Eventually, the wolf was stirred out of its rest by a surprising amount of pain, and regretfully, it neither felt nor heard any humans approaching to let it out of its prison, suspended over a...

Not quite a death drop, but the level below was bent and damaged, so if it slipped off its perch once, it could easily slide off and drop to its death if it wasn't careful and ready.

Thankfully, it was a little too pleased to care. As it moved down a few steps to catch one of the wall-lights the humans put around the lip of the entrance, it observed its limb as if it was something it had never seen before, with wonder and excitement.

No matter how it moved its leg, it couldn’t see its bones, nor the tendons, hidden under a coating of newly formed flesh and fat. It turned its head to look at its hind legs, and its hips were no longer an angular mess, its ribs no longer giving off the impression they were trying to break through its skin and escape. It was still rather skinny, but it looked twice as healthy as before its sleep. In fact, its skin was starting to feel a bit tight, likely from the overnight bulk added to its form.

After hopping around a bit and walking up and down the stairs, it noted just how incredibly full of vigor and energy it felt. The Endurance stat was definitely not something to take lightly. It felt like it could take a hit from a boulder and survive.

Of course, it wasn’t stupid enough to try such a thing, but the feeling was reassuring all the same. It yawned and turned to look at the points where it felt pain, which were… everywhere.

Its snout was in pain, a rather constant sensation not unlike a headache, one that travelled from behind its eyes and straight down until it was next to its nostrils. Painful, but also reassuring to know that the antennae was growing so quickly.

The less reassuring part was the pain it felt in every single bone of its body. It didn’t know if it was simple pain from its bones rapidly changing and growing, or because there was something wrong with them. Generally pain meant something was wrong, and the pulsing, intense waves certainly didn’t feel good, but at the same time, it couldn’t really come up with any other reason for its bones to suddenly hurt. Not even microfractures, as it hadn’t really gotten into a genuine fight since it had eaten the rats.

Having nothing else to do, it moved up to the iron plate, and sat down, ready to try and learn how to use the ‘mana’.

The limb it felt in its chest was a bit more responsive, and so it spent every ounce of energy it had in learning how to manipulate it, feeling like a pup learning how to walk all over again. Sometimes it slipped through its mental guidance, sometimes it simply refused to be used, yet despite the wolf’s growing frustration, an hour later, it had wrung its soul dry of every drop of mana, and it couldn’t say that it was displeased at all with its progress.

Sure, it wasn’t useful yet, but it could at least force the mana out in the way it wanted to. A puff of black mist appearing over its snout where it was supposed to, was a vast improvement over the flickering, dissolving bits of smoke it could conjure before.

Out of curiosity, it decided to go to the railing and find out what had happened down below, its footsteps surprisingly heavy as they hit the metal underneath. With a bit of head-turning, it shoved its head under the railing pipes and looked down, expecting to see nothing but a horde of rats cleaning up their brethren and the humans.

Much to its surprise however, it was dead silent, the blinking dark yellow lights of the trash pit illuminating countless unmoving silhouettes as they lay dead and broken down below, the smoke and copper scent of their blood flitting into its nostrils and invading its mind and stomach with the need to feast.

The rats had seemingly been scared away by the earth-shaking impact and had most likely retreated to feast somewhere safer. They were surprisingly logical beings when there were no other living things involved.

And that gave it an idea. A very greedy, perhaps dangerous idea.

It yanked its head back, and shortly checked its nails, which it had forgotten to do during its sleep, and found them much the same as before, if a bit thinner and longer, likely a combination of growth hormone and the [Devourer] skill. It quickly but carefully moved down the loop, its sides rubbing against the metal cylinder in the center, until it came to the spot where the loop stopped. With trepidation, it looked down at the full loop of bent stairs underneath it, and found that it wasn’t so much scared of the drop, which was a distance it had taken many times before, but of the possibility of it hitting the metal and sliding off to its death.

For a minute or two, it practised with the mental control it had over its nails, just to feel a bit more reassured, and after realizing that it was just wasting valuable time, hesitantly went to the last step, its right side basically scraping off its fur with how hard it was pressing into the metal center of the stairs.

