my mouth and fangs were burned by the fire on my body and left black marks. The rats that I bit were letting out smokes from it''s hollowed throat. I looked at the two still living rats, I growled menacingly to intimidate them. "You have learned [Intimidation]!" My body covered by fire, my fangs stained by black marks from the blood as I stood on top of a Forest Rat corpse. Behind me were two more Forest Rats corpses. The two alive Forest Rats growled back at me, but they slowly retreated and finally ran while leaving words. "Strong, run." "Run, avoid." When the two rats disappeared from my sight, I deactivated [Fire Clad] and went to the shallow river with slow steps. I voraciously gulped down the water after checking the river with appraise skill. After satisfying my thirst, I rolled around the water to clean my body and face. My plan worked. Taking on five rats were dangerous, so I need to intimidate them to leave. That was why I took out three rats while leaving two alive. To intimidate the last two. For now, three rats were my my limit. The stamina used for my ability was no joke. The battle just now already exhausted 25 points of my stamina. Thankfully my intimidation worked. If not, then I''m in for a rough battle. I checked my status, after resting a bit. I heard the level up announcement in my head after killing those three rats. Name : unnamed Species : Fire Kitten (Common) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 01 LV : 013/100 HP : 15/30 MP : 05/05 STM : 15/40 ATK : 5 DEF : 10 MGC : 1 MND : 2 DEX : 2 AGL : 10 Points : 24 Active Skills : Appraise LV02 Fire Breath LV01 Fire Clad LV01 Intimidation LV01 Passive Skills : Languages comprehension LVMAX Pyrokinesis LV01 Dominate LV01 Resistance Skills : Heat Nullification LVMAX Tittle : Otherworlder Harem seeker Wow, level 13! I really leveled up quick! 24 points to use for stats upgrade. Hmm, how to distribute it? I used 10 points for stamina, more stamina means I could use more ability. 4 points for HP, for more HP. 3 points for MND, to defend against magic attack. 3 points for DEX, for more accuracy. And lastly, 4 points for ATK, for more raw power. Hahahahahaha! I''m still far from being OP, but I''m getting there! Name : unnamed Species : Fire Kitten (Common) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 01 LV : 013/100 HP : 15/50 MP : 05/05 STM : 15/90 ATK : 9 DEF : 10 MGC : 1 MND : 5 DEX : 5 AGL : 10 Points : 0 Active Skills : Appraise LV02 Fire Breath LV01 Fire Clad LV01 Intimidation LV01 Passive Skills : Languages comprehension LVMAX Pyrokinesis LV01 Dominate LV01 Resistance Skills : Heat Nullification LVMAX Tittle : Otherworlder Harem seeker Chapter 3 : First Encounter, "Her I carefully roasted the only rat that''s not reduce to ash. The appraise skill did said that it was edible, so I''m going to trust it. I took a bite. ......Gross. The meat was smelly and hard, taste bitter and sour. I saw my stats, my stamina recover 7 points and my HP recover 2 points after one bite. I forced myself to ate nine more bite. .......Ugh, I want to throw up. The taste was bad enough but the aftertaste was even worse. I rinsed my mouth on the river and gulped down a lot of water to completely washed away the bad taste on my mouth and throat. But at least, after sacrificing my tongue and taste bud, my stamina fully recovered and my HP was more than half full. I turned the rat to ash and searched the human corpse for anything useful. I took everything I could from the human corpse, even his ruined clothes. I got a bag, two low-grade potion, a map, a short sword, a wooden small shield, boots, torn shirt and pants. It was hard to take the clothes off, but I managed to do it without further damaging the already torn clothes. After burning the corpse and offered some prayer, I placed everything on top of the shirt and dragged it to the hole, where I slept before, and retired for the day. Many danger lurked in the dark and dusk was when darkness covered everything. I didn''t know whether strong monster come out at night or not, but being extra careful won''t hurt. Right now I''m still weak, but I will keep defeating monster and strive to be stronger as fast as I could. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////=/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// In the middle of a day, I was munching on a well done snake. Beside the snake I was munching on, there were three more rats and a pillbug corpses around me. Though I said well done, the meat was tasteless. All I could taste was smoke from cooking it with direct fire and bitterness of the burnt part. But at least, it was still a lot better than the gross rat meat or the tough pillbug meat. When I was still a human, I believed I am a pretty good cook but I guess, no matter how good a cook was, if the ingredients were trash then it would still be trash after being cooked. It''s been a week since the fight at the river. Since the fight, I''ve been exploring the forest and managed to found some new plants and prey, like the snake and bug around me. Because I kept appraising anything that caught my eye, my [Appraise] skill leveled up. It gave me more informations when I appraised a monster. Name : unnamed Species : Red Circle Snake (Common) Type : Reptile Rank : 01 LV : 018/050 A common species of snake that can be seen anywhere around the world. Possesses venom that paralyzed the victim but the poison itself will not cause death. The skin is good for crafting. Except the fangs, bones, skins, and it''s poison sack, anything else is edible. Name : unnamed Species : Armored pillbug (Rare) Type : Insect Rank : 01 LV : 025/075 An omnivore pillbug that have a hard armor-like carapace that protect it''s body. The carapace hardness and resistance to magic is among the best out of all monster. The higher the level and rank, the higher the defensive capability of the carapace. Highly sought material for armor. While it have high defense, it attack ability is lacking. Their only method of attack is by rolling to a ball and ramming itself to it''s enemy. Only by evolving to rank two and on, that it would have other method of attack. Edible. Hisa flower Can be eaten raw or used to make a potion to detoxify poison. Inion herb Can be eaten raw or used to make a potion for paralysis. Right now, I''m on my way toward the middle part of the forest. From the map I got yesterday, I found out the name of the forest and my general location. I was at the south outer part of this forest called [Sting Forest]. The forest drawn on the map was colored black on the center part of it, the color got paler from the center to the outer part. If this was a game, this color represent the monster distribution in this forest. The darker the color, the stronger the monster. The reason why I''m going toward the middle part of the forest was simple, to hunt stronger monster. After a week of hunting, my level had rise, but now it would take too long to max my level up just by killing rats. The snake gave more exp but it was kind of tricky to fought them, since I couldn''t afford to get bitten by them. As for the pillbug, I never saw one again after the first one. As expected of rare monster. And so, I decided to go to the middle part of the forest to look for stronger prey. Also, it was an established fact in fantasy world, that only by killing monster stronger than oneself, pushing oneself to the line between life and death could one become OP. I need more exp to evolve and by killing stronger monster I might be able to evolve to a rare or unique monster. Killing a stronger monster was like killing two birds with one stone. Of course, there was a risk But it''s a risk I would take, no, it''s a risk I must take. For my future happiness. If I keep evolving, I would get stronger each time. Not only that, I''m sure I could obtained a humanoid body if I keep evolving. Become strong and obtained humanoid body. These two are my current goal. To protect myself, I need to be strong. And by being strong will make it easier to earn wealth and fame. By being strong, rich, and famous, a harem won''t be a pipe dream for me anymore! That''s why I need to be strong, no, I will be strong! The strongest! And I will have a harem filled with cute girls! Oh, there was one change in my mind after my transformation to a monster. I realized that everytime I thought about a beauty, what appeared in my mind were girls with animal ears and tails. I like monster girl, but why couldn''t I thought about normal girls? No, even before that, I could only thought a beauty as a red cat that looked like me. What''s up with that? I mean the cat was cute but why a cat? Pushing the thought to the back of my mind, I walked toward the middle part of the forest again. As I walk, I killed five more forest rats and two red circle snakes. From morning to now, I had killed eight rats and three snakes. I became more used to this body of mine with every fight. For the me now, fighting five rats at the same time was easy. I had quite the adaptation ability, if I say so myself. And I also acquired and made new skills, some of my skills also leveled up. My current status is like this. Name : unnamed Species : Fire Kitten (Common) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 01 LV : 035/100 HP : 41/50 MP : 05/05 STM : 80/150 ATK : 23 DEF : 25 MGC : 1 MND : 20 DEX : 5 AGL : 20 Points : 0 Active Skills : Appraise LV03 Fire Breath LV02 Fire Clad LV02 Intimidation LV02 Fire Ball LV02 Fire Claw LV02 Passive Skills : Languages comprehension LVMAX Pyrokinesis LV01 Dominate LV01 Resistance Skills : Heat Nullification LVMAX Poison resistance LV02 Paralyze resistance LV01 Tittle : Otherworlder Harem seeker The fire attack skills were easy to acquired as I only need to used it once to learned it. But the poison and paralyze resistance..... I went through torture to get it. I needed to ate some poisoned mushrooms to get it, just one of it was an ordeal. It felt like my stomach was punctured and twisted, my whole body also became numb and felt like numerous ants were crawling all over my body, at the same time. It was hell, and I went through several time of this torture to get the skill. I''ve noticed that as my level grew, I also grew bigger abruptly. When I saw my reflection on the river, I think both my height and length increased about 10 centimeters. It''s a good thing to know that I grew bigger as I keep leveling up. Oh, I used the upgraded appraisal on my stats and I got a clear grasp on what my stats do. HP If it become 0, you die. MP Your magic gauge. Used for magic. STM Your stamina. Used for certain abilities. The more you have, the longer you can stay active. ATK Your physical force. The more you have, the harder you hit. Affect your overall strength. DEF Your defense. The more you have, the harder you become. Affect health regeneration. MGC Your magical might. The more you have, the mightier your magic. Affect magic generation. MND Your magical defense, the more you have, the lesser the magical damage you receive. DEX Your dexterity. The more you have, you can pull more complex move. AGL Your speed. The more you have, the faster you become. Based on this and my initial stats distribution, I have given up on magic. I would focus on becoming the ultimate destructive tank. After the stats, I tried appraising my skills and titles but the description didn''t appear. I guess the level was too low. But when I appraised my species, a description appeared. Fire Kitten A cat that hold the power of fire. Omnivore. Usually alone but will group up when mating season come. An agile hunter that ambush it''s prey, it''s fire are deadly and will burn anything or anyone that underestimate the Fire Kitten because of their small body frame and name. Fire Kitten''s fire is a non-magic fire, magical defense will only be half-useful against it. It''s furs are sought for fire-resistance armor, it''s fangs and claws are a good catalyst for fire element weapon. Edible. After reading this, I finally knew that my body was not as weak as I thought it was.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. After two hours of walking, I felt like there''s a change on the air. My skin was all tingly, I think I''m out from the outer part of the forest. I walked around for a few minutes before finding a new prey. A new monster appeared, when I appraises it, I exclaimed softly. " oooooo~ " (MC) From the bushes ahead of me, a rabbit-like monster came out. It was bigger than rabbit from earth, the fur was white with brown spots on it''s back, and what''s make it different from rabbit from earth more than it''s size were it''s claws. The claws on it''s front legs were long, it was at least 5cm. But I didn''t care about that. What I cared was what written on it''s description. Name : unnamed Species : Long Claw Rabbit (Common) Type : Beast Rank : 01 LV : 010/050 A herbivore rabbit with long claws on it''s front legs. Live in herds. Not aggressive as long as it was not threatened. Will attack in fury with it''s claws when threatened. The fur is good for crafting. High reproductive ability. The meat is a delicacy. Edible. " The meat is a delicacy. " That one sentence was enough to make me hunt that rabbit to the end of the world. It''s been more than a week since I arrived to this world, this nine days were enough to torment my tongue. Since I arrived here, the only thing that delicious enough to eat was the apples I found. Other than that I only have poisonous mushrooms, bitter leaves, and gross tasting meat. That''s why, I will hunt that rabbit down without fail and make a feast out of it. The rabbit hadn''t see me yet and went under a tree to eat some kind of grass. I sneaked to it''s back, I walked quietly and slowly as to not roused the rabbit. The moment I reached a leap distance from the rabbit, I leaped and pounced at the rabbit. The moment the rabbit became aware of me, it was too late. I didn''t want to accidentally burned the rabbit, so I mimicked the way how carnivores attack and bite the rabbit neck from the back. I tried to break the rabbit neck and it broke easily when I bit hard and twist it. I was completely excited. I drooled just by imagining the taste of the meat. I heard the notice of acquiring new skills but I ignored it and focused on the rabbit. I quickly bled the rabbit and skin it with my claws. It was hard but I managed to do it, although the skin ended up messy. The skin looked like rags with blood stains. Since it was my first attempt, I think it was good enough. I carefully roast the rabbit meat after I beat it a few times to soften the meat. When I done roasting, the meat was burned here and there but it looks good nonetheless. Now for the moment of truth, I took a bite....... It''s delicious! The meat was soft and the fat was juicy although it smells a little. The meat carried a faint sweet taste, pity I didn''t have salt or pepper. After the meat, I also roasted the organs. Although it was a little bitter, I couldn''t waste a good protein I managed to catch. After a few minutes, what''s left of the rabbit were only organs filled with waste and the bones. Just one was not enough, I ran around and manage to find three more. The three rabbits also ended up in my stomach. My new body really have quite the big appetite, I wonder where the food all end up. The new furs I took from the three rabbits also end up being a mess, but it was a little better than the first one. Ah~ my stomach was finally full, and not full because of the gross tasting meat but a good tasting meat. As I rest, I checked my status for my new skills. It was [Stealth LV01] and [Dismantling LV01]. I got stealth after I sneaked behind the rabbit and successfully ambushed it. For dismantling, I got it after I skinned the rabbit. This skills would be very useful. Just when I was about to climb a tree to rest, I heard growling and fighting sound. Piqued by the sound, I went toward it stealthily. Hiding behind a bush, I looked at the source of the sound, and then I saw ''her'' fighting five goblins. Slender body that full of elegance, beautiful pale blue fur that shined when hit by sunlight, silver eyes that showed wisdom, soft bushy tail gracefully gliding in the air, all that combined with that incomparably cute small face of her.... Ah, she could only be described with the word beautiful, truly a breathtaking beauty. I didn''t know if my beauty sense was affected by my monster body but the pale blue fox in front of me was truly beautiful in my eyes. Sound appeared on my mind, telling me to make her mine. The sound echoed over and over again. But that beauty was being surrounded by five goblins, there were long wounds on the beautiful fox''s body. The wounded beautiful fox growled at the goblins but it was useless, the goblins slowly coming toward her. Before my brain could think of a plan to save the beautiful fox or appraised the goblins, my body already moved by itself. I ran out of the bushes and let out a roar infused with my [Intimidation] skill. Maybe they were startled by my roar or maybe intimidated by me, the green skinned goblins were scared stiff. Taking a chance when they were unmoving, I shot the strongest fireball I could make toward one of the goblins. The five goblins held different weapons. The three at the front held a wooden clubs, the two behind them held a sword and a bow. The goblins had green skin, long ears, kinda long but bent nose, protruded stomach, child height, bloodshot eyes, and scarce and deformed teeth. The one with the sword was different. It was a little bigger than the rest of the goblins and it''s skin had deeper color, it wore some kind of patched up leather armor while the other goblin only wore a cloth around their waist. The one I hit was the goblin holding the bow. From the five goblins, it was the most dangerous to be left alone. I still didn''t have the confidence that I could dodge an arrow or realized an arrow coming my way in the middle of a melee yet. The archer goblin was rolling around in agony while screaming, trying to put out my flames. I ignored the archer goblin and focused my sight on the other