The forest was dead. Or at least, much deader than it was before now that I went through it with a fine comb, eating everything smaller than rabbits. I avoided even touching any suspiciously looking animals unless I saw someone else touching them first (or unless they were already dead), of which there weren’t many, thankfully. If some larger predator grew tired with hunger enough that I could eat it… I ate it. It might take a full year or two for more animals to migrate in the area, but until then, their deaths were my profit.

And now, after days of hunting like mad, after days of spinning webs and devolving and evolving abilities over and over again because Pest kept taking them away seemingly just to annoy me, it was done. Despite all his efforts, I had enough EXP for my next jump up the food chain.

I opened my evolution options. And oh boy, did I have a lot of them. Mice (not horned ones), rabbits, squirrels, snakes, you name it. I’d be a wielder of venomous fangs by now if I didn’t worry how they would fit in my beak and if I didn’t have a stinger already. My eyes were set on only one, though.

[Kobold (130226 EXP)]

It was relatively cheap, as creatures went. Evolution into a boar, for example, cost 143525 EXP. Boar was much more massive than a kobold. There wasn’t even a question who would win between a boar and a kobold—which is why kobolds always hunted in groups.

But contrary to boars, kobolds had hands, and hands meant I would be able to make and use my own weapons and tools. Maybe I will even be able to use human speech, but if not, I will be able to write at least. I didn’t have anyone besides Pest to talk with at the moment (and he was the worst company imaginable), but if I wanted to find a way to get rid of that parasite, I would have to.

And, well, some good weapons and armour go a long way. Nothing can be as great, in my opinion, as well-levelled set of scales and claws (and stinger proved itself very useful, too), but equipment was something better to have than to have not.

I looked around my webbed nest. The surroundings were covered in sheets of silk, gleaming sharply in the sunlight. My lair, my fortress. There, I would be safe to evolve, even though increasing in size this much would take a while.

⠀⠀

I spent an eternity of pain that felt like being dipped into a river of boiled blood and made me feel strangely nostalgic about the last time I was on the shores of the river Phlegethon. As far as places in Hell went, this one was warm (mostly too warm) and full of stuff to eat.

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It was with this cloudy feeling in mind that I woke up, aching but fine overall. My body felt too big for the space it occupied, but at least the floor and the walls were comfortable. When I opened my eyes, everything was in the shades of grey, and for a moment I feared I became colorblind, until I realised it was just nighttime already.

‘Oh, be damned my nonexistent magic ass, you didn’t actually kick the bucket! What the fuck happened? Was I so unlucky that my host is now deathly sick, too?’ Pest’s voice rang in my head, taking away the last threads of drowsiness.

I scowled with relish, happy to have facial muscles again, and sat up. The nest I made with my future size in mind still felt too small after my evolution. ‘Shut up. Since when you are worried about my wellbeing? I thought you wanted me dead.’

I flexed my fingers and took a quick examination of my body to see how my abilities fit with in. My wings, again insect-like and fragile, grew out of my back, but it took me an effort to even lift their weight, not to mention mine. I could still spit webs, and the white cross-like mark was still on my chest. It took longer to find my stinger, because it somehow migrated to my right wrist, where it grew from a skin pocket, only as big as my dull claw and about as useless as a weapon.

I would have to spend EXP to level up all the abilities I wanted to keep, too. I long-abandoned all that I didn’t want to, because it just wasn’t worth the bother with Pest constantly taking them out. The only good thing that came from his presence was the fact that if I ever wanted to, I could actually get rid of unwanted abilities.

But the problems he made for me really weren’t worth it.

With teeth clenched in annoyance, I opened my character sheet.

[Voren]

[General Info]

Species: Kobold

Sex: Male

Age: 32d

Height: 112cm

Weight: 19kg

Emotional state: Annoyance

Titles: Devourer, Alpha Predator, The Lord of Nine Hells

[Stats]

HP: 7/7

EXP: 118263

STR: 7.4

DEX: 14.51

CON: 10

INT: 9.1

[Abilities]

Devourer (lv MAX) (Evolution options available!)

Flight (lv 4) (Can be levelled up!)

Stinger (lv 6) (Can be levelled up!)

Steel Web Spinning (lv 11)

⠀⠀

No innate abilities at all, and while I was evolving, Pest sucked out two levels of ‘Flight’. I checked out my current weight, then made mental calculations about how much I will have to level up the ability until I will be able to fly again, writing numbers in the dirt with a claw. The result came out to be somewhere around fifteen and was very, very approximate.

This was why big creatures weren’t prone to fly, this.