Simultaneously, the cows’ eyes glowed with heat, and Elise used {Dart} to jump out of the way. She barely got it off in time to avoid the red beams of heat that turned the blue grass where she had been standing into smoking ashes.

Elise did not waste any time thinking. She simply ran back toward the vines that hid her tunnel. Behind her, the cows made sounds that were somewhere between a moo and a growl, and started charging her, their long tongues hanging out of fang-filled mouths. The ground shuddered as they ran, but thankfully, they weren’t actually very fast. They were faster than Elise, but not by so much that they could catch up to her before she reached the vines. Their laser beam attacks also seemed to have a cooldown attached, so the only thing Elise needed to worry about was their bodies.

She was able to get halfway through the thick layer of them before the first cow crashed into them behind her. Ironically, the impact actually helped open a wider path so that Elise could get inside more easily. She did not stop to rest once she was inside though. The vines were currently tangled in the monster’s horns, but they were shifting and shaking dangerously, and though it would be a tight squeeze, the evil cows could most definitely fit inside.

She kept running down the tunnel, and for a while, the sound of the angry moo-growls got further and further, but then, there was a loud sizzling, followed by the sound of four pairs of hooves stomping on the stone floor. Elise sped up, using her {Dart} charges as soon as they came off cooldown.

They were only a hundred feet behind her when she reached the steeper sloping section, which she was thankful for. The ground was smooth, but her paws got enough traction that she could ascend more or less without trouble. She doubted it would be the same for the cows. Especially since they were so much bigger than her, so they wouldn’t be able to turn to the side.

The slope did slow them down, but not as much as she had hoped. She was pulling ahead, but there would not be time for her to truly escape. Once they got to the main chambers, she would be in deep trouble. She needed to fight right then, while she had a terrain advantage.

She turned around to look at her pursuers. They were too big to travel side-by-side, so they were in a single-file line, and they were too tall to have their heads up, because their horns would scrape the ceiling. Seeing how they struggled to maneuver, Elise realized that she had made the perfect choice. Her {Magic Missile} was not that strong, but the cows were presenting their eyes, a major weakness, directly to her, and they had given themselves no room to dodge.

She cast the attack spell, targeting the leading cow’s huge eyeball. Its vision must have been poor, or at least its dark vision, because it did not see the spell coming, and was hit square in the pupil. It let out a moo-roar of pain and rage, and stopped in its tracks, causing the other to run into it and let out a moo-roar of its own.

Unfortunately, the attack didn’t do quite as much damage as she would have hoped. Its eye was bleeding, but still mostly intact, and it was glowing again. Elise dodged to the side as the laser beam shot by, singeing her fur, and the cow started its climb again. She prepared another {Magic Missile}, but her mind raced to find another solution. She was confident she could give it death by a thousand cuts, if she had the time, but her mana pool was way too small for that. It would be best if she could make it fall, or better yet, if she could get the other one to try its eye laser into the leading one’s behind.

She sent the second spell out, this time hitting the cow’s eyelid, since it reacted soon enough to block. It still did not like getting hit there, and moo-roared again. Suddenly, an idea struck her. She prepared a third {Magic Missile}, but this time, rather than aiming it at the front cow, she focused on the back cow. It was a tricky shot, because she could not see it very well, but the spell was easy to control, and unlike them, she had room to move to the side to get a better sightline.

She lined up her shot as best she could, and then sent the missile flying at the second cow’s eye. It was not expecting any kind of attack, and did not react until it had been hit. Elise’s heart jumped in excitement as she prepared the next stage of her plan.

It’s right in front of me! she sent using {Suggest}. I need to use my eye beam!

She doubted that was the name of the skill it was using, evidently it was close enough that it still got the point across. She saw the soft red glow on the stone walls as it charged up its attack and fired… straight into the other’s rectum.

It wasn’t a lethal blow, but it was a crippling one. The front cow’s back legs collapsed, and it started sliding backward. It tried to find purchase with its front hooves, but the Earth Wyrm left no footholds for it, and its descent only accelerated. It collided into the back cow, taking out its front legs, and together, they tumbled down the tunnel.

It was not a pretty sight. Even just one of them was already almost too big for the tunnel. With two, both struggling to stop their fall, they found themselves constantly smashing against the walls and ceiling. By the time they reached the bottom, both were bruised and bloody, and the back one had lost one of its horns, which was lying on the ground beside them. They both struggled to get up, but the laser beam had left a smoking crater right on the spinal column of one, rendering its back legs useless, and the other had its front legs broken in the fall.