goblins, it''s bow was already ruined by my fireball, so even if it''s survived I won''t have to watch out for arrows anymore. I went in front of the pale blue fox, I activated [Fire Clad] and let out threatening growl. My [Intimidation] skill in full throttle. The three club carrying goblins staggered back a step but before they took another step back, they were stopped by a shout from the sword carrying goblin. The sword goblin glared at me. Taking the chance, I appraised the goblins. Name : unnamed Species : Goblin (Common) Type : Demi Human Rank : 01 LV : 035/050 The most common demi-human which you can see all over the world. They are cunning and intelligent. Although they can''t make tools, they can learn how to use human''s weapon. Some of the variant goblin can even use magic. Live in group inside a hole or cave they make, called herd. The bigger the herd, the bigger the chance of one variant goblin or more would be born. If the herd is big enough, there is a chance of even rarer variant would be born. Always move in groups. Do not have female counterparts, use other races females to breed. Variant goblins having their mother''s characteristics are exceedingly rare. The three green goblins were a normal goblins, but the deeper color one was a variant. The appraisal result was different. Name : unnamed Species : High Goblin (Uncommon) Type : Demi Human Rank : 01 LV : 062/70 A variant goblin. Except being stronger and smarter than normal goblins and deeper skin color, they are not much different than normal goblins. They can control a normal goblins to an extent. Goblin born out of the union of strong goblin and strong mother. They can use weapon better than normal goblins, also can make and use traps. There is a bigger chance of high goblin or rarer variant born from it. Level 62, that''s high. Not to mention, it was a variant. Fighting with it would be risky. The other goblins also quite high leveled. This fight had nothing but disadvantages for me, should I just grabbed the beauty and run? Maybe it sensed my hesitation, the high goblin smirked and ordered the normal goblins to attacked me. Seeing the goblins moved, I decided my action and was just about to turned around and grabbed the beauty and run, the high goblin roared. The moment the high goblin roared, I stopped and rooted to the ground. The fire covering my body extinguished. A heavy trepidation feeling weight on my whole body. This was the first time since I came to this world that I felt.....fear. Nothing registered on my mind other than the feeling to flee from this place as fast as possible, I''m scared. I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED, I''M SCARED. I want to run! I want to flee from this place! While I was trapped within my fear, the goblins were getting closer to me. The fear overwhelmed me, I turned around to flee but stopped again when I saw the beautiful fox. If I left her, she would no doubt be killed. Imagining the goblins tore apart her body, I turned around and glared at the goblins. ......No. I can''t let this bastards killed her. If I let them killed a beauty like her, I couldn''t call myself a male. I forcefully suppressed my fear and once again clad my body in fire, I roared at the goblins. The goblins staggered when they heard my roar, especially the high goblin. It probably surprised I could suppressed the effect of it''s roar. The goblins only staggered for a moment before they started rushing toward me again, the normal goblins all rushed toward me while the high goblin stayed behind. I also ran toward the goblin since fighting close to the beauty was too dangerous. The foremost goblin saw me charging at it and rise it club to bash me, before the club descend on me, I rise my speed and rammed straight to the goblin. The goblin fell back on his back, I slashed at it''s face with [Fire Claw] repeatedly. The goblin''s face was wrecked, the two other goblins foolishly struck at me with their club while I was still on top of the slashed goblin. I leaped backward and the two goblins clubs fell onto the slashed goblin, the clubs dealt the finishing blow to the goblin. While the two goblins still at close proximity with each other, I shot a fireball at them. The fireball exploded right in front of them, engulfing them in fire. I relaxed a little bit when the three goblins died and let my guard down, suddenly someone shouted from behind me. "Behind!" (???) My body reacted before my brain told it to, I leaped backward and somersault once in the air, the high goblin slashed managed to grazed my back. The slash was quite deep but fortunately didn''t reach my bone, I staggered when I landed on the ground. the high goblin clicked it''s tongue seeing his surprise attack failed. I glanced behind me, the beauty behind me and nodded. If she didn''t warn me, I would be dead already. When the beauty saw me fine and all, she slumped to the ground and fainted. I returned my sight to the high goblin, the high goblin already readied it''s sword. Since I would be in disadvantage in melee, I shot a fire ball at it. The high goblin sidestep and dodge the fireball, then it ran toward me. I wanted to continue to shot fireballs at it but my stamina already reached dangerous level from maintaining [Fire Clad] for so long. With no choice left, I dashed at it. The high goblin hacked at me when I neared it, the speed of the attack was faster compared to normal goblin, I dodge to the side and slashed at it with [Fire Claw] but the high goblin ducked and managed to land a kick on me. I was thrown and crashed to a tree from the force of the kick. I tasted blood on my mouth as I struggled to stand, the high goblin sneered at me, fully enjoying the sight of me struggling to stand. Shit, our power was not that different but the high goblin clearly had more battle experience than me, not to mention, it saw me fighting and knew my moves. I need something to caught it off guard. I racked my brain and then I remembered when I rammed the goblin. I deactivated [Fire Clad] as I glared at the high goblin, the high goblin walked toward me, thinking that I probably had no more energy to resist it. The high goblin raised it sword high, ready to hacked me into two but before it sword descent at me, I activated my new skill. Something burst behind me and propelled me at the high goblin in frightening speed. The high goblin was caught off guard, it couldn''t defend. [Fire Burst], that was the name of my new skill, it make an small explosion behind me to propelled me forward. I rammed at it like a cannonball, the high goblin and me thrown backward a couple meters before stopping. Before the high goblin could stand and realized what happened, I shot fireball after fireball at it. The fireball exploded and scorched everything around it, the sight of fireballs exploding was like a fireworks complete with deafening explosion. I only stopped after firing the fourth fireballs, I fell to the ground right after I finished, my stamina was almost spent. I confirmed that the high goblin was dead, it died without a complete corpse. It''s body was dismembered by the explosion and burned to a charcoal by the intense heat, the ground was still letting out smoke from the bombardment. I fought the desire to just fainted here and there, I took the fainted beauty with me and dragged my weary body to my base before collapsing. Chapter 4 : Fight to Evolve Opening my heavy eyelids, I was blinded by the bright light from outside the base. I rose slowly and lightly stretch before grimacing. The wound on my back was still aching, other than the wound on my back, I was fit as a fiddle. I heard a faint breathing sound from beside me, I turned my head and saw the beautiful fox lying on the ground. She was frowning in pain, soft whimpers escaped her mouth. Her body was jolting from time to time, her wound was still letting out blood a little. I ignored the pain on my back, I took the bag from the adventurer and bolted out the base to search fruits and healing herbs for her. Damn it, if it weren''t for her strong vitality, she would''ve died last night. I should''ve treated her yesterday before I collapsed. After an hour or so, I managed to find some Kousu herbs and apples. I also found some new herbs. Braldi herb Useful for coagulating blood on wound. Have a strong disinfectant property. Use it on the wound, can''t be eaten raw. Anisia herb Numb the pain senses when eaten or applied on wounds. Long term use is not recommended. I ran back to the base while holding the bag on my mouth. When I went in to the base, I found the beautiful fox was trying to stand up despite her wounds. I dropped the bag and stopped her. "Hey, stop! Don''t push yourself! Just stay down!" (MC) The beautiful fox ignored me and kept trying to stand, when she finally stood up, she walked staggeringly toward the base exit. Her movement were taxing on her wounded body and more blood start pouring out from her wound. I couldn''t bear to see it anymore and forced her to lie on the ground. "Stay down! Can''t you see how bad your condition is?!" (MC) The beautiful fox glared and growled threateningly at me for a second before obediently lying on the ground. Looking at the obedient beautiful fox, I nodded. I dragged the bag closer to her and took out some Kousu and Anisia herbs and apples, I placed them near her mouth. "Eat the herbs, it will help you recover and lessen the pain. It is bitter but bear with it, eat the apples if it become too bitter." (MC) The beautiful fox tilted her head after she heard me, I thought she didn''t quite get what I say. Wait a minute, she didn''t get what I say? That''s not possible. The cheat I got from God should have made it possible for me to talk with anything with any language. Now that I think about it, back then The goblin language wasn''t translated either. Wait, language? Do goblin and fox have the concept of language in the first place? While I was deep in thought, the beautiful fox was still looking at me. Released from my thoughts, I make some gestures to told her to ate the herbs and apples. Getting my message, the beautiful fox looked at the herbs and apples, after looking carefully at it, she sniffed them. She frowned after sniffing the herbs, I guessed she knew the herbs were bitter from the smell. The beautiful fox glanced at me and I told her one word. Maybe.... "Eat." Hearing me, the fox reluctantly ate the herbs. I see, now I get it. I think that the fox understood and have a language of it''s own, but the beautiful fox words were too limited like a child, that''s why she didn''t understand what I say. I think the cheat translate my words in sentences not in words, that''s why although the beautiful fox understood some words, when said in a sentence it became confusing for her. Like someone that just learned english suddenly watch a western film with no subtitles. As for the goblins, I think they didn''t have the concept of language, they communicate with gestures and roar of their own. I didn''t know about higher level goblins, but I think that low level goblin didn''t use language to communicate. Maybe because of that, my cheat didn''t translate it for me. After the beautiful fox ate the herbs, her face was warped because of the bitterness. I put more apples in front of her and told her to eat it, the beautiful fox ate the apples with relish. While she was eating, I chewed a Kousu and Braldi herb and pasted the chewed herbs on her wound, I appraised her while doing that. "[Appraise] level up!" "New content has been added." Name : unnamed Species : Frost Fox (Rare) Type : Beast Sex : Female Rank : 01 LV : 031/100 HP : 09/46 MP : 02/90 STM : 22/54 ATK : 10 DEF : 09 MGC : 29 MND : 25 DEX : 13 AGL : 15 Oh, I can see her status! I guess, this is the effect of the level up. Wow, a mage! A fox ice mage! I want to see her skills! I wonder if she had [Cocytus] or [Nefelheim], that would be so badass! Her Status..... is this high or not for her level? Now that I think of it, I didn''t know the average status for rank 01 monster. Oh well, I''ll find out eventually. Now, for her race. Frost Fox A race of fox that had the gift for ice magic. A social animals that live in place that cold and buried by snow all year around, their herd are lead by the strongest female frost fox, a matriarch. Protective of their young offsprings, they will tear apart anything that harm or threaten their offsprings. A smart creature. An omnivore but prefer meat over anything else. Their eternally cold fangs and nails can be forge into a good ice element weapon. Their fur are warm on cold days and cool on hot days. Meat and organs have anti-aging and beautifying effect. A highly sought monster. ...... I hope a herd of Frost Fox won''t suddenly come and attack me. That aside, something strange. If these guys lives in cold places, then why was this beautiful fox here? I mean, this place is far from being cold, it''s more like a tropical jungle here. And how could she be wounded? From her level, I think she was still a young fox, then wasn''t her herd supposed to be very protective of her? Why was she alone and even being chased by the goblins? Was she separated from her herd? Why was she here in the first place? My head was full with questions and speculation. When I snapped out, I found out that I had finished treating her and the beautiful fox was already sleeping. The edge of my mouth unconsciously rose when I saw her peaceful sleeping face. After observing her for a minute, I look at my status to check the result from the fight with the goblins. Name : unnamed Species : Fire Kitten (Common) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 01 LV : 073/100 HP : 20/50 MP : 05/05 STM : 015/150 ATK : 23 DEF : 25 MGC : 1 MND : 20 DEX : 5 AGL : 20 Points : 114 Active Skills : Appraise LV04 Fire Breath LV02 Fire Clad LV03 Intimidation LV03 Fire Ball LV04 Fire Claw LV03 Fire Burst LV01 Stealth LV01 Dismantling LV01 Passive Skills : Languages comprehension LVMAX Pyrokinesis LV01 Dominate LV01 Resistance Skills : Heat Nullification LVMAX Poison resistance LV02 Paralyze resistance LV01 Tittle : Otherworlder Harem seeker Damn! My active skills grew up a lot! Other than [Fire Breath], everything grew a level! [Fire Ball] even grew two levels! Very nice! And my level rose to 73! Hahahaha, I''m so close to max level! I wonder what will I evolve to. My excitement kept rising, it rose even more when I saw the over 100 stats point. Now how to distribute this.... First thing first, I need to upgrade my defense. The fight with the goblins taught me how valuable defense are, if my defense was high enough to ignore the slash and kick from that high goblin, then I could bully that damn goblin to death. So let''s put 25 points to defense. After that, 7 points each for HP and STM for endurance. Next 20 points for ATK to hit harder. And 20 points for MND, you couldn''t never go wrong with more defense. Another 20 points for DEX and the last 15 points for AGL for dodging. Name : unnamed Species : Fire Kitten (Common) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 01 LV : 073/100 HP : 20/85 MP : 05/05 STM : 015/185 ATK : 43 DEF : 50 MGC : 1 MND : 40 DEX : 25 AGL : 35 Umu! Looks very good! Feeling very satisfied with my stats, I went out the base to search for herbs and games to recover my HP and STM. I went to the river and saw myself reflected in the water, I got bigger. My height increased about 23cm and my length increased about 18cm. My muscle became more prominent. Also, my fur color was darkening and when I felt it, it was still soft and fluffy when touched but when I tried to cut it with my claw, it put quite the resistance before being cut. And when I tried ramming myself at a tree, most of the shock was absorbed by my fur, I only felt an itch and I was using quite a lot of power. Hahaha! I just can''t stop my excitement! I ran with my full strength into the forest. When I came back to the base, I brought back six rabbits. I skin and bleed the rabbits outside the base, didn''t want my base to stink. I slowly roast them to perfection, oh the smell was just irresistible. Before I knew it, the beautiful fox already staring dagger at the roast rabbits while drooling rivers. I let out a small chuckle as I gave her a roast rabbit, when I saw how devoted she was at devouring the rabbit I let out another chuckle. I devoured my own rabbit while feeling amused. And just like that, the beautiful fox stayed with me for two weeks. **************************************************\\\\////****************************************************** A fat rabbit was eating weed, unaware of a pale blue fox hiding inside a shrub behind it. The pale blue fox locked on on her target, she steady her breathing and when the rabbit took another bite on the weed, like a released arrow, she pounced on the rabbit. Caught unaware, the rabbit could only struggled in vain before a strong bite land on it''s neck and snapped it. The beautiful fox look pleased at her prey as she show her happy face at me. "I....caught it." (Beautiful Fox) I walked out of the shrub I was hiding in and went toward her, I lowered my head and lightly rubbed my face against her''s. Even though she had grown bigger, the beautiful fox was still smaller than me. "Yeah, good job." (MC) The beautiful fox was happy from hearing my praise as she snuggles her head on my neck and happily wagging her tail. Her voice might be cold but she was actually a cute child that want to be spoiled. In these two weeks we spent together I patiently taught her words and engaged on a conversation with her to train her conversations skill. And with her being originally smart, she finally could converse normally, albeit her speech a little broken here and there. I also taught her how to hunt and fight but since my own experience was shallow, there was not much I could teach her. I skinned and bleed the rabbit and roast them. The beautiful fox was looking at the process as drool slowly dripped out from her mouth. After roasting the rabbit, I tore out a leg for me to eat while I gave the rest to the beautiful fox. The beautiful fox ate the rabbit delightfully, I smiled as I watched her eat. I ate the rabbit''s leg in one bite, bone and all. As I wait for the beautiful fox to finish, I checked her status. Name : unnamed Species : Frost Fox (Rare) Type : Beast Sex : Female Rank : 01 LV : 054/100 HP : 57/57 MP : 143/144 STM : 60/60 ATK : 14 DEF : 11 MGC : 50 MND : 41 DEX : 18 AGL : 25 In these past two weeks, she had grown a lot, especially her magic. As for how she could level up so much... Well, it''s thanks to.... Heh, speak of the devil. My nose twitches as a foul odor drifted toward us. The beautiful fox smile disappeared in the instant she smelled the odor, replacing the smile was her baring her fangs and growling threateningly. I rose slowly and stood infront of her, emerging out from the shrubs were goblins. "Five, huh. Quite a lot came out today." (MC) After the first battle with the goblins when I saved the beautiful fox, I didn''t know why but the encounter rate with the goblin was raising like there was no other monster in these forest but goblin. Other monster encounter rate was dropping considerably. But although we met many goblins in these past two weeks, I only met a high goblin once other than the first one I fought and it was weaker than the first one. With these endless supply of goblins, me and the beautiful fox grew a lot. The five goblins were wary of me, I guess they could tell the power difference between them and me. I appraised them and all of them were normal goblins. Their armaments were just a rusted sword, wooden clubs, and dirty rags. I perked my ears and nose to detect if there''s any other goblins other than them. After confirming there were none, I turned back to the beautiful fox and rubbed my head with her. "There''s no high goblin. Wipe them out at your leisure." (MC) "Un...... I understand." (Beautiful Fox) After she rubbed me back, I went and stood behind her. Three spear-shaped icicles appeared above the beautiful fox the moment I stood behind her, followed by an ice cold voice. "I''ll kill..... All of you." (Beautiful Fox) The icicles flew toward the goblins with great speed and impaled three goblins. The other two goblin wanted to run away after seeing the three impaled corpses, but would the beautiful fox let them run? Of course not. The beautiful fox fired an icicle at one of the goblin and the icicle hit and buried deep in the goblins leg. The goblin fell and roared in pain while holding it wounded leg. Hearing the goblin pained roar, the other goblin sped up.