As the mama bug, which was nearly as big as me, freed herself from the ground, and turned her eyes towards me, I, un-willingly, got a first-hand experience in gazing at her… glorious form.

Her carapace was mostly black, with only a few other lighter colours here and there, and her eyes were made of hundreds, if not thousands, of small panels. Her jaws were so big, and pointy, that I had no doubt that if she ever got a hold of me, I wouldn’t be able to free myself. Also, she had a few small spikes around the sides of her head and another one that was considerably larger than the others jutting out of her forehead, not that the spike was very big in itself, but in comparison with the others, it was really big.

And as I finished my appreciation of the mama bug’s glorious outer appearance, which would probably make anyone jump out of their skin if they weren’t expecting her, I started thinking about what to do.

“Do I escape or fight her?” as I mulled over that thought, I started weighing the cons and pros of the 2 options.

Escaping would be the safe option as I am not sure if I can win in a fight against her seeing as she is heavily armoured and probably the weakest part of her, her head, is covered in spikes that look fucking painful.

But on the other hand, she is probably strong and if I am able to defeat her, I’d get a lot of exp, and maybe a level up or 2!

Also, if I fight her, and win, I will have a corpse of… what I assume to be a predatory, or at least a scavenger, creature on my hand which would be a lot greater than a rotting rabbit and after getting her corpse, I can probably hunt small creatures and maybe a small predator or 2 and not have to worry about having to constantly seek out new corpses to puppeteer! But if I lose… I’d lose the only corpse on my hand, and I might actually die die this time…

As I continued to contemplate what to do, while keeping an eye on the mama bug, I couldn’t help but notice something weird…

“Why is she not moving? Is she not worried about me escaping and coming back another time to kill her hatchlings? Or is there someth-“ but before I could finish my line of thought, I heard skittering noises right behind me and at that moment I understood, the mama bug wasn’t alone.

And after hearing that skittering noise I gave all the power I could to my legs and jumped out of there! But whatever was behind me was still able to get a hit at my busted leg, and I felt the feet attached to that leg coming loose.

And as I made my landing, it wasn’t much of a landing and instead a short tumble that ended with me getting light bruises around my body. And after my tumbling stopped and I was able to get up, I quickly turned towards the bugs and saw 2 identical bugs looking at me and clearly preparing for a fight.

“Welp, that’s it. I am bolting away! No need to contemplate anymore.” I mean, what was I supposed to do in that situation, fight? Fuck no.

Fighting against one of those things would’ve been a big problem by itself, but 2 of those massive fucking bugs? Hell the fuck no! I may be functionally immortal, as long as I have a fresh supply of corpses that is… or at least I think I am, but I am not suicidal!

And as I started turning around to bolt away, as any sane person that possessed a rabbit’s corpse would, I nearly fell down on my face and after regaining my balance I looked at my hind legs to see the problem.

“Fuck, it’s totally useless now!” what I was looking at was my busted leg that was eaten by the lynx which now had another minor issue in the form of the foot attached to it being nearly detached from its place! Which would be a big problem by itself, but combined with that leg already being busted, it was impossible to use that leg now!

And as I started spewing a liberal stream of swear words, I saw some movement in the direction of the bugs and saw them repositioning themselves from far away each other and moving ever so slightly closer to me.

One of them, the one that hit me from the behind, was making an active effort to come into my field of vision and take my focus, while the other bug was going to my left, probably to further circle me and go behind my back to catch me off guard while I was focused on fighting the one in front of me and finish me off.

But unfortunately for them, I wasn’t a normal undead rabbit, I was a soul puppeteering an undead rabbit, and I was quite smart! So, I could use my innate intelligence to cook up a great plan to play them and win this battle with ease!

Except I couldn’t really do that for 2 simple reasons: Firstly, I was using the body of a rabbit with a broken leg and couldn’t use my advantage of speed against them.

Secondly… my intelligence was designed to use a rock to sharpen another rock, and then to use the sharpened rock as a weapon. Not come up with ways to fight giant bugs!

Wait, maybe an Australian could handle this… everything there is basically gigantic and trying to kill them so yeah, possibly, but sadly for me, I wasn’t an Australian, so I didn’t have any knowledge of fighting against terrors of the fucking night, so I’d need to come up with a plan, on my own, in the middle of the forest, next to a river, with nothing in sight that I could easily use to overcome this predicament…

“Yeah, I am fucked, aren’t I?”

Shaking off my negative thoughts, I started looking around, and observing the bugs and the forest around me, searching for something I could somehow use to either make the bugs lose my trac, or better yet, somehow kill them as I couldn’t lose this corpse because if I did, finding another one this close to a river would be a fucking miracle.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

So, I started looking around.

Next to the river there were small rocks, and a meter or so behind me, trees. The river wasn’t that fast flowing, so I could maybe use it to escape as I am positive that bugs don’t do too hot with water, but I didn’t know how deep the water was so that’s a no go, and the bugs were also in the direction of the river. I could also run deep into the forest and make them just stop fallowing me… if only one of my legs wasn’t useless and wouldn’t actually slow me down to a crawl.

“Hmm… maybe… maybe I could trick one of the bugs to charge into a tree, and get it stuck?” that… that wasn’t a bad idea as I really doubted these bugs were smart enough to understand that I was tricking them… or at least I hoped so, but there was a tiny miny problem, their horns were small.

