I stared, wide-eyed, at the forest around us.
It looked the same as ever — gentle breeze rustling the branches overhead and early-morning sunlight dappling the leaves underneath. But without our mother there to watch over us, it all felt so much more…menacing.
I hadn’t yet actually seen any predators in my few months of life, but I knew they were there. I’d seen enough evidence of their passing to prove their existence — their scent barely detectable on the wind, their scat with tiny, undigested bones inside, the shadow of wide wings passing overhead. Each time we’d caught even a whiff of danger, our mother had signaled a retreat to the safety of the burrow where we’d hide for hours until the danger passed.
Yet now we were alone, on our own to detect and hide ourselves from all the dangers of the world. Or at least that was what I assumed.
I supposed it was possible that our mother would be returning, that she had a legitimate reason for — for the first time — running off outside our normal foraging area without warning, and that she’d be back within an hour. Part of me hoped desperately for that to be true, for there to be someone in a position of authority working for my survival, even if that someone was only a chipmunk. Yet I doubted it.
Beyond her basic duties, our mother had never shown any affection to her children, nothing like what I occasionally saw between the siblings. And I could see the logic behind her leaving, as well — our stash was almost completely empty and our foraging expeditions were ranging further and further afield with each passing day. Our tiny section of forest was simply not enough to support five hungry chipmunks, not in the limited area we’d previously been foraging.
Of course, we could simply forage further out. But every step from the burrow was one further step from safety. And I found it…a struggle…to move too far away from our bastion of safety.
I’m not sure if it was my recent ‘death’ or a consequence of my new prey instincts; most likely some combination of both. But I found it extremely difficult to move too far from safety, to the point that I would almost start to feel like I was having a panic attack. Open areas triggered the same reaction, to a lesser extent. I was generally fine exploring the forest while near a tree trunk or climbing through undergrowth, but any clearing wider than a few feet made me nervous.
And it was those nerves now that I fought to control. I had my siblings, but aside from a litter of legitimate chipmunks who might leave at any time, I was alone. No friends, no support group to catch me if I were to fall…completely alone, my safety no one’s concern but my own. And I was only a few links up from the bottom of the food chain.
As if mocking my fears, the system chose that moment to chime with a notification.
New skill available for purchase!
Skill: Prey’s Awareness
Cooldown: 30 minutes
Description: Provides a minuscule increase to your perception for the next minute.
I dismissed the notification with a thought — like the previous offering, I had no way to ‘purchase’ the offered skill, so it was nothing more than a distraction in my suddenly much more dangerous world.
I rubbed my paws over my tiny ears, a nervous squeak — a different noise I’d yet to hear from my mother or any of my siblings — escaping my mouth as I fought the urge to dash back to the burrow and curl up in a dark corner. I could feel the burrow behind me with the extra sense in my new body that always pointed me toward home. It felt like safety. Like protection.
Like comfort.
I took a deep, shuddering gasp before straightening my body, rising up on my hind legs.
I would not fall into that trap again.
Peter and Jacob were both already foraging, but Alphonse and Miriam were staring at me curiously.
“What are you looking at?” I squeaked at them. Alphonse turned away while Miriam continued to stare. I sighed. “Let’s go get some food. I’m not sure how bad winter’ll be, but we should probably build up our stash in preparation.” The trees were still a dark green and the morning sun was pleasantly warm, so I didn’t think winter would be an issue anytime soon. But assuming the seasons on this world remotely resembled those of Earth, we’d want to be prepared.
With a squeak, I led Miriam in search of Peter and whatever food he’d miraculously managed to find.
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It had been three days since our mother disappeared, and things had been going surprisingly well.
As I’d expected, we’d been forced to forage further from the burrow to adequately fill our stomachs, but without the older chipmunk leading the way and claiming all the more easily accessible foods — though Fat Peter was doing his best to fill the role — we returned home after each expedition with full stomachs. We hadn’t seen any fresh signs of predators in that time, either, and I was almost able to relax as we hopped through the forest in the neverending search for sustenance.
