Sleeping while having multiple Skills active or activating was an odd sensation. It had discovered a while ago that it could do so, but it just hadn’t crossed its mind whatsoever to actually use this strange Skill interaction.
Back when it was climbing up the shaft, it just wanted to sleep, and it wasn’t in the best mental state, nearly delirious. It hadn’t even been using [Restful Awareness] for many of its naps, feeling like its head was stuffed full of acrid dust.
Then, after another couple close brushes with death, it ended up in a cage surrounded by humans, and it was in no mood to reveal or draw attention to itself more than it already had.
In short, it was trying to get out of the tunnels then getting captured and nearly dying like seven times in a row, while juggling the far too numerous possibilities of its own flexible biology, so it had its own excuses as to why it hadn’t dedicated much thought into how the Symbols functioned.
It once again felt stupid however, which was a mild prickle to its pride.
Maybe it should be focusing even more on Intelligence.
Regardless, it had a… not a theory, but an untested realization.
As it sunk into the warm embrace of sleep, it used and kept activating as many Skills as it could while it slept. No, actually, it didn’t just use them, it pushed them to their limit.
It kept [Mana Conversion] at maximum power, sucking mana out of its environment and funneling it into [Echoes of Oblivion], pushing way more mana than was needed into the Skill. It activated [Bloodrush] the moment it came off cooldown, it tugged its own limbs around to further Level up [Restful Awareness], it clumsily made… noise, meaningless sounds with [Logotexnia], confident [Echoes of Oblivion] would eat the sounds up before they traveled the tunnels.
Judging by the pings on the back of its mind as it slept for nearly two days straight, its theory was correct.
And it was on the verge of slamming its head into a wall for not doing this sooner. The amount of levels it got during a two day period of basically doing nothing was ridiculous.
[Echoes of Oblivion] has Leveled Up. Level 8 → Level 15
[Bloodrush] has Leveled Up. Level 8 → Level 14
[Logotexnia] has Leveled Up. Level 6 → Level 14
[Restful Awareness] has Leveled Up. Level 26 → Level 32
[Mana Conversion] has Leveled Up. Level 4 → Level 13
Seeing the Levels go up, but without knowing what those numbers represented, was rather moot. That visual improvement didn’t mean anything. So it began to prod and push, trying to figure out how they improved. Not only its recent level ups, but those it had gained from the fight as well.
Most of them were rather self-explanatory, like [Tough Skin] making its skin act more like thick, treated leather when struck rather than thin skin, at least with its current level. Some of the more opaque ones took a bit of mental trickery to figure out.
[Echoes of Oblivion] had gotten a little easier to use, but considering how used to it the wolf was, that was not particularly noticeable. It felt like flicking a switch, by now. What would have been noticeable, had it bothered attempting it, was that its range had increased significantly. The range at which it could push out this… puffy, all-consuming darkness, was not mere inches, but feet.
The Skill refused to tell it a number, or even a vague impression. It was more like it just helped the wolf control the darkness outwards.
It would take a bit of practice, but it could quite literally cover itself in a cloud of darkness if it wanted. Any kind of melee combat would be impossible for whoever was trying it. They would just lose their senses and get shredded to ribbons without even knowing where their opponent was.
If it practiced control, it could pretend its form was multiple times larger than it really was. Which would have been very useful back when it was leaving the lift.
Moving on, [Bloodrush] leveling up just made the boost it got from the Skill more potent with every level, without impacting anything else. The same went for [Maddened Frenzy].
The level ups in [Sonic Blast] were a bit more impactful. Control, speed, and efficiency. The distinction between power and efficiency was very important.
How quickly it could gather a blast, how well it could control it, and the efficiency of its mana when gathering up air and propelling it. It didn’t make its blasts stronger or louder directly, but indirectly, through helping the wolf be more efficient. It would likely reach a level where the efficiency was near perfect, and then that progress would plateau completely, but it had no idea at what level that would come.
