hmhmhmhmhmhmhm-hmhmmmhmhm-badabing-badaboom-badabingbangbingbangboom Aaaaaand done! Gotta say Mia, not bad, not bad at all. Only took you... Dunno, few hours? But it's homey! You're also covered in dirt and mud but ehhhhh? Wash up later, for now let's begin the (dramatic music included) tooooooour! Man I'm really going crazy, huh? Ah well part of the life style. Alright let's see.
Starting off, we've got some patented shadow traps™️ plastered all around the nearby forest! Did some experimenting with shadow magic, turns out, trap runes are a thing! They're basically just normal runes that take longer to form into the real world, but they can be kept in the real world without actively having to hold them together. All it took was a "bit" of extra instructions in the magic! They can also activate automatically which is you know, pretty cool. Step on the inconspicuous drawing in the floor? Boom ya blinded buddy. Sheer darkness covering your senses, it's over.
They've also got this nifty little feature that alerts me when they activate, to divulge the patented shadow traps™️ recipe , would take quite the bribe. But it's a good thing I'm not telling this to anybody but myself here. "High, Shadow, High, Persistence, Activation, Delay, Alert." Admittedly, that almost knocked me out on the first cast. And it still did for all the subsequent ones, it took everything I had to use it even once which is... Kind of worrying, but could still do it so, hah!
Also, as you're so astute to have noticed that "Delay", "Activation" and "Alert" Didn't have any power modifiers before they were used, some runes don't actually require modifiers to be used. Methinks it's because those runes themselves are modifiers, but certain modifiers need power modifiers as well. Took me a long time to figure that out, actually managed to faint for the first time while experimenting as well. Bottom line, magic sucks, I hate it, stop being so complicated. Moving on!
Next up, the first place where I can hopefully feel safe sleeping in! My cramped little hole. Significantly more underwhelming then I made it sound, I know... Anyway, I just dug a hole into a slightly raised piece of the ground. It wasn't hard, I'm pretty small so I don't need a big spot. It did take me awhile though. It's also a little slanted, so rain water shouldn't pile in it. I mean, provided rain falls? I'd think it would given how big of a forest this place is. But I can't ignore the fact that I haven't actually seen any rain yet.
Cozy hole, traps all around, though they're not exactly sustainable... and a stream of water that is perfectly drinkable nearby! Alright, this is officially my new base of operations. I'll just have to uh... Remember where it is? I don't know what the range of perception on runes with "Alert" is but I wouldn't think it's infinite? So if I get too far away I'll need a way to remember how to get back... Problems for future me. Not present me! Let's go do something already.
Mia took off on a slow pace, mildly jaunting around the dark forest. For the moment, she actually had the peace of mind to just go around without overthinking about everything and worrying herself half to death. Her newfound strength granting her the privilege to reign above any would be attackers. Though, her worries were slightly rekindled, like sparks on a pile of wet sticks.
Footprints. Human footprints? That's distinctively boot-like... Mia stared at the dirt worriedly, grinding to a halt as soon as she'd noticed the odd trail. Monsters in the forest didn't leave a trail, SHE didn't leave a trail and she hadn't even actively thought about it that much. Covering or not leaving tracks was just a completely natural thing for any monster born here.
Actually, were we even really born? I just kind of popped into existence. Maybe I'm the outlier, but I dunno... Regardless. These have gotta be human prints, but what the hell are they doing out here? Surely they're reeling after such a massive horde was attacking them all day long? Would they even have the man power to spare to do... Whatever they're doing? I mean regardless it's probably fine. What are the chances that they're specifically out here to hunt me down, kill me for absolutely no reason, and they just so happened to somehow find me? It's preposterous. Any other opinion is paranoia! Paranoia I say!
Mia shook her head clear, dismissing the chance of these people having any reason to hunt her down. Nor the means to do so. She was fairly certain her stealth was at least somewhat alright. Even if that... One. Guy. Had seen through it fairly easily, the other archers seemed to have some difficulty keeping track of her. So avoiding the people out here should be fairly easy even if they happened to come looking for her. For whatever reason.
No need to be no paranoid, no need to be scared even if you're paranoid. Carry on as usual girl. Hell maybe it'd even be possible to introduce myself? Concerns for if you manage to come across them. Anyways, I'm thinking... Venison? That's deer meat right? Since I've got taste buds might as well try to satisfy them right? Heard it tasted fairly good somewhere in my uh, past life. Still doesn't feel very real, just two days ago I was doing mundane things like, taking art class. Now I've apparently killed a hundred monsters, eaten a fair amount of them, avoiding humans cause I think they'll kill me... People really do change fast under crisis, huh? I feel like a stranger in my own body if I'm being honest with myself. I... I really need a way to process all of this, but it'll have to wait I guess.
Now that I think about it, I realize I've literally been unable to "think about it" since I got here. Every moment was running or hiding from something, fighting to uh, not die. Bar magic testing, but that wasn't some kind of emotional revelation like the confrontation I forced myself into against myself a few hours ago. Was that... A trauma response? Holy... I'd tell myself to just, "not think about it", but I don't want to not think about it. If I did that I wouldn't even be hum-... No, I'm already not "human" any more, but I wouldn't be a thinking sentient being. I mean it's literally in the saying. "Thinking", I can't just... Turn emotions and thoughts off. I'm gonna say that the correct response to this particular question is to not, "not think about it", but to instead put it off for later when I'm not standing in the middle of nowhere.
