It took about two hours before he realized something was off.

It wasn't really any one thing in particular that roused his mental state into awareness as much as things just adding up in a misaligned way. As he crawled through a craggy rift in the stone, he was faced with sudden self awareness.

It wasn't that he hadn't been aware before. He had just suddenly realized that he was being subtly guided from the point he existed to about five seconds ago.

In hindsight, it made no sense to suddenly accept everything. Suddenly existing after not existing just moments before, with a fully developed mind or close enough, was an incredibly sudden shift.

Deciding he needed to take stock of- Take stock of what, exactly..? 'Well,' he processed, 'everything.'

He sat down and decided to go through existence piece by piece.

First off, him. What was he? That was easy enough to figure out with the system fed knowledge. He was a demon. A curseling to be exact. Beyond that, he had no clue to the more subtle details. On a similar but much more complicated note, who was he. Had he even existed long enough to have developed a personality? Was one assigned to him at birth? Was everything about him just a template slapped on to a blank piece of elemental mana? He thought about it for a solid three seconds before triggering a fully body shudder and cutting his thoughts off there. That lead down a hole of complicated thoughts that required entirely too stable of a mind for him to qualify. It was better not to think of things like that for the moment.

Next on the list: What was he doing? Walking would have been his answer a bit ago, but walking where? Eventually, he considered, surely he would find something of interest. Other demons perhaps. Maybe civilization. Maybe something altogether more hazardous to his health. It seemed ill advised to anyone who was actually thinking to just walk without a plan. He leaned back against a rock about half his size and watched a corpse fall from the sky. It landed at the top of the crevice with a wet cracking noise before falling into a wet pile on the floor. It looked like some kind of furred creature with horns and a red face.

Getting up he started to crawl over to it before pausing and standing on his two hind feet instead. Walking instead of crawling felt odd but not uncomfortable. It felt more... civilized. When he stood next to the cadaver he brushed his fingers along the furry torso. Was this a demon? Something else? A subtle feeling in the back of his head almost like the automatic reaction to breath lit up. He brushed against it with his thoughts and text lit up his view over the corpse.

Wargfaced Baboon Grunt: Tier 1 Demon Beast

Well that raised more questions then it answered, to be honest. Clearly he had some ability to identify things. Maybe only significant things since he didn't feel the ability to do that to things like rocks? On that note, when he questioned what a Demon Beast was, he realized he already knew. While mana could form demons with intelligent thought, it could also create less intelligent life more similar to animals in other realms. The Tier was simply a categorization of how much mana density was involved in its shape.

It certainly was interesting that corpses were falling from the sky. Were they just random dead beasts? Was there a limit to what kinds fell through? What caused it? He likely wouldn't find answers to these questions standing around but before he got back to walking he wanted to test something.

Looking at his skills he remembered he had the Animate Dead skill. If the world was going to literally drop dead bodies at his feet it would simply be rude to not use them. When trying to activate the skill, it took a second for him to figure out what he was doing. He could feel something similar to three liquids in his body. One of them twice as big as the second largest. He had a guess this was his mana trying to coax out the largest provoked certain imagery in his head, like something rotting in the sun with plants growing through its layers. Or rotten meat twitching as insects dug holes through its surface.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Needless to say it wasn't a pleasant feeling.

Regardless, he pushed the feeling out through his fingers and watched mesmerized as a sickly green fog flowed through his digits. It seemed almost solid with how thick it was. With a push of his intent, the fog reached out greedily to the Wargfaced Baboon and dissipated inside.

Wargfaced Baboon Grunt reanimated: 30 Mana Reclaimed

Looking to his system menu as the corpse twitched jerkily and rolled on the floor he confirmed the message.

Necromantic Affinity 3% | 121/121 Mana (30 Reclaimed) | 50.6 Mana per 1% Affinity

Depending on the relative strength of the Baboon he could animate maybe 4 more corpses. Thankfully there wasn't a scarcity of them around so he could afford to be selective. Looking to the Baboon, he once again instinctively brushed a trigger in his head.

Wargfaced Baboon Grunt Zombie (Common)

Rage Affinity 2% | 20/20 Mana | 10 Mana per 1% Affinity

Stats

12 Strength

14 Dexterity

3 Magic Power

4 Consciousness

11 Body 110/110 Hp

Unfortunately, it seemed it didn't have any skills and only one affinity. Either tier 1 beasts only had one affinity, or his skill couldn't replicate their full abilities in life. At the very least, its physical stats were a lot better then his. He nodded in satisfaction with a smirk while the beast stood at attention half walking on its knuckles.

Now having a defender incase he ran into trouble, he felt a bit more secure should danger arrive. Crawling up the incline of stone to get back on flat ground, he looked around for something interesting. Now out of the odd fugue state that frankly concerned him he spotted things of more interest. Piles of corpses stacked in certain places between rolling hills where they naturally collected. It would appear likely that if they fell anywhere nearby they would end up rolling into these natural low points.

While such piles of corpses sounded appealing for use with his skill, the other things he saw made him think twice. He was not the only one to have such ideas. He could see creatures in the piles. Some of them were easier to miss then others. Some blended in, being the same color as the flesh and viscera. Some were just too tiny. However, others were very visible and had good reason to be so. He saw creatures with flaming backs and wicked clawed paws. Lanky creatures with a dangerous colored saliva. Skull faced beasts who the other beasts took to avoiding.

It made sense. He knew demon beasts existed. He just had been lucky to avoid them so far he guessed. Or was that part of the same fugue state he had found himself in before. A small part of his brain found that thought concerning but again he had no info to go off of.

He had several options from here. He could go to one of the corpse piles and try and find an optimal corpse. He could avoid them and try to find other intelligent demons. Or he could scavenge around for corpses with less options then the piles. One choice was cleanly removed when he saw one of the skull faced beasts ripping a flame covered dog in half and start devouring its intestines. Yeah... he didn't want to go to the piles. In fact, he took a step closer to the Baboon he was lovingly thinking of as Red for the added security.

So the other two options. Surely he would run into more corpses so explicitly looking felt redundant. He thought it would be better to simply try to find people and grab any interesting ones he saw along the way.

How would he find people though?

Looking around, it once again became clear that the bone colored stone plains he found himself in were surrounded by three things. On most sides there were giant mountains of the stone looking like giant teeth. On another there was that wall of mist that allowed no gaze to penetrate. On the last was a change in the bland grey sky. An orange color suffused the sky in that direction far in the distance and no mountains stood in the way.

For now, staying with what he knew which was mainly boring white stone, felt the most safe. If he followed the mountain range surely he'd find a path or village or something right? Gathering Red and raising his foot to step forward, he was forced to stop as he heard something coming closer. The sound of howls.