What was a mouse?

A mouse is a small creature (barely five times as big as I am), with four legs and a long skinny tail. It’s covered in short brown fur, except for one thin bright-red stripe over its back. It has two ears, two eyes, also red, and two horns. Which is weird, something tells me, but I can’t imagine why.

What was a normal life routine of a mouse?

A mouse spends most of her day searching for food. After filling its belly, it stores any surplus into its burrow. The mouse is a herbivore and prefers seeds and fruit to any other food; but if it’s hungry, it will eat anything. Just like I.

A mouse is a nocturnal creature. Most of the day it sleeps or hides in its burrow, coming out only when the dark descends on the forest. In the dark, it’s easier for it to hide from predators. My eyes are blind in the darkness, but my antennas let me smell a mouse’s tracks.

A mouse’s burrow is a well-hidden haven. It’s tiny and disguised under old leaves and grass, only perceptible if you know it’s there.

I knew it was.

What else I knew was more of a suspicion, but one that I couldn’t ignore. The mouse I inspected ate and ate, and gathered and gathered food, more than it could ever eat alone. Which led me to a suspicion that it wasn’t alone.

Which is why, when it left its burrow for the night of gathering berries and nuts, I quietly crawled in. I didn’t fly, because the sound of it was too loud in the night with all the bats and night birds around, and especially now, when I wanted to be stealthy.

My antennas were my only guides. The smell of the mouse was thick near the burrow, and I found the way in with ease. I moved forward, and soon enough a new smell entered my perception. A smell of grain, coming from a small branch of a main burrow. Must be the mouse’s storeroom. Not interesting.

I moved forward, past it, and my antennas registered another scent. More mice, but not like the one I stalked. These felt… lacking something.

Jackpot.

They detected my approach, and I heard rustling and soft squeaking in the darkness. I crawled towards them, assured of my prey’s helplessness. Baby mice, I found a nest full of baby mice. It was free EXP! Maybe not as much of it as from an adult mouse, but also much easier to get. The time for the mouse will come later, too.

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I reached for the first soft body and prodded it with my foreleg. I felt the mice trying to get away from me, but there were no other exists from the burrow besides the one I blocked. With anticipation for a tasty meal of fresh meat in my mind, I brandished my deadly stinger and stabbed at the nearest little mouse.

It sharply squeaked in pain, the rest becoming even more agitated, and I hurried to sting them all, too. My poison glands worked hard, but at level six of ‘Stinger’, I had enough poison for five times as much mice.

They had no chance against me. It was a massacre. A feast.

[Creature devoured. Gained 17 EXP. Gained new evolution options.]

[Creature devoured. Gained 16 EXP.]

[Creature devoured. Gained 17 EXP.]

[Creature devoured. Gained 18 EXP.]

[Creature devoured. Gained 18 EXP.]

Now I had one hundred and thirty-seven EXP total. With the nest, padded with dried grass and fresh moss, empty now, I paused to rub my hind legs over my belly in satisfaction.

The baby mice’s meat was so soft… It’s a pity the EXP they gave me won’t be worth much of anything. Just for my curiosity, I opened my evolution menu and checked the new evolution options. There was only one, but when I read it again, I had a desire to rub my eyes to make sure I see right.

[Terast Red Mouse (15 382 EXP)]

Fifteen thousand?! It was five times more than the bird who almost ate me, and the mouse was smaller! What was so special about it that evolution into one cost so much? The baby mice were tasty, but absolutely helpless before me.

After feeling confused for a little longer, I threw the thought out of my head. I didn’t have so much EXP, anyway. My overall plan stayed the same as it was last time—eat until I have enough EXP to transform into a small animal, then keep eating until I can transform into a bigger animal… There were many more small animals than just mice.

My intuition told me not to wait for the mommy mouse’s return, and it saved me more than once before. I scuttled with my stick-like legs, eager to get out of this place. Soon, the fresh night air met me, but my antennas registered another smell on it.

A fresh scent of the mommy mouse. I tensed, lifting my chitinous wing covers and preparing to fly. Something, something was wrong.

Dried leaves rustled under someone’s tiny legs, and without further hesitation, I left off the ground with loud buzzing, raising about a meter to the air.

A twin flash of red light pierced the darkness where I just was. From my position in the air, I saw these twin pinpricks of light become enveloped in a red glow. It let me see the rest of what was going on.

The red stripe on the back of the mouse glowed now, too. The mouse’s snout was trailed on me, and the creature itself somehow tripled in size while I wasn’t looking. Its claws and teeth looked much longer and sharper.

In the next moment, the glowing mouse jumped towards me, clearly intent on showing me how sharp they were.