"I want some swords.", "I need bodies", "I want this", "I require that"...
It was almost a sad sight. After stealing my beautiful scales and skin, Noah, the divine eye, found out what a ravenous mob of internet-starved ex-teenagers looks like the hard way.
Arguably, he seemed quite happy that his cheat was this useful. He had an abundance of points, so in less than an hour, everybody had gotten more or less what they wanted.
Finally, Mrs. Kaiz stepped in and asked, "Noah, I'm glad you're kind enough to share. However, what we need right now is a roof over our heads. Is there any way you can do that?"
This raised quite a murmur through the monster crowd. The skeleton, who for some reason kept bugging me and insisting on talking to me, chatted me through private conversation, "I want a computer again... I miss my waifus".
I snorted in contempt and ignored him. Instead, I focused on Noah again, who had begun to make a speech. "No, I cannot buy already made houses or buildings. And even then, with our sizes and shapes, I doubt we'd be able to make use of them. What I can do is buy materials, which we can use to construct stuff. That's the best I can offer."
He seemed downcast at this, but Mrs. Kaiz quickly reassured him and then spoke up herself, "You heard him, boys and girls. Who here has any idea how to build things?" She asked. Nobody spoke up.
She frowned and sat there in thought for a minute. We didn't have hands, or at least most of us didn't anymore. Furthermore, we were only 16-17 years old. I doubt she expected us to know how to make houses, especially monster houses.
Just as we were about to reach a deadlock, the incubus who had mostly stayed silent so far spoke up. "Why don't we go to the city and ask for help from them?"
Everyone's attention gathered on her. The Fire Tiger snorted and said "Yeah, sure. Like they'll help us. What can we offer them anyway?"
Mrs. Kaiz's eyes blazed as she shouted, "Silence! Monica, continue. I'm interested in your idea."
She smiled as she explained, "From what I know, the city we found seemed to be somewhat isolated from the rest of the world. If we could convince them that we aren't a threat and instead we can mutually help each other, we could have their support in building ourselves our own little city..."
The three-headed dragon spoke up at this points, "What's the point of even having a city for ourselves? Shouldn't we only focus on getting stronger for now?" He asked.
Most people agreed. Even I did. Having a city would be definitely nice, but it paled to the idea of training in case something or someone wants our skin. Or my scales. They seem valuable.
Mrs. Kaiz sighed and spoke up again, "I don't think we should all focus on one thing. Perhaps some of us, those less interested in fighting, should simply stay here and build up things, while those more combat-oriented should go and train together."
After a moment of thought, she added, "I have an idea. We could make divisions, for example, a defense division, a food-gathering division, and a construction division. We have plenty of water, and the food is quite easy to catch with our bodies and power."
Most people nodded, some were a bit skeptical but eventually gave in.
By this time, the sun had gone down. Most people were quite tired, and everybody wanted to sleep to digest everything that had happened. Even Mrs. Kaiz looked quite weary.
With my newfound body size and defensive ability, I offered myself to act as a cocoon-cum-shield for smaller creatures. Mrs. Kaiz, the skeleton, and a couple others were the only ones who didn't need to sleep, as they were undead. Therefore, they were tasked with keeping guard.
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Seeing nobody take up my offer, I was a bit downcast but not too much. An idea came into my mind as I approached the lake and slithered into it, and sure enough, I found myself perfectly fine underwater.
I didn't need to breathe. My Devour ability allowed my body to run solely on food, hence, water and air were unneeded.
I made myself comfortable in the deepest parts of the lake, where I closed my eyes. Before actively trying to sleep, I checked out my status card and was pleasantly surprised to find that my level had gone from 4 to 7. Almost double.
Other than that, nothing changed. I sighed in my mind as I tried to will all the chit-chat of the system to turn off, and it did. Without any noise surrounding me, I slowly fell into deep, blessed sleep.