She descended back down toward them, still watching for stray eyebeams, but only one was still facing her direction, and a quick {Magic Missile} took care of fully crippling its already-damaged eye. She cast {Prehensile Vines} and picked up the broken horn off the ground, and without hesitation, plunged it as deep into the cow’s eye socket as she could. It let out a final whine that sounded so dreary it almost made her pity it. Almost. She would have felt worse if it hadn’t been trying to kill her.

[You have defeated Omnivorous Cyclops Cow, lvl 4]

[You have leveled up! 14 -> 15]

[You have reached an evolution threshold! Excess exp will be disregarded.]

[Agility +3, Dexterity +4, Charisma + 12, Intelligence +4, Willpower +4, Mana +5, Mana Control +5]

[You are eligible for evolution! You have {6} options! You have 168 hours to select an option and begin your evolution before an option will be randomly selected for you and your evolution will start automatically]

Elise tried to pull the horn back out to finish off the other, but her mana ran out and her vines withered. The living cow, which had been the first one, the one that was paralyzed, started making a whimpering sound. While she hadn’t pitied it much before, now that the crisis was over and the adrenaline was wearing off, she was starting to feel a little bad. They had been trying to eat her, yes, but they were just animals. And now, it was helpless and in extreme pain, and she couldn’t even put it out of its misery.

The whimpers turned into whines as it tried to crawl away from her, making her feel even worse. She decided that she would at least stick around until she could properly kill it. She could do at least that much for it. If it managed to make it back out without dying, it would only be prolonging its suffering. It would be impossible for it to live too much longer with that level of injury.

In the end, she didn’t have to decide whether or not to wait the hour she needed for her mana to recharge enough to kill it. Just a minute later, she heard more footsteps and moo-growls coming from the tunnel’s entrance, drawn by the whimpering of the injured one. Elise didn’t think that the new cows would be able to make it to her, since the corpses of the first two would be blocking their way, but she didn’t want to give them any incentive to try, so she ran back up the tunnel as fast as she could.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

She waited at the top and listened as the new hoofsteps got closer. There was only one set this time, and when it stopped, the whimpering from the injured one got louder. For a moment, the only sounds Elise could hear were the whimpering and her own heartbeat. Then, with a sickening crunch, the whimpering stopped, and the hoofsteps retreated back down the tunnel.

Elise breathed a sigh of relief, and after waiting a few more minutes, just to make sure it wasn’t coming back, she returned to the main chambers. She took a long drink, ate another mushroom, and then sat down so she could look more closely at her new evolution options. She was really hoping for something that would allow her to talk finally.

System, what are my evolution options?

“You currently have {6} evolution options. Of those, you have 2 Rare evolution options, 3 Epic options, and 1 Legendary option.”

Elise’s eyes widened. Jumping from Rare to Legendary in one evolution could be huge.

“Your Rare evolution options are {Rabbit Enchantress} and {Rabbit Illusionist}. Your Epic evolution options are {Lesser Fey (Rabbit)}, {Leporine Wisp}, and {Rabbit Succubus}. Your Legendary evolution option is {Familiar (Rabbit)}. Would you like me to explain your options?”

Elise’s heart sank. She wasn’t a huge fantasy fan, but she’d seen enough to know what a familiar was.

Only the Fey, Wisp, and Familiar, she thought. The rest were obvious enough.

“Certainly! A {Lesser Fey (Rabbit)} is a very rare creature that thrives on trickery and deceit. They often target humanoids, luring them in with innocent appearances or friendly conversation before taking advantage of them.

“A {Leporine Wisp} is similar to the {Lesser Fey (Rabbit)} in that they are both part of the Fey family. However, while the {Lesser Fey (Rabbit)} relies on direct trickery and confrontation, the {Leporine Wisp} uses more indirect forms, luring its targets to their doom while staying at a safe distance.

“A {Familiar} is any animal acting as the contracted companion of a humanoid magic-user. Its rarity and skills are determined by the class of their companion humanoid. A {Familiar} shares experience points with its companion, and its companion shares experience points with it.

“Do you have any further questions?”

Who would I be contracted to as a Familiar?

“You do not have any existing contracts. It is likely that this class was offered because you are in close proximity with a humanoid who wishes for you to become their familiar. Should you take the evolution, you may initiate a contract signing with them once the evolution process is complete.”

What happens if I can’t form a contract?

“A {Familiar} without a contract takes on a severe penalty to experience gain until they can successfully form a contract.”

In other words, if she selected {Familiar (Rabbit)} and she couldn’t find Sophie again, she would be stuck there, unable to evolve. As much as it pained her to let a Legendary evolution go, she couldn't take that risk. She had no idea where Sophie was, or whether she’d try to come back, or whether they’d find each other if they did. It was far more important that she level and get stronger than it was for her to have the Legendary class.

That left her with two options, but based on their brief descriptions, Elise was pretty sure which one she was going to take.

