-White Bunny POV-
The bunny killed another thirteen rats, testing both her knife and the activation of [Time of Death]. The bunny sliced her knife across the rat's neck, missing the creature's throat.
[Lvl 1 [Time of Death] is available! Activate?]
That was the trick, she had learned- a lethal blow, but not the kind that killed instantly. The rats swarmed upon the body. No matter how many rats she killed, the rats just kept coming, drawn to their own flesh. The rat's head disappeared beneath the yellow teeth.
[You have slain [Grey Rat]! You have been awarded +1 Free Skill Points!]
Upgrading a skill took ten skill points. After spending over an hour killing rats, she had gathered all of three. The bunny eyed the swam of rats. She could continue picking them off one by one, but it would be dark before she gathered enough points to level a single skill. Her knife might be sharp, but their tiny teeth were still deadly.
Killing them was a slow, tedious process, and she had already gained most of what she could from the rats. The only thing left was to test [Time of Death], so when the opportunity came-
[Lvl 1 [Time of Death] has been activated!]
The bunny took a deep breath in. She wasn't in any danger, so she took the time to examine how [Time of Death] had affected her senses.
It was awful. She could hear everything the rats did- the beating of their tiny hearts, the scratching of their nails, the squelches of ripped flesh. If [Time of Death] didn't pump her veins full of adrenaline and artificial calm, she would've vomited from sheer sensory overload.
[Time Remaining: 0:28]
Instead, her mind whirled, processing all the information at once. At any given moment, she knew exactly how each rat would move based on the twitches of their body. Distantly, she wondered how far into the future she could predict if she stayed in [Time of Death] forever.
[Time Remaining: 0:21]
She would go insane. Pressure built at the back of her head, and her vision tinged red at the edges as [Time of Death] dragged on. It would end soon, and to optimize the time she had left-
[Time Remaining: 0:15]
Skill points. Hundreds of openings stretched out in front of her, so obvious she didn't know how she hadn't seen them before. Her mind ran through all the possibilities, calculating which rats would be worth chasing down, then she moved.
Every twist of her body, every stretch of her muscles- it was all perfect. She tore through the rats, every movement transformed with pure efficiency.
[[Time of Death] has ended!]
She was standing alone. Dead rats littered the dirt, blood seeping from nearly invisible cuts on their neck. The rest of the rats had fled. Ninety-four, she knew without counting. There were three-hundred fifty-seven rats. She killed ninety-four. Two hundred sixty-three had survived.
The rats did not dare to return, not even for all the blood which just soaked into the dirt, wasted without anything to consume it. The bunny suspected she would never be able to find a rat in this village again.
Shame. It seemed she wasn't getting more skill points for any time soon. Still, it had been more than worth it- in fifteen seconds, she had managed to gather over forty skill points.
She slipped away, heading for the other side of the village. The stench of death was already growing under the scorching afternoon sun, and it wouldn't be long before the bodies were found. After burying the knife, the bunny settled down to clean the blood off her fur. She groomed herself carefully, methodically, and-
[You have consumed a sufficient amount of blood! [Devourer] is now available. Activate?]
Her eyes widened, then narrowed again.
The [System] could roughly be divided into two separate components. The first were the automated messages, and the second was the [System] which wanted... she wasn't sure, but nothing good. This window seemed like it came from the first, but...
[System: So little faith.]
The [System] murmured, in a tone of voice which could mean anything. The bunny pressed activate anyway, knowing she couldn't afford to ignore the [System].
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Damn it.
[Lvl 1 [Devourer] has been activated! Searching for target... target found! Expand list of available skills?]
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-Available Skills-
[Infection]
[Rotten Life]
[Tiny Teeth]
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There was no way to read anything about the skills. She glared at the window. It would kill the [System] to be helpful, wouldn't it? She opened the [Devourer] window again.
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-Devourer-
There's nothing quite like the taste of blood, is there?
Level: 1
Points to Upgrade: 0/10
Skill Slots Used: 0/1
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She compared the two windows, matching "skill slots used" to "available skills." If [Devourer] worked the way she thought it did... her mind spun.