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. But before it could run far, the beautiful fox already caught up with it. The beautiful fox swung her tail at the goblin, if it was her normal fluffy tail, it wouldn''t do any damage. But her tail right now was covered with ice, the ice surface was covered with little and sharp thorns, being hit by it would be like being grated by thousands of little knifes. The ice also extend to double of her own length, adding a range advantage to her. She made his technique by copying my [Fire Clad], but since she couldn''t cover her body with ice, she choose this form. She called it [Frost Whip]. The goblin hastily hold up it''s wooden club to defend against the beautiful fox''s tail. The tail struck the club from above and it didn''t stop when it hit the club, the tail kept going down as the little thorns shaved the club down. The club broke shortly after and the beautiful fox''s tail hit the goblin and hurled it backward. The goblin was twitching on the ground with a long bloody wound extending from it''s head to it''s stomach, it was dying. The beautiful fox walked toward the dying goblin and gaze at it, her eyes was so cold it could freeze hell over and beneath that cold eyes was a burning hatred. The beautiful fox''s rose and start bashing at the dying goblin, over and over again. Maybe because her past experience of being chased and hurt by goblins, the beautiful fox had a great hatred for goblins, every time she met one, she would definitely killed it as gruesomely as possible, just like this. The beautiful fox stopped bashing at the goblin after it turned into a meat paste, she turned to the last living goblin. Consumed by fear after witnessing the gory scene, the goblin tried to run. It was scared to the point of forgetting the pain from it''s leg. It desperately tried to run but it''s impaled leg won''t let it, so it crawled on the ground wet from it''s own kin''s blood. The beautiful fox walked slowly toward it, her tail was now colored red from the blood. Her pale blue fur was stained red and there was still goblin''s blood dripping from her fur. She was like a demon that just crawled out from hell. When she caught up with the goblin, her tail stabbed at it''s back, the goblin scream in pain. The stab was like rain, it fell repeatedly on the goblin''s body. Soon after the goblin''s body was already like a beehive, full of holes. After stopping, the beautiful fox gaze at the goblins corpses for a moment before she walked toward me while smiling slightly. "...... I''m back." ( Beautiful Fox) "Un." (MC) I licked her face to clean the goblin''s blood on her face. The goblin''s blood tastes bad. "You''re dirty again, let''s go to the river so you can wash." (MC) "Un ...... I love bath." (Beautiful Fox) The red icicle tail crumbled away as she said that. We went to the river after I throughly burned the goblin''s corpses. At the river, I was lying in the shallow water, my submerged legs were clad in fire. I now could control to wether clad my whole body in fire or just part of my bodyusing [Fire Clad]. The water around me was boiling but thanks to my resistance skill, I only felt the water around me was a little warm. Not far from me, the beautiful fox was enjoying her bath as she lied in the warm water. The beautiful fox dipped her head under the water and rolled around from time to time to cleanse her fur that was dyed red from the goblins blood. Seeing her relaxing in the water, my mouth unconsciously lifted upward. This was how we take our bath now. Before we just licked or let the dirty part dry by itself. Surprisingly, I didn''t have any problem or felt disgusted with it, I guessed my body affected my mind more than I thought. I knew it was not exactly hygienic but we''re not human anyway, we''re monsters, so this was enough......... or so I thought. At first it was fine, but after some time I found a problem, a grave problem. The beautiful fox''s pale blue fur was stained grey! I couldn''t stand looking her beautiful fur stained grey like that, so I wracked my brain and came up with this. I used my power to heat up the water and make a pseudo large hot water bath. For the beautiful fox, who used to live in cold places, I thought she won''t like the warm water but my worry was unfounded. The moment she submerged her body in the warm water, her face grew loose as she let out a relaxed smile. Now, it became a habit. After every two or three fight, we always took a bath. This past few weeks, I also grew a lot. Name : unnamed Species : Fire Kitten (Common) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 01 LV : 091/100 HP : 160/160 MP : 05/05 STM : 205/205 ATK : 50 DEF : 80 MGC : 1 MND : 40 DEX : 25 AGL : 43 Points : 0 Active Skills : Appraise LV04 Intimidation LV04 Fire Breath LV03 Fire Clad LV05 Fire Ball LV05 Fire Claw LV04 Fire Burst LV02 Stealth LV05 Dismantling LV06 Passive Skills : Languages comprehension LVMAX Pyrokinesis LV01 Dominate LV01 Resistance Skills : Heat Nullification LVMAX Poison resistance LV03 Paralyze resistance LV03 Tittle : Otherworlder Harem seeker Guardian My stats and skills grew a lot, almost all my skills grew a level or two and I even get a new title, [Guardian]. Better yet, the title even gave my def an extra 10 points. At this point, any rank 1 monsters couldn''t hurt me in the slightest. I got the [Gurdian] title after I started protecting the beautiful fox. I really wanted to appraised my title but unfortunately my [Appraise] skill level was too low to appraise it. I tried leveling the skill up, but after it reached level 4, leveling it was tough. I couldn''t level it up by appraising the same stuff over and over again. Hmm, guess it''s about time we went deeper to the forest. As I thought that, a loud explosion sound rang from the forest. The beautiful fox and I instantly put our guard up and went to hide inside the bushes near the river and looked at the sound source. After we focused our senses toward the sound source, we could hear the fighting sound. This sound.... sword sound? Another loud explosion sound rang. Smoke float up to the sky. Fire magic? A bomb? As I wondered that, two man ran out of the bushes toward the river erratically. One man was a warrior wearing leather armor with one of his shoulder exposed and one of them covered with shoulder armor. He also wearing legs armor and a gauntlet as weapon. One man was wearing a black colored cloak with gold lining and a hoodie. He was running while carrying a long staff with small red gem in it''s point. Their faces was warped with fear and despair, they were running as if their life depended on it. No, from the shouting I heard, their life really depended on it. Why? Because they were chased by a monster, a rank 2 monster. "F**k! Didn''t you said you could kill it in one shot!? You need two shots before you even made a crack on it''s scythe! Because of you, it''s pissed now! It even killed captain and Roma! Now it wants to kill us too! You bastard, it''s all your fault!" (????) "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! It''s not my fault! My fire magic can burn anything! It can even burn a rank 2 trash monster like that! It''s you guys fault for not protecting me and stalling that monster! It''s not my fault! It''s not my fault!" (????) "You bogus mage! I swear if I live after this, I''ll kill you!" (????) A rank 2 monster..... One with good defense.... With my level, if I kill the rank 2 monster, I would definitely level up and evolve. Not to mention, killing monster above one''s own rank, ain''t that a ticket to the plane of OPness? Was this god''s plan to help me? Bringing such a good monster for my evolution trial? But can I kill a rank 2 monster? F**k it, this was not the time to hesitate. Such a good chance, I couldn''t let it go to waste! "Stay here." (MC) I said to the beautiful fox as I wait for the two man to get closer. The moment they drew close enough, I fired a small but fast fireball at the mage''s head, I also rushed out of the bushes the moment I shot the fireball. The fireball flew and hit the mage head without error, as if it sucked toward the head. The small fireball maybe weak and couldn''t blow the mage''s head off, it still strong enough to blow his face off. And that was enough to kill a human. The mage''s body fell to the back with fire burning it''s face, the already panicked warrior was scared stiff when he saw what happened to the mage. Using those chance, I quickly decapitated the warrior without giving him a chance to retaliate using [Fire Claw]. The headless body of the warrior fell to the ground and the fear filled head of the warrior fell and rolled on the ground before stopping near my feet. There was no blood spurting out from the body because the wound was burned by my fire, there was only smell of burnt meat on the air. I tried appraising the two man since I forgot to do it before. [Appraisal content has been upgraded.] Wut? Name : William Race : Human Age : 21 Sex : Male Job : Brawler LV43 HP : 0/80 MP : 0/0 STM : 3/90 ATK : 30 DEF : 30 MGC : 1 MND : 1 DEX : 10 AGL : 15 Name : Ashara Jack Race : Human Age : 23 Sex : Male Job : Mage LV50 HP : 0/56 MP : 4/95 STM : 1/40 ATK : 9 DEF : 10 MGC : 41 MND : 34 DEX : 7 AGL : 8 Weak! These guys were weak! Hell, I didn''t even need to ambush them. Even if they attacked me, they wouldn''t even be able to graze me. Their stats aside, I guess it was that obvious the content of human and monster''s appraisal would be different. But, I wonder what that little pop-up warning about. ...... Guess it was not time for that, the main guest has arrived. The sounds of trees falling and something slashing the air getting louder, sounds of footsteps kept getting louder as it drew near me. Then it came out of the woods. A scythe-like claw came slashing down at me, I quickly dodge to the side and counterattack with a full power slash of [Fire Claw]. My blow landed on the creature''s body, I also used the chance to shot a fireball at it. The creature was knocked back for a few steps by the explosion, I stand on the ground while growling as I glared intimidatingly at the creature. As the smoke cleared up, the creature''s body was revealed. Light green body, an armor-like exoskeleton protecting it''s upper body, long abdomen, scythe-like claw, and purple eyes. The preying mantis-like monster stood up, it''s height was almost at least 175cm. It stared at me while the mandible letting out sounds of metal bashing metal. The claw and abdomen tip was colored purple like it''s eyes, it''s body was wounded and letting out green blood and some part of it was blackened. The was a shallow long wound on it chest, four shallow claw wound on it''s side and there was also a small crack on one of it''s claw. Name : unnamed Species : Purple Eyes Mantis Type : Insect Sex : Female Rank : 02 LV : 009/075 HP : 142/198 MP : 0/0 STM : 172/203 ATK : 85 DEF : 101 MGC : 0 MND : 57 DEX : 31 AGL : 63 Hot damn, I lost at every stats beside STM and MGC and that only won by 2 and 1 point respectively. I already expected that I would lose stats wise but to think I would lose this much. But comparing my stats with the mantis, having stats close to a rank 2 monster''s stats at rank 1, did this mean I''m actually pretty strong? I hesitated a little when I saw the mantis''s stats, but when I thought about the power I would get from killing the mantis, my hesitation disappeared in an instant. To live in this world you need to be strong or you''re only gonna end up as prey. The scene when the beautiful fox was chased by the goblins, the fear I felt when I saw the demon spider or when I confronted the high goblin flashed in my mind, my determination and desire to kill the mantis in front of me strengthen. All for more power! I unleashed a roar infuse with intimidation and so did the mantis, our roars served as the bells for the start of our battle. I clad myself in fire and rushed toward the mantis, the mantis swung it''s scythe overhead at me. I didn''t change my course or slowed down, I ran straight at it at full speed. Right before the mantis''s scythe touched me, I used [Fire Burst]. I instantly dodged the scythe and zeroed in to the mantis and slam my body straight to the mantis''s chest. The mantis was pushed back a little because of my body slam. Still in the air, I hit the mantis with [Fire Claw], I hit it repeatedly but all of it was but shallow wounds. The mantis once again swung it''s scythe at me, I used [Fire Burst] again to dodged it''s scythe. I landed a few meters beside the mantis, but before I could stabilize myself, the mantis''s scythe was already upon me. My body moved before my thought, Using [Fire Burst], I dodged the scythe with paper-thin margin. I tried to distance myself from the mantis but just like before, it''s scythe was already near me right after I landed. I was baffled but my body didn''t stop moving and dodging the scythe. After several use of [Fire Burst], I was getting dizzy and disoriented from all the high-speed movement. And using several [Fire Burst] in succession was quite taxing. It really puzzled me as to how the mantis could possess such speed, even though it''s speed didn''t differ that much from me. It would be dangerous if this keep up, my stamina won''t hold. I gritted my teeth and tried to dodged the upcoming scythe without using [Fire Burst]. The first scythe came from above, I jumped to the side but I was late, the scythe grazed my right forepaw from the shoulder. But it didn''t pierce my skin, it only cause bruise. The second strike was a sweeping slash, I jumped as fast as I could and managed to barely dodged the attack. In midair, I caught sight of the mantis''s wing and suddenly it hit me. That''s it! It''s the wing! The source of the mantis''s almost instantaneous movement was it''s wing! I found my target. The mantis swung it''s scythes at me from both sides while I''m still in midair, I waited until the last minute before using [Fire Burst]. While the mantis''s scythes slashed empty air, I appeared behind it and slashed at it''s wing with full power using [Fire Claw]. My claw only cracked the wing''s exoskeleton and frayed the wing''s web but that was enough. The mantis scream in pain but before it turn around, I shot a fireball at it''s back and then distance myself from the mantis with [Fire Burst]. After the smoke clears up, the mantis growled at me with rage before letting out a roar. Of the pair wings, one was obliterated with only half remaining, the other was broken but the broken part was still hanging on like a loose kite caught at a tree. With it''s wings gone, it lose it''s instantaneous movement. Although it''s normal speed was still faster than me, but I had [Fire Burst]. But to preserve my already low stamina, I decided not to use [Fire Burst] again. Facing the enraged mantis, I ran straight at it and so did the mantis. The mantis and I traded blows after blows. I dodged and parried any attacks that I could, but some still managed to land on my body. Thankfully my defense had increase and provided me with enough toughness to endured the attacks. Some caused deep wounds but not deep enough to reached the bones. Just like the mantis carved many wounds onto my body, I also left it many wounds of my own. It''s chest was cracked with a dent on it, the cracked scythe was already broken off, the other scythe and it''s body was covered with many claw marks, some was shallow and some was deep, some of it''s body also had burnt wound from [Fire Ball]. "Haaa..... haaaa... gulp, haaa.... You tough bastard, why won''t you just keel over?" (MC) The mantis growled at me as if