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My dreams were weird. I dreamed about my past life, but my body was the same as it is now. My parents didn't recognize me, my older brother tried to kill me, and everything went wrong. It was... depressing.
I was dragged out of my sleep by something poking at my face. I slowly opened my eyes and looked around, whereas I spotted a skeleton riding a fish made of only bones.
"Rise and shine, sweetheart. Daddie's here!" The skeleton cried as it and its mount swam towards me.
I was horrified for a second and instantly retreated, instinctively hissing, although the water made it hard for me to do so. I noticed that the system had turned back on, hence why I could hear him speaking.
"Aw, don't run! I just want a nice loving hug!" The skeleton said with indignation as I retreated away from it.
"Fuck off, I'm a man. I'll eat you if you don't go away!" I shouted.
The skeleton went even crazier when it heard this, and eventually, just as it was about to reach me I reached my breaking point and chomped down on him.
I didn't actually swallow him, but I made sure to keep him nice and locked up in my jaws. Being a skeleton, I doubt he'd get harmed by it.
I swam up to the surface, and when I re-emerged, Mrs. Kaiz was standing there, looking at me.
"Good morning, Leon. Where did Charles go?" She asked, somewhat confused. I was still quite irritated, so I answered in a somewhat aggressive tone.
"I have him. I apologize for not waking up sooner, but please never send that bastard again." I said and spat him out. He flew out with a shrill scream and landed with a faceplant.
Before they could say anything, I retreated back into the huge lake. Mrs. Kaiz seemed like she wanted to say something, but she held off.
Seriously though, what is wrong with that agglamation of bones? I already suspected that our rebirth affected our personalities in ways we cannot even imagine, but to turn a relatively normal guy into a complete creep?
I had the skeleton in my class before. His name was Charles, a relatively quiet and friendly guy. Either he had been hiding his true personality all along, or my theory is correct. I don't know which is worse.
After a bit, I sighed, realizing I had been a tad bit childish as well. However, I really didn't feel like leaving the water for some reason, so I chose to simply swim around for a while.
I did poke my head out a couple times to see what the others were up to. For the most part, some were playing around with their powers, others practiced magic, some slept and Noah was constantly buying stuff using my scales.
I did see Mrs. Kaiz speaking with the more human-ish people, and from what I could inquire, they seemed to be planning a trip to the human city. A terrible idea in my opinion, but then again, my opinion doesn't matter that much.
Sighing, I retreated back into the depths of the lake. Since I had nothing better to do and wasn't particularly tired, I swam around and caught a couple larger fish, which I ate.
Hours passed. By the first hour, I had caught around 20 decently large fishes, and after a while, I came across an extremely large shark.
It wasn't as big as me, only being around 10 meters long, but it was still a pretty big fish. I shivered at the idea of this monster attacking me in my sleep. Perhaps I should have checked out the lake before sleeping in it...
As I was thinking this, the shark saw me and tried to run, but I gave chase. I wasn't about to let such a good snack escape from me.
It took me a long time to catch up to the shark. In the water, I was surprisingly faster than I was on land, but I still wasn't fast. After all, I'm more of a tank than a speedster.
Eventually, though, the shark seemed to have gotten tired of being on the run and turned to bite me. It succeeded in biting me, however, my body is that of a snake. My organs are all extremely dispersed, and that's not counting my cheat. Hence, bites, stabs, and punches are all ineffective against me.
Just as it was about to try and run away again, my jaws chomped down on its sides, firmly tying us together. I quickly moved my body around the shark and wrapped him up in my loving embrace.
After that, I began squishing, and oh boy did it feel satisfying hearing the shark's flimsy body crack.
I only let go after 20 minutes of constriction. After I was certain it had parted from the world of the living, I swallowed it down. It wasn't as hard as it was before since I was bigger and had a much larger mouth to work with.
Feeling somewhat happy about my success, I decided to cleanse the lake of anything longer than a meter. I was totally doing it for the safety of the others, not my own hunger. Nope, not at all...