It crouched low and used its newfound intelligence to visualize the drop and the actions it would take over and over, and finally, it turned its body so its snout was facing the cylinder, and jumped off sideways to the best of its ability, tucking in its legs to its torso.

Despite its best efforts, a yelp of fear choked out of its throat as it dropped, and the second its body slammed into the tilted stairs with a deafening clang, it tilted its paws downwards as its elbows curled, and stabbed its nails into the metal, immediately halting its slide.

For a moment, it simply panted from the adrenaline rush, then with as hurried but careful steps as it could manage, it continued digging its nails into the metal and slowly made its way out of the tilted section, step by step in an awkward, sideways shuffle down the stairs.

As soon as it felt no pull of its body weight against its nails, it realized it was walking on straight planks by now, and quickly glanced behind itself to confirm.

Not perfectly straight, but straight enough to not be an issue.

It was also mildly embarrassed to note that it was so focused on not looking at the drop, that it had forgotten most of the bent section still had the safety railing attached, if a bit more compact than before.

Those thoughts were all rather easily swept away by another breeze, upon which rode the bittersweet miasma of death, blood, and decay.

Something about a breeze even existing down in a pit felt a bit strange, but it didn’t ruminate too much on such thoughts as it quickly trotted down the stairs.

As it made its way to the final loop, it quickly got to work on eating all the rat carcasses it could find, a task which was surprisingly annoying to fulfill when its mouth and canines were still so small. It had to carve out slabs of meat with its front teeth a lot of the time with the larger rats that were as lengthy as its head and nearly twice as tall, and the amount of fur it digested was frankly appalling, yet slowly but surely, with excitement and hunger slowly buzzing in its veins, it made its way down.

At the last couple steps, the familiar sound of squeaking caught its attention, and it slowly curled in its legs into a crouch as it stalked around the corner. The dim light reflecting off the metal plates of the rectangular tunnel illuminated nothing but a small rat nibbling on one of its bisected siblings, so the wolf decided to test out its Hunter trait.

The results were that even as it towered over the rat just a footstep or two away, it didn’t notice it one bit, simply digging its snout deeper into its kin’s putrid innards.

Having completed its experiment, the wolf dashed forward, and using the strategy it had proven as most effective versus rats, simply bit into its hips, reared its head up, and then snapped it down, letting its teeth cut the flesh open before the rat could even realize what had happened.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Its skull cracked against the stone with an oddly hollow-sounding thunk, and after a single twitch, it stopped moving. The wolf quickly chomped its prey down, before focusing back to its feast, its tail slowly starting to wag as it realized just how much meat there was available nearby.

Hours went by in fugue as it devoured burnt, crushed, stabbed, and cut apart rats strewn all about the tunnel alone, and its jaws and tongue muscles eventually started cramping before it had even made its way out into the pit area.

Eventually, a shuffling sound to its left made it freeze with a rat hanging out of its mouth, and it snapped its head to the sound, fur bristling and [Bloodrush] ready to activate. But it didn’t growl, not yet.

Nothing happened for multiple seconds, then it caught movement to its left, and observed in silence as something behind a mound of rats shifted, the twisted form of the staircase having squished them into a glob of gore. Then a sharp gasp sounded off, and the movement stopped.

Cautiously, it backed off towards the wall as it started to circle the mound of metal, under which was the struggling creature, simply to have some distance between whatever was moving and itself, and its eyes caught a dainty, furless paw extending out from under a rat’s mangy corpse.

No, a hand.

One of the humans was alive.

Unsure of what to do with this new revelation, and remembering the hateful glare of the leather-clad human from before, it simply stood stock still and watched silently as the human struggled to dig themselves out from under the weight of metal planks and rat corpses.

It didn’t need its newfound intelligence to know that the human was likely severely injured, every shift accompanied with a strangled gurgle or a gasp, or some sort of half-hitched yip. Even as the minutes rolled by, the human’s efforts were only rewarded with a single finger's width of progress at a time, and the wolf…

The wolf was torn.

