Chapter 14: Distorted Step

Looking down at the beast as it pecked at the side of the nest, I felt some disappointment in myself, for being discovered almost immediately.

The bird below me kept peaking at the nest and slanting one of its heads from side to side, while probably waiting for a responses, what it was doing was probably a bird version of knocking. Noticing it hadn't looked up to discover me. I was about to jump down to silence the creature, but it cluelessness gave me a sense of security, and instead I slowly lowered myself into the nest again.

Laying besides the bird I had just killed, I took one of the corpses wings and draped it over my body. Hiding myself away from sight, while at the same time masking my scent.

I made a guess, a gamble perhaps that this bird would probably do one of two things, when it didn't get a reply from the nest, either it would get curious and enter the nest to explore, or it would go away.

If it did the latter one, I would let it live for today, and come back after I got more practice with stealth procedures. While if it choose the former, I would quickly dispose of it. Of course there was a chance it would alert more birds, but either way, if they wanted me they had to first enter the nest. Within a tight enclosed space like this nest, killing two at once would be easier than killing one birds at a time.

Because of my immediate failure though, I was planning on withdrawing back to the cave corridor, maybe if I practiced entering the empty nest in the corridor I would discover a trick to it.

I decided that for practice I would continuously enter both the empty nest, and this one repeatedly. Till the point in which I could enter without alerting the surrounding.

I lay waiting in the nest, awaiting the decision of the bird with bated breath, silently resting under the corpses wing, with my body relaxed and my eyes closed.

If the bird decided to enter, all my muscles would tense instantly, and propel me towards it in a forceful, swift and powerful manner.

I stopped focusing on all my other senses, and only concentrated on my sense of hearing. I listened closely for the tapping of the creatures talons against the floor.

Several moments of uneventful silence elapsed, and I just lay there patiently. My mind was calm.

Tap tap

Tap tap tap

The creature did not approach the nest further, and began to leave.

It would be great if the reason the bird left was that it didn't notice me, but most likely its reason for leaving was an instinctive premonition of danger. Maybe with its keen senses it smelled the pungent odor of avian blood.

Either way since it had left, I didn't linger any longer, I climbed out of the nest and exited the room.

.....

Back at the corridor of the cave I began to practice entering and exiting the nest silently.

I spread all the eggs in the nest at separate quadrants of the nest space, as an extra obstacles, and for several hours I continued to run and jump into the nest.

I kept altering my bodies movements and stances while attempting to find a method for silent approach, but when it came to entering the nest I couldn't find a way to enter without making a sound.

Every time I attempted to enter a nest, there would be a crunching of leaves or a snapping of twigs, and while I was getting more proficient at walking silently on the normal hard ground of the cave, it was beginning to seem impossible to remain silent while climbing the soft brittles of the nest.

Crouch

Rustle rustle

Crack

I was beginning to become frustrated with my lack of progress, as the more I attempted to climb the nest silently, the more mistakes I made.

With sweat dripping from my face onto the ground. I decided to take a break and distance myself from my troubles.

For now I resolved myself to begin stretching my body, while hiding my body in a corner of the cave structure. I had already been away from the ruins for a day now, and I didn't want to lose out on the chance of gaining the flexibility stat.

Angling my body into positions that would otherwise cripple me if I were human, I fought through the pain, twisting my limbs into impossible position. I let my muscles strain and ligaments tear repeatedly, while using the intense pain as a gauge to my progress.

Without pain I wouldn't be sure, that my body was changing in anyway. So I strive to inflict injury on myself, trusting my body to recover.

While I was stretching, I began to wonder whether other stats could be gained through training, or more importantly I wondered if preexisting attributes could be trained. This was still the real world after all, it wouldn't make sense for the bodies real adaptive mechanism to be turned off....right?

I wasn't sure it would work, but I still had a couple hours or more, before my status window would appear again. With my bodies natural healing abilities, training would be a swift process, completely skipping over the recuperative phase of muscle development.

Finding a fortified corner, I began a workout routine, comprised of push-ups, squats, and including back and neck exercise from my previous world .

I remember when I was in my previous body, I had attempted several times to workout my human body, I was always extremely dedicated hoping to somehow changed myself, but unfortunately my body healed several times slower compared to the average person.

What would take the average person two days to recuperate from would take me up to three weeks. It got to the point in which a rigorous workout exercise only maintained a status quo, and several time after exercise my immune system would weaken and I would be bed ridden.

Now on the other hand, as I began to constantly strain my muscles. I felt a consistent painful and warming sensation, as my muscle rapidly tore and healed. Sweat poured from my body profusely creating a puddle on the cave floor below me.

With a normal constitution, I would have reach a point, in which my body became numb or unable to move, yet instead my body went through a constant painful refining process.

One hour of exertions that felt like an eternity passed me by, and I started to feel like the limbs of my body were losing their flexibility.

I stopped my exercise, and began to stretch while still laying in the puddle of my own sweat.

After only one hour of work, my muscle development was outstanding, as begun to limit the range of motion I adamantly worked hard for, I decide that from now on I would stretch after every fifteen minutes of exercise to keep my flexibility, as I painfully repositioned my ligaments and tendons.

I continued to stretch and workout in intervals for another one hour, till all of a sudden my vision began to go dark, and my stomach started feeling like a empty black hole in space.

Staggering to my feet, I approached the birds nest, and without energy to climb into it, I began to tear a hole into the side, with my talons. I opened the hole, and reached into the nest grabbing one of the large eggs, and breaking it over my face  as I ingested like my life depended on it.

With large gulps I swalllowed the gooey liquid inside the egg, then threw the shells to the side grabbing another from inside the nest.