saying " why don''t you keel over first? ". Our fight had gone for a long time already. The beautiful fox was so worried and anxious for me, she almost ran out of the bush for so many times already if I didn''t shot her a reassuring glance from time to time. If the beautiful fox was discovered by the mantis, it would definitely went for her. It would be dangerous if it happen, I better finish this fight soon, but how? I observed the mantis as I thought how to end this fight quickly. As I stared at it, I spotted that it''s chest was covered with the most wounds than any of it''s body part. Deducing that it would be the most brittle part of it''s body, I decided to attack it''s chest. But the last problem was the attack, I didn''t have a strong enough attack to bust the mantis''s chest open in one attack. Fuck it, if I didn''t have it, I just have to make one. Of all my attacks, the [Fire Burst] powered body slam worked the best against the mantis, it only lack power to pierce through the mantis''s exoskeleton. Wait a sec, if once was not enough, then why not use it continuously? With an idea for new attack, I fired up my body for one last attack. As I prep myself for an attack, the mantis did the same. As soon as my body ready, I broke to a run, aiming straight toward the mantis, the mantis raised it''s only scythe left, ready to be swung. But before the mantis swung the scythe at me, I shot a [Fire Ball] right to it''s face. The mantis moved it''s scythe to protect it''s head. Even though the scythe was hit by my [Fire Ball], it only cracked and blackened a little. But with this, I had achieved my goal. While the mantis was still blinded, I used [Fire Burst] and dove straight to the mantis''s chest. If it was a normal [Fire Burst] powered body slam, I would only drove the mantis back a little but what I did was not a body slam. It was my new skill, [Fire Drive]. The fire cladding my body suddenly change and grew sharp and fierce. At first, the fire was covering my body like a robe, but now it was enveloping me like a capsule and it drove me forward with great force. Like a meteor, I struck the chest of the mantis. With a loud dull sound, a spiderweb-like crack spread on the mantis''s chest, but even cracked, the mantis''s exoskeleton still hold. I didn''t stop and just used more stamina to strengthen my skill, the driving force kept rising and drove me deeper into the mantis''s chest. "PIERCE THROUGH!!!!" (MC) With a shrill scream from the mantis, it''s chest caved in. Still clad in fire, I pierced through it''s chest. Just as I landed, the mantis plummeted to the ground as it''s blood made a pool around it''s body. Before I could look back at the mantis''s body, I lost any and all power and collapsed. My eyes were heavy and my mind hazy. Before I fell to the darkness, I saw the beautiful fox running toward me anxiously and cold voice. "Skill [Dominate] level up!" Chapter 5 : Cave Raid (1) White and desolate.... When I woke up, I found my self in these strange place. There was nothing here. All I could see was white all the way to the horizon, no other thing or color could be seen. I found myself floating there, but as I looked around, I couldn''t see my body. Where am I? Where''s my body? my mind kinda hazy. I remembered that I fell unconscious after the fight with the mantis, but now, where am I? As I pondered, a cold voice rang. "Level requirement has been achieved!" "Skills requirement has been achieved!" "[One who protects] and [One who devour the strong] optional achievement has been achieved!" "[Guardian] title achievement has been achieved!" "Karma : Law(14) Neutral(0) Chaos(2)" "Altering evolution option!" "Please choose your evolution!" "[Armored Tiger], [Blaze Panther], [Ruby Cat]" Evolution? Wait, what?! Evolution?! My hazy mind cleared instantly. I see, So this was the so-called " Evolution Space ", huh? Optional, title achievement? Karma? What''s this? I guessed, that the evolution choices would be altered or selected based by one''s action? Hmm, make sense. I appraised the optional, title, and karma, but it said my [Appraise] skill was too low. Well, enough of that. Time to choose! But before that, I appraised the choice first. Armored Tiger A tiger with iron defense. All it''s body is covered with armor formed of their own furs, a keratin armor, with no gaps at all. The only part not armored on their body was the eyes, nose, mouth, under belly, rear and soles. Their armor provide them with strong defense from physical attack, taking them down will take a very long time without proper strategy or strong magic. Their armor can regrow, albeit slowly. In exchange for their air-tight defense, their armor make them very heavy and slow. Although they have a good physical might, the power of their fire suffer a downgrade. A good source for armor material. A carnivore. Inedible. Blaze Panther Dark eyes, blazing red fur, slender body, and crimson claws and fangs. With it''s slender and tough body combined with it''s fire manipulation ability, the Blazing Panther is a born killing machine. It strike fast and deadly and it''s fire can turn a forest to ash. But it''s not without weakness, albeit it has speed and firepower advantage, it''s defense is lacking. It held absolute advantage in fighting slow opponent, but it loses it''s advantage against fast opponent. It''s fangs and claws are good material for fire-type weapon and it''s fur is good for fire-resistant armor. A carnivore. Inedible. Ruby Cat A strange breed of feline with a crystal-like exoskeleton protecting their body like an armor. The red crystal-like exoskeletons grew on top of the skin replacing the black fur, but it didn''t cover their whole body. Their legs from knee down are completely covered with the crystal-like exoskeleton, like wearing a crystal boots. Then from the knee it travels to the shoulder in one line, from there it combined to one line covering the spine. Three exoskeleton lines extending from the spine to each side of the ribs and some of the exoskeleton protecting the head, forming a head armor. The tail is covered with the exoskeleton. Unlike from what it''s appearance suggest, the exoskeleton is quite elastic, not impending movement in any way. It has good balance of defense and speed, it''s power and firepower also good. It''s crystal is malleable, a good material for light armor and knife. It''s fur is a luxury material for making coats and other clothes. An omnivore. Inedible. Ruby Cat. Definitely Ruby Cat. Why? Easy. Simply because the first two just didn''t match with my battle style. The Armored Tiger was not bad and it had a good defense, just what I wanted. But ever since I made [Fire Burst] and used it in my fight with the mantis, I just couldn''t neglect such a good skill. If I choose Armored Tiger, I would have an iron defense but [Fire Burst] would lose it''s effect. Not to mention, my other fire-based offense skills might weaken. I couldn''t win a fight if I can only defend. It''s the same case with the Blaze Panther. It might have a good offense and speed, and they did say " offense is the best defense. " but unfortunately, I didn''t have the confidence to be able to dodge everything my enemy threw at me. The Blaze Panther was a paper tiger, it have might but a good strike could destroy it in one hit. And also, these two were carnivores. I didn''t have any healing related skill or magic, and I didn''t feel like I can make it like I made my other offense skill as I didn''t have an aptitude for healing magic or anything related to healing. So, right now, I depended entirely on herbs for healing. I couldn''t heal myself without eating herbs, and I didn''t think that carnivores can stomach eating herbs. So, with these reasons, it was only natural I choose Ruby Cat. It didn''t have excellent defense, offense, or speed, but it still have some of it. It was like jack-of-all-trade, it didn''t excels in anything, but it had a bit of proficient in everything. And it also an omnivore, meaning it could eat herbs. Considering my choices and my situation, Ruby Cat fulfilled all my requirements for an evolved form. Without hesitation, I picked the [Ruby Cat] and after that the cold voice rang again. "Confirming choice!" "Transferring new skill(s)!" "[Dominate] skill activated!" "The body is now fully dominated!" "The body can now be customized!" "Do you want to customize the body?" New skills? I wonder what skills I got. Customize? You mean like a gundam and the like? I''m gonna try it, it''s faster that way than guessing all day. "Yes." (MC) "Understood! Beginning customization!" In a second, some kind of hologram appeared in front of me. A hologram of black feline with red crystal armor in life size. From the appearance, I guessed that this was the Ruby Cat, it was cooler than what I imagined. As I admired the hologram, the could sound rang again. "Please imagine how do you want to customize the body!" "With the [Dominate] skill level, only the body structure can be customize!" Structure, was it? Then, I want it to be a humanoid. As I imagine the form, the hologram in front of me started to change. The once four-legged feline changed to bipedal. The foreleg became longer and slender, the paw loses it''s pad and turned to human hand, only with furs and long nails. The hind leg became bigger and longer as to support the body. The body let out sounds of bones rattling as it changed closer to a human. The face and exoskeleton didn''t change much, and the neck only changed a little as to adapt to the new body. After a few minutes of applying finishing touch, the customization was complete. The hologram changed from a big feline to what''s commonly called beastman. A strong body with a well sculpted muscle, tough limbs filled with vigor, a whip-like crimson tail, shining red crystal exoskeleton. A face filled with wildness, the burn scar on my face add a kind of dangerous vibe to my charm. An astounding male, if I say so myself. If a complaint exist, it was only one thing, it was that my "little brother" not hidden anymore. Back when I was still a kitten and a ruby cat, it was kind of hidden, with only the balls exposed. But now, with this new body, it completely visible for all to see. And maybe because I messed with it for more than I ought to, it became quite a something. But still, it''s something I made and I''m proud of it. After the customization, the cold voice rang once again. "Confirming the customization!" "The species has changed from [Ruby Cat] to [Ruby Beast]!" Oh, it''s a beast alright. "The evolution is finished!" The moment the cold voice finished, I blacked out. ************************************************\\\\\\\\******************************************************** My heavy eyelids slowly opened, blinding light entered from the gaps. Squinting my eyes as I looked around me, caging me was a dome made of ice. I raised my arm and saw a humanoid arm with sharp black nails. It was completely covered with the red crystal exoskeleton from the elbow below, and black fur covered the arm from elbow up. I opened and clenched my palm and inspect my body feeling with a series of small movement, noticing no discomfort or foreign feeling, my lips curled up. Even though my body changed, it still felt like my body, no, it even felt like my body has always been like this. "[Dominate] has reached level 2!" "Active skill : [Enslave] has been acquired!" "Any skill related to domination increased by 1 level!" I was startled by the sudden notification, a flux of information about the skill appeared on my mind abruptly. Enslave? All I could think of about this skill was the scene of a loli lady knight turned slave being violated. I wonder if I could do something like that too? Ah, I got a little horny. My unhealthy imagination was interrupted when a little white face suddenly entered my view. The beautiful fox''s eyes was red, like she was just crying, and she was gazing at me intently before suddenly tearing up. Before I could say something, she cried as she clung to my neck. Helpless, I patted her on the back as gently as I could. Even though my arm was covered with exoskeleton, I could still feel how soft the beautiful fox''s fur, fortunately. She told me what happened after I fell unconscious while crying, her already broken sentence became even worse, but I managed to piece it together through much effort.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. When I fell unconscious, the beautiful fox panicked and ran toward me while crying. She tried waking me up, but I didn''t wake up no matter what. Only after she confirmed that I was still breathing, she calmed down. After that, she made this dome to protect me, she anxiously waited for me to woke up this whole time. My heart felt warm, back when I was still a human, there was no one that worries about me like this. I hugged the beautiful fox and rubbed my head against her''s like usual. I did this to appease her and also because the beautiful fox looked really cute and dear to me now. "It''s alright, I''m okay. I was just evolving, I''m sorry for worrying you." (MC) "Nn...." (beautiful fox) Maybe because she was tired from the wait and crying, the beautiful fox fell asleep after I said that. While holding the beautiful fox in my arms, I rose up but I couldn''t stood straight because the dome height was too low. As to not disturb the beautiful fox, I activated [Fire Clad] on my right arm while the left was holding the beautiful fox. Different from before, usually my whole arm would be covered with fire right now, but now, only the part of my arm that wasn''t covered with the exoskeleton was clad on fire. The deep red exoskeleton on my right arm changed color to burning red as it emitted strong heat. Even without directly touching the ice wall, the heat emitted from my hand melted the ice. After I went out of the ice dome, I looked around for any enemy sign. There was no any enemy sign and even the mantis and humans corpses were gone. The suspect was revealed when I found goblin''s footprint around. Well, I didn''t really need the corpses, so I didn''t think about it for too long. Besides, I knew where to find the goblins who stole it. I think it''s time to visit them. But before I went after the goblins, I need something to cover my groin. I walked toward the base, I recalled I still had the clothes that I took from the dead adventurer back then. I could just stay naked as I''m a monster, not a human, now. But being naked in front of the beautiful fox was kind of... As I walked, I opened my status. Name : unnamed Species : Ruby Beast (Rare) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 02 LV : 005/100 HP : 160/160 MP : 05/05 STM : 205/205 ATK : 50 DEF : 80 MGC : 1 MND : 40 DEX : 25 AGL : 43 Points : 102 Active Skills : Appraise LV04 Intimidation LV06 Fire Breath LV03 Fire Clad LV09 Fire Ball LV06 Fire Claw LV06 Fire Burst LV04 Fire Drive LV01 Stealth LV05 Dismantling LV06 Enslave LV02 (0/2) Passive Skills : Languages comprehension LVMAX Pyrokinesis LV01 Crystallokinesis LV01 (Ruby) Dominate LV02 Resistance Skills : Heat Nullification LVMAX Poison resistance LV03 Paralyze resistance LV03 Tittle : Otherworlder Harem seeker Guardian Oh! It was a long fight but it was worth it! My skills got a big upgrade! I also got new skill! And 60 points bonus! Sweet! Now, how should I distribute this? First, I want more DEF, so 20 points to that. Next, definitely more power, 30 points there. Then more stamina and HP, 10 points each. And last, 10 points for MND, 12 for DEX, and 10 for AGL. Ahahaha, I could feel the power coursing through me. Name : unnamed Species : Ruby Beast (Rare) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 02 LV : 005/100 HP : 160/210 MP : 05/05 STM : 205/255 ATK : 80 DEF : 100 MGC : 1 MND : 50 DEX : 37 AGL : 53 Points : 0 I reached the base after I''m done with my stats. When I went in, I realized how big I am now compared than when I was still a Fire Kitten. I put down the beautiful fox on the ground gently, I found the clothes but the pants size was a too small for me, so I just tied the torn shirt around my groin like a makeshift underwear. It''s a little weird but it''s good enough to cover me before I found a real pants. I threw the rest of the herbs and food in the bag, as for the sword and shield, I want to use it but I never use a sword or a shield before. Plus, I''m kind of used to unarmed fight. As a monster, I couldn''t use a weapon before I evolved. And back when I was a human, I got involved in a fight quite often because of my face, and because of it, I''m kind of use to fight with my bare hands. So, I left the shield at the base, as for the short sword, I''ll use it for dismantling my prey. Dismantling result would be much better using the short sword than using my claws. With this I''m ready, when I turned around, The beautiful fox was already awake. "Let''s go. We''ll head to our new home." (MC) When I said that with a smile, the beautiful fox showed me a bloodthirsty smile. She knew what I was talking about, she was probably waiting to do this. The beautiful fox ran ahead without me impatiently. I let out a helpless sigh before catching up with her. After, at least an hour, we reached our destination. It was a cave located far to the west from our base, but this was no ordinary cave. The current tenants of this cave were goblins, this cave was a goblin''s nest. We discovered this nest when we tailed a group of goblins coming back from hunting. The first time we''re here beautiful fox was almost ran inside the cave if I didn''t hold her down. We were strong, yes. But we were outnumbered, if we were to raid the cave, we would definitely died. So I persuaded the beautiful fox to came back to raid this nest after we grew stronger. And so, now we''re back. The beautiful fox and I were far stronger now, and I even evolved. Now, as long as there were no high leveled rank 2 goblin in the nest, no matter how many goblin there was in the nest, we would definitely massacre them. There was 4 normal goblins guarding the entrance of the cave, all of them only had crude wooden cubs. While I was