The concept was a bit complicated, but it… somewhat understood it.
[Tremor Sense] had a sort of… dual purpose and improvement. It seemed to be adding exactly ten feet of vibrational sense to its natural senses per level. Which was negligible with what the wolf was currently operating with, but the real benefit came from the added detail the Skill added to its vibrational senses.
Whereas normally, it should have been feeling rough, hazy guesses, like knowing there was a gap in the stone sixty feet to its left, some kind of pipe twenty feet below, the Skill instead intercepted that vague information and sharpened it, added detail, before feeding it to the wolf.
The vague gap in the stone turned into a room, the muffled idea of something in the corner turned into a pulley box it could almost feel the inner mechanisms of. Because this applied to the nearly four hundred feet of distance it could feel while barely paying attention, the value of such a low level Skill was immediately apparent.
Looking back on all this, it made sense. Before it got the Skill, everything was hazy and vague with the vibrational senses, which was normal, because that’s how antennae worked. It was an organ that was never meant to be long-range nor accurate. It came from a cockroach.
The wolf just hadn’t noticed that incongruence until now. It had just assumed it was some kind of natural progression, just it getting used to its own new senses.
With that simple realization, [Tremor Sense] became one of its most treasured Skills.
It moved on to the next one, its least liked Skill thus far.
After a few minutes, it realized that it was also the one Skill that had improved most drastically compared to its first level.
[Danger Sense].
All the levels truly did was increase its detection range. But when its starting range seemed to have been barely two feet, it had been more of a nuisance than an assistance back when it was getting chased, constantly pinging in its head of danger that it could already see and was already in the process of dodging. Now, its range was about eight feet.
It wasn’t great at math, but at level four, it could assume that each level up added two feet to the range. If an attack was coming, and it hadn’t seen, heard or felt it coming, this could be the final line of defense to prevent it from getting stabbed by another pointy flying stick or needle.
And… that was about it.
It didn’t really have anything else to do. It figured its Skills out, its changes were just about finished.
The urge to go back to resting mindlessly was tempting, but it went into [Devourer] instead.
It wasn’t really sure what it was here for. Usually it identified problems and found solutions to them.
Now, it just wanted to… do more. Do better, just more.
Earlier, it was just relieved to be alive and free. Now that it had had plenty of time to relax and calm down, it was more upset at the fact that it was happy about being able to run away. It had resolved to stop running, hadn’t it? Yet, it was still all it could really do.
It had to do more.
It didn’t know exactly what the feeling was. There was something of an uneasy, emotionless sort of panic in the back of its mind. That wasn’t... entirely new. It was always there, begging the wolf to think and think and think and overthink until it passed out.
What was new was that there was a vague idea of change, change, something has to change, an insistent scrape at the back of its mind. It felt something similar many, many times, but never so strong nor insistent. It could usually ignore it. But two days of suddenly doing nothing but sleeping had brought the notion to the utter forefront of its mind.
Coupled with the umpteenth time it had almost died…
It knew, in the back of its mind, it was still restricting itself. There were still some loose threads holding onto something it thought it had discarded, some background thought in its mind that made it push less than it might have to.
It had just changed itself a lot, that cautionary remnant would say. It could take a bit of time to familiarize itself with its new changes, the cautionary remnant would say, of a time before it was fighting for its life constantly, a sentimental piece that didn’t even want to change its own paws because it would be changing its form ‘too much’.
There was no time, no essence, the remnant would use as an excuse, and for once, the wolf grabbed onto that subconscious thought, and crushed it.
There was no time?
There was nothing but time. What could come here? What could find it here before the wolf did first? Nothing could ambush it. Nothing could kill it, not in these decrepit little sewer tunnels. It could feel a half-dozen exits the humans didn’t even know about, at the edge of its perception, all leading back to the outside world, a couple hundred feet below. It could escape any time it wished. It would just take a bit of time.