Today, though, was a bit different.
“I don’t care what you say. I’m not eating that,” I squeaked resolutely.
Fat Peter, being a chipmunk, didn’t respond. But I imagined he was regarding me judgementally as he chomped down on the earthworm, the end of the worm still wriggling as the first half slid down his throat.
I didn’t care that my tastebuds were now different and that the worm might be the most decadent meal a chipmunk could ever experience — which from the way Peter and the rest of them were gorging themselves, might be the case — I wouldn’t be eating something that wriggled as it was being consumed. Not to mention that the largest of the worms were almost half our size, and muddy and slimy to boot.
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We’d gotten a heavy downpour the previous night, the first I had experienced in this life, and a small stream of water had flowed into our borrow before soaking into the earth below. It was less unpleasant than I otherwise might have expected, but certainly not comfortable — and now this.
With the heavy rain soaking the ground, the forest floor was positively littered with earthworms and other grubs, which my siblings pounced on with gusto. Our foraging had been ranging further out, and though exact distances were difficult to gauge in my new body, I would guess that the previous evening’s expedition extended almost fifty feet from our home. Yet today, with the veritable ‘feast’ littering the ground around the burrow, none of my siblings seemed inclined to search for anything else. And I didn’t want to go foraging alone.
Which unfortunately didn’t leave me with many options.
A half-hour later of half-hearted foraging for other foods in the proximity of the burrow, I found myself back with the rest of my siblings, the smallest worm I could find wriggling on the ground in front of me.
“Just imagine it’s a noodle,” I told myself as I pointedly did not look at my soon-to-be breakfast. “Just an extra thick strand of spaghetti. Spaghetti sometimes wiggles if you slurp it. And what is marinara sauce except tomato-based slime?”
I shuddered.
I had the presence of mind to realize that my pep talk was serving the opposite of its intended purpose. So before I could lose my nerve any further, I leaned forward and bit into the worm, right in the center.
It didn’t tear cleanly. My mouth wasn’t big enough to fully bite through the worm, not when I was approaching it so hesitantly. Which meant the worm was forced to fold as I tried to suck it down, both ends of the worm wiggling frantically as I choked on the extra-thick middle.
It wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
…that was about the only positive thing I could say about the ordeal.
Five minutes of gagging, choking, and tears later — apparently, chipmunks could cry — the worm was down, and I lay on the forest floor gasping for air.
Eubluic Earthworm defeated.
+1 exp.
The notification flashed in my view for only a second, just long enough for my mind to register its presence without obstructing my vision, and then it was gone. But the implications of the message lingered.
From my back I looked at the forest around me, littered with worms and grubs of all kinds. No — littered with experience.
I swallowed painfully as the gorge rose in my throat. This was not going to be pleasant.
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On the plus side, it was easier to get the worms down when I considered them as little bundles of experience rather than as food. On the negative side…pretty much everything else.
Twenty minutes and seven worms later, I was absolutely stuffed, the fullest I’d ever been since being reborn as a chipmunk. I didn’t feel as if I could swallow a single seed more, much less a full worm — yet I was so close. Eight experience out of the needed ten, only two worms away from my first level-up.
With how easily we’d found the food today, Miriam had already returned to the burrow, while Alphonse and Jacob were playing tag around the trunk of a nearby tree. Peter was the only one still with me focusing on food. At the rate he was downing worms I was sure he’d long passed the ten exp mark, assuming he had access to the same system as me. But if that was the case, he gave no indication of a level-up or any other change the system might have granted.
Smaller grubs gave no experience, as I’d discovered with some dismay. If they had, I could’ve easily gotten more than enough experience from consuming those. Unfortunately, only the worms were valid targets for my growth, and two more worms were much more than I’d be able to eat. Both for the moment and potentially even the rest of the day — the thought of another foraging session later in the evening almost made me sick.