observing the cave and tried to smell any clue of strong goblin inside the cave, the beautiful fox ran toward the cave and shoot icicles spears at the 4 goblins, killing 3 of the goblins instantly. The last goblin had an icicle spear embedded in it''s stomach, before it was awarded one more icicles, it managed to let out a scream. Alerted by the sound, many goblins came out of the cave. Faced with number disadvantage, the beautiful fox didn''t cower, it only increased her bloodlust. With the situation had reached this point, the options left was to retreat temporarily or just went in guns blazing. Retreat was impossible with the beautiful fox already riled up now, so gun blazing it is. When the goblins were about to attacked the beautiful fox, I ran in front of her and let out a roar and activated [Intimidation]. The goblins faltered, some of them fell to the ground, another was scared stiff, and a few smart ones was already turned around to ran away. But they have to asked my permission first, if they wanted to ran away. I took a deep breath and let out [Fire Breath]. In an instant, sea of fire engulfed all the goblins in front of me. I stopped after 3 minutes or so, when the fire went out, what I saw was goblins burnt carcasses pilling on top of another. The ground was scorched just as black as the carcasses, the burnt flesh smell was strong. A slight breeze flew past and all the goblins carcasses crumbled and carried by the breeze. Wow, was my [Fire Breath] always this strong or was it because my evolution? Well, no matter. An upgrade on my power was always welcomed. When I looked at the entrance of the cave, a horde of goblins were just standing stiff there. All of them were trembling, I suppose they were scared stiff by what they''ve seen. While they were scared stiff, I signaled the beautiful fox. Catching my signal, the beautiful fox broke to a run and pounced at the group of goblins. At first I thought to fight by myself, but I changed my mind. I''m gonna let the beautiful fox deal with them, although I wanted to protect the beautiful fox and never let harm came to her, I knew I would do more harm to her that way. The time I spent as a monster maybe short, but I knew that living in this world as a monster meant that you need to be strong if you want to survive. You didn''t have other to depend, even if you have one, you couldn''t keep depending on them. Make no mistake, I would definitely protect the beautiful fox, but the beautiful fox still need to have enough power to defend herself. That''s why from now on, other than when I would be tanking at front and her attacking behind me, I would let the beautiful fox fight on her own whenever there was a chance. She would be hurt, I''m sure, but the pain would let her grew to be stronger. In mid-air, she used [Frost Whip] and start spinning like a beyblade. When the goblins snapped out, it was already too late. The beautiful fox''s tail swung toward the goblin, due to the centrifugal force, her attack became more powerful. The foremost goblins was the unluckiest, they were hit by shredder like club, the beautiful fox''s tail not only broke their bones, a good portion of their flesh was also gouged out. The goblins behind the foremost goblins was hit by the goblins that were blown away by the beautiful fox''s attack. "[Icy Needles]" Following the tail attack, the beautiful fox opened her mouth and shoot out numerous ice needle. The needles were small and thin but it was unexpectedly tough and sharp. Some managed to defend their head and stayed alive while some was hit in the head and died instantly, but the goblins who managed to defend wished they never did. None of the goblins were safe from the needles, they may defended their head but their body was turned to a needle pillow. Their expressions and screams told the pain they felt when the coldness from the needles penetrate into their body and froze their inside was excruciating. The goblins that were unhurt were about ran inside the cave after seeing how the beautiful fox easily took care of their kins. But another group of goblins came running out of the cave, with their number bolstered and so did their courage. They trampled their own kins body and rushed toward the beautiful fox. Jumped back once, the beautiful fox swung her tail at the goblins. The foremost goblins was thrown backward and disrupting the goblins rush for a second, the beautiful fox shot out [Icy Needles] again. The needles hit many goblins but it didn''t stop the rush. One goblin got near her and swung it''s club at her, the beautiful fox hastily defend using her tail. The moment she stopped attacking, the goblins rush came crashing at her like a wave. Before she could push the goblin that attacked her, two more goblins swung their clubs at her from the sides. The beautiful fox managed to jumped back at the last minute, dodging the clubs. But the second she landed, another goblin swung it''s club at her. The club hit her square at the her chest. The beautiful fox coughed blood and staggered, the goblin gave her another kick and she fell to the ground. The goblin didn''t give her a chance to recover as it raised it''s club for another strike and so did the goblins behind it as they came forward to attack the beautiful fox. Before they swung their clubs, I used [Fire Burst] and reached them at split second. I spun and hit all the goblin around the beautiful fox with a roundhouse kick. When I let out my [Intimidation], all the goblins stopped at their place. While they stopped, I let out another [Fire Breath]. Maybe because it had level up, it was stronger than the [Fire Breath] from before. After all the goblins in front of turned to ash or carbonized, I turned around and kneeled down before the beautiful fox. I dropped the bag in front of the beautiful fox, I took out some apples and kousu herbs and fed it to her. "Eat some herbs and rest. You did great." (MC) The beautiful fox smiled as she ate the apples and herbs. Now, while the beautiful fox rest, time to take care of the goblins. When I was taking care the beautiful fox, a group of goblins came out of the cave. Just how many goblins were in that cave? No matter, I''ll take them all on. Activating [Fire Clad], I rushed toward the goblins. With this our first cave raid started. Chapter 6 : Cave Raid (2) My first battle after evolving and also my first battle in humanoid form after reincarnating. I stance myself with both my hands in front of me. Ahhh... I couldn''t hold it anymore. Seeing this many goblins, it really boils my blood! Now that I have a humanoid body again, I''m itching to test it in a fight. I may have tried a few moves just now, but it wasn''t enough. I wanted a much more intense battle, I wanted a brawl. I had vaguely realized it, that I''ve changed after I reincarnated to this world as a beast. One of the change was that I became more savage, searching for a fight everywhere and enjoying it. My cautious nature was suppressing it right now, but the stronger I became the harder it was to suppress it. So, before my restraint broke, I decided to let loose myself first. "Come! From here on out, it''ll be a massacre!" (MC) I rushed forward and threw a punch toward the nearest goblin. I could feel the goblin''s skin ripped apart and it''s bone crushed under my fist, it died in one hit. Weak, too weak. The goblin was blown away and hit the other goblins behind it. "A.. AAAaAAHHH!" (Goblin) The scream was the starting bell, all the goblins screamed and started attacking me. I tried dodging but some still hit me, but it was futile. No matter whether they hit me with their weapons or limbs, it didn''t do anymore damage than a scratch to me. "It''s useless!" (MC) I threw a punch and destroyed both the sword and the goblin who hold it. Without pulling my hand, I hit the goblin beside the one I just kill with a back hand hit. A goblin leaped toward me while holding a sword overhead, I caught it legs and sent it flying toward the other goblins. One of the goblin tried to be a smartass and hide behind a shield but with my strength, a wooden shield like that would not stop my attack. With one kick, I broke the shield and hit the goblin''s arm and chest. The goblin''s arm broke and it''s chest caved in with blood leaking from it. After that, I kept attacking. I punched, kicked, grabbed, threw, smashed, and just repeating that action. I didn''t use any skill, it''s pure brute force. I drowned in my own blood lust and just kept killing every goblin around me. When I noticed, there was no goblin around me. All the goblin retreated to the cave''s entrance, all the goblins were trembling, there were no trace of wildness or rage in their eyes, there was only fear. Well, it was an obvious reaction. After all, a lot of their kind was lying on the ground bathed in their own blood around me. A majority of the corpses were deformed because of my attacks and a few of them were in pieces from being swung and thrown around. My body was covered in blood and entrails, combine that with the surrounding, it created a picture of hell. No wonder the goblins were scared shitless. Walking toward that bloody me was the beautiful fox with the bag on her back. She stood beside me without any hints of fear or disgust, in fact, she looked excited and satisfied. I guess for the goblin-hater, her, my fight and the result was quite the sight, huh. I scanned her body a little and thankfully, she''s fine from what I saw. Her defense may be on the low side, but with her level it would be weird if she took heavy damage from a goblin attack or took a long time to recover. "Let''s go!" (MC) Rather than asking her to stay behind, I took her with me as we rushed into the goblin''s cave. I ran in front of the beautiful fox with my body clad in fire, I ran through the goblins while dishing out blows to the goblins in front of me. The beautiful fox behind me used [Frost Whip] and attacked the closest goblins from us that I miss, she put priority to killing any goblins with projectile weapons. With her backing me up, I didn''t have any worry and just went on with the massacre. After awhile, I finally felt fatigue closing on to me. The goblins were just that many, there was no end to them. One got killed and another ten came forward. Ten got killed and another hundred came forward. Should I say, as expected of a race with great reproductive ability. From the look of her face, the beautiful fox probably almost spent all her mana. As much as I want to keep fighting, it would only be a matter of time before they overrun us. It would be foolish to keep fighting. I scanned the area, in the long path of the dark cave infested with goblins, I spotted a worn wooden door. "Follow me!" (MC) I bulldoze everything on my way toward the door, the beautiful fox followed closely behind me. After we went in, I closed the door and yelled. "Ice the door!" (MC) The beautiful fox understood what I meant, she then froze the door and the wall around it. I could hear the faint sound of goblins hitting the door in order to break it but neither the door or the ice budge in any way. Although it may look like it was fine, but I knew the door would be broken into sooner or later. "Let''s rest and recover our strength as much as we could." (MC) I was just finished saying that and about to lied down when suddenly I realized there was a breathing sound behind us and it was just one. I was yelling at myself for being careless, I hastily turned my head and was stunned by what I saw. Cages, there was five cages to be exact. Inside the cages were naked women of various race. There were about twenty woman. Their whole body was covered in filth and many small injuries, some even festered. From what I saw, I could identify human, elf, dwarf, beastman, and there was even one woman with reptile characteristics. They were women from different races, but they all have two similar points. Their bleak and hollow eyes and their protruding stomach. I knew these disturbing scene all too well. When it was but a fiction, a mere drawing, it was arousing for me. But when it became reality and I saw it firsthand like this, it really make me sick in the stomach. I walked toward them but they didn''t even twitch, their face were still lifeless and blank. When I observed them closely, I noticed the tendons in their arms and legs were cut. Clinging on their neck was a black collar, something familiar to me. It froze my heart and spine when I saw how bad their condition was. It made me realized that this was a different world all over again, it was different from the world I was once a part of. This was a crueler world, a cruel dog-eat-dog world, death was not the scariest thing in this world. Being deprived of dying, couldn''t die when you wanted to and being kept alive against your will was the scariest thing in this world. ".....a-ah...les....." One of the women in the cage in front of me opened her mouth to say something while staring straight at me with her lifeless eyes, but what came out was broken words. I strained my ear and went down to my knees. "Ple-please.....kill.....us." She tried to rise her hand toward me but she was too weak to do that, her hand only rise a little before dropping down. After that, one of the women said the same thing with the same broken words. Soon, another one spoke the same thing and followed by another one, until finally they all spoke up.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. "...free us..." "......kill me.." "....please....end this suffering..." The lifeless and blank expression on the women faces were gone, in it''s place was a sad, pained, crying face. All the women begged me to kill them with tears. My face distorted as I felt pity for the women. I appraised them all and, as expected, they were all slave. I found out that all of them were young, the youngest was only 13 years old and the oldest was 25 years old. After I appraised all the women, the usual voice rang in my mind. "[Appraisal] skill leveled up!" "New content has been added!" I was not in the mood to check the new content of [Appraisal], so I just ignored it. I rose, my face turned solemn and slowly small beads of fire appeared and hovering around my body. The BB bullet size fire beads hovered around me like fireflies. When the women saw the fire beads, there was no fear in their eyes. All the women smiled, their faces were showing joy and relief. While smiling, they uttered their final word. "......thank you." The moment they finished saying it, the fire beads around me flew toward each women like an arrow released from the bow. The fire beads hit their target without an error, the women''s hearts. All of them died painlessly. The voice rang again notifying that I acquired a new skills and level up. ...... This was the first time I didn''t feel happy when I leveled up. I tore apart the cages by heating them and took the women out. I put them all together half of them sitting back to back and the rest were lying in the embrace of the sitting one. I raised my hand and let out fire to burn the women, I wanted to give them a proper burial but I don''t think they would like to be buried in the forest where these goblins lived. So, I''m gonna cremated them and hoped the wind would take them back home. The beautiful fox didn''t understand what the women saying so she was confused by my action. But when she saw my solemn expression and my silence, she stayed silent behind me. I observed as the fire slowly burned the women corpses to ash. Even in their deaths and even when the fire burned them, their smiles didn''t fade from their faces. My heart ached as if it was stuffed with smoldering rock. I silently offered a prayer to them. After the fire died down, I gathered their ashes inside a jar I found in the room. Thump! Dooom! Craaack! I turned my head after I''m done putting the ashes into the jar, the frozen door and ice wall was on the brink of being broken through. "Stand behind me." (MC) I told the beautiful fox as I walked toward the door. Although I used my power when I tore the cages and burned the women, it was an insignificant expenditure. I spun and destroyed the ice wall with a roundhouse kick. I threw another kick at the door and break it, the goblins behind the door was blown away. Without a pause, I opened my mouth and let out [Fire Breath] without holding back. Soon, the whole cave lit up by the brightly burning fire. Sounds of goblins screaming from pain and smell of burning flesh flooded the cave. I stopped after I exhausted at least a quarter of my stamina. When I came out from the room, the wall and ground near the room was charred black and still letting out smoke. Lying around on the path was a goblin corpse that was burned to crisps in great number, I carried the beautiful fox in my arms as only I could walk on this still hot path. My face was still solemn as walked deeper into the cave. I let the beautiful fox down when I reached the path that was not burned. When I looked at the cave wall, I noticed it was different from the wall around the entrance, I guessed they were digging to enlarge this cave. Based on my knowledge about goblins, there was a smart goblin here, at least a normal goblin won''t think of enlarging a cave, they would just dwell in it. After a while, There was no goblin attacking us. Did they get scared by my [Fire Breath]? No matter, in the end all the goblins in this cave would die today. Me and the beautiful fox kept walking as we slowly recovered our spent energy, it''s been at least an hour since we walked and while there were goblins ambushing us, it was only a group of three or five, which we took care of very easily. Along the way we found many rooms, they were fairly big rooms that seems to function as mass bedroom for the goblins and there were also room filled with empty cages. In some of them were caged women like from before and some goblins that were engaging in lewd acts with them. I killed the goblins and then the women asked the same thing from the women from the room before, I helped them all fulfill their wish. My face became expressionless after the third time, my heart turned calm and without ripples. We also found a room filled with stuff the goblins pilfered and just like I expected, the corpse of the purple eyed mantis was here. From the stuff stored inside, I found 10 low-grade stamina potions, 3 low-grade health potion and 1 low-grade mana potions. I chugged 3 of the low-grade stamina potions and the beautiful fox drank the low-grade mana potion, this potions came at the right time. With our energy restored, there was nothing to be worried anymore. I stored the health potions for later. We rested there for a moment, the beautiful fox lied on the ground and took a quick nap. I sat with my legs crossed and brought out my status. Name : unnamed Species : Ruby Beast (Rare) Type : Beast Sex : Male Age : 1 Months 2 Weeks Old Rank : 02 LV : 009/100 HP : 151/210 MP : 05/05 STM : 255/255 ATK : 80 DEF : 100 MGC : 1 MND : 50 DEX : 37 AGL : 53 Points : 12 Active Skills : Appraise LV05 Intimidation LV06 Fire Breath LV04 Fire Clad LV09 Fire Ball LV06 Fire Bullet LV01 Fire Claw LV06 Fire Burst LV04 Fire Drive LV01 Hiding LV05 Dismantling LV06 Enslave LV02 (0/2) Passive Skills : Languages comprehension LVMAX Pyrokinesis LV01 Crystallokinesis LV01 (Ruby) Dominate LV02 Resistance Skills : Heat Nullification LVMAX Poison resistance LV03 Paralyze resistance LV03 Tittle : Otherworlder Harem seeker Guardian I didn''t realised I leveled up four times, I guess I was really out of it back then. I put 10 points in ATK and 2 points in AGL. Name : unnamed Species : Ruby Beast (Rare) Type : Beast Sex : Male Age : 1 Months 2 Weeks Old Rank : 02 LV : 009/100 HP : 151/210 MP : 05/05 STM : 255/255 ATK : 90 DEF : 100 MGC : 1 MND : 50 DEX : 37 AGL : 55 [Appraise] and other skills leveled up, I tried appraising my skills once again and this time it works. As for my active skills,except for [Enslave], I knew them without appraising it since I was the one who made them. Enslave Highest level skill in the Slave ability tree. Enable the user to make other their slave, the number of slave depends on the skill''s level (5 MAX). The slave will be loyal to the user. The user will receive the essence of the slave''s power, the user able to give the slave only one copy of his/her skill if he/she desire. The slave will remain a slave even if the user died. Highest level skill? And this was something I get from [Dominate] level 2? As expected of cheat from god, I guess. I didn''t know what essence was but I did know that this skill would be immensely useful. 