Power, the [System] had promised. Was it even surprising that the [System] expected her to kill to get it?
She reviewed the skill list again. A few of the rats had tried to use [Tiny Teeth] when attacking her, so that skill was self-explanatory. [Infection] and [Rotten Life] were both unknown, but in the context of rats...
Rats ate everything, rotten or not. That meant they often picked up diseases, spreading them to other creatures. She had once seen a coyote become mad from a single rat bite, turning on its own pack. The coyote had a miserable death, flies buzzing about its rotten flesh for days before the creature finally passed.
She selected [Infection]. It was less because she hated coyotes- she most definitely did- and more because she was fucking sick of eating rot. She had known the taste of sour, mushy grass all her life, and she had no intention of eating it anymore.
The [Devourer] window updated.
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-Devourer-
There's nothing quite like the taste of blood, is there?
Level: 1
Points to Level: 0/10
Skill Slots Used: 1/1 [Infection]
*Skills acquired with [Devourer] cannot be directly leveled.
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More hidden conditions. She wasn't even surprised. Based on how the wolf's [Jaws of Death] had interacted with [Wingblade], a skill's power was determined by its level.
That didn't mean skills were useless without levels- [Sixth Sense] and [Time of Death] were perfect examples of that. It was possible [Infection] would be like that, too. She opened the skill description, hoping she had made the right choice.
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-Infection-
Steals 1 Health from enemies. Amount of Health scales with level.
Level: 1 (capped)
Activation Condition: Draw blood
*Automatic
**Can only be used once per enemy
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Steals, she thought first, because she quite liked stealing. Then, [Infection] would be much more powerful with levels.
It didn't matter. She had gained two knives and thirty skill points, which was far more than she had bargained for. One way or another, she would figure out how to make [Infection] work.
She stood up, stretching her legs. She still had things to do that the wolf didn't need to know about- namely, stealing money. The days were long in the summer, but they wouldn't last forever.
━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━
-Black Wolf POV-
The human children didn't play monkey for long.
"You're terrible at this," the little girl told him, and the wolf nodded solemnly.
Yes, he was. The children taught him how to "catch the ball," but even when they "threw the ball" at him, the best he could do was block the ball from hitting his face.
"We should do something else," the girl decided. The wolf nodded to that, too.
"But I wanna keep playing ball!" One of the kids complained. It was the boy who had thrown the ball at the wolf. The boy seemed to love the ball more than anything. The wolf understood how he felt- the wolf also loved the ball very much.
"Then go!" The girl huffed. "Just don't hit me with the ball again, or I'll hit you back. With a rock."
The boy laughed.
"Play far away, got it!"
The rest of the kids ran off with him, leaving him and the girl. And the cows, but the cows didn't care about them. The cows were just happy to eat grass in peace.
The girl reached into the pocket of her pants, fishing out a rock. She showed the rock to him.
"I always keep it with me. Just in case," she said solemnly. The wolf nodded. Being able to defend yourself was good.
"You should get a rock, too."
And so off they went, searching the long grass for a suitable rock for the wolf to carry. His clothes were still painfully itchy, but it became more tolerable as dirt coated the fabric, bringing him closer to the earth.
"Here."
The girl presented him with a rock. The wolf examined the rock. It was more of a pebble, worn smooth like the ones that washed up from the river. The rock was gray, with a faint blue hue that shone under the sunlight.
"It's round, see? Good for throwing."
She threw the rock. The wolf watched as the gray rock soar through the air, landing far away in the grass. It was good for throwing, the wolf thought. The girl smiled proudly at him.
"Now we have to find the rock again."
When they finally found the rock again, the girl collapsed into the grass, declaring herself to tired to move. The wolf lied down beside her, and the two of them stared up at the sky, limbs sprawled in the grass. The fluffy white clouds drifted above them, grass swaying in the wind.
"I gave you a rock. You should give me something back," the girl said suddenly, looking over at him. The wolf glanced at the little girl. Her eyes were colored something between blue and gray, and it reminded him of the rock sitting in his pocket.
"Like a flower crown. You know how to make those, right?"
The wolf shook his head, and her smile brightened.
"Great! I get to teach you!"