I mean, they were pretty gigantic for a bug, don’t get me wrong, but they were not longer than a few centimetres, so, if I wanted to get them stuck, I would need to find a crack in a tree, trick them into charging at me while I was in front of the said crack, and then pray to whatever deity or demon that was willing to hear me so that the bug didn’t stop, or change it’s course… yeah so a big maybe. Not impossible but not that probable either.

“Hmm… so if I couldn’t trick them into getting stuck in a tree, why not trick them into attacking each other?”

As far as I understood, these bugs were trying to trick me to focus on one of them while another one went behind me and impaled me with its horn. So, if I had one of them in front of me, and another on at my back, I could maybe trick them into charging at each other. Sounds like a plan… wait a second.

“Why not do both plans?” I thought to myself.

I mean, nothing wrong with trying to do both as they don’t really get in the way of each other, and I am probably increasing my chances of succeeding in one of them! Nothing can go wrong whatsoever!

And right after I said that I heard a skittering sound behind me and quickly remembered that I was facing 2 very angry, and very big, bugs that didn’t care to ask for my consent before impaling me with their very big horns.

Quickly reacting to the skittering sound behind me, I hopped in the direction of the forest, but I wasn’t able to completely get out of the charging bugs way and it teared apart the fur at my right side, and a moment later I saw a small patch of dirtied and bloodied fur with some flesh clinging onto it on the bugs horn, but there was no blood as all of them had dried long ago.

And after finishing its charge, the bug positioned itself in front of me while the other one started circling behind me, but I wasn’t going to allow them any more freebies! So, I reoriented myself to have both of them in my sight, and started going back towards the trees, preparing to play my own tricks on them.

The bugs, however, didn’t plan on letting me go so easily, probably thinking I was trying to escape, because the bug in front of me charged at me once more while the other one started speeding up to get behind me. But I was able to successfully escape from the charging one, which made it clear why they were teaming on me because the bug just started running forwards while looking at the ground, pointing its head forwards, and it probably wouldn’t be able to change its direction or see where it was charging at which was a great thing to learn for my plan because now I was sure that I’d… probably be successful… to some degree.

No need to get my hopes high, because I can always fail but now, I am confident that at least one of my plans will work!

But my hopes were, as expected, quickly shattered because I saw the other bug charging at me too instead of trying to go behind me this time, probably realizing that if it didn’t do something quickly, I would escape. Not that I was trying to escape though.

After dodging the bug, I quickly started making my way towards the nearest tree, trying to keep both bugs in my line of sight so I may avoid their charges.

But before I could get far away, the bug with a patch of my fur on its horn, which I think is the first mama bug I saw, charged at me once again, but, I was able to skill fully dodge its attack and quickly get out of harm’s way!

…Except I couldn’t as I hit something hard while trying to hop out of the way. Which I realized, was the tree I was hoping to get one of the bugs to charge into, so, as quickly and as strongly as I could, I used all 3 of my working limbs and jumped out of the charging bugs way, but I couldn’t get away fast enough and the mama bug’s horn destroyed my only remaining good hind leg.

*chirp* *chirp!*

As the mama bug hit the tree, I heard a bird chirping in panic, it was probably resting on the branches of the tree but was now disturbed by the mama bug who rammed into tree while trying to get me.

“One… down?” I muttered to myself as I could see the mama bug was quite dazed, but before I could focus on everything going on, I heard a skittering sound right behind me and before I could even try to get away, I was impaled by a giant bug and started being swayed around by it.

“…F-fuck…” as the bug swayed me around like a piece of meat, which I literally was, I found solace in the fact that this was, probably, not a game over for me as I could always just get a new body.

“Well at least I got one of the fuckers to ram int-“

*ding*

Stray Soul William’s amount of mana has dropped to dangerous levels, if you do not gain more mana, or find a way to conserve more, your skill Bind (Z) will cancel itself.

Mana Points: 3/15

…Fuck.

Wait! No no no no no no NO NO!!!

I will NOT make it to a new corpse with that little mana! I will be dead dead for real this time!

NO! This can’t be happening there must be a way for me to get out of here! Think Will, think!

Then I started rapidly looking around for something to help me survive and making a lot of sounds, but no matter where I looked, or how hard I looked, there was nothing around me that could help me survive and slowly, dread started filling me.

“no…t-this is can’t be where everything ends… just… no…”

And as I was finally giving up hope and slowly started losing my vision on the most outer edges of my eyes, I saw the mama bug that had rammed into the tree struggling and it had sticks, leaves, and all sort of weird stuff on it, glued there by some egg yolk.

And as it struggled to remove the bird nests from its head, it must’ve heard me struggling because it turned towards me and started readying itself to charge. And before I could understand what was going on, it started charging and rammed itself into the ass of the other bug that was currently impaling me.

*SCREEEE-*

With a disgusting guttural screech, the bug that had impaled me started struggling to get itself from the mama bug’s horn, and realizing it had impaled an ally, the mama bug started trying to free its horn out of its friend to no avail.

And slowly, I saw the life leave the eyes of the bug impaling me, and quickly capitalizing on this new opportunity, I left my body, losing all my senses, just to enter the new one that had conveniently appeared in front of me.

“Die with ease knowing that I’ll put your body into a better use than you ever could, bug.”