5 loyal slaves, if I groomed them right I would get 5 good swords and shields. I tried appraising my passive skills but it didn''t work. The skill level still inadequate. I thought it won''t work for my resistance skills either but strangely it worked. I only appraised [Heat Nullification] as the others were pretty much self-explanatory. Heat Nullification Highest level of skill from Heat-resist ability tree. Nullify any effect and damage of any heat based internal and external factor. Nullification effect spreads to the user''s clothes and equipment. Another highest level skill? Damn, if I got this much advantages from the start, I guessed the other reincarnator must have some sick cheat too. I needed to get much stronger before I met other reincarnator. Looking at the skill''s description, looked like I didn''t need to fear of becoming a streaker if I activated [Fire Clad]. Thank god. Like seriously, thank god. With my skills done, I looked at the beautiful fox. I appraised the beautiful fox once more. Name : unnamed Species : Frost Fox (Rare) Type : Beast Sex : Female Age : 8 Months 2 Weeks Old Rank : 01 LV : 089/100 HP : 68/91 MP : 169/178 STM : 61/72 ATK : 18 DEF : 23 MGC : 90 MND : 52 DEX : 20 AGL : 40 Active Skills : Ice Needle LV03 Frost Whip LV03 Icicles Shot LV03 Ice Wall LV02 Passive Skills : Ice Magic Mastery LV02 Nimble Body LV01 Resistance Skills : Cold Resist (Medium) LV02 Ice Magic Resist LV01 Water Magic Resist LV01 Ah... She didn''t have [Cocytus] or [Nefelheim]. But, maybe she would have it after she evolve. Yeah, I''m not gonna give up so easily. Maybe I''ll tell her about those two magic later. I tried to appraised her skills but it didn''t work, weird. Oh well, I knew about the skill well enough without appraising them anyway. Even with the potions, we still felt the fatigue weighing down our body. So, the beautiful fox and I decided to rest first before continuing. Chapter 7 : Cave Raid (3) We resumed our journey, and the deeper we went, we the stronger the goblins that attacked us became. But their number was not overwhelming like before. The biggest group was only consist of ten goblins, but they were all high-leveled goblins. Some even hit their level cap. I wonder why they didn''t rank up? There were also high goblins but they were scarce, I only saw three and they all ran deeper into the cave when they saw us. The cave was deeper than I thought, just how did these goblins dig so far? Finally, we reached the end of the cave. In the end of the cave, we found a big wooden door. We looked at each other before nodding. I went forward to open the door while the beautiful fox hide behind me and ready to deploy an ice wall anytime, in case of ambush. I pushed open the door and suddenly a fiery red ball came at me with great speed. Before the beautiful fox deployed an ice wall, I already threw my fist and punched the red ball out of reflex. I thought it would explode but what happened next surprised me, I punched it back. You heard me right, I just punched the fireball back! I! punched! it! It felt like hitting a ball! The fireball I punched hit the wall and exploded, it was a little weaker than mine. WTF! A fireball could be touched?! Was that the normal in this world? But if it was like that, then the mantis from before should be able to slice my fireball, but it couldn''t. When it tried to, the fireball exploded when the mantis''s scythe touched it. Did that mean only I could? But why? I didn''t dwell on it very long as a very arrogant voice echoed after the explosion of the fireball. "Magnificent! To touch a fireball physically and even punched it!" Suddenly the surrounding got bright. Behind the door was a big round hall with torches on the wall. In the big empty hall, a goblin in shaman clothing was sitting on a throne made of skulls and skeletons at the end of the hall. Gripped in his right arm was a simple metal wand with red jewel at the top. By his side were five goblins in leather armor, two of them used axes, the other two used swords, and the last one used two daggers. Name : unnamed Species : Goblin Axeman (Common) Type : Demi-Human Sex : Male Rank : 02 LV : 039/050 HP : 164/164 MP : 0/0 STM : 161/161 ATK : 83 DEF : 50 MGC : 0 MND : 30 DEX : 18 AGL : 10 Active Skills : Heavy Swing LV03 Bash LV02 Howl LV03 Passive Skills : Axe Mastery LV02 Tough Skin LV02 Strong Arm LV02 Resistance Skills : - Name : unnamed Species : Goblin Swordman (Common) Type : Demi-Human Sex : Male Rank : 02 LV : 033/050 HP : 134/134 MP : 0/0 STM : 149/149 ATK : 68 DEF : 37 MGC : 0 MND : 23 DEX : 25 AGL : 33 Active Skills : Slash LV03 Multi Slash LV02 Thrust LV02 Parry LV02 Passive Skills : Sword Mastery LV03 Fluid movement LV03 Footwork LV02 Resistance Skills : - Name : unnamed Species : Goblin Thief (Common) Type : Demi-Human Sex : Male Rank : 02 LV : 042/050 HP : 124/124 MP : 0/0 STM : 166/166 ATK : 57 DEF : 32 MGC : 0 MND : 21 DEX : 46 AGL : 59 Active Skills : Backstab LV04 Quick Thrust LV03 Multi Thrust LV04 Dagger Throw LV03 Hiding LV03 Passive Skills : Dagger Mastery LV04 Nimble Body LV03 Quick Hand LV03 Dexterous hand LV02 Acrobat LV02 Resistance Skills : - Name : unnamed Species : Goblin Mage (Uncommon) Type : Demi-Human Sex : Male Rank : 02 Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.LV : 066/075 HP : 153/153 MP : 192/198 STM : 22/22 ATK : 26 DEF : 33 MGC : 91 MND : 74 DEX : 21 AGL : 09 Active Skills : Fireball LV04 Fire Lance LV03 Fire Hand LV02 Fire Vortex LV03 Fire Wall LV03 Passive Skills : Fire Magic Mastery LV04 Rod Mastery LV02 Chanting LV03 Mana Control LV02 Looking at the appraisal result, I didn''t have to worry about anything. While the mage have a quite high magic attack, it was futile against me who had [Heat nullity]. But the beautiful fox was in danger. She wasn''t like me, who was a tank, so fighting the five fully-armed goblins would be dangerous for her, especially that goblin thief. His hiding skill was dangerous, I just hoped it wouldn''t let him just disappear from sight. As for the mage, even if she had good magic defense, the mage power was too high. His magic offense stats was high, not to mention the boost from his skills. A hit from his magic would probably dealt severe damage to the beautiful fox. Should I take them all on? With my stats and skills, I could probably do it. But then the beautiful fox won''t grew stronger, and she wouldn''t let me take on all of them by myself. I observed the environment, it was wide with many room to ran. I would give her the mage to fought, the beautiful fox agility was high, if she was in constant movement, the mage would have a hard time hitting her. I looked at the five goblins, if I took care of them quickly, I could then help the beautiful fox. As I was finished thinking, the goblin mage spoke. "Huhu, are you so scared you became stiff? I don''t blame you, it is normal to be in awe before my presence." The goblin mage raised his head arrogantly and looked down on me, the five goblins also sneered. These guys were probably always in the dominant positions, the looked down on everything and anyone, thinking they''re the best. I couldn''t wait to saw what their expression would be when I destroyed them. The goblin mage looked at me like an interesting item, he was a little disappointed at first before returning to normal. When his gaze landed on the beautiful fox, it turned excited. "Ahaha, I really am lucky! I thought I lost you, but to think you come to my doorstep all on your own!" The beautiful fox growled at the goblin mage as cold air gathered around her body. The goblin mage didn''t care about the beautiful fox''s threatening action, he looked at me with arrogance. "You, red beast, you have done good deed by bringing that fox to me, submit to me and I will spare your life. Be grateful of my magnanimity!" The goblin smiled smugly and his expression was saying I should be honored, I ignored his words and replied. "Are you the leader of this place?" The goblin mage frowned in displeasure, I guessed he was displeased that I didn''t answer his previous question. He looked at me with malice. "You''re the first one to ever dismiss my question and even daringly question me..." "So what? Just answer me or is the leader someone else and you''re just a stand-in?" I shrugged my shoulder, as if something like the likes of the goblin mage could intimidate me. The goblin mage''s face grew red from rage, agitated, he stood up and pointed his staff at me. "Preposterous! How dare you! How dare you call me a stand-in! How dare you undermine my rule! I am the lord of this place! I am the king!" The goblin mage exaggeratedly swung his staff and pointed all over the place, as if declaring his dominion. "Then, you''re the one responsible for what happened to the human females above?" "Human females?" The goblin mage started laughing, there was mocking and disdain in his laugh. "Those human females? I''ve only given them the sacred role of being the mother of my kind, it was the highest honor those swine could get! They should be honored they''re blood flowed inside my subordinates and could serve along side them as his majesty''s servant!" I suppressed the rage within me, being a toy for disgusting goblins was a the highest honor? Fuck that! My hand clenched as I recalled their hollow eyes. I forced myself to calmed down and managed to heard the goblin mage said the word ''His majesty'' Did that mean the goblins here was just underlings? This whole base was only one of many? A goblin who ruled other goblins, a goblin king, something troublesome was happening in these woods. I threw all of the hard stuff to the back of my mind, I lacked information to thought about it, I could always thought about it later after I milked information from these garbages. "I''ve heard enough." "Heh, a monster sympathizing with swine. How laughable!" I aimed my hand at the goblin mage and shot out a fireball. It was bigger and faster than the goblin mage''s fireball. Seeing my fireball, the goblin mage and the five goblins were shocked. "Impos..." Before his word was completed, my fireball already in front of him. The goblin mage hastily jumped to the side and the five goblins scattered as they dodged to get away from the blast radius. My fireball hit the throne and exploded, the explosion was greater than the goblin mage''s fireball. The goblin mage was thrown away by the explosion but the damage on him was trifling. The five goblins also unscathed, I didn''t aim at any of them so that was normal, but the fireball did separated the five goblins from the mage. "I''ll take the five goblins, you take on the mage." "Okay!" After instructing the beautiful fox, she ran toward the goblin and used her frost whip to attacked the mage. I turned to the five goblins and cracked my fingers, I wouldn''t let you guys died so easily. Chapter 8 : Cave Raid (4) (Hey guys, here''s an update! I wrote this with Grammarly, I hope it was better than the usual, please enjoy! And if you enjoy my work, please consider donating to my patreon, any amount will be greatly appreciated! Patreon.com/Fluffas P.S I changed DEF to VIT.) The five goblins held their weapons, looking at me warily. The previous show of power made them took me seriously, after all, that attack alone could deal considerable damage to them. Only based on stats, I could kill them easily. But I already decided on the first target, my eyes locked on the goblin thief, I rushed to it. But one of the axemen goblins, axeman goblin A, blocked my way, it swung its ax at me, I repelled it with a backhanded slap then I Kicked the axeman goblin away, but the goblin thief was no longer there, I looked around and yet, I didn''t see it. The axeman goblin A that I kicked away already back on its feet, the other goblins were closing onto me. I decided to focus on the four goblins in front of me first, the swordsman goblin A slashed at me with an overhead slash from the front, swordsman goblin B attacked me from the side with a sweep, I kicked swordsman goblin A before it slashed me, the swordsman goblin A flew backward while throwing up blood, I blocked swordsman goblin B sword with my hand, I only felt a sting on my forearm where the sword hit, . I was about to attack it when axeman goblin B hacked at me from the side, I quickly defended using my other hand, the ax hit my hand hard and dug into my crystal forearm shallow and made me bleed a little. As expected of my high defense, an ax hit my hand directly and yet, it could only make me bleed a little. The two goblins poured more power when they saw I stopped both their attack with one hand each. They poured more power into it, but their weapon couldn''t penetrate deeper into my flesh. Goblin axeman A came attacking at this point, it held its ax over his head as it jumped, the ax swung down, wanting to cleaved me into two from my head. If the ax hit me, even if I didn''t die, I would probably suffer heavy damage. Under the threat of death, my instinct to survive kicked in, my body moved on its own, my left-hand grabbed the swordsman goblin B''s hand and swung it to, the still airborne, goblin axeman A. The two goblins collided and the sound of flesh burst and bones broke rang out, the swordsman goblin B face was ruined when its face hit the axeman goblin A armor. The axeman goblin A probably broke his ribs, the two flew away like a pair of broken kites. Axeman goblin B was about to distance itself from me, after seeing what happened to the two goblins. But how could I let it? I grabbed his hand and pulled it toward me, then I gave it a strong punch right to its face. Right after my fist destroyed the goblin''s face, two small daggers flew toward me, the target was my eyes. I flinched and abruptly brought my hands to my face, defending by crossing my hands. Axeman goblin B fell to the ground and twitched, his face caved in. From behind it, a shadow jump out and stabbed a dagger to my stomach, the dagger was about an adult''s palm long, the dagger pierced my stomach and about half of the dagger invaded inside my body before stopping, it couldn''t advance anymore. I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen and my fists came down to bashed the assailant, but the shadow jumped backward before my fist could hit it. I pulled out the dagger out of my abdomen, my fireproof body forbids me from cauterizing, so I could only let my body heal on its own. Thanks to all the points I put into VIT, my body had become tougher and tenacious, the wound stopped bleeding after I pulled out the dagger. I looked at the thief goblin in front of me, it was hidden behind the other goblins the whole time, waiting for the moment to attack me. The thief goblin was dangerous, it didn''t have the strength like axeman or swordsman goblin, but it compensated with its cunningness. But now, with no other goblins or place to served as a hiding place, it didn''t have any choice but to fight me head-on. If it couldn''t use it''s hiding skill, it was no different than a slightly strong goblin. But then, my ears heard a sound, when I turned to the source of the sound, I saw swordsman goblin A standing up, the thief goblin rushed to the swordsman goblin A. Before I could catch it, the thief goblin disappeared when it went behind the swordsman goblin A, as if melding into its shadow. The swordsman goblin A looked at me and taunting me to attack it, I sneered, did he forget I could just hit him with a fireball? And that was what I did, I shot a fireball at the swordsman goblin A. It panicked and tried to dodge to the side, but I fired two more fireballs, the two fireballs flew to the sides of the first fireball. With no escape, the swordsman goblin A got hit by the fireball and blown to smithereens, then out of the smoke, the goblin thief jumped out. There were burnt wounds all over its body, I already expected it, so I grabbed its face with iron claw.