The female human screamed as the Pale Hunter, burdened by a sudden wave of hunger and thirst, bit into her left hand. She struggled – harder than she’d ever struggled before – but to no avail. She was too weak. And she had no claws or teeth with which to fight back. Humans were, in general, weak when without their external weapons – those gleaming, shining things they used to kill predators that were far superior to them.
The Pale Hunter chewed and gnawed on the female’s fingers first, taking great care to savor the flavor of her flesh, blood, bone, and sinew, despite the hunger that burned in its stomach. All of it crunched and squelched in its maws as it chewed thoroughly. The woman screamed in tears and thrashed against the dying of her fate.
The Pale Hunter cared little for her struggle; she was too weak to do anything, too weak to escape.
All she could do was wait until it was finished.
"NO NO NO NO! LET GO OF ME! GODS! PLEASE LET ME GO! HELP MEEEEEE!!"
Once the fingers were all eaten, the gaunt predator bit down on her knuckles and did the same to them, crunching and breaking her bones as it gnawed hungrily.
Why was it so hungry?
Its stomach felt painfully empty – far more so than the usual. This hunger was different, too. It wasn’t merely a simple need for food.
The hunger was powerful and primal, and yet it was so much more than what the Pale Hunter understood. All it knew was that it needed to feed, to devour prey – a waste of good food.
The two humans made the perfect stock for when food was scarce, especially in the dead of winter when men almost never left their homes. The gnawing hunger in the endless pit that was its stomach was making a mess of that perfection. It would have to hunt once more, after this, after the two humans were in its belly.
It still didn’t make sense. It shouldn’t have been hungry.
But, the Pale Hunter pushed the thoughts away as it continued eating.
Its hunger would be sated first and foremost; it would wonder on the why, afterwards, but not before.
The human woman went silent when the Pale Hunter’s hungering maw reached her shoulders, tearing chunks of flesh from her torso. The hunter reached in and tore a single rib bone from her chest, and sipped on the copious amounts of blood that flowed outwards shortly after. Her bones snapped and crunched, her flesh tore and ripped; all that she was, the very essence of her being, was consumed. The human woman’s unborn child was not spared, its soft and mushy form quickly devoured alongside its mother’s organs.
And then, the Pale Hunter felt the spark of something within itself, a surge of… warmth that spread across its form.
It liked the feeling. It was new, but not entirely unpleasant. And it couldn’t recall the last time it ever felt the feeling of comfortable warmth.
And then, the words appeared in its vision – no, that wasn’t entirely right. The words appeared in its mind’s eye, making themselves seen without intruding upon the Pale Hunter’s view.
+100 Exp!
Level Up!
You are now a level 2 (Cursed Undead, Wendigo)!
+5 Points!
Strange
Somehow, the Pale Hunter understood what the words in its head meant.
How it came to know at all was a mystery best left for later.
And so, deciding to ignore the words for now, the Pale Hunter turned to the other human, who thought it had been discreet in its attempt to escape by slowly crawling towards the mouth of the cave. The stout human couldn’t walk; the Hunter had already broken both of its ankles. It couldn’t grab anything, either, as its wrists were similarly broken and shattered. It could do nothing but crawl and writhe on the ground, like a worm.
The Pale Hunter did not humor the human by letting it get far. Instead, it bent down and chased after the stout human, who very quickly begun screaming and whimpering as it frantically tried and failed to crawl faster. The Hunter scaled the cave walls on all fours and dropped down from the ceiling, before biting down on the human’s exposed shoulder. The human’s scream grew much louder as the Hunter reared back and tore a chunk of its flesh. A geyser of blood spurted from the man’s shoulder.
As the human struggled beneath it, the Pale Hunter simply grabbed both the human’s arms and snapped the both of them, cracking and shattering the bones that lied within the flesh.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHH GODS HELP ME!” The stout and hairy human screamed. But, the Pale Hunter noted, its struggles were becoming weaker. It was losing blood – quite a bit of it, in fact.
A waste of good blood….
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And so, the Pale Hunter sank its down on the torn chunk of skin, bone, and flesh on the man’s shoulder and begun drinking all the blood that flowed freely out. The prey struggled for a bit, but all it could afford to do was flail its broken arms about and lash out with its legs. Soon enough, however, its resistance grew feebler and feebler until there was no longer any fight left in its form; it stopped moving at some point. And it was then that the Pale Hunter begun to devour it as it had done with all its prey. By the end of it, not even the human’s bones remained.
+100 Exp!
But the Pale Hunter was not yet satisfied.
It needed more.
And, unfortunately, it could only gain sustenance from the flesh, blood, and bone of humans. No other creature would suffice – no other creature would ever sate its hunger and quench its thirst.