There was no essence?
Its attention turned to the dozens of humans it could feel, patrolling, searching, chalking up the walls with little sticks so they wouldn’t get lost. Its lazy mental glare focused on the few hundred rodents the humans left behind as they searched, the other few hundred that hadn’t noticed them to rush to their death yet.
There was essence everywhere.
It turned to the pouch of slime in its back, putting into perspective the amount of space and weight that added to its body. The things it prevented the wolf from putting there. Out of some sort of sentimentality.
The human was dead. Burned, boiled, melted, eaten and vaporized. She was gone.
It didn’t matter if even the logical part of itself told it that there was still a decent chance she was alive. It knew that. This wasn’t about what was true, because truth didn’t matter. This was about the wolf getting over its feelings, and focusing on being alive to feel the damn things in the first place.
No, not just alive. That was complacent. It wanted to thrive. It wanted to be the hunter, rather than the prey. It was sick of running.
So it repeated the mantra to itself, over and over, until it began to convince itself.
The human was dead. Gone.
And the pouch of slime on its back would never be needed again. What would it use it for? Holding heads? Judging by the lift incident, it could get more whenever it felt like it.
Pragmatism. It needed pragmatism, not sentimentality.
It turned towards [Devourer] with a determination that it hadn’t felt yet. Ideas did not waft and waver, they stuck to its mind and sunk their hooks in.
It got rid of the slime glands in its back, removed the slime veins entirely. It added a branching vertebrae to its upper back, and added another t-…
No, it was no tail.
Just a tentacle that came out of its upper back, almost vertically, a couple inches below its neck eye. It was made of equal parts bone, muscle, and thick, rope-like tendons. There was no fur. The last vertebrae was extended into a ten inch long, hardened blade that moved past the flesh and skin to stand proud in the air.
It used the cat’s spinal structure to make the thing as flexible as it could. It added a network of intertwining flesh that snaked around the base and through its back muscles to latch onto ribs and spine, adding strength and structure to its motions.
It nestled the tail into the back pouch, which it severely reduced the width of, and increased the length, just to hide the extra appendage better. This look also made its back look wider vertically, paradoxically making it look more like a canine, while also shielding its spine.
Any whisper of doubt that crept in, the wolf crushed it.
It had gained a pressure system, hadn’t it? It had been trying and failing to find ways to use its paralyzing poison, hadn’t it?
There was nothing bad about just blindly adding more firepower, literal and not, to its body.
The remnant of its cautious self hesitated, and the wolf pushed it away, crumpled it into a ball and stomped it into the back of its mind.
It took the pressure system that it had used for its liquid fire, and reduced its size to what the small thrakling had been using.
It copied this system nine times, and for six of these copies, it changed the inner chemical to something thinner than water, but equally harmless. It planted those six copies at the base of its new tentacle, surrounding the base, half-burrowed into the surrounding, significantly smaller pouch, and ran the tubes up the sides of the tentacle.
It replaced the normal launching sac muscles with several layers of thick braided ones, just for added force, after doing the same to the launch sacks responsible for its mouth-fire.
It borrowed the structure of the two fangs it had hidden in the tip of its two tails, enlarged them, several times over.
It straightened them, melted the joints, turning them to thin, straight hollow spikes made of brown-black chitin, with catch grooves on the bottom, extending outwards. It even added some small, hooked barbs, so they couldn’t easily be removed.
It used the nerve structure of the slime veins to make a thin film of nerves and fat that lined the inside of the spikes, one that would automatically contract without the presence of the nerves in its tail to keep the films dilated, causing them to push whatever liquid it placed inside them out of the thin hole at the tips the moment they were disconnected.
With the spike structure done, it placed them around the top of its tail in two layers, three four-inch-long spikes that began four inches below the bone blade, and crested upwards to end where the skin ended and the blade began, then added the other three in between the gaps of the first, just a couple inches below.
