When the wolf woke up, it was to the sound of approaching humans. Its eyes shot open, more than well-rested, and it quickly sank low on its legs, crouched and ready to bolt out of its hiding spot and run.
Its single ear strained to listen, and it quickly deliberated whether it should flee instantly or try and hide first.
Then its eyes lowered to the small, but noticeable trail of blood that led directly into the hole of metal it’d dashed into, and it decided.
With but a thought, it activated [Bloodrush], planting its front paws on the lip of the vent it had entered through, and kicked with its back legs to leap out onto the alley.
Behind it, in the distance, it heard the faint sound of humans conversing, but their volume was muted, their growls subdued and sounding… irritated, more than scared or threatening. It didn’t dwell on it much, and simply rushed away, its eyes gradually widening as it realized just how good it felt.
Rushing through the metal maze with all its might, it let out a happy bark as its tongue hung out the side of its mouth, slowly but surely turning its sprint into a trot as [Bloodrush] faded, until it decided to stop completely, and examine itself.
Although it could see very little with its eyes compared to what it could see when dreaming, it did note that its bones and joints were a little less defined than yesterday, no longer like sharp angles that jutted out of its sides but…
Well, more like blunted angles that jutted out of its sides.
It did have to resist the urge to chase its own tail though. It didn’t feel bendy enough to reach it anyway.
Still, it was ecstatic, and despite the ravenous hunger, it felt more than satisfied. It could barely feel any ticks on its fur anymore, its skin seemingly growing too tough for the insects by the combination of [Tough Skin] and the Endurance attribute. There were still a couple of those large ones, but once it found a rough enough spot to scratch them out of itself, it would be free of the pests, finally.
There was also a sense of long-lost safety in the fact that it actually had the strength to run away now. It did reprimand itself for running for longer than necessary, but it was a fairly mild self-criticism, as it had no idea how good those humans would be at tracking. They had a terrible sense of smell, but their eyes were great.
It resumed its walking, looking up at the towering structures of iron above itself, stretching on and on until the smog rendered it unable to see the ceiling of the cavern, giving them the illusion of reaching into a smoke-drowned sky.
Pipes and masses of wires ran between the structures and through them, giving its surroundings the sense of a maze in the truest sense of the word. One stretch of cobbles was a tunnel with a roof of pipes that opened into a multi-layered series of hammocks made of cables that went up endlessly, then a sudden drop into an open coal chute, and a pathway on the side that led to sparking cylinders, and it continued with no sense of direction or logic but number plates that the wolf could find no pattern or direction in.
The only signs of organic life was the rare human, covered completely in their extra skins and glass masks as they checked wires, carried things into the buildings, or were running around with some kind of humming, glowing device, moving it up and down the exposed bits of machinery they could find.
Interspersed through all this, were the even rarer humans who climbed up and down the structures without such a suit and just a mask, banging and clanging and fiddling away with every bit of their nest structure they could find, hanging hundreds of feet in the air and climbing about like insects, dots of moving black in the incomprehensible and seemingly useless maze of machinery.
There were still a lot of humans down here, but in comparison to the nest above them, they might as well not even be there. Even in the slow half hour walk it took to get back to the canals, mainly using the glowing marks in the distant cave walls and months of experience, it barely saw two dozen humans altogether.
It was a welcome change in pace, even if the air there hurt. It hurt a lot less after the symbols helped it, but it still burned, and even though it knew that being around this place would keep leveling its poison and magic resistance skills, it wasn’t particularly keen on staying more than necessary. It would hunt around for a few scraps, then start making the journey to get to the level above, where rats could withstand the far milder levels of poison in the air, and it might even find a dead human again, with any luck.
Its level of success was not exactly staggering, but the difference was more than obvious.
The Scavenger Trait had severely understated the effect it would have. The dumber creatures, like the glowing flies, barely even noticed it, even if it shoved its snout into their prey and suddenly dragged it away. Stronger things like the predators near the tops of the rivers still easily saw it, but as long as it was simply moving about with the ‘intent to scavenge’, creatures of a lesser nature barely saw it.
In one particularly risky experiment, it tried to see how close it could get to one of the glowing predator vines before it noticed the wolf, and quickly realized that checking how its trait worked definitely didn’t count as ‘scavenging’. It would have lost at least an entire toe had it not activated [Bloodrush] in a panic to jump back.
