I'll be the first to admit that life in this hellish new world was rather boring, especially considering I was still, essentially, a newborn. For all the insane growth rate and my inhuman speed and strength, most of my days were spent huddling in a corner of our group's chosen cave.

I often spent the majority of my time either half-sleeping or training, with the occasional bout of fighting off my siblings or scurrying away from the adults when they got rowdy. Overall, compared to my modern-day expectations, it was extremely boring.

I wish it had stayed that way.

"No. You hunt your own food now. You've grown strong enough." The human woman said. I hanged back, eyeing him warily as the elf brat quickly nodded before beating a hasty retreat from the annoyed adult. She chuckled a bit before wandering off, her stomach having started to show signs of another pregnancy.

She wasn't the only one. All of the other women had also gotten pregnant, which considering the number of orgies they carried out on a daily basis without any sort of protection, was not surprising at all. For the most part, I was just thankful that I was still too small and young to be viewed as an object of interest. After all, even if I didn't want to, I doubted that my father would care about my willingness if he chose to rape, or worse, straight-up eat me.

I needed to escape from here, soon.

I watched as the adults once more left the cave, only this time, nobody was left behind to defend us from the various monsters. After waiting another few tense minutes, I hesitantly walked over to the mouth of the cave and peeked out.

What greeted me was a desert wasteland, with very little plant life around. Slowly, I made my way out from the safety of the abode that had housed me for the past one and a half months and into the scorching rays of the morning sun. Behind me, I could hear my brothers tentatively following my example, although they kept their distance from me.

For a moment, I considered pouncing on them. They were threats, rivals to my mission for sustenance. Besides, they were unlikely to survive if some of the monsters I'd seen so far were in any way common through this hell.

I forced myself to shake my head, but the idea refused to leave me. I bit my lip and quickly started walking out, both of my inhuman ears twitching this way and that so that I could hear any threats coming.

I... I really wanted to kill my brothers. I could still remember the delicious taste of my true brother, of the respite it gave me from the all-consuming hunger that had become so depressingly normal to me. I craved for more, and yet, the last shreds of my past self refused to just... kill them like that.

Unconsciously, my steps slowed down and I turned to face them. The elf was still lingering back in the cave, looking quite cautious, but my direct brother was acting far more bravely, as I could already see him trotting off towards where the adults usually went.

... Surely, no one would miss one of them? They had tried to attack me, so it would be self-defense, right? If I let them go, then they would only cause more death, so I would be doing a good deed, right?

I licked my suddenly dry lips. I could feel my tail tensing up behind me, the still-foreign appendage twitching erratically as I continued to stare at my closest brother, the elf.

He noticed me staring and tensed up, his eyes darting around for a moment before he leaped forward and started running away.

My heart was suddenly in my throat as my vision narrowed down. I fell down to all fours, my clawed hands digging deep rends into the hard earth beneath me, and then I ran.

The elf was fast, but not faster than me. Furthermore, he was also running in a straight line, meaning my leaps and jumps could carry me forward faster than he could.

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The chase lasted only around a dozen seconds, and then, I was upon him. At the last moment, he swirled around to face me, his expression set into a snarl as he arrested his momentum and tried to tackle me back.

We impacted hard, his skull hitting my face hard enough to shatter my nose and jaw, but I ignored the pain. My hands lashed out, grappling with his as we each tried to push the other into the ground.

I won that exchange quite handily, as my superior strength and what little shreds of training I'd managed to get in quickly started showing. My leg swept out, taking his own out from under him and causing him to fall down with a cry of surprise.

I was quick to take advantage. I headbutted him just as he had done to me, stunning him for a second and allowing me to reach down to his neck and carve it open.

After that, the fight was over quick. A neck wound wouldn't slow down either him or me for long, but it was enough. He managed to inflict some damage, carving long lines through my naked body that bled plenty of blood, but those were just flesh wounds. Meanwhile, I managed to rip open his chest and get to the real important stuff inside.

By the time I realized what I had done, it was too late. I stumbled away from the corpse of my brother, his unmoving eyes staring at me with hatred.

I don't know how long I just stood there, stunned. My mouth opened and closed like a dying fish, my mind trying to make sense of what had just happened.

I don't know why I'd chased him. He'd done nothing to me, and yet, the moment he'd started running away, it had lit up a switch in my brain.

I didn't even have the excuse of one of the murderous adults staring me down. I'd done this all on my own. I'd killed what was essentially a baby with my own two hands.

I wanted to retch, to vomit. And yet, the sweet aroma of flesh refused to leave me. I desperately looked around, trying to find something to distract myself with and ignore the temptation in front of me, and yet, there was nothing for me to focus on.

It was all just a flat, yellow wasteland with a few mountains here and there. No trees grew, and what few bushes did manage to live looked as inedible as the earth beneath them.

I swallowed. I wanted to run away, to flee and never come back, and yet, the hunger deep inside me forbade that. It was practically burning inside me now, the emptiness demanding to be filled. It ached so much that it actually hurt more than having my back carved into.

I stared for another few minutes, desperately wishing that the hunger would just go away. It didn't.

Instead, it only grew worse and worse until finally, I gave in. I crawled back over to the corpse and started eating with the resignation of someone who knew they were damning themselves in the eyes of whatever cruel god oversaw this hell.

I ate and ate until there was nothing left, even going so far as to lick the very ground where a few puddles of blood had formed. The worst part, perhaps, was what followed, as the satisfaction of finally finding a respite from the hunger vanished as soon as all the food was gone, and the damned hunger was back, stronger than ever.

I stood there for another few minutes, simply... existing, as I took the time to regret everything that I had ever done to be punished like this.

It was only when my ears picked up the sound of footsteps from a distance away that I finally broke out of my self-induced trance. I quickly looked over to the source, only to find a small pack of green-skinned humanoids as large as me emerging from behind a small hill in the distance.

I froze up, eyes darting as I took stock of their numbers. There were five of them, and even worse, they had actual weapons. Feeling a sudden bout of deja-vu, I slowly tried to make my way out of the flat terrain I was in and back towards my family's cave

I didn't succeed. One of the goblins must have spotted me, because they all started running in my direction, screeching and hollering. For a moment, something within my consciousness urged me to stand and fight, but I ruthlessly suppressed it. I was a monster now, a kin-slayer, but I didn't want to die. I just... didn't.

And fighting an unknown enemy with weapons that also outnumbers you seemed like a stupid idea. I had no idea if these goblin look-alikes had the same insane toughness and regeneration as my family or the trolls did, but I had to assume that, yes, they did.

Fortunately, they were rather slow. As I bounced away, each jump easily clearing half a dozen meters in a second, I could already hear their frustrated cries as they utterly failed to catch up to me.

It would have been easy, then, to lose them, to scurry away into some hidey-hole where they wouldn't be able to find me. I was small, nimble, and agile. There were very few places I couldn't get into, and my safety would have been assured.

And yet, the gnawing pit inside me demanded otherwise. Despite it having just claimed the flesh and blood of one of my very own siblings, it still demanded more. If I hadn't already grown so desensitized to all of the horrors of this world, I think I would have cried.

But no. I didn't cry, because to cry now would have meant I didn't cry as I cannibalized my siblings, as I watched my father debate whether I was worthy of life or not.

I slowed down my jumps, hating myself more and more even as I did so. If I was going to have to fill this void inside me, then I was going to do it right.

I started looking for an ambush spot, and when I found it, I quickly got to work.