In the tentacle, it built small glands that would pump the hollow insides of the spikes with its paralytic poison from the side, enough in each of them to kill a human several times over, and built a small, separate network of muscles that would be able to tug the spikes around in whatever direction it wished, for aiming purposes, creating odd bumps in its tentacle.
It hooked the spikes up to a valve system like the one it had in its lower chest for the liquid fire, but made of cartilage and muscle for the most part, allowing the wolf to launch the spikes, or thorns, with a small, effortless contraction and a spew of harmless liquid.
For the other three launching systems it had not changed, which still spit flame, it nestled them at the bottom of its ribcage where intestines used to take up space, a long time ago, and ran the exit tubes around the ribcage and out of its back, through the base of the tentacle and all the way up to just under the spikes, ending them in three equally spaced, reddish holes which it could clench open or shut.
The result was a tentacle whose tip was covered in six venomous spikes, and three exit points for liquid fire.
Now that it had this system, why stop there?
It added more glands in its stomach, more pressure systems. Ten of them, nestled amongst the auxiliary brains and other various glands, snug but not tight.
It was amazing how much it could fit into its abdomen, and still have it just over half-full and almost skinny-looking compared to the rest of its frame.
It ran the flame-thrower systems up to its arms, two ending at its shoulders, two ending at its forearms, and six going backwards to its actual tails, three for each. It copied the spines and muscle structures, and overlaid them atop what was already there, adding three maneuverable spikes to each forearm, shoulder, and tail.
It wouldn’t be able to launch the ones on its upper body individually, as each triplet of spikes was connected to the same system, but it didn’t matter. It wanted firepower. Something to kill with, not something it could use to run.
Out of the corner of its proverbial ‘eye’, it saw a small pouch of its teeth, nestled into the top of its gut, in the process of turning into armor plates.
Without allowing itself to form doubtful thoughts, it took four of the sixteen future plates, and told them to shift into twelve inch-long spikes, thin, sharp, long and covered in triangular, jagged protrusions that would shred and widen any wound it made with them.
It quickly double-checked to make sure all its inner teeth were set to be blunt, and resolved to watch carefully for the spike-shaped ones, to make sure they wouldn’t put pressure on things they shouldn’t.
Four months, the Skill said. It didn’t care, it accepted, regardless of the ridiculous timeframe.
Then again, it used to take the Skill ten days to give it human eyes. Now, such a change would barely take a day. Fixing its whole body was a work of a dozen hours, even if it was on the brink of death.
In two months, [Devourer] might say it would only take a week to shift its teeth.
Prodding the Skill provided no rebuttal. Good.
More. It wanted more. More change.
It took the shock-absorbing scar tissue of the spearhead shark, scrutinized it.
Why had it thought there was no use for this?
It built a wide, abdomen shaped strip of it, and shoved it under its skin, snug against its abdominals.
It wasn’t like it used its abdomen to curl all that much. Its structure wasn’t like a human’s. And its abdomen was full of useful things now.
What else? Where else?
Skull. Blunt impact. Obvious.
Why hadn’t it thought of that?
That emotionless panic, that scraping whisper of change, change you have to change, change now, it gradually receded, turned into ideas and open concepts.
It took a thin film of the scar-absorbing tissue, and removed any and all fat that was around its skull, replacing it with a little less than half an inch of the bouncy tissue instead, making sure to keep the tissue disconnected from both the muscles below and the skin above, but held firmly in place by surrounding pressure.
What else? It wanted more.
It thought of other ‘crazy’ ideas, ideas it had discarded, old ideas.
Once, what felt like months ago, it wished it still had human arms, just to be able to fiddle with their annoying devices and ladders and the like.
Why not? It had room. It could make room.
It took the structure of a human shoulder, severely lengthened the arms. It removed all fat and a lot of muscle, replacing bulk with tight, wiry networks of interlacing flesh, replacing normal muscle with braided one, and put these shoulders right under its pectoral muscles, to the side and a little further down to not interfere with its main arms.