If I select the Lesser Fey option, will I be able to talk?

“Yes! Deceit through speech and word games is an integral part of a Fey’s modus operandi. As a {Lesser Fey (Rabbit)}, you will be able to speak freely as if you were a humanoid.”

Will I be able to speak if I choose the wisp option?

“No. Although {Leporine Wisp} is a species of Fey, they do not have the power of speech, as they rely on indirect deceit. A {Leporine Wisp} has a unique appearance and a passive allure that draws their targets toward them and reduces their awareness of their surroundings.”

Then I choose {Lesser Fey (Rabbit)}.

“Great choice! Would you like to begin your evolution now? I must warn you that the process of evolution takes a significant amount of time, and a disturbance in the middle would result in your death.”

Not yet. I need to get to a safer place.

“Just let me know when you’re ready, and I’ll start the process for you.”

With no better ideas, Elise decided she might as well return to the cave where she had made her first evolution. The tunnels had clearly been untouched since she last left, so the old evolution chambers were probably still her best bet as far as safety went.

Life had other plans though. She started down the tunnel, but came to a hard stop when she noticed it was getting colder. She couldn’t hear anything happening in front of her, but the cold was too much to ignore, and the temperature brought back all the memories she had been suppressing. Her heart rate skyrocketed and she froze in place for who knew how long, until the utter lack of activity around her calmed her back down.

She was safe in the tunnels. The Warg would not be able to fit in them. The cyclops cows had barely fit, and the warg was almost twice their height. Though maybe it could crawl. It did have long legs. Maybe if it found its way in, it could scootch along until it found her.

But obviously that wasn’t happening. She would have heard it by now if it was doing that. Even if it was lying in wait somewhere around a bend, she would hear it breathing and be able to escape long before it could do anything to her.

Actually, if it had gotten itself into the tunnels, that might have been a blessing in disguise, because if it was underground, that meant it wasn’t aboveground, and she would be able to move more freely through the forest, and possibly even leave the forest before it could manage to extract itself. It was strong, but the highest points of the tunnel, like where she entered from her burrow, were still a full 10 feet from the surface. Surely it couldn’t burst through that with brute force. It would have to crawl all the way down into the tunnel, turn around, and crawl all the way back out.

She crept forward, hoping that her ears would pick up the sound of its breathing, but even though it only got colder and colder, the only thing she could hear was herself. She rounded the final turn before reaching the point where the tunnel met her old burrow and her heart sank. The tunnel had caved in. She couldn’t see outside, but she could hear the rustling of the trees, and worse, the soft breathing of the Warg.

It sounded asleep, but she wasn’t going to take any chances, so she turned around and crept back, even more carefully than she had arrived. When she was certain she was out of its sensory range, she full sprinted back until she reached the main chamber.

She needed to find a new place to evolve. She still had almost all of her seven day time limit left to find such a place, but with what she thought had been the perfect reliable spot unusable, it felt like no time at all.

She had checked all but one of the other tunnels, and none of them had seemed like good places. Obviously the cavern with the evil cows was a no-go, and she didn’t like the lake either because she didn’t know enough about it. The one leading to the hill by the cavern was also no good. The chances of the warg finding it were way too high. That left her with the loop and the last unexplored tunnel. She didn’t like the idea of the loop because it would be so exposed, but if the final tunnel turned out to be just as bad as the others, the loop might be her only option.

I still have plenty of time, she told herself, trying to reduce the panic. I have a full 7 days. I could even dig a tunnel myself in that time. Wait…

If she had hands, she would have facepalmed. Of course she could just dig a new tunnel herself. The main cavern was not deep enough to be stone. The dirt was packed much tighter than that at the surface, but that just meant it would take a bit longer.

To be safe, she went a little ways down the loop tunnel before starting. Now that the vines had been cleared from below and the entrance from the cow cavern was exposed, even if it wasn’t the cows, something else could just wander in and find her little tunnel.

She dug a narrow entrance in the side at a random point that went a few feet deep, then opened up into a more comfortably sized chambers. She almost settled down to evolve right then, but had an idea and dug a small side chamber as well before returning to the main cave with the stream for a few mushrooms. She deposited the mushrooms in the main chamber of her little tunnel, then sealed off the entrance as best she could before settling down into the side chamber to begin.

Just like the first evolution, it was over in the blink of an eye. One moment, she was in the darkness, and the next, she was staring out of a translucent, glowing, orange membrane. She burst out and shook off the residual goop and tried going to the main chamber, but found herself getting blocked.

Did I get bigger? She thought, as her back hit the roof.

She looked back and her eyes widened.

She hadn’t gotten bigger.

She had grown a pair of wings!