Still, the amount of actual food it could find without having to worry about every tiny little squirming or frothing thing? It had doubled. And feeling a bit more confident than before, it even found some melted blobs of skin and flesh that were those black, winged creatures that it saw and heard squeaking around up high on the pipes, and ate them, only mildly regretting all the burning liquid in its throat. It would probably not get anything useful out of them besides filling its stomach, so ruined they were by the fluids, but any food was good.
It hurt and its throat felt raw from the liquids on the fliers, but it had a feeling all the excess flesh waiting in storage could heal that minor injury overnight. Maybe it could restore its ear too, but it was so close to its brain and the structure was so small and complicated that-
The wolf paused.
There was no real difference between one ear and the other, besides the side of its body they were on. It could just… copy what was on the right, and use the human’s meat to create it.
But how would it get rid of what was already there? The injury itself was healing, the infection done and receding, but now it had an ear that was on the border of being dead flesh, taking up space on its precious head when it could fit something better there.
After a few minutes of deliberation with no answer but wild, unintelligent theorizing, it gave up, and spent a few moments trying to re-orientate itself as it hopped up on the edge of the canal, its feet thanking it for finally being on semi-flat ground once more. Managing to find a spot to peek at the walls of the cave and the blurry glowing things on them, it compared the distance and realized it was closer than it had thought to the spiraling stretch of chaos that led to the upper levels.
After an exhausting three hours of walking uphill at a snail’s pace, it found a fallen gear covered in rust leaning against a dented wall, and slept underneath it.
The process of deconstructing the flier began, but it provided it with nothing but a vague notion of where its organs might be, and a name.
A bat.
When the wolf woke, it was to the faint scent of copper. Its nose seemed to have healed enough for it to at least be able to smell itself, and its fur absolutely reeked of blood. And despite the abundance of blood it was ingesting from the human, it was extremely thirsty, its throat dry and its body begging for some actual water rather than the thin slime that blood was.
There weren’t many places for someone or something that wasn’t a human to drink water from. In fact, its best chance was to find some leaking pipes, and lap up the water that formed underneath them.
After another hour or slowly trotting up a very vaguely defined path through the iron jungle, presumably made by the humans, it began slowly recognizing its surroundings and took a dip into a little crevice that was so tight even its thin body could barely squeeze through, and found what it was looking for, a perpetually leaking pipe that it had stumbled upon when looking for a safe place to sleep.
It had to stop and stare for a moment at the tiny green things flanking the puddle of water. After curiously sniffing and pawing at them, it deemed them safe. After licking up every drop of water it could with its unfortunately still numb tongue, it pushed its snout against the iron, trying to get one of its eyes as close to the odd green thing as possible.
Small as it may have been, it was definitely strong, because it seemed to have snaked up and pushed the iron plates out of the way to grow… out of where?
After observing it for another five minutes without any sort of sudden revelation to its origins and nature coming to its mind, it simply got up and walked in circles in the little alcove where the pipe ran through, alternating its stare from the humans' strange nest to its own legs, still skeletal but no longer to the point of it looking absolutely grotesque, where it could see its tendons poking out through its thin fur. It felt great, but that was only by comparison. It had no delusion that compared to even most of the other kin in the human’s nest, it was weak, and still entirely too thin.
It was going to fix that.
Moving was a chore, however, even if it moved in small circles. Its fur was so matted by filth, blood, and melted together by the times it had to rush through the burning river on the few occasions it had drawn the attention of the more dangerous beings of the canals that it was simply too… inflexible, pulling at its skin with every motion like the plating of a cockroach but without any of the defensive capability, just heavy and annoying.
Thankfully, its sense of taste was still numb at best, which it wasn’t planning on fixing anytime soon, deliberately directing the human’s flesh to become its own and turn to better tasks. After a self-cleaning session that left its tongue feeling raw however, it realized that it would probably have an easier time just… cutting through its fur.