The shoulder structure was surprisingly easy to graft in, just weaving the muscles between its obliques and attaching them to its ribs, the scapula being draped over the side of its ribcage like a thin piece of armor, the shoulder joint simply shoved against one of the ribs and stuck onto its surface, a mass of cartilage. It added another two more curving bones at the bottom of its ribcage, and extended lateral muscles down to attach to them, around its sides, just to add pulling power to the arms, to be able to use them to lunge forward even further and faster if it had to.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The finished look was like it had swallowed an elongated human and it was trying to burrow out of its torso.
Just to not have the arms stick out from the rest of its body, it covered them in a rough, thin layer of fur, and made the skin dark gray, the nails black and humanoid, but very thick and slightly sharp. Just in case.
Now, it looked like it had just added some parts of shoulders and back muscles under its already existing ones. They didn’t even take up much room. It should still be able to use its main arms in all the usual ways.
The new arms were… perfect. They had multi-jointed fingers, not like its own, which were short and stumpy, barely usable for anything other than running, scratching and climbing.
Dexterous, light but powerful, not like its main arms, but good enough.
Then it paused.
There was no such thing as ‘good enough’.
It had room. It still had room.
Two more flame-thrower systems, nestled under its new, rather thin and short ribs, which ran through the underside of the secondary arms. The launch tubes curled around the wrist to back of the hands, and split into four exit points, placed at each knuckle.
It didn’t want precision, it wanted brute force and destruction. It had more than enough precision.
Its abdomen and gut in general were about three fourths filled up by now, and it resisted the urge to fill up the last quarter of space with more liquid fire.
For the last touch, it made sure the tendons of the arms were as thick as it could reasonably make them, and went to remove the by-now useless fangs under its bottom jaw.
Had it even gotten to use them once? It didn’t think it had, and they made resting its head on its paws awkward, so it removed them without much thought, the venom glands connected to them as well.
It added two more flamethrower systems in its tails, the exit points nestled right next to the venom fangs. It might burn the fang and fur a little when it shot, but so what? It was just fire. It had felt worse. It had felt its insides melting as a pup barely able to reach a human’s shins. A little fire was nothing, despite its stupid instincts insisting its dangerous.
More. A little more change.
It vaguely remembered how annoying it was to constantly have to chew and cut and bite to eat. How time consuming it was.
So it took its esophagus, and just… widened it. Significantly, all the way down to its stomach.
If that meant its vocals would get deeper too because of the windpipe and vocal cords being shifted around, it wouldn’t complain either.
After confirming that change too…
It felt…
Calm.
No, satisfied. It had reached a point where no matter how much it pushed itself, it just couldn’t find more ideas it could feasibly add to its body without bloating itself and making certain ways of fighting inefficient. That mild sort of frenzy that kept whining and pleading for change was no longer there, sated.
Without a hint of second thoughts nor regret, it briefly checked over its work, did some small corrections and minor structural improvements in the way the muscles were woven, and sank back into thoughtless rest, idly activating Skills as they came and went.
It knew it barely had any essence left. It knew its passive essence consumption had almost tripled with the amount of glands and organs it had added, its increased size. It knew the nutrients its body needed to not only maintain itself, but grow, were in the realm of at least three fourths of an entire human body per day.
It just didn’t care.
Essence was everywhere.
And it had nothing but time right now.
----------------------------------------
Another day and a half was spent with it going from hiding spot to hiding spot and napping the hours away, not even bothering to test anything before everything was done. It was barely making any progress through the tunnels, but doing very much the opposite with its body, so it was satisfied.
Besides, the humans were seemingly starting to give up, the search parties lessening more and more, so it was in absolutely no hurry.
It woke up for the umpteenth time with a lazy yawn.
Four days of strolling around sewage tunnels and finding little hidey holes to sleep in was surprisingly fun and relaxing.
