Chapter Fourteen

It was over. Jevan lay lifeless, his eyes open and hazed over. The familiar was gone, too — it became so much EXP that I had leveled twice. I had to consider moving the decimal point to dumb this down, because the requirement for the next level felt close to a million EXP. I had a good head for numbers, but didn’t want to deal with this without a calculator. I could just say it was a thousand instead of a million, and adjust everything else accordingly. Yes. That was exactly what I should do.

The thought was a distraction, I realised. I guessed I just I didn’t want to face the fact that I had killed not one but two intelligent creatures: a man and a spirit. I could have made some feeble excuses that technically it was Akela who had killed the man, and I had only killed a spirit, but … this was on me. It was a simple matter: they had decided I should not live and I disagreed. This was the result. It was what it was, and I just had to deal with it.

‘Are you alright?’ I asked Akela.

Fine. He declared. He sat next to the man’s body, staring at it and sniffing it. Strange prey.

‘Yes. Strange,’ I agreed.

Jevan’s teal colored soul began to flicker. It was going to dissipate soon, and my Tentacle Horror instinct screamed at me not to let such a fine meal go to waste. Would it be considered cannibalism if I ate a human soul? In all honesty, I felt less distaste at the prospect of eating his soul than at killing him in the first place.

I looked at my severed tentacle, hovering in the air like a phantom-snake. I was somewhat surprised it hadn’t disappeared, dissipated or floated away. It was just there, as if someone had painted it against the backdrop of the swaying branches and leaves of the trees. Would it be considered self-cannibalism if I ate it?

Hungry. Want to eat.

Akela licked some blood off Jevan's severed hand.

Oh, how I envied Akela at that moment. To him this was nothing out of the ordinary: he hunted his prey, he killed it, and he wanted to eat it. Business as usual for a wolf. Was the wolf bad or evil because his prey happened to be human? I didn’t think so. What about me then?

Don’t like strange prey. Akela declared.

Well and hell, I'd been wrond: he didn’t want to eat this prey. For a moment it occurred to me that it might hurt Jevan’s pride: “You went to all this trouble to kill me and now you don’t even want to eat me?”

I laughed. It was a stupid thought. But at the same time it was a relief — I really didn’t want to see Akela feeding on the man. I’d gotten used to unigoat guts, but … just no.

In the end I gave in to my Tentacle Horror instinct and I plunged all of my tenties into Jevan’s soul before it began to disappear. It took me a minute to consume the soul. It tasted great. It tasted like mint. Like chocolate filled with toothpaste. It was refreshing. I liked it, and that scared me.

I got Akela to stand up and trod closer to my floating tentie so I could reach it. I managed to do that, and I ate it like I ate anything else. It tasted similar to the familiar — not quite the same, but close — and that otherworldly quality, that feeling that I was consuming more than just that visible piece of Spirit-Stuff, was there too.

The EXP was plentiful. Jevan’s soul gave me roughly two-hundred thousand, and my tentacle gave me half as much. I realised I could grow and level quickly — probably limitlessly — on a diet of humans and spirits. Why didn’t the familiar do it then? If I had been it, or him, I'd have done it first thing. Was it a natural difference between me and the familar? Was it a different species of spirit? I had a feeling that it was exactly the case, my Tentacle Horror instinct whispering it into my mind. If that was true, then things were skewed in my favor, weren’t they?

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Voice? Hungry. Akela complained, looking at the dead man with disappointment.

I brought out what little was left of the unigoat from Jack’s Room. Its bones still had some meat here and there, and I hoped it would be enough for him. Akela looked at the remains, tilted his head, then looked at Jevan’s body again. I could have sworn he sighed as he turned back to the bones.

***

I decided to take stock and examine my recent growth while Akela munched on his food. I wasn’t really in the mood, but I hoped it would take my mind off recent events and the weird guilt I felt but not felt at the same time. Perhaps I should be more like Akela: it was prey, no hard feelings.

The growing and leveling had happened during my fight with the familiar, and I’d done it by instinct rather than conscious decision, so I needed to get acquainted with the changes.

The EXP I had gained from the spirit had been so much that I was Level 23 now

The tentacle I lost had grown back, and as a bonus, I had grown a new one as well. I had seven of the buggers now, and each of them were a whopping 1.4 meters long approximately. That was twice as long as the arm of an average man. Like poor, dead Jevan, for instance. I was amazed: it was double of what they’d been just two or three levels ago.

My body had grown from a diameter of eleven centimeters to twenty. Double again, to the size of a volleyball. Was was that familiar made of? Pure spirit-protein and steroids? How else could I explain this unprecedented growth?

My main Essence Pool’s capacity had grown to 59 and my Mana Pool to 33.

I had a feeling that I’d become more Mana-efficient in the use of my skills; I hadn’t really been keeping track of it, but the 5 Mana per minute it cost me to keep Akela fully clad in Mana-Armor used to be at least 7 Mana per minute. It was a good development.

I wondered why the familiar didn’t do the same for Jevan. Not being able to eat other spirits was one thing, but for God’s sake, didn’t it have some skills to protect its host? I decided I didn’t want to ponder that question right now. Not with the freshly deceased Jevan staring up at the sky with his glassy eyes. I should be just happy that I had skills to protect Akela.

I activated Mana-Glove on one of my tenties and I carefully closed Jevan’s eyes for him. There wasn’t anything else I could do — I didn’t think Akela would have been happy with me if I asked him to dig a large enough hole to bury the man, so that was off the table.

I had kept some of the Spirit-Stuff from the man’s soul, mixing it with some Essence and Mana, and I used it to I expand my secondary Essence Pool from 24 to 29. I also expanded Jack’s Room: I managed to enlarge it by three spaces, increasing it from 14 to 17.

All in all, I had a lot to thank Jevan and his familiar for. I still wished they’d not picked a fight, though. I wished the familiar had listened.

Akela finished his lunch.

I wondered what had happened to the spear wielding pirate. The wound I'd inflicted wasn't fatal: at most he’d have some difficulty walking. Then I wondered where the young woman could have gone. Akela could find her, I had no doubt, and perhaps it was time to go and look for her. But before that, I wanted to try something.

I got Akela to go back to Jevan’s body. I activated Mana-Glove on four of my tenties and managed to fiddle two of his small blades out from his belt. Not having fingers was an inconvenience on occasion — it wasn’t often that I needed to grip things, but when I did, I could use my Mana-Gloved tenties as if they were pincers, or just coil one around an object and lift it.

The small blades were throwing knives maybe, or very small daggers, I wasn’t sure. I used a few EPs to pull them into Jack’s Room, the pair of blades taking up 1 space. Then I got Akela to trod over to the sword the man had dropped. It had a straight, narrow blade and a small hand-guard — the weapon was maybe a cross between short sword and a rapier, but I wasn’t an expert on swords, so I didn’t dwell on it. It took up 3 spaces in Jack’s Room. I didn’t know if I’d ever have a use for them, but they were the first man-made objects I’d come across, and it seemed like a waste to just leave them behind.

I turned to Akela and taking a deep, mental breath, I said,

‘Right. It’s time to find that woman. Uhm … the not-prey.’

Fine.