It was really hot in the canal area anyway, and the only time it ever got cold was if it was wet, or simply too starved to produce its own body heat efficiently. So, using its front teeth with the utmost caution, it got to raking its teeth through its fur like a human would a razor, mentally noting to prod around the [Devourer] skill with the symbols’ odd visions to see if it could make itself more flexible. It could probably figure it out on its own given time, but frankly, it had only a vague idea of what it was doing, and it feared that making itself too flexible would end up making it less… solid.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Like its joints and bones could snap out of place when it didn’t want them to, making any impact suddenly dislocate important bits of itself outside of where they should be. It sounded a little odd in its head, but its logic didn’t feel wrong, so added flexibility was something to be looked into, but not jumped into.
Its thoughts were interrupted by its front teeth accidentally shaving off a thin layer of skin as well, and it yelped in pain as the injury registered, jumping back to its feet.
Confusion overcame the wolf, having thought its teeth’s newfound sharpness couldn’t be used on itself for some reason. Its bleeding leg was only a mild concern at the moment, only giving it a couple licks to clean the wound and get it to start healing.
Experimentally, and extremely slowly, it prodded one of its canines with its tongue…
And nothing happened. Oh it was pointy, extremely so, feeling like the tip of a needle more than the teeth it was used to, yet it refused to puncture its tongue, no matter how hard it pressed down on it, even when trapping the very tip of its tongue between its razor sharp front teeth and squeezing. It hurt, but that was it. It didn’t make any sense.
Bewildered, it turned to the pipe of water, having only now remembered that its teeth could cut through metal since the symbols appeared. But the pipe was far too large for the wolf to sink its teeth into, so it turned to a simple corner covered in swirling bits of metal that seemed to serve no purpose, turned its head, and bit.
Without even the slightest hint of pushback, its teeth sank into the metal, and raked through it with a similar amount of effort.
Spitting out the remnants of broken iron bits out of its mouth, it returned to focusing on its tongue, pressing it into its canine with the intent to pierce it a bit and draw blood.
Two things happened at once.
Its canine went into its tongue just a bit, then stopped, resistance registering suddenly.
And something about the puzzle of the situation clicked into place through the haze of pain as the wolf hung its bleeding tongue out of its mouth.
It could control how its teeth worked with its mind.
Rolling its tongue back into its mouth, it turned to a support rod nearby, about as thick as its waist, and turned its head with open jaws, focusing on having its canines not pierce or cut through the metal.
And slowly but surely, as it closed its jaws, the metal was unaffected, its teeth raking against it uselessly.
It tried again, with the idea to pierce but not cut, and its teeth sank in as if through air. Experimentally, it tugged, and it didn’t move even the slightest bit, its teeth firmly stuck into the iron. Then, it focused on having its teeth cut through a little, and with a mighty pull, it slowly began to cut through the metal. Satisfied, it focused on its teeth cutting through completely, and yanked back, feeling not the tiniest shred of resistance as its teeth just phased through the metal, leaving deep wounds into the support rod.
Then, with as much caution as it could muster, it focused on its teeth cutting through anything except its skin, and found that it could cleanly shave its fur off with no issue. After a few more minutes of experimentation, the wolf got back to its grooming, mentally pushing some extra bits of the stored flesh to heal its tongue and foreleg.
Half an hour later and with over half of its body feeling like it could finally breathe, it trotted out of its little metal alcove, occasionally stopping to lap at its leg wound. Shaving its fur had definitely done it no favors in the sense of appearance, it noted, as without the extra bulk of it, it looked even more like a thin layer of leather stretched tight over a skeleton. The extra bulk it was slowly getting from the human helped, but it was still slightly disturbing when every movement was clearly seen through its own skin, like its leg tendons tensing and relaxing with every step.
The majority of its backside was still unshaven, and its head and shoulders were too, for obvious reasons, but it couldn’t deny that it had been a great idea. Without all that extra baggage, it felt a couple stones lighter, which certainly helped with its stamina.
Eight more hours of walking, interspersed with many short naps, it came across a small pipe that was full with the sound of rushing liquid. Trying to see if it could wet its head and back enough for the crusty fur to soften or get cleaned, it approached the thin pipe, only about as large as its muzzle, and hooked a canine into it.
As it smelled the foul scent of the canals, it quickly removed its tooth from the metal and retreated as the pressurized water exploded out of the hole.
Yet it was still just water, if extremely foul smelling.
Deciding to risk it, it walked to the rapidly growing puddle on the floor, and dipped a toe into it.