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. It struggled and tried to stab my arm, I took the dagger off him and stripped the other weapons on him. Then I tried one of my new skill on him, the Crystallokinesis (Ruby). I guessed it had the same power and usage as pyrokinesis, so I tried imagining a sharp dagger-shaped ruby, I named it... "Ruby Shot!" (MC) A ruby piece shot out of my palm that was holding the thief goblin, the ruby piece pierced the thief goblin''s head and more than half of it protruded from the back of its head. The thief goblin died with a hole in its head. "You have learned [Ruby Shot]!" The usual voice rang in my head. The ruby piece was sharp with 2cm in thickness and fifteen centimeters in length, it was red with a tinge of pink. The ruby piece was hard as iron, I looked at my crystal-covered arm and pointed it at the dying axeman goblin A and swordsman goblin B. "Ruby Shot!" The same ruby piece flew out of my palm and hit the axeman goblin A back, the ruby lodge itself deep into the axeman goblin A back and killing it in the process. I make a finger gun with my right hand and l shot one more time, the ruby piece came out of my finger and head-shot the swordsman goblin B. With my opponents lying dead on the ground, I shifted my focus to the beautiful fox battle with the goblin mage. But she already finished her fight, the goblin mage was impaled by ice on its shoulders and stomach. Its robe was stained with blood and frost. goblin mage was lying on the ground, clutching its stomach, dying. The beautiful fox was in front of him, burnt wounds were scattered all around her body, some of her furs were charred black and some were stained grey because of dirt, a trail of blood leaked out from the side of her mouth. She was using frost whip and looking down at the goblin mage, I walked toward her and pet her on the head. "You''ve worked hard, good job." (MC) "Un..." (BF) I looked at the pitiful state of the goblin mage, seeing the pity in my eyes and the beautiful fox looking down on him with spite, the goblin mage was red with rage. "Tell me everything you know about that king of yours, and I might let you live a little longer." (MC) I tried to extort some information out of the goblin mage, but it went to the deep end, it started frothing from the mouth as it yelled out at us. "You... This is impossible! Impossible! How can you lowly animals defeat the great me!? How dare you! How dare you! His Majesty will punish you for this! Yes, yes, he will punish and torture you lowly animals! I will laugh as you see your mate being tortured in front you! His Majesty will avenge me! His-" Before the goblin mage finished speaking, the beautiful fox killed him by piercing his head with the frost whip. "Noisy!" (BF) She undid the skill and the frost whip crumbled, it left a gaping hole on the goblin mage''s head. I didn''t get any information out of the goblin mage but they were building a base on this forest, then I would meet the goblin king sooner or later. "Sleepy..." (BF) Right after she killed the goblin mage, the beautiful fell down, I caught her and when I was about to get the bag left outside the room to let her drank some of the potions, her body was wrapped with bluish light like a cocoon. I panicked and appraised the cocoon. Evolution Cocoon. A mysterious cocoon that will only appear when a monster is evolving. They will wrap the monster and disappear when the monster is done evolving. The cocoon is indestructible. It is said the cocoon originate from the power of the world itself. I felt relieved, so the beautiful fox was just evolving. I looked at the cocoon curiously, was I like this when I evolved back then? I put down the cocoon gently on the ground and started searching the goblins bodies for any clue, but I didn''t find anything. I explored the room and found a door behind the throne, I opened it and went inside but it was just a small path that was unfinished. I presumed it was an escape route, I went outside and took the bag from outside the throne room and sat down before the cocoon. I waited for the beautiful fox to came out of the cocoon, I opened my status to check. Name : unnamed Species : Ruby Beast (Rare) Type : Beast Sex : Male Age : 1 Month 2 Weeks Old Rank : 02 LV : 019/100 HP : 173/210 MP : 05/05 STM : 191/255 ATK : 90 VIT : 100 MGC : 1 MND : 50 DEX : 37 AGL : 55 Points : 30 Active Skills : Appraise LV05 Intimidation LV06 Fire Breath LV04 Fire Clad LV09 Fire Ball LV06 Fire Bullet LV01 Fire Claw LV06 Fire Burst LV04 Fire Drive LV01 Ruby Shot LV01 Hiding LV05 Dismantling LV06 Enslave LV02 (0/2) Passive Skills : Languages comprehension LVMAX Pyrokinesis LV01 Crystallokinesis LV01 (Ruby) Dominate LV02 Resistance Skills : Heat Nullification LVMAX Poison resistance LV03 Paralyze resistance LV03 Title : Otherworlder Harem seeker Guardian Hm, I leveled up ten times, huh? Even though I just killed four levels thirty and one levels forty rank two goblins? The exp needed to level up was getting steep. I put ten points to ATK, ten points to VIT and the last ten points to MND. Name : unnamed Species : Ruby Beast (Rare) Type : Beast Sex : Male Age : 1 Month 2 Weeks Old Rank : 02 LV : 019/100 HP : 173/210 MP : 05/05 STM : 191/255 ATK : 100 VIT : 110 MGC : 1 MND : 60 DEX : 37 AGL : 55 Points : 0 Mmm, looking good! Suddenly, the usual voice rang in my head. "VIT has surpassed 100 points!" "You have learned [Stone Skin]!" What? Stone skin? I checked my stats again. Name : unnamed Species : Ruby Beast (Rare) Type : Beast Sex : Male Age : 1 Month 2 Weeks Old Rank : 02 LV : 019/100 HP : 173/210 MP : 05/05 STM : 191/255 ATK : 100 VIT : 120 MGC : 1 MND : 60 DEX : 37 AGL : 55 Points : 0 Active Skills : Appraise LV05 Intimidation LV06 Fire Breath LV04 Fire Clad LV09 Fire Ball LV06 Fire Bullet LV01 Fire Claw LV06 Fire Burst LV04 Fire Drive LV01 Ruby Shot LV01 NEW! Hiding LV05 Dismantling LV06 Enslave LV02 (0/2) Passive Skills : Languages comprehension LVMAX Pyrokinesis LV01 Crystallokinesis LV01 (Ruby) Dominate LV02 Stone Skin LV01 NEW! Resistance Skills : Heat Nullification LVMAX Poison resistance LV03 Paralyze resistance LV03 Title : Otherworlder Harem seeker Guardian Wow, ten points boost to VIT, nice! To thought, I would get such a good skill from having a stats surpassing 100 points, I wondered if I would get new skill if it surpassed 200 or 300 points? That would be very good. After waiting for an hour, the cocoon cracked and a figure emerged from it. Chapter 9 : Building a Pride (Another update! If you like my work, please consider helping me by being a patron and donate to my patreon. Any amount will be greatly appreciated! Patreon.com/Fluffas You can contact me on discord https://discord.gg/Rqv2adR) The figure emerging from the cocoon was breathtaking, the pale-blue fur color became deeper, her slender body became even more graceful, her fur was even more luscious. She was like an ice fairy, a fleeting beauty descending upon this mortal world, her two bushy tail moved elegantly. The beautiful fox opened her eyes and smiled at me, she walked toward me and rubbed her little head against my neck and cheek. "I''ve evolved." (BF) Her voice was soft combined with her intimate act, it made her looked so endearing. I raised my right hand and pet her head, I also rubbed my head against her affectionately. "Yeah. Yeah, you did." (MC) "Am I pretty?" (BF) "Of course, you''ve always been pretty." (MC) "Un. Thank you, I can evolve because of you." (BF) "It''s all your hard work, I only help a little." (MC) The beautiful fox licked my face and once again rubbed her head with mine. I kept petting her head and appraised her in secret. Name : Nameless Species : Two-tailed Tundra Fox (Rare) Type : Beast Sex : Female Rank : 02 LV : 03/85 HP : 104/104 MP : 239/239 STM : 91/91 ATK : 22 VIT : 31 MGC : 135 MND : 81 DEX : 30 AGL : 52 Active Skills : Ice Needle LV04 Frost Whip LV04 Icicles Shot LV04 Ice Wall LV03 Passive Skills : Ice Magic Mastery LV04 Nimble Body LV01 Magic Boost LV01 NEW! Resistance Skills : Cold Resist (High) LV02 NEW Ice Magic Resist LV03 Water Magic Resist LV03 Vulnerability to Heat LV02 NEW Two-tailed Tundra Fox A race of foxes that lives in the extreme cold region. Their body has acclimated to the cold and changed their constitution, now, they vulnerable to heat. Their two tails help regulate their body temperature and also serves as a mean of attack, as they can enlarge and extend. Lives in a group led by a matriarch, the strongest female in the group, highly territorial. They''re a skillful ice element magic caster, they''re ice magic is amplified in cold region. Their whole body is a treasure for making ice element equipment. Carnivore. Inedible. Hmm? Her max level went down? Why? Wait a minute, now that I thought about it, except beautiful fox, I had never seen another person or monster with a max level of 100. Was there any reason for it? Level? In this game-like world, the strongest being would definitely a being with the highest level, with that line of thought, between the same leveled rank 2, the one with a max level of 100 at rank 1 would be stronger. Then, in other words, the max level in this world represent an individual''s potential? The reason why beautiful fox''s max level dropped because her potential as a Two-tailed Tundra Fox was less than Frost Fox? Or potential was something that depleted every evolution? If my guess was right, then the reason why the goblins didn''t evolve when they hit max level was because that was the limit of their potential. Not good, I could only hypothesize. I needed to research this or asked someone who knew a lot about this. But for now, I needed to fix the problem in front of me first, the beautiful fox. I had to fix her max level and the [Vurnerability to Heat] skill, as of now, I didn''t know how to fix her max level but I could fix her skill. How did you ask? By making her be my slave. If I made her my slave with [Enslave] skill, I could share my [Heat Nullification] with her, then she would no longer have a weakness. And besides, I couldn''t let a mere skill prevent her from approaching me or being near me, right? I didn''t know but I just couldn''t bear the thought of her not being near me. The beautiful fox is mine! None can keep her away from me! Such thoughts filled my head and echoed with no end. I didn''t know when I fell for her and how could I fall in love with a female fox, but since it already happened, why fight it? I pulled her face in front of me and stared straight into her eyes. "You''re mine." (MC) The beautiful fox was surprised for a moment, her eyes widen but then it turned to normal, I saw affection in her eyes. The beautiful fox nodded. "....Un." (BF) I activated [Enslave] skill and targeted the beautiful fox when I saw her nodding. My power was sucked and clustered in front of me. "[Enslave] activated!" "Target acquired!" "Creating a personal slave mark, complete!" The power clustered and mixed together, at first, they were transparent and intangible, the could only be felt. Then slowly, they materialized and dyed with deep crimson color. From the abstract shape, they slowly took the shape of a blazing fire with half of them fragmented. "Integrating the slave mark to the target!" The mark descended onto the beautiful fox''s chest and disappeared inside her. Then I heard a notification inside my head. "The individual, Two-tailed Tundra Fox, is now the host''s slave!" "Would you like to share your skill with the individual?" "[Y/N]" "Yes." (MC) "Please choose the skill." "[Heat Nullification] skill.]" I felt something just came out of my body but there was nothing missing in my body. "Copying skill...integrating to the individual...complete!" "...nn..." (BF) The beautiful fox writhes a little as if she was tickled. When I thought it was over there was another notification ranging in my head. "Analyzing the individual, Two-tailed Tundra Fox...complete!" "Collecting essence...complete!" "Ah!" (BF) The beautiful fox furs swayed without wind, she writhed even more than before. I could vaguely sense something was copied and taken out from her. "Transforming essence...complete!" "[Freezing Fire] essence is created!" "Integrating essence to host!" "Hngh!" (MC) Something entering me, it was cold and yet hot at the same time. The mysterious power entered me and settled, I instinctively knew what was it. I freed one of my hand from the beautiful fox, I pointed my palm at a wall. "Freeze Bolt!" (MC) A ball of pale blue flame with the size of an adult''s fist flew out of my palm, when the ball of fire hit the wall, a layer of ice spread out from where the fire hit. A circle of ice with a diameter of twenty centimeters appeared on the wall, part of the wall under the ice began to darkened and smoke came out from the ice. This was the identity of the new power of mine, ice that burns. Anything hit by it would be covered by ice, but the ice would not freeze them, it would burn them.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. The beautiful fox looked on curiously, for her, ice was used to freeze things meanwhile the ice I threw burn things. I understood what essence meant now, it referred to the slave signature power, which in this case, ice. The beautiful fox essence was ice, the skill copied that and changed it to something that fit me, the host. That meant I have four more chance to acquired such useful and powerful power, I needed to think this through. Then another notification rang out. "[Dominate] skill activated!" "The individual, Two-tailed Tundra Fox, is now under the effect of [Dominate] skill!" "Forcefully raising potential...complete!" "The individual stats management is set to manual!" "Both the host and individual can now modify the individual body when evolving!" What? The beautiful fox also had a surprised face, seemed like she heard the notification. I looked at her stats. Name : Nameless Species : Two-tailed Tundra Fox (Rare) Type : Beast Sex : Female Rank : 02 LV : 03/100 HP : 104/104 MP : 239/239 STM : 91/91 ATK : 22 VIT : 31 MGC : 135 MND : 81 DEX : 30 AGL : 52 Points : 0 Active Skills : Ice Needle LV04 Frost Whip LV04 Icicles Shot LV04 Ice Wall LV03 Passive Skills : Ice Magic Mastery LV04 Nimble Body LV01 Magic Boost LV01 Resistance Skills : Cold Resist (High) LV02 Ice Magic Resist LV03 Water Magic Resist LV03 Heat Nullification LVMAX NEW! The heck? Her max level was forcefully increased? Shit, to tempered with individual''s potential, this cheat of mine was too sick! But, I like it, with this, I could have 5 individuals under me with full potential! The beautiful fox was full of questions, I ruffled her head and smiled. "It''s okay, it only makes you stronger." (MC) "...okay, husband." (BF) ...what? "What did you call me?" (MC) "Hm? Is there something wrong, husband?" (BF) "Why are you calling me "husband"?" (MC) "You said I was yours, right? Then that means, you''re also mine, isn''t that right? Then you''re my husband." (BF) ....her words made sense so I couldn''t retort her, based on my word, it wasn''t far from a proposal, wasn''t it? It was kind of light and abrupt one but, for a monster, it was good enough, right? Besides, hearing her calling me "husband" filled my heart with a sweet feeling. I rubbed my head against her''s, this little act filled me with joy. I wanted to continue but it was time we went our way, I stood up and wore the bag on my shoulder, I walked out of the room to the entrance of the cave. The beautiful fox walked beside me, there were some goblins left which she killed swiftly with ice magic. I looked at the beautiful fox face that was filled with hate as she gazed at the goblins corpses, the reason for her hatred against the goblin, I vaguely guessed it. Her family probably killed or captured by the goblins. I pet her head since she didn''t tell me about it, then I wouldn''t ask about it. After we got out of the cave, we disappeared into the forest, I led the beautiful fox around searching for prey and caught four delicious rabbits. I cleaned and roasted the rabbit, armed with [Heat Nullification], the heat no longer bother the beautiful fox. While we were eating, I asked something to the beautiful fox. "How did the leader of your pack control her pack?" (MC) "Power, mother used power to control the pack. Mother was The strongest, so everyone listens to her." (BF) "I see." (MC) Power, huh? Simple yet effective. After we ate, I went around the forest, searching for a pack of monster. Not to hunt but to tamed and made into subordinates, my subordinates. The cave raid taught me that number was sometimes more important than individual strength. If wasn''t for my overwhelming power, the only six powerful goblins in the cave were haughty, the raid probably failed. If the six goblins were to fight me with the rest of the goblin horde, it would be very dangerous. The fact that I raided the cave with just the two of us were beyond reckless, I was drunk on the feeling of omnipotence after evolving. Thankfully, the raid was successful, but it would be safer if I had some subordinates, so I thought of getting some. That was why I asked that question to the beautiful fox. She lived in a pack before, so I thought of referencing how the leader of her pack ruled. If using power was enough, it would be very easy for me, even if it didn''t work, I could try again and again. I''m sure I would success with enough trial and error. Unfortunately, we didn''t find anything but rats, I wasn''t desperate enough to recruit rats to my pack. I and the beautiful fox found a relatively safe place before retiring for the night, we would continue the search tomorrow. @@@ Morning came, I went searching again with the beautiful fox, today we searched deeper into the forest. We walked for quite some time until we found a pack of wolves, well, it was more like they found us. We were surrounded by a pack of grey