It asked the symbols for updates.
[Echoes of Oblivion] has Leveled Up. Level 15 → Level 20
[Bloodrush] has Leveled Up. Level 14 → Level 17
[Logotexnia] has Leveled Up. Level 14 → Level 16
[Restful Awareness] has Leveled Up. Level 32 → Level 36
[Mana Conversion] has Leveled Up. Level 13 → Level 16
Why hadn’t it been doing this before? It felt like strangling its old self with its tails. Both of them. Just… free levels!
With a grumble of annoyance, it shuffled out of the tight vent pipe it had burrowed into, and quickly confirmed there was nothing nearby but rushing waste water. With a small puff of darkness on its legs and paws, it landed soundlessly on the mossy cobbles underfoot, and straightened, stretching.
Not that it even got stiff anymore, not really, but it still felt nice after being confined in a tight tube of iron.
All of its changes were done, and its essence storage was nearly empty, the drain only off-put by the wolf idly snacking on whatever rodent it could find. It had to get food soon.
First, testing its new tools.
It turned to the left, and opened its mouth wide, clenching a pair of muscles in its gut. The pressure built, and built, and then, it tugged another muscle, the one for the inner valve, and pried it open.
Two twin streams of liquid fire traveled a clean thirty feet in a completely straight line before even beginning to curve down to the stone below, and it was around forty feet away that the liquid finally met mossy brick, pooling and thickening in a rapidly expanding, slimy puddle that dripped into the trash waters below.
That felt easy to use.
And it was very beautiful, it noted. It really liked flames.
Its mouth should be getting burned from how the liquid instantly lit on fire while still contained within its jaws, but the most it felt was a building, irritating heat.
It loved Endurance…
It kept the stream going, until it began to run out of liquid, which came after three seconds or so.
As the liquid ran out and the pressure lessened, it felt the stream lax before abruptly cutting off, and its tongue burned from a stray drop or two that hadn’t joined the pressurized stream. It grimaced as it clicked its mouth shut, suffocating the fire before rubbing the thick liquid into the roof of its mouth and mixing it with spit, sloshing its tongue around, feeling it dissolve.
It tasted really bad.
It opened its jaws again, and let out a relieved exhale when its mouth didn’t light on fire.
Next thing to make sure worked right…
Well, the secondary arms worked exactly like they should be, and it had gotten to know that very well when they’d grown long enough to drag on the ground as it walked, which was really annoying.
Finding a comfortable way to rest or suspend its secondary arms took a while, until it had managed to sort of fold them over each other and across the bottom of its chest, and tuck the hands into the armpits, its forearms snug against its ribs.
That, combined with their light weight and rough fur provided enough friction to let the wolf let them rest without having them dangle and drag down on the floor.
It had tested them a bit, and discovered them to be… about a third as strong as its main arms. Which made sense. They were missing a lot of supportive structure and muscle mass.
But the fingers were perfectly dexterous. Only thing it hadn’t checked was their reach.
It unfolded them, feeling its wrists and knuckles hit the ground as it brought them out from under its main arms and between them. Then it extended them out, as far as it could. It knew they were about four feet long, far longer than actual human arms, but it hadn’t extended them so far.
Two and a half or so feet away from its snout, they stopped. That didn’t sound like a lot, but it was further than its main arms could reach by quite a lot.
It was still rather odd to have four arms.
It turned them over, palm up, and brought them close, tilting its head as it examined the skeletal-seeming limbs. Fingers wriggled, wiggled, closed and opened.
So odd.
It folded them back around the bottom of its chest, out of sight, and moved onto the next thing.
It burrowed the tentacle out of the back pouch, extending it towards the ceiling, and stared at it with the eye it had on the base of its neck, wriggling it back and forth, admiring the black-brown spikes that almost gleamed in the firelight, the black skin making the appendage look oddly stout and hard, the pure white, straight bone blade jutting out of the tip adding even more contrast.