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Where was I? Venison? Venison. Deer things, meat. Cause I'm a carnivore, with human taste buds for some reason. How did you make meat taste better again? Ah hell figure it out on the way, come on get going.
Mia walked openly around the forest, the barrier of caution that had kept her alive up to then slowly starting to crumble. Despite her initial disposition against overconfidence, repeated efforts and demonstrations served to tell her otherwise. That she should, in fact, be overconfident. Because nothing in this forest seemed to be as strong as her. Or at least, nothing directly near her. Which she also felt was very weird, cause she'd been alive for two days in this body. Somehow she doubted that put her in the upper echelons of power in this world, but what the hell did she know? Maybe Riftwalker was some ultra broken ability that just made you a hundred times stronger for some reason.
After awhile, she actually managed to find a monster fitting her description of "deer". It was a very uneventful encounter, as it hadn't even noticed Mia until she was already right below it. Even though it had noticed her at the last moment, it hadn't even been able to properly attack her. Given that it's head was hanging on to it's torso by a thread within a single blow. So, said fight didn't last very long, clearly. It immediately collapsed to the side, dead. No level up, nothing of note, just meat now. Meat that Mia wanted to experiment with!
Alright, so what exactly about animal carcass makes it taste bad? I don't have any hopes of being able to start a fire, I mean, maybe I could, but could I control it? I don't think so, so I am NOT doing that in the middle of a very flammable forest. Therefore, I must find out why else it tastes bad and remove those parts of it. For science, steel thyself Mia! Then she took a bite, grimaced through it as usual. Though it was for some reason, significantly harder to force herself to do it then usual. Maybe because this one wasn't strictly a necessity for survival, her previous human reflexes were built to not want the objectively disgusting meal. That would be her theory anyways, regardless though she sucked it up and chewed.
Ok, first off, Yeuck! Meat's super hairy-ok check that one off, skin the animal if you want it to taste better, maybe don't eat glorified leather, or unglorified leather? Disregarding that, the meats super chewy, like, uncomfortably so. Think back to a time you've eaten a chicken nugget, maybe microwaved it just a little too long right? Then the meat inside got like a rubbery consistency and you couldn't properly chew it, yeah? Think of this like that, but instead of specific patches of inedible nugget it's just the entire thing with less rubbery to it. It also doesn't help that the entire thing tastes like iron because it's coated in blood-oh no duh! Get rid of the blood for less taste of iron in your mouth! See how helpful this is already Mia? You should walk yourself through basic obvious things more often.
So like, cut away the hide first, can't do much about the meat without actively cooking it, then bleed it out before eating it. Now how in the hell am I going to do that? Problems for future Mia I suppose. Might be a little late for this one though... She stared down at the dead body of the deer monster, collapsed on it's side with a small part of it's side ripped out, head barely attached. I mean, don't waste food though right? Never really hunted as a human but heard about hunting without a goal being a shitty thing to do. You've eaten... At least ten bodies so far! This one isn't so different, you just don't feel your stomach growling in your ears like it's about to rip it's way outside of your torso and eat you like a xenomorph because you won't feed the damn thing! Really it's a simple problem to overcome, just steel your will aaaaand...
...
Mia didn't know why she didn't just leave the deer. She felt like she was gonna throw up but, hey! No wasted food! (Well, as little wasted as possible, she is quite small.) She definitely wouldn't of done that as a human, she supposed being a wolf might've been influencing her subconsciously a bit, even if she didn't actively realize it. Mia stumbled around the forest nauseously, stealthily of course, as was her natural predisposition. It wouldn't do to just let everything see her sauntering around like the contents of stomach were trying to jump ship, which they were. Ok, think of it like this, if you throw up, you'll have to ACTUALLY eat more-oh god, nope, that just made it worse. It's like thinking of the taste of medicine, you just taste it again-oh god.
She fought hard, a valiant soldier against the cause of not vacating the contents of one's own stomach. Lying down on the ground in an attempt to calm the fuzz of her own stomach. What the hell...? This can't just be a shitty tasting thing. Even if I was tuning out the mental damage that these meals deal beforehand there's no WAY it was this bad. Was this deer sick or something? Holy crap! Reeling in the nausea once again she struggled to remain calm. Slowly shuffling to the side of a tree to hide herself in the shadow. She huffed, hard, though her attention was momentarily shifted to something else.
Ding!
What the hell was that? Is somebody in my mind? Helllooooo? Wanna take me to civilization? I'd like that better then being out here on my own in the wild, please? No? nobody in my brain? Dar-URP... God, god. No, ok, it's not a magic man in my brain, it's DEFINITELY not whoever brought me here, I'd recognize that "voice", if I was half dead and unconscious, that'd be a real trauma response. So what else would play in my brain at random? Would... OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH my trap went off! Alright! Let me go see what's up with tha-HRRRRK!
The details of her following harrowing experience would be shelved, for most certainly not a later date, and instead, forever.