Race change completed - Alloy Elemental

"Alloy elemental? That's decidedly vague." I quietly mumbled to myself.

"Shhhh." Nyssa suddenly popped up in front of my face with a finger on her lips.

I was puzzled until I saw the fae's terrified face. "What's wrong?" I whispered.

"Wolves." She looked towards the mountain entrance. "They took over our house while you were sleeping!" Nyssa quietly shouted.

"Oh, is that all?" I asked, with a small laugh.

"Raak, this is no time for jokes, what are we going to do?"

"Nyssa, look, there are a group of wolves, trapped in a room made entirely of stone," I stated.

Nyssa raised her finger as if to argue, then paused. "Wow, that was really dumb of them, wasn't it?"

"Yup," I said simply and stood up, just leaving Thud where it was.

I casually walked over to the doorway, not even attempting to hide my presence. By the time I could see inside the open room, all of the wolves were awake. One slightly larger wolf was on my bed, growling. Seven regular wolves were on the floor, growling.

I slammed the door shut.

I placed both my palms on the floor, pressing my mana into it forcefully.

"What are you going to do?" Nyssa asked.

"This," I replied simply.

Cries and whimpering noises erupted from the other side of the doorway. I turned around and walked out into the rising sun and waited for my mana to regenerate.

After 5 minutes I returned and poured mana into the floor again, before warning Nyssa. "You might not want to go in until I've had time to clean up."

"N-No, I'll help, I can move the wolves out of the way with space magic. I need to try and get used to things like this." She said with a hint of determination.

I thought for a moment. "Alright, but if you can't handle it, just leave it to me," I said, before opening the door.

Inside the room was a disaster, 8 wolves, all with large holes in their bodies. Blood was pooling on the ground and running into the now red fountain. I had created a sheet of half meter spikes from the entire floor and bed, skewering them all, before removing it on my second pass.

The fae woman flew up right behind me and instantly turned pale. 

"Are you alright, Nyssa?" I asked, stepping into her line of sight.

"I'll be okay. Just give me a second." Nyssa took a deep breath and balled her hands into fists, before flying into the room and quickly storing all the wolves.

"Thanks, Nyssa. You can wait outside while I clean up the rest if you want." 

She shook her head. "No, I'm okay, It's just a little bl-blood." 

I nodded and placed my hands on the floor again. I lowered the floor slightly and let water from the stream flood into the room, before tilting the floor to drain all of the water back out. The floor still had blood on it, but it was far less than before.

"Come on, I need more mana for the next part," I said waving to Nyssa as I walked out the door.

"Right, yeah." She said absently but still followed. "Um, what happened to you? Yesterday I mean." She asked as we got out into the fresh air.

"Ahhh, right." I sighed. "I had a 'race adjustment' apparently. One of the stone bricks contained iron and was incompatible with earth elemental, I guess."

"I've never heard of anything like that before." She thought for a moment. "But it might have something to do with your passive skill." She said.

"Mmm? how so?" I asked.

"Well, it would normally never be a problem for an earth elemental to eat stone as they wouldn't be able to chew iron with stone teeth. What race did you change into?" Nyssa looked at the red veins starting in the center of my chest and thinning out towards my extremities.

"Alloy elemental," I grumbled. "From the sounds of it, I shouldn't have any problems eating whatever metal I come across now." I picked up a couple of the bricks as I spoke, and started weighing them against each other, some of them were decidedly heavier, so I set them in a second pile.

After a few minutes, once my mana was full again, I headed back inside. All I did was scrape off the very top layer of the smooth stone floor. I then crushed the whole bundle into a ball, took it outside, and launched it to the other side of the stream, prompting a gain in earth manipulation.

"Alright, everything is cleaned up." I told the fae "How are you doing?"

"Better." She said and pointed off to the side. "Your wolves are over there."

"Thanks," I said. "Can you get a big fire going? I'm going to need the coals."

"For leatherworking again?" she asked with a look of disgust.

"Not this time, the hides are all full of holes. I'm just going to smoke the meat so it lasts longer."

Nyssa nodded and lit a fire before stacking plenty of logs on it to burn down.

Meanwhile, I got started on dismantling the wolves. I removed the hides and just threw them off to the side, for now, appraisal showed them as 'extremely poor quality wolf hide'. I then began cutting the meat into very thin strips, using leaves to hold the sliced pieces.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

After I finished cutting up the wolf meat, I looked over to see what Nyssa was doing. She was taking care of the fire and facing the other direction. In light of that, I got started on the hides, cutting them into smaller pieces. I then fused my tongue into my body, before stuffing a piece of the filthy hide into my mouth and swallowing it. Removing my tongue did exactly as I had hoped, removed my sense of taste. 'However that works' I thought to myself.

Due to a special action, Wisdom has increased by 1

I kept eating the hides until there was nothing left, then I ate all of the internal organs as well for good measure. Over the course of my meal, I learned the name of the wolves was simply 'Forest Wolf', with the large one that was on my bed being 'Forest Wolf Alpha'. I also found out that I didn't need to eat the meat to gain stats from a creature. All together with the work and everything else, I ended up with 18 strength, 8 vitality, 14 dexterity, 4 intelligence, and 3 wisdom. I also gained 5 levels in dismantling, even with the very poor quality hides.

And finally, I also gained a new skill, which was exceptionally jarring to gain 5 levels in at once.

You have gained the skill: Novice Enhanced Senses

Passive: Improved Sight, Hearing and Smell

Enhances basic senses used in tracking predators and prey

Almost immediately, I could see farther, hear Nyssa mumbling to herself about me eating guts, and smell blood everywhere around and on me. The sensory overload was disorienting, to say the least. I closed my eyes and covered my nose to try and block out some of the changes. 