After fully consuming both raw eggs my vision started to clear up, yet my stomach still felt empty and my body irregular.

I slowly walked back through the cave, entering the dungeon room entrance once again.

Barely paying attention to stealth I ran and jumped into the nest I hunted in several hour ago.

I landed besides the corpse I had left there earlier, and without removing the feathers I sank my teeth into the Birds corpse, and began to drink the avian blood from it long stagnant body.

The taste of the blood was not fresh, and it felt a little thick on my tongue, yet I still feasted more ravenously than ever before.

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Gulp gulp gulp gulp

Ahhhhhh

I finally drank my fill, then laying on my back, I covered my body with the birds wing and fell asleep.

......

Only minutes after falling asleep I reawaken. I had almost made a irreversible mistake, it seemed that while exercising my bodies expenditure of energy had been too great. I had constantly stimulated my regenerative abilities, and before I knew it, all the nutrients stored in my body from previous meals had been exhausted.

I almost carelessly lost the ability to function, if something like that were to happen in my current predicament, I would be destined to never leave this place.

While thinking of my close brush with misfortune, I blinked my eyes then

<<>>

Name: Adam Crane

Race: Ghoul

Level: 10 Skill points:25

Vitality: N/A

Strength: 19+7

Agility:  42+18

Intelligence: 80

Endurance: 230

My status window had finally popped-up, to show that I had reach level ten, with 25 un-allotted skill points to play with. When viewing the current skill points allotted into my agility and strength stats I found that both had increased slightly.

I was overjoyed because with this I had discovered that training could enhance stats, and all though the amount of increase seemed minuscule at first, I realized that the potential for future advancements was tremendous, over the course of two hours my stats increased by a total number of six points, and my endurance even went up by thirty points.

This was the first time that my endurance stat ever increased, and I had discovered earlier that skill points couldn't be allotted to it.

I now knew that this stat had to be trained by physical exertion.

Of the 25 un-allotted skill points, I distributed eighteen towards agility, bringing it to a nice even number of sixty, and the remaining 7 skill points were distributed to strength increasing the total to 26.

It was an exaggerated leap in capabilities that I could already feel while laying down, I felt like the grasp the invisible hand of gravity held on my body was slightly loosened, and an invigorating feeling of freedom washed over me.

Satisfied I made a move to dismiss my status window, but then something flashed in my mind, and I brought up the skill window for distorted step.

<<>>

Distorted Step

Active

you are able to move in unpredictable patterns

creating distortion in the space around your body

especially during the night

Cost: 10            

Studying the wording of the skill closely I began to wonder if I completely understood this skill, for one thing the first line of the skills description said " you are able to move in unpredictable patterns." I wondered what was considers an unpredictable pattern, even as a ghoul without the flexibility stat I could already do weird thing with my body.

Unpredictable patterns of movements was already one of my Fortas without activating a skill. Distorted step was labeled as a active skill and not a passive skill, meaning my pattern of unpredictable movements were somehow enhanced while the skill was active.

Furthermore reading further into the skill it said " creating distortions in the space around your body." While at first I had interpreted those words to only mean visual distortions. I began to wonder why the wording of the skill never specified the type of distortion created around your body. If there were further distortions happening, for example sound distortion, maybe just maybe this skill could be the answer to my problems.

It felt like it was a reach in logic, but then again I had never activated the skill for more than a few seconds in perilous situations, I could have missed something.

I dismissed the skill window, and raised one of my hands into the air. I swung it back and forth in the air and tried activating [distorted step]

......

Nothing happened and my arm kept lazily flowing in the air....

After a couple of seconds wondering why the skill didn't activate, I got another epiphany.

I gripped the large body of the bird I was still laying under, and kicked off the nest with my left leg activating [distorted step]

Crich

My body still clinging onto the bird rose into the air, and slanted past the edge of the nest like a pole vaulter. I landed silently on the ground below. I kept it in my mind to distort all sound around the circumference of my body. And it seem to have work.

I only made one sound during my initials step, then I entered my own world without sound.

Stepping on the ground, without lingering I sprinted out of the room. Leaving behind blurry white after images like a paranormal entity. The images stretched two inches from my body then immediately dissipated.

My body flashed passed the room at full speed. Distorted images appearing as I ran through the corridor. As I ran I had to concentrate tremendously, and began to see the images of sound waves being trapped around my body and altered. Some of the sound escaped the circumference of my body with frequencies so altered I couldn't audible hear it. The rest lingered around me swirling about.

I had never noticed this effect of distorted step before, using it for only instantaneous attacks a couple time, I probably was using this skill like a speed enhancer, or a disorientating attack, but it was neither, I didn't get faster while in distorted step, instead I became more mysterious. a delirious image of an illusionary being, coming to torment the psyche.

Seeing a rock formation just a couple feet in front of me I jumped into the air and somersaulted onto my feet again.

I underestimated my momentum, and instead of completing the movement on my feet, I jerk forward and rolled several times on the ground, skidding dangerously, the skill [distorted step] broke and all the sound wave escape my circumference in an instant, drowning out my fall with the loud tapping of my previous steps.

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap....

It was like I was still running even though I had already stopped. Looking up I found I had already arrived in front of the nest.

My speed was amazing now, it wasn't to the point in which I could outrun a train or something like that, but the speed at which I violently kick the earth and propelled myself forward reminded me of the irregular movement of a cheetah chasing prey. When I moved the feeling of transcending human limitation permeated my consciousness.

I immediately felt dizzy, and had to spit out a mouthful of blood.

Well time to eat again. [distorted step] was such a power drain when used that long.