I ran around for a little bit and damn was I fast, like seriously if this thing had run away there was approximately no chance that I would have been able to catch it. I could easily leap 8 feet into the air and I ran straight up a tree like it was nothing. Backflipping was a thought away and it was awesome. I was sorely tempted to stay in this body but a few things made me pause. I could get tired, my stamina would only recover when I wasn't using it so I either had to stop or walk slowly for it to recover. I didn't have opposable digits so I wouldn't be able to use tools or weapons, I did have claws now though. Then there was the collar around my next.
I really really did not want to be running around inside of somebodies dead pet, not only did that feel incredibly disrespectful, even more so than killing it since it had tried to kill me first, I lead the risk of them finding me and locking me up in the house or something. That could either be really useful or end up being really bad for my health or sanity.
I decided that I would use this body only until I could find some good materials to make a new body out of. Maybe find a quarry or a mine. Maybe they had golem shops with all sorts of bodies on display and I could try to steal one. I wanted to find wherever this little kitty had come from and at least see what it was like. I walked upriver, back to where I had first found the cat and tried to use my vision as a sense as a tracker might. I picked up the "scent" my new body had left behind when it had found me and began following it.
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As it turns out the woods are quite safe. I know that because I'm pretty sure I've been everywhere in it at this point. This cat was either wandering around here all day or I was a god, awful tracker. Maybe both to be honest. I eventually just got lucky and stumbled upon a well-trodden path through the forest and followed it back to a small village. I could see maybe 3 dozen buildings from my rooftop perch. None of them looked to be a golem shop which honestly didn't surprise me but was a little disappointing. It was still nighttime though so I was holding out hope that there would be golems walking around everywhere later.
The houses were pretty much all wood and stone cottages, there was a larger building in the middle that was entirely made of stone but most were just housing. Thathed rooves, dirt roads, very medieval but I was also expecting that. These kinds of worlds were always sort of medieval since they had magic and didn't really need science. Maybe I could start a technological revolution one day with what I knew from earth. Would that make the gods angry though?
I wasn't really keeping track of my thoughts, I had some time to kill and had let my body fall asleep. That was weird, my core had only recently woken up but my body was tired. I'm just glad that I didn't need to sleep alongside my body. As I lay there listening to my own soft snoring I watched a few lanterns flicker on in the houses. Some of these people woke up before the sun it would seem, that was not a schedule I could keep. Well... maybe I could now? I was no longer not a morning person.
A couple of men came out of their house first, one was pale white with dark black hair, stocky and thick with muscle. The other was skinny, a yellowed ginger colour to his hair and much more tan than the first, he held a bow and wore a quiver whilst the other had just general work clothes that were heavily stained with dust. They shared a kiss before one took off down the path I had followed here and the other walked down the street towards a covered wagon. He ended up leaning against it on his own for a little while.
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I got up and switched rooves so I could watch what he was doing. It wasn't much later that more people began to exit their homes, most went to the forest or joined the man at the wagon but a few went about other business. I noticed that all of the others around the man by the wagon wore similarly dirty clothes and were just as thick with muscle. If that was not a group headed for a mine I didn't know anything. Well, I guess they could be lumberjacks or something but it didn't really look like soil that was covering them.
At some point, one of them scanned the crowd of a dozen or so men and shouted something before hitching some horses up to the wagon as everyone climbed on. I took this opportunity to jump onto the top of the wagon and sit up there. It was no more than a couple of minutes before we were on our way out of the village.
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It only took 20 minutes to get to the mine, didn't really seem to be worth the wagon ride but maybe after a day swinging a pick down there you just couldn't bear to walk home afterwards, I could definitely see that. I guess they'd need to bring whatever they were digging up somewhere too. When we arrived at the mine I stayed on the roof long enough to watch them all enter the mine and one of them to post up in a hut to one side.
I then, as sneakily as I could, jumped down and hopped inside. My stomach gave me a growl when I was outside of the hut and I paused for long enough to make sure the man inside didn't come out before slipping inside. There was a small room full of hooks, on which were a selection of bags that my nose and my sense told me had food inside. This would probably be the last time I could actually eat food for quite a long time, even if I would be losing this body soon. Someone could donate a sandwich for that cause, right?
I managed to pull out some food and pulled apart the cloth covering it, it was some kind of meat and vegetable sandwich between what looked like a brown bread bun. The meat was a bright purple which baffled me for a moment, it was a very innocuous thing but it really drove home how alien this world might be to me. It was sort of amazing actually that the creatures I had seen so far had been people and this cat. Even the trees had looked fairly similar to on earth. I wonder what animal this was from?
It tasted remarkably sweet and salty for what I was pretty sure was uncured meat which was odd to me but was undeniably tasty all the same. The bread was clearly fresh, much fresher than I had ever had on earth and was delightful too. I ate my fill which was only half the sandwich and left the other half on the floor, I couldn't really put it back in. I then slinked further into the mine.
I entered a chamber or maybe a cave, around it there were several carts filled with rocks that were on a number of tracks. There were way more than I had expected with only a dozen miners but maybe in this world of stats and magic one man could do the work of 5 back home? That was a thought that was as exciting as it was terrifying. How strong were the strongest people here? Were they armies unto themselves or was there a limit to how strong a person could get? I would like to find out one day.
This room was pretty much empty and there was a pile of unlaid tracks piled up in a corner of the room, I was going to just try to use some of the rocks but maybe I could use metal? I mean it wasn't alive, right? That might be enough. I went over and hid behind the pile and began infusing it with my mana and found out pretty fast that metal took a LOT of mana to saturate. Like, enough metal for just the leg of my old dirt body took more than my entire mana pool.
This was going to be a long job, I'm glad I ate something.