Voraci looked up to the sky, aimed and fired. A bird flying overhead dropped as a sudden spout of acid forced its feathers and flesh to fall off of its bones.
Voraci leapt over a large distance and repositioned to where the dead bird fell, straight into her mouth. ‘Speed, again’ She mentally requested, barely considering anything else.
YOU GOT 15 NOW. Due to having 15 {Increased speed} you have gained a reward, {Time dash}
{Time dash}: speed yourself up in every way (effectively slowing down the world around you) by a large amount for a fair amount of time, scaling with your amount of {Speed increase}. Notably, Effect can be canceled whenever you want, damage will not be dealt to any areas around you that you do not intend to hurt, and overuse of the skill will make you need to wait to reuse it.
‘Hm, that’s pretty neat’ Voraci thought. Voraci activated the time dash and the world around her paused. It didn’t pause entirely, but it was impressively slow.
Voraci had been hunting birds for incredibly long now, it had been around 56 days, and she had been progressing very slowly.
Voraci felt something inside her mind, not literally of course, but there were two feelings. How long she could dash and how long it was until she could use it again. No time required until she could use it again, and a surprisingly long time she could stay dashing.
Voraci looked to the sky. There were a lot of birds now, where there hadn’t been when she had just gotten to the surface. They were all directly above her. Strange.
Voraci looked at how long she had left, and it was enough to do what she wanted. Voraci jumped up into the birds circling above her. She decided to try out a new upgrade she got for her acid spitter organ. It was distinctly not a node, but it was still obtained once she got 15 copies of it.
It had past but it said:
Due to having 15 {Acid blast} you have gained a reward, {Compacted acid}
{Compacted acid}: Your acid becomes heavier and more effective, though its volume can be increased at the cost of its effectiveness.
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Voraci looked around at the birds and started putting a constant pressure on the acid pouch’s diaphragm, letting out a constant spray instead of a single shot. All the while, she turned her compacted acid back to a normal potency, that being just enough to melt feathers.
Voraci’s dash suddenly cut off and she fell to the ground. The birds around her had started flying away, but about half of them were covered in the acid. The covered birds fell to the ground like rocks, which Voraci had an appetite for anyways, and Voraci walked over.
Dash, and therefore speed, was a great thing to have gotten. The birds had also let her get more sight power increases, bringing her up to seven. She also got a copy of weight control, but only one.
From all of these birds, she got a total of one aspect, which she chose to be speed. It was unfortunate, and she decided to acknowledge it; Eating the same thing over and over had lowered the efficiency of getting aspects. She didn’t know how she would combat it, but she could just eat other things.
Voraci looked at a stream. She hadn’t eaten that many humans yet, and plus, they had a lot of unique devices which she could eat as well. It was probably worth it, she decided.
Slowly, Voraci walked back to the wooden structure, which reminded her, she should eventually eat some more trees, but she didn’t see the necessity of any of the aspects she got. The explosive summoning one especially was interesting, but it wasn’t related to her current goal.
Voraci looked at the barn, it really wasn’t impressive, but it would do its job, if the owner hadn’t been burnt to a crisp and eaten by Voraci. There was a small perimeter devoid of greenery. Outside of that was a circle with only grass, which faded into the natural forest. Strangely, a strand of the completely empty area extended through the forest.
Voraci wasn’t sure what this plant devoid area was, but it extended far beyond where she could see. She had noted this area before but never investigated it. While she didn’t know what it was for, it definitely would lead to humans.
Voraci had already eaten enough from this area, which was mainly birds, over the last part of the week, so Voraci set off down the path.
The path was thin, but Voraci didn’t care. There weren’t too many interesting things around the path either, but every once in a while there were large animals. Voraci would have eaten them, but the smell of acid, dead birds, and probably the stench emitted by the very hostile bacteria which clung to her carapace. It was smart of John, in her opinion. Not only did the microorganisms get to attack, but other animals could be warned of the danger.
The whole ecosystem was full of cooperation like that which, as guessed by Voraci, wasn’t there in whatever the original world was. It would just be inefficient if animals were killed just to eat, so they had been forced into cooperation. Something about the humans was different though, they did get something out of killing others, and she had no idea what other than the idea of levels.
Voraci kept walking down the path, but in the distance she suddenly saw a group of four humans coming down the path.