wolves, they were about a meter tall and one and a half meter in length, their grey furs was long and their tails were long and bushy, their eyes were blood-red. They were growling at us and I understand what they said. "Meat..." "I want the female, tender meat..." "Hungry...hunt...kill..." There were about ten wolves from what I could see, but I sensed a stronger wolf hidden behind the pack, my sense had become stronger after evolving. One of the wolves attacked us, it jumped with its mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth opened. I caught it by the neck with one hand, it struggled and scratched my hand with its claw but its strength, it wouldn''t be able to hurt me. Name : Nameless Species : Grey Wolf (Uncommon) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 01 LV : 046/50 HP : 120/120 MP : 8/8 STM : 210/210 ATK : 52 VIT : 43 MGC : 0 MND : 12 DEX : 17 AGL : 35 Active Skills : Iron Claw LV02 Brute Bite LV02 Sprint LV03 Howl LV02 Passive Skills : Pack Mind LV03 Swift Feet LV02 Silent Step LV02 Stamina Boost (Small) LV02 Resistance Skills : Slash Resistance (Small) LV03 Bludgeon Resistance (Small) LV2 Fear Resistance LV02 They''re stronger than goblins, for sure, especially their stamina, but still weak. For my first attempt at subduing monsters, they should do. Grey Wolf A wolf monster that can live in many terrains and environments, but prefers forests and plains. A nomadic monster that will go from place to place searching for food. A highly organized monster that lives in a pack led by the alpha male. They don''t have any special aspects or characteristics, except having exceptional stamina. A fearless monster that will attack anything they perceived as prey. They exhaust their prey before going in for the kill. Their thick fur protects them from slashing and bludgeoning attack, good material for armor. Their sharp fangs and claws can be used to make small-size weapons. Carnivore. Inedible. This monster was just perfect for what I need. Seeing their kin caught by me, one more wolf lunged at me, I simply threw the one in my hand at the one jumping at me. I held myself back, so they were only hurt without actual wounds. The wolves growled at me but before they could act, I activated [Intimidation] and all of them were frozen stiff. I''m not adept at using it yet but I managed to exclude the beautiful fox from the effect of [Intimidation]. Even though they were frozen stiff, they face still showed defiance. I smirked, I kinda liked these fearless mutts. I strolled pass them easily with the beautiful fox, and I found a bigger Grey Wolf than the other at the back. It was frozen too but this one could still growl at me. Name : Nameless Species : Grey Wolf (Uncommon) Type : Beast Sex : Male Rank : 01 LV : 066/75 HP : 135/135 MP : 8/8 STM : 265/265 ATK : 73 VIT : 59 MGC : 0 MND : 17 DEX : 24 AGL : 44 Active Skills : Iron Claw LV03 Brute Bite LV02 Sprint LV04 Howl LV04 Passive Skills : Pack Mind LV04 Pack Commanding LV03 Swift Feet LV03 Silent Step LV03 Stamina Boost (Small) LV03 Resistance Skills : Slash Resistance (Small) LV04 Bludgeon Resistance (Small) LV3 Fear Resistance LV03 Title : Alpha Male Ho, based on stats alone, it was on par with a rank 2 goblins, very nice! "Submit to me and you will live, against me and you will die along with your pack." (MC) The Grey Wolf leader growled even more and even moved his feet to stood his ground, there was no fear in his eyes. He glared at me back, even though, he must have realized that I was far stronger than him or his pack. He clenched his teeth and I assumed he wouldn''t be able to converse while under the pressure of my [Intimidation], so I canceled it. The moment the pressure was gone, many wolves fell to the ground, not many could still stand, but they were all panting hard. The Grey Wolf leader was still standing, he was panting exhaustedly. I waited for him to recover and when he did, he roared at me. "Fight me! The strong lead! The weak die!" A simple deathmatch to determine the pack leader, I liked this simple solution. The other wolves stood circling us, watching who would win, despite their leader was fighting, no wolf cheered him on. The beautiful fox joined them and sat down a distance from me, she was relaxed, no wolves dared to went near her. I looked at the Grey Wolf leader, he was charging himself, ready to lunge. I sneered at him, I would finish this quickly. I walked toward him leisurely, the Grey Wolf leader took that as an insult, for not treating him like a worthy enemy and underestimating him. He lunged at me with explosive speed, but I could still see him, I dodged a little to the side and caught his neck, then I slammed him to the ground. While he was gagging and dazed from being slammed, a stream of pale blue fire poured out of my mouth. "Cold Breath!" The Grey Wolf leader''s head was encased with ice, he struggled greatly but he couldn''t move his head as the ice pinned him down to the ground. I released my hand and stood up, smoke coming out of the ice and the smell of burnt flesh filled the air. After a few minutes, the Grey Wolf leader ceased moving. The wolves revealed their feeling of trepidation after seeing what happened to their leader, not one of them talked. I looked at them and asked. "Submit or die like your leader" (MC) The Wolves didn''t hesitate and howled to the sky. "Submit!" "Strong leader, submit!" I smiled, with this I''ve taken the first step of building my pack, no, my pride. Side Chapter : Meeting "him" (Another update! If there''s a typo or something felt wrong, please tell me in the comments! If you like my work, please consider helping me by being a patron and donate to my patreon. Any amount will be greatly appreciated! Patreon.com/Fluffas You can contact me on discord https://discord.gg/Rqv2adR) (Beautiful Fox POV) I ran across the deep field of snow, everywhere I saw was dyed white, in these infinite spans of white, I once lived here with my family. I played with another child, I trained with mother, I watched the adult hunt, I was happy. Mother was the strongest in the pack, she could hunt big prey and defeat all the uncles and brothers in the pack, she even beat the humans who came to the mountain. I wanted to be like her, I want to be stronger than her. My body wasn''t strong like hers but my magic was stronger than hers, I trained with her and hunted with her. Slowly, I became strong like mother, all the adults said I was strong, my mother said she was proud of me. But one day, my happy life was destroyed, a pack of flying lizards invaded my home. Mother called them dragons, they were brutal and voracious beasts, they killed wantonly and drove many monsters out of their own territory. They claimed dominion of the whole mountain, my pack was driven out of the mountain by them. We tried fighting them but we were defeated, they were strong, very strong. Our claws and fangs couldn''t injure their body covered by scaly armor, our magic barely scratched them. We couldn''t hurt them but they could kill us easily, they used their fangs to bite uncle''s head off, their claws cut brothers to two, their tails broke sisters bones, and their breath froze everyone hit by it. We lose many, we ran in shame, we couldn''t do anything but run. Mother was injured severely when she fought the dragons, she lost her right eyes and tail, her body riddled with wounds. I and the other children were okay since the adults protected us, I was angry for being weak, I couldn''t help mother. I froze when I saw the dragons, I was scared of them. After being driven out of the mountain, my mother led us to the nearest forest, the [Sting Forest]. We lost many pack members, mother planned to stay in the forest and recover our strength, then after we recovered, we would search for another snowy mountain to live in. On the way to the forest, we encountered many dangers, both monsters and humans attacked us, there were few of us who could still fight. Despite being the most injured, mother fought the assailant and drove them away, the fight aggravated her injuries. My mother fought every time assailant came attacking, her wounds bled continuously and never closed. We couldn''t run from them because if we ran, I and the other children would be left behind. I wanted to help mother, so I insisted on fighting with her, thankfully, I managed to lift some of the burdens of the fight from mother. After weeks of walking and fighting, we finally reached the forest, we entered the forest and managed to find a relatively safe place near a river. Our arrival attracted some of the monsters originally living in the forest, but no monster came attacking except a few ignorant rats at first. We settled in the forest and slowly recovering our worn out body, we didn''t quite like the warm temperature of the forest but we get used to it. For two weeks, we lived without any problem, but another disaster struck us. Green monsters came attacking in huge number, most of them carrying a wood log, but there were those who bodies clad in human armor and carrying human weapon. The came and attacked abruptly, we were taken by surprise, the ones carrying wood logs attacked first as vanguards. Though we were ambushed, the goblins carrying wood logs were weak, we dispatched them easily, I even killed five on my own. When the goblins using human equipment came forward, we were cornered but we could still resist but after the goblins using magic attacked, we finally couldn''t hold on anymore. Suddenly, emerging from the sea of goblins, a goblin with deeper skin color and bigger body compared to other goblins, almost twice the size, came out. His body was clad in leather armor, in his hand was a big cleaver. Mother told us to run the moment she saw the goblin, she and the older siblings would hold the goblins back, I didn''t want to leave mother but one of the uncles hold me by biting my neck and took me away. I called for my mother as the uncle took me away, but what answered my call was a beast-like roar. We ran and ran until we reached a certain distance, but before we could stop and rest, we heard the sound of goblins coming our way. The uncle quickly grabbed me and ran again but no matter how far we ran, the goblins kept following us relentlessly. Slowly our numbers decreased until in the end, only I was still running, the rest either captured or killed by the goblins. I wanted to fight but the uncle told me to survive and avenge them before we part, so I couldn''t die before I avenge my family. My hatred for dragon and goblins filled my heart with black haze. While I was running from the goblins, I met "him", a handsome male with red furs like fire. He helped me and healed my injured body, at first, I was wary of him but then he taught me how to fight, took care of me, and help me got stronger. I began to like him. We fought together, with his help I believed I could take my revenge on the goblins. When we found a goblins cave, I wanted to rush inside and started massacring the goblins inside, but he held me back and told me to wait until we got stronger and we did.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. After he fought an insect with big blades for hands, he evolved. He was already charming before but he became even more handsome after evolving, his body radiated strength, the burnt wound on his face just added more charm. I want him, that was my honest feeling. He then brought me to raid the goblin cave, just as he promised. He easily tore apart those damned goblins with his bare hand, seeing his gallant figure inflicting raw violence on those goblins excited me. These goblins only had numbers, they were weak individually, but it was truly hard to deal with this many enemies. We found a room not far from the entrance and entered it, inside was a huge cage with human females caged inside. I didn''t like humans, they were a greedy and insatiable monster. He kneeled in front of them and started letting out weird sound, what was he doing? Then I suddenly felt a change in his mood, he was...angry? He killed all the females in the cage and burned them all to ash, why? We continued diving deeper into the cave and killed all the goblins we encountered, we found more human females and he burned them all, I could feel his anger deepening, why? There was a big door when we reached the end of the cave, A fireball attacked us the moment we entered the room, he slapped away the fireball like it was nothing, then he began to let out weird sound again, the same sound the goblins let out. Was he talking with the goblins? But he wasn''t a goblin, how could he speak with them? Then a goblin with strange equipment pointed at me and I recognized it, it was one of the goblins that attacked me and family that day! Rage filled my heart and was about to pounce at it, suddenly he threw a fireball at the goblin pointing at me and separate it with the rest of the five goblins. My ice covered tail flung at it and the goblin blocked my attack with its staff, but the goblin was pushed away by the impact, further distancing it from the other goblins. The goblin yelled out a strange sound and fire its fireball at me, I used my tail in an attempt to slap it away as he did back then, but my tail was destroyed by the fireball upon touch. The fireball didn''t weaken and kept going at me, I hastily jumped to the side to dodge it, but another fireball came at me. I dodged again and another fireball came, this repeats a couple times more before I fired an icicle at the goblin and stopped it from firing more fireballs. The goblin''s fireball was weaker than his but it would still deal quite the damage to me. The goblins avoided my icicle and fired another fireball at me, I erected an ice wall in front of me, when the fireball hit the ice wall, it exploded. The impact destroyed the wall and injured me. There was a lot of white smoke around after the fireball hit my ice wall, the white smoke disrupted the goblins vision and concealed my figure from it. Thanks to that, I got time to recover, the white smoke also disrupted my vision, so, unfortunately, I couldn''t ambush the goblin. The white smoke cleared up fast, the moment I saw a shadow of the goblin, I shot my ice needles at it. The goblin quickly erected a wall of fire and neutralized my needles, then it threw something like my icicle lance but was made with fire. It was faster than the fireball, I couldn''t dodge so I erected a new ice wall and hide behind it, the lance easily pierced my ice wall but it only grazed me. It was scorching hot, I blow cold wind on my wound but it didn''t help, then the goblin waved its staff at me and suddenly, the ground below me glowed orange. I hastily dodged to the side and went out of the ground that was glowing, a fire pillar came out of the ground, if I was a second slower, I would have burned to ash. The goblin shouted at me and sent a fireball at me, I didn''t know what he said but from its disgusting face, I knew it laugh at me. I dodged the fireball and fire my own icicle, three of them to the goblin, it leisurely erected a fire wall in front of it, I thought of something and fire one more at it. As expected, when it felt three impacts on the wall, it dispelled the wall and was about to throw a fireball at me again, but it was taken by surprise by the icicle I fired last. Sadly the icicle missed, I aimed at the goblin''s head but the icicle hit its shoulder. The goblin screamed in pain and looked at its bleeding shoulder in disbelieve, it then screamed strings of incomprehensible sound before firing magic wildly at me. Fireball, fire lance, fire pillar, magic flew at me. I desperately dodged, but I couldn''t keep avoiding, then I recalled the white smoke, an idea was born in my head. I quickly erected ice walls around me, it was destroyed the moment I erected it but I didn''t care, I kept erecting more and more. Then a bunch of magic flew at me and hit the ice walls around me, resulting in an explosion and a lot of white smoke. I was hurt by the explosion but I was still alive, the goblin probably thought I was dead, I could hear it''s laughter but it was good for me. I used frost tail and thrust at the source of the goblin''s laughter, I didn''t stab it but I did stab the ground, I quickly launched myself using my tail. The moment I came out of the smoke, I saw the goblin looking at me, shocked. I didn''t delay and rammed at the goblin and when it''s down, I fired an icicle at it and hit it at the stomach. My fight was done, he came to me and pet my head, I was delighted and savored it. Then he talked to the goblin again but it was too noisy, so I killed it and my vision went black. In pure black, I heard something said that I had grown to my full potential and was evolving, then an image of a beautiful fox with two tails emerged on my mind, something said it was my new form. I was happy, he would definitely like my new beautiful form. When I came back, I saw him staring at me, I smiled and rubbed my head against his, it was an act only done with one''s mate in my family, I have decided, I wanted to be his mate. When he suddenly separate himself from me, I thought he rejected me but then he said I was his, I was elated and said yes. Then he left his mark on me, I could feel his mark inside me and it made me stronger. He rubbed his head against me, returning my affection, I took the chance and left my scent on him while rubbing against him, it was so that other females knew who he belongs to. I suddenly heard a voice in my head, the same with the one I heard when evolving, it said something I didn''t understand but since husband said it was fine, then it would be fine. I saw him threw ice like mine but his ice burns things, the opposite of mine. Then we left the cave and husband asked me how mother reined the pack before, so I answered him. He then led me and found a pack of wolves, he quickly killed their leader and became the leader of the pack. Looking at him being feared and respected by the wolves made me thought that I didn''t choose wrong, I saw some female wolves targeting him but unfortunately, he was mine and I''m not sharing!