Absolutely nothing.
Half an hour of rolling around on the ground and rubbing its face against everything it could find, it shook itself free of all the liquid on its body, taking the opportunity to get rid of the few remaining ticks and other things remaining on its back by rubbing against some metal wire fence.
And finally, after another hour of walking, it was finally out of the maze area, the path before it quickly simplifying into an extremely wide rectangle that led to the floor above, around which were…
A startling amount of humans.
Its steps slowed as it watched the humans curiously.
Humans tended to go into the giant towers to descend to the lower levels, so there were rarely any people hanging around the entrance to what might have been the most toxic place in the nest. And if it wasn’t the tower, they’d use some boxes being pulled up and down along some thick wire to make shorter trips that didn’t land them straight to the bottom.
It couldn’t help but worry that maybe they were there to hunt it for eating one of their own.
Humans were odd creatures. Some had horns, some had soft, peachy skin, some had tails and scales, some were smaller and had green skin, usually being led around by some bigger humans, some even had a mixture of all of the above from what it had seen, but the one thing they always seemed to carry with them when they’d get ready to hurt something, was an inanimate object. Some long pointy stick, some sharp piece of metal, maybe some of those glowing devices, or some long, oddly glowing sticks with crystals on the top.
And almost every single one of these humans were absolutely covered in extra metal coverings and having some sort of weapon hanging on them or in their hand as they conversed.
With mildly trembling legs, it stalked forward, but besides a few odd looks, nobody seemed to be actively looking for it. A little more confident, with hesitant but quick steps, it moved forward, swerving its head around as much as possible to ensure no sneak attacks, [Bloodrush] hovering around the forefront of its mind to be used at a moment’s notice.
Besides some curious looks however, few paid it attention.
Until someone who was in that group of “few”, loosely raised her hand in its direction.
“[Control Beast].” The woman said, her tone oddly curious as she tilted her head of light blue hair, wearing some form-fitting extra skins and carrying some sort of curved wooden shield on her other hand.
The wolf stopped in its tracks instantly, its eyes bulging as it felt a strong, foreign compulsion to follow the woman. It turned a little, its mind pushing [Bloodrush] to the forefront as it tried its best to resist the insistent desire- no, the need to follow the human’s orders.
“C’mere, little guy.” The woman - presumably, the wolf wasn’t close enough to smell her scent and confirm - cooed, quirking her lips upwards from more than two dozen feet away, yet the wolf heard her nonsensical human speech and understood what she meant regardless.
As if bewitched, its legs carried it forward, and as a moment passed, it struggled to find a reason to resist the human’s influence in the first place. This… this felt right, somehow. Perhaps out of sheer stubborn-ness however, it kept doing its best to resist, until it remembered it had [Mental Resistance], and with a mental order for the skill to rise to its full power as it should have done the moment it had gained the Skill. The human’s hold broke like cut strings, and it turned, activating [Bloodrush] as it fled at full speed.
The woman let out a surprised gasp, as did some of the humans it dashed between, and just barely, it heard her parting words.
“That dog was Awakened!” The woman excitedly barked out, and the wolf saw out of the corner of its eyes as almost a dozen humans all armed to the teeth simultaneously turned around to look at it, their eyes wide, another dozen looking around curiously for where the wolf was.
Not looking back, it dashed through the streets with all its might, sending its claws the intent to pierce through the stone just a tiny bit to add more traction to its gallops. Some humans barked at it as it dashed through, under, and between their legs and coats, but besides a single dodged kick, none tried to stop it.
Five minutes later, it ducked into a tiny set of stairs that wrapped around someone's home, rushed up the thin pathway that led up to a place of yellow light, and found itself into one of those open, circular areas surrounded by buildings where humans gave each other things. It turned around to look for any angry human pursuers as it panted, and finding no danger at its heels, it relaxed, finding a relatively untouched and unseen corner behind a cart to sleep in.
It didn’t like to sleep around humans, but with its [Restful Awareness] skill and their general apathy towards beings like itself, it could at least take a short nap to let its limbs rest up from the abuse they’d endured during its escape. As long as it didn't make more humans mad by breaking their Skills with [Mental Resistance], it should be fine.
It slept in peace, surprisingly, despite the constant clamor of its surroundings.