And yet, hunger was not all there was that lingered in its mind, even as its blood-soaked tongue lapped up whatever bits and pieces of mortal flesh clung around its mouth. It was also curious. Foreign thoughts, ideas, and even tidbits of memories floated around in its head. The Pale Hunter recognized none of them, of course, but it understood what they meant. It knew, for example, that there were numerous human habitations along the edge of the woodlands, far from its lair. It also knew that there were strange and powerful humans who often ventured into the forest, seeking to kill the great beasts that dwelled in it to gain further… strength?
The images in its head did not explain how it worked, but the act of killing – of taking life – was the key to growing stronger.
Just as it took the lives of those two humans and partook in their flesh, so did the Pale Hunter grow in strength and power; this, as it understood, came in the form of Exp.
How did it know any of these things?
The Pale Hunter knew not and neither did it care to find out.
Its curiosity laid in finding out if its knowledge about the human… settlements was even remotely accurate. The Pale Hunter, after all, had never ventured far from its lair. To think that there was a place where humans gathered in droves… they would be ripe for the picking, fat sacks of meat and blood to be harvested at its leisure. Of course, they would fight back, humans always did, but they were helpless in the deep woods, where their feet sank into the snow and their strange weapons and glimmering skins did not protect them from the bite of the cold and the wrath of the elements – both things the Pale Hunter did not need to fear.
Yes, humans were weak.
Sure, as it had observed, a few of them were capable of… unnatural things, such as spewing globs of fire from their hands or any summoning strange creatures from black holes in the air. But, a good and quick bite to the back of the neck was usually more than enough to put down even the strongest humans.
And so, for the first time in… an uncountable number of years, the Pale Hunter ventured out of its cave with not a single intent of returning.
Winds cold enough to freeze rivers into solid blocks of ice greeted it as it crawled out of the mouth of its home. It was comforting – the biting cold – despite a lack of blubber or fur to keep itself warm as most beasts did. It was a strange thing, the Pale Hunter decided, that it didn’t seem to obey much of the laws that governed the lives of beasts. The fact that it still wasn’t a frozen icicle despite its constant exposure to the cold was a testament to that.
Then again, the Pale Hunter hardly cared.
It leapt towards the tops of the trees, crawled up the snowy canopy, and stood there, drinking in the vast whiteness that seemed to encompass everything as far as its eyes could see. It smelled blood in the air, but it did not come from a human. And so its hunger was not roused.
Its thoughts drifted back towards the letters and symbols in its head. And, sure enough, they reappeared.
Name: N/A
Race: Cursed Undead, Wendigo, Level 2
Class/es: Necromancer (level 1), Assassin (level 1)
Experience: 100/200
Endurance – 0
Strength – 0
Dexterity – 0
Willpower – 0
Spirit – 0
5 Points Left to Spend
It understood the meaning of the symbols – somehow. It appeared almost like a distant dream, a faint memory that made little sense without any context. At the very least, however, the Pale Hunter understood enough. Endurance, for instance, would harden its bones, muscles, and skin. Strength would increase its overall physical prowess, while Dexterity increased its speed and agility. Willpower and Spirit… were two things it could not understand, even with the strange and distant flutters of memories in its head. These ‘Points’ were used to raise them.
With something that might’ve been a shrug if a human did it, the Pale Hunter dumped all its points into Dexterity, which would increase its speed and agility – two of its most useful weapons, especially when ambushing humans and running away from greater threats.
Endurance – 0
Strength – 0
Dexterity – 5
Willpower – 0
Spirit – 0
0 Points Left to Spend
The changes it felt were… strange. Its muscles seemed to shift underneath its skin, writhing and coiling as though taking on a life of their own. It lasted for several seconds, before his muscles finally seemed to settle and stop. When the Pale Hunter experimentally moved its arms and flexed its legs, it found that movement somehow came easier. Despite never being heavy at all, it felt lighter that it had ever been. Moving had never felt as easy as it did now.
I crawled under the canopy and leapt towards another tree.
As expected, its movements were lighter and faster than before – not by much, but there was certainly enough of a difference for it to be noticeable.
The Pale Hunter leapt from branch to branch, moving further and further away from its immediate territory, the vast swathe of snowy woods that surrounded its cave. If the faint memories in its head were even remotely correct, venturing to the edge of the woods should lead it closer to where humans made their nests, closer to its food source. But… there were other things that seemed to linger in its mind.
More than the urge to kill and feed, more than the urge to sate its hunger and thirst, was curiosity.
The Pale Hunter wanted to know the world beyond its little cave, to see what lay further in the horizon. There had to be more out there - more than the hunt, more than the constant hunger that burned in its belly.
As it leapt over the forest floor from one tree branch to another, an all-too familiar scream caught its attention.
The Pale Hunter’s head snapped to the right. It sniffed the air. There was blood – human blood - in the winds.