It took only seconds for the rage the deer felt to overcome its survival instinct. As Genesis watched on, the small deer began to limp towards them with all the strength it could muster. Genesis doesn’t know what to make of the actions of the deer, so it simply stares.

Half of the deer’s body is matted with dried, brown blood. It pushes itself harder to attack Genesis, its wound reopening. If Genesis had more knowledge of the world, it may have questioned why the deer was alone, and why it was wounded.

It takes nearly two minutes for the deer to reach Genesis, and by the time it does, it’s clearly already on its last legs. Its mouth is open, loudly panting from exertion and pain.

The moment the deer is in front of the motionless skeleton, it attempts to lunge forward, raising its front hooves to try and bat at Genesis. Genesis takes a few steps back, easily avoiding the awkward attack. The deer nearly buckles once it catches itself from the miss, and upon trying to lunge once more, it does.

It crumples onto its unwounded side and stares at Genesis, rapidly panting as blood seeps heavily through its fur. Its eyes are dim, but anger still fills them.

Genesis is confused by this entire chain of events. It doesn’t know why it has been attacked by every creature it’s come across, besides the insects. What they do know is that the attack stopped once they killed the sparrows.

Recalling the way they used a sparrow body to kill the insects, they raise one of their skeletal legs, and smash it down onto the deer’s head.

Fortunately for the deer, bones are not particularly heavy, and Genesis has low Strength. Unfortunately for the deer, Genesis didn’t give up when the first stomp didn’t kill.

Several minutes later, Genesis receives the kill notification.

[You’ve slain the doe!]

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

[You showed brutal single-mindedness, and opened a new stat: Determination!]

[You’ve learned a new skill!]

[Stomp

Unleash fury beneath your feet. Feel the ground quake as you assert dominance over your foes, sending shockwaves rippling through the battlefield. Scales off of Strength, receives a bonus to damage from the user's weight.]

Genesis, half covered in gore, looks down at the fragmented mush that the “doe”’s head has become. Their first reaction is to immediately cast Proliferate, but they pause. They lean down, and take a look at the gash on its side.

They’d paid no attention to the wound initially, not knowing the original appearance of the creature. But they knew what blood was by now, and blood was supposed to be inside of the body.

They spent several minutes manipulating the loose flesh around the wound, pulling and pushing. Not looking for anything in particular, but wanting to learn more about how the body works. As one may have guessed, Genesis didn’t learn much from this exercise, and gave up.

[You have cast Proliferate.]

Once the skeletal deer stood up, Genesis noted a very peculiar change. Well, two notable changes. One of them was that the deer had no head. This was strange to Genesis, but they didn’t think about it for very long, because the second change stood out more - Magic Sense wouldn’t function on this new body.

[User does not meet requirements.]

Did the deer not having a head cause it to no longer have access to Magic Sense?

Genesis was rather decisive about testing this, immediately ordering one of his bird bodies to bash its head against a nearby tree. It only took a few seconds before that body suddenly lost all vision, and Genesis received the same notification as when they attempted to use Magic Sense on the headless deer.

Genesis pondered this for a short while. Feathers to fly, a head to see. When they mentally went over a list of the skills they’d previously gained, they determined that they must require legs and feet to use Stomp, and some kind of limb to use Strike.

They decide to test all future skills with all future bodies, to ensure no problems would arise in dangerous moments.

For now, the body of water they had yet to explore. Genesis forced the deer body to lay down where it stood, as they knew that both the deer and headless sparrow would be useless from now on. At best, they would be an alarm for any creature that came to the area, as it would immediately do its best to tear his sightless skeletons apart.