In short, it looked brutal. Five feet of wriggly murder.
It looked like something the wolf itself would see on another creature, and immediately decide to keep its distance.
It twitched the muscles around each spike, and found the process to be a lot harder than it had thought. Some spikes turned to the side, some up, some down, and it took a solid five minutes for the wolf to feel confident in what it was doing.
It did note that the display was immensely disturbing and intimidating, and for once, it found an odd sort of sadistic joy in the thought of making humans stare at it with enough fear to soil themselves, running away before they’d even fired a bolt.
It was still preening over how it had handled the lift, yes.
It brought the tentacle low and turned to the opposite wall of the tunnel, lifting a spike to jut perpendicularly out from the limb. It aimed that singular spike with as much care as it could manage, slowly, and began squeezing.
It kept the pressure up, until it felt those muscles begin to cramp, and then finally used a different group of them to peel back the hardened cartilage over the grooves keeping the spikes embedded in its tail.
The millisecond the cartilage had slipped off the grooves, with a strange sound like a sharp, short whistle combined with grinding sandpaper and a violent burst of fluid, the spike…
Disappeared, at the same time the sharp crack of stone echoed down the tunnel, its tentacle rocking back a couple inches from the unexpected recoil.
It blinked, turning its head to stare at its tentacle with at least four incredulous eyes, spread over its side.
The eyes on its right side focused on the wall, and stared uncomprehendingly at the black, dripping thorn embedded an entire inch into solid stone, the stone cracked around it with a little spider web pattern that extended about three inches from the center.
Its tentacle fell limp, tip on the ground as the wolf turned its full attention on the thorn, squinting at it, tilting its head left to right.
That…
That didn’t make sense. That shouldn’t even happen, even if the wolf had the force necessary to do it. Which it thought it did, because a multi-layered sack of braided flesh squeezing something smaller than a human's fist until the muscles began to cramp was a lot of pressure.
But even if it could throw them with such force, its spikes were made of chitin. No matter how incredibly hard it squeezed the launch sac, it should have just bounced off. Maybe dug into the stone enough to stay in place by the tip, or just outright shattered, considering the speeds involved.
It shouldn't have cracked stone.
They weren’t light, but they weren’t that heavy. They weren’t soft, but chitin could bend, it was not harder than… rock…
It remembered its ‘Survivor’ trait for a moment.
Every time that trait upgraded, it had felt a very noticeable improvement on how tough it was. And considering the number had risen to three out of five, maybe the improvement got even steeper as it leveled up?
That speculation was centered on the ridiculous idea that maybe Endurance applied to its projectiles.
It dove into the rushing waters below, and with energetic paddling, made its way to the other side of the tunnel in four short seconds, clambering up with scraping claws, taking a brief second to shake the water out of its fur.
It went up to the thorn, tilted its head, and gripped it between its crusher teeth, yanking it out of the wall.
Then, it tried to crush it with as much force as it could muster.
It squished, a little. It barely noticed it. And that was it.
It knew that it was more than strong enough to crush a thin hollow spike into nothing but chitin chunks. Stone too, if it tried a bit harder.
It extended the right secondary arm around and up, and the wolf grabbed the spike out of its mouth with its fingers, holding it up for inspection, twisting it around contemplatively as it tilted its head, feeling the spike’s texture on the naked black skin that covered the underside of its fingers.
The symbols made no sense. That was not a part of its body. Maybe the hardness would fade? If it didn’t, would the humans be able to grab its spikes and use them like weapons? That wasn’t an actual concern, but more of just… where did the symbols draw the line between what was and wasn’t its body? It didn’t make sense.
As with most things that didn’t make sense, the wolf decided to leave it for later, or never.
With a flick of its wrist to toss the spike into the waters, it folded the human arm back out of sight.