Humans weren’t bad. Suicidal to some extent, but most simply allowed it to live and do its own thing without particularly caring of its existence. Some had shown it kindness, which was something no other creature ever had. It wasn’t exactly grateful, but it could recognize that the humans, in all their illogical, suicidal glory, were the strangest, most suicidal and kindest creatures to be found in their own nest, shown evidently by the fact that they even allowed other creatures to exist in their home.

And watching one die like this was just… uncomfortable. It made its chest feel weird, a sensation similar to when the first human it ate had died, but less visceral, more resigned. It could kill the human with one bite through the back of their neck. The human could survive its injuries with the help of some of her kin, maybe, although that presented the danger of her telling the other humans of what it had done. Which was... a frightening thought.

Also, even if it didn't want to kill the human, it definitely wanted to eat her, even though its jaws were cramping and its snout was so covered in blood and guts that it couldn’t even smell or taste anything but copper, it simply wanted to use its meat storing abilities to their fullest extent.

It dropped the rat in its mouth, and moved closer, [Bloodrush] ready to activate at the first sign of danger. Using its nails to dig into the gore and drag the corpses off the human, who was covered up to her forearm, it started from the top, dragging off one, then two rats, and the human gasped, her hand reaching out to the wolf, prompting it to stop and lean back for a second.

“P-Please... he...lp.” The woman croaked out quietly.

Deciding that it was being too timid again, it redoubled its efforts to dig the human out, who was pinned under four iron planks and a small assortment of gore and rats as she continued making her human sounds.

“S-Say some...thing.” She breathed out, and was ignored by the wolf who wondered once more how difficult it would be to learn human-speak.

Each bit of fur and flesh removed further uncovered the human’s wretched state, entire chunks of her flesh completely ripped off and the skin covered in holes where the rats had chewed through her coverings. The fingers were the worst, the bone actually visible in some parts, the wounds growing less severe as they traveled up her forearm.

Before long, it had managed to catch a glimpse of her head-fur, however coated in crimson it was, and quickly focused on snagging its teeth on corpses covering her head and dragging them off.

“H-He...llo?” She breathed out weakly, her fingers twitching, and the wolf only spared her a glance, noticing that she had been so completely covered in rats that they shielded her from both the fall impact as they got squished under her, and the impact of the iron slamming into her back as they got squished above her.

A particularly large rat on top of her nape panted and twitched, not dead, and the wolf wasted no time in snatching it up, and repeatedly slamming it into the floor as it squeaked its shrill sounds and struggled to fight for its life. Growing annoyed at the constant, almost shrieking sounds of the rodent, it snarled and got up on its hind legs as it raised its head to the sky, and put its whole body weight into a particularly vicious downwards throw.

The rat slammed into the stone with a meaty, wet thud, and didn’t move again.

The wolf shoved it aside with a paw and got back to work on unraveling the human, who had gone completely and utterly still as she struggled to control her breathing.

Likely trying to play dead, something that she hopefully wouldn’t have to pretend about soon.

Another couple wrenched-off corpses and her nape and shoulders were revealed, showing no leather coverings of any sort, meaning that this was the woman making the light sphere when the attack started.

The woman made some sort of strained and poorly muffled yelp sound, her shredded free arm curling back to cover her head with sluggish, jerky movements. Which was annoying, for more than one reason.

One of which was that this woman reminded it too much of the woman that had fed it the yellow-white stuff above in the square. They were different humans, it assumed, but every time it thought about snapping her hand off and just biting through her neck, it hesitated. The second reason was said hand would make killing her needlessly painful and annoying.

It didn’t particularly want to kill her though.

There was a chance this human could tell the other humans about it, which meant she was a risk. She was also dying anyway, so killing her quickly would be a mercy, considering the other humans above seemed to be in absolutely no hurry whatsoever to come save her and her companions, or unlock the iron gate above.

But even though she could tell the humans about it, the wolf didn’t particularly stand out in any way from other canines. It could hide about as well as it always did, in plain sight and the humans being none the wiser to its presence. What would she tell them? Some black dog cut off the staircase?

Would the humans even believe her if she told them?

Was it worth taking that chance however, just because the human female reminded it of a kinder woman from above?

It didnt know.

So it simply stood there silently, unsure of what to do as the human female tried to play dead.