Now, with my eyes and nose blocked off, I could even hear the tiny fae breathing, which helped me to relax a bit. I slowly unblocked my nose, I could smell smoke, raw meat, and blood from all around. This too I soon got used to and finally opened my eyes. It was like a completely different way of seeing the world, there were more sights, more smells, more sounds.

I just sat down and watched the forest.

"Raak. Are you okay?" Nyssa asked, quietly approaching.

"Eha ehes-." I recreated my tongue. "Enhanced senses. From the wolves." I said just as quietly.

"What is it like?" Nyssa looked curiously at what I was staring at.

"It's like." I thought for a while. "Like I was living in a glass bubble, cut off from the world, and now I'm out."

I pointed to a seemingly random bush 25 meters away. "There is a rat over there, eating a rotten piece of fruit. It seems too scared to get near our camp, even with the smell of raw meat saturating this place,"

"Sorry about eating that in front of you, I thought you would be too busy with the fire to notice." I suddenly apologized.

"Eh? You heard that?" She looked stunned. "Don't worry about it too much, I know what your skill does, and I should try to get used to seeing some rather disgusting things." She said with a grimace.

"How did you even manage to eat that?" Nyssa asked.

"I got rid of my tongue," I said with a small frown.

Nyssa giggled at that. "Well, at least we know you don't enjoy eating raw scraps and intestines."

"Who would," I said, sticking my tongue out at the fae. "Bleh."

I started picking the meat up to carry over to the fire, before Nyssa swooped in and stored it all, and flew off, giggling.

I shrugged and followed after. The Fire had burned down into a nice coal bed so I created a rack of stone above it and started hanging the meat strips the fairy had deposited nearby. 

"Add just a few small pieces of wood at a time, just enough to keep it smoking, please," I said as I finished hanging the last pieces.

"Nn!" She nodded and tossed a few twigs onto the coals.

I went over to the side of the cave entrance and pulled down the rat hide, giving it another quick coating before putting it back. 'One more day of drying, then I have to stretch it out.' I thought to myself.

I washed the guts off my hands and walked over to the stacks of bricks I had sorted. I appraised a few of the bricks from the original stack and they just showed up as 'stone brick'. I didn't notice it before but all of the bricks in the other stack were a bit redder, which I now realize is rust, seeing as they show up as 'ironstone brick'. 

I gingerly ate one of the bricks from the ironstone pile, waiting for the pain from last time, but it didn't appear. I looked at my hands to simply see the small red veins grow a bit thicker. I was consciously holding myself at the same size, so while my mass was still increasing, my size didn't at all. I found that rather helpful seeing as I didn't want to be 15 feet tall and end up the final boss of the forest or something.

"Nyssa, if humans came to the forest, would they try to kill me?" I asked, suddenly curious.

The fae pondered for a bit, before replying. "Probably not, most sentient life forms are treated courteously, unless they attack first, of course. There are, however, some unscrupulous people who don't really care if a monster is sentient or not," she said sadly.

"So, I'm considered a monster then?" I asked.

"Technically yes, since your crystal core works exactly like a mana core for magic purposes. Like my lighter, which uses a small fire core, some people might try to take your core to use for casting earth magic." Nyssa quietly stated.

We sat quietly for a while and I continued eating the red bricks until they veins were more like thick bands of red across my entire skin. I was now a whole 43kg heavier and decided to do something I've been wanting to do for a while.

I used the extra mass to change my outer layer of skin to look like clothes. Just a simple shirt and pants, but better than walking around in my underpants day-in day-out.

Nyssa snorted a little from her place by the fire. "Finally decided to get dressed?"

"I apologize, now if you want to see my literally chiselled muscles, you will have to ask politely," I responded and grinned.

I took one of the pieces of meat off the rack and tried to bend it, it snapped in half so I ate half and set the other half beside Nyssa. Smoking the meat got me another 3 cooking levels, which I thought was strange, as I hadn't done most of the work. Shrugging, I started pulling the pieces off the rack and setting them to the side, where the fae stored them away.

"The meat should last for a very long time as long as it doesn't get wet," I told her, but it shouldn't be a problem unless she has a pool hidden in her storage for some reason.

I looked at the veins on my hands and arms again. "I should probably try to find some purer iron, I could use some to strengthen Thud as well," I mumbled.

"Mmmm, the closest place to find smelted iron would probably be the goblins," Nyssa said. "They have a small village near the road north of here and attack caravans. So they would probably have whatever weapons they managed to take from weaker guards or merchants."

"How far is it from here?" I asked.

"About 3 hours, if you walk," Nyssa responded.

I looked at the sun that was now setting. "Should we leave early in the morning then? It's getting a bit too late and it would be night by the time we got there."

We spent the short time before the sun went down with me playing around with my clothes, making it into a business suit, a set of spiky armour, a speedo (which Nyssa yelled at me for). I finally finished the show with a set of pyjamas with tiny light red elementals (made of my iron) patterned all over it, which Nyssa said made me look ridiculous.

We went to sleep just as the sun was going down, with the soft grinding of the sliding door.

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Name Raak Race Alloy Elemental Mass 219kg Str 34 Vit 33 Dex 24 Int 21 Wis 20 Hp 500 Mp 305

Skill List - Passive Level Glutton 1(MAX) Crystal Core 1(MAX) Journeyman Photosynthesis 5 Novice Hand to Hand Fighting 2 Novice Two-Handed Weapon Mastery 7 Novice Dismantling 8 Novice Cooking 5 Novice Leatherworking 2 Novice Enhanced Senses 5

Skill List - Active Level Glow 1(MAX) Apprentice Earth Manipulation 5 Novice Space Manipulation 10 Novice Plant Manipulation 5 Appraisal 1(MAX)