It turned its head down to stare at the three spikes laying flat and a little diagonally on its right forearm, tips aimed at the ground. They were something it could use as armor, weapon, and projectile. It flexed the extra muscles it had put around its arm.
The spikes came to life, wriggling, four-something sharp inches of slowly wavering chitin.
Just for show, it wriggled the antennae it had spread throughout its forearm too.
The sight was uniquely disquieting, even to itself.
It took aim at the opposite wall again by putting its forearm parallel to its chest, took a short second to amp up the pressure, and shot.
Same result as the first. Three spikes, embedded into the stone a solid inch each.
Disbelief and joy were an odd mixture, but the wolf found itself to be liking it. How could it complain about something like the symbols helping it too much?
It extended its secondary arms out from the side, under its main ones, took aim at the wall with its knuckles.
The liquid fire that spewed out was not so much of an accurate stream as much as it was a wild, vaguely rectangular spray, droplets and mist breaking off from each other and almost detonating. Rapid ignition was surprisingly loud, a short, bassy ‘fwoom’ sort of sound echoing down the tunnel.
With four shared exit points, the spray also only lasted a little more than a second, and the range was barely ten feet. Trade-offs.
It wasn’t disappointed at all as it stared at the giant stretch of brick merrily being charred just five feet away.
For when it couldn’t afford precision and needed to just make whatever was in front of it cook, this was perfect. It could increase the capacity later when its essence storage wasn’t practically empty.
Folding its secondary arms out of sight again, it took aim with the tentacle, down the left side of the walkway it was on, and found the range to be the same as the flame-throwers in its mouth, albeit less of a twin stream and more of a triangle-shaped spew, the streams hitting each other and spraying wildly after the thirty foot mark. Two seconds before emptying. The exits to the tubes were a little wider than it thought.
The entire tunnel smelled of smoke by now, and was extremely well-lit by the giant stretches of burning liquid squirted about, and so, it kept itself vigilant for wandering humans. None within two hundred feet. None approaching.
Its tails were next.
They had by far the most accurate, tight stream of fire, the longest range at fifty feet, and the longest fire time, at six seconds. It had taken care to make the exit point as small as possible, so that made sense.
The spike shots were the same as all its other shots, without any delineation. It was much harder to aim the ones on its shoulders, but it could manage, somewhat. They did work great for intimidation, as well.
It did realize that aiming these spikes would take a bit of practice in general, but it would have time for that. The extra eyes certainly helped it aim, what with the added perspective they gave it.
The last test it wished to try…
It activated [Echoes of Oblivion], like it had been doing for hours and hours of sleep, and just like before, it didn’t let the Skill be, it pushed mana into it, as much as it could drain from its own cells.
For a moment, a familiar fog embraced it, like a comforting blanket. Then the next moment, the blanket expanded, turning into a genuine, roiling cloud, a little over three feet in each direction, shaped almost like a squashed sphere around its body.
Of course, with the wall and ground and its legs touching it, that just meant it was sitting in a roughly seven-something foot wide and tall sphere of void-black fog. Enough to conceal its movements, make the enemy guess what they were even fighting.
It extended its secondary arms forward, and the fog roiled forward to match them. It swished its tails, each almost as thick as a human's arm, and the fog did the same. Using the Skill this way did consume a surprisingly large amount of mana though.
It tried to push even more mana into the Skill, but the Skill sort of… rejected it? It was like it refused to let the wolf extend the cloud further distance than its Level allowed the wolf to.
That was odd, but it couldn’t complain about the ability to completely conceal its form, even when in plain sight.
It wouldn’t be able to cover a room or anything like that, not anytime soon. But it didn’t need to.
It felt its tails begin to furiously wag, joyful and hopeful, and it quickly located the most jittery, isolated search group within its range.
With a black hole in its stomach, an empty pit in its soul, and self-satisfaction wriggling in its chest, it howled.
[Echoes of Oblivion] devoured its declaration of a hunt.