Although…
The system never said anything about eating the worms. I pulled up the latest message with a thought, the small blue window hovering in front of my eyes.
Eubluic Earthworm defeated.
+1 exp.
Defeated. If I only had to defeat the worms to get the experience, I could get the final two points of experience right now. Just a few quick chomps of my teeth, some scratches with my claws…it’s not like the worms were particularly tough.
But I hesitated.
It felt wrong to kill something I wasn’t going to eat, to kill just for the sake of killing. And it wasn’t like we could easily store the worms’ bodies for later consumption, not in the same way we could store nuts and other foods in our stash. Just a few days earlier, our mother had abandoned us (I presumed) because of the lack of food immediately around our burrow. To waste some of that food felt almost sacrilegious.
Yet at the same time…it was two worms. I wouldn’t be wrecking the ecosystem. I wasn’t killing someone’s pet or another higher-thinking animal. Or at least I hoped not — if it happened to me, I supposed it was possible for someone else to be inhabiting one of the worms’ bodies.
I pushed that thought out of my head. I couldn’t afford to second guess every creature I killed, not if I planned to be an omnivore. Especially now that I knew killing other animals was the key to leveling.
I leaned forward to the worm in front of me, prepared to tear it apart — when my instincts screamed at me.
I didn’t second guess myself, my body moving before my mind had a chance to register what my subconscious had picked up. I leaped forward, my tiny claws barely finding purchase in the wet soil beneath me. There was a crash of crumpled leaves as something landed in the space I’d been occupying only a moment before.
I could barely see it as I fled, courtesy of my near-three-sixty field-of-view, but all I could make out were feathers, a beak, and talons — curved, ridiculously sharp talons. Talons that cut into the ground before the bird hopped after me. I was forced to run away from the burrow, but I didn’t let that stop me. From the corners of my vision I noticed Mike, Alphonse, and Jacob scatter as well, but the bird stayed focused on me.
I climbed the side of a nearby trunk, hoping to circle around the tree and make it back to the safety of the burrow, but that was a mistake. With another hop and a few flaps of its wings, the bird surged forward and stabbed at me with a snap of its beak. A last-second change of direction allowed me to dodge, but not without cost. Burning flared down my back leg where the beak grazed me, but I continued to run. I couldn’t afford to slow down or hesitate, not even for a second.
Luckily, this second attack slowed the bird down enough for me to gain a bit of distance from the predator, and I scurried into a nearby overgrown clump of bushes. I dug a small ways into the dirt under the bush and huddled close the ground, my heart pounding a staccato beat in my chest.
It wasn’t the burrow, but for the moment I thought I was safe.
I could still see the bird hopping around outside the bush — with the time to consider it more fully, I thought it might be a hawk of some kind. It obviously knew I was hiding within the bush, but it had no way to get at me. Not unless I made a run for it or did something similarly stupid.
I had no intention of doing anything of the sort.
For the next ten minutes I huddled there, the hawk hopping around and pecking at the edges of the bush, trying to drive me back into the open. But I refused to be moved.
I saw no sign of my siblings. Hopefully, they all made it safely back into the burrow. Despite my present safety my heart refused to calm, and my eyes darted back and forth with every motion and sound the hawk made, my nose filled with the smell of a predator as my feet itched to flee.
I took deep breaths, trying to force myself to calm. While my prey instincts had saved my life in the first confrontation, they were doing nothing for me now. I turned my mind to other topics, trying to distract myself from the cloying fear. I thought of the worms, of the experience points I had missed. If I had killed those last two worms just a minute sooner, if I’d leveled up, what would have happened? Would I have been just a hair faster, avoiding death that much easier? How could I use the system to help me survive, to maximize my survival through the procurement of more experience?
And as I followed that train of thought, I had an epiphany — an enlightening, terrifying realization.
Assuming everyone and everything else had a similar system as myself — which I had no reason to think otherwise — I could only imagine that everyone’s system worked the same way.
Which begged the question…
How many experience points was I worth?