Pain was nothing new to me. As an experiment, torture was a common occurrence while I was in the laboratories. I always thought that pain was completely useless. It only told you when you were hurt, which could already be observed by seeing blood or bones twisted in the wrong angles. The ‘doctors’ thought along a different track than me. They thought that pain was a perfect motivator. After feeling pain, a living organism instinctively tried to do something so that the pain would stop. That response was part of the reason why torture worked so well on people.

Immediately after activating my ability, the worst pain I had ever felt raced through my body. And that was saying something, considering that I had already died. The sound of my bones cracking was just a prelude to the pain that hit every nerve like a sledgehammer. It hurt so bad that I couldn’t even open my jaw to scream, not that it mattered. With my jaw currently in the process of reshaping itself, no words could come out even if I want them to.

That was just my bones though. The rest of my body was also in agony. My skin was torn to shreds as fur grew out of my body, replacing the once pristine white skin. As it grew, I noticed that the coat was extremely thick and silky, like I had just taken a shower. I had to admit, even though my brain was being fried by agony, the new fur looked beautiful. If it wasn’t for the pain as it came out, I would almost say it was worth it.

After what felt like an eternity of my bones being pulverized and reshaped, my skin being torn and replaced, and my limbs changing and reforming, the pain finally stopped. As my vision returned I was finally able to look around. It did not escape my notice that the wolves looked completely unbothered by my sudden shift in species.

The only one even slightly concerned about me was the alpha wolf, and even then he just sniffed at me. Although I don’t want to admit it, he was probably scenting me to see if I could be a good mate. A simple growl scared him off of scenting me. Once he backed off, I started to take stock of my situation.

I was now a wolf. To be honest, I don’t know how I should feel about it. It was a little weird being in a different body, but there were some pros. Being in this form was probably easier to sneak around because my fur was completely black. Also, my senses seemed to have changed.

My sight had gotten a lot better than when I was in my humanoid form. I remember from the little research I could do that wolves only see in black and white. Or were those dogs? Anyways, I could see it in full color. My vision had improved enough to let me pick out smaller details, like the insects that were camouflaged as plants.

My sense of smell had also improved substantially. I somewhat remembered that lupines had 10,000 times better noses than humans when it comes to smelling different scents. Since I was previously based around a human and an angel, I had the same sense of smell and mostly the same attributes as a normal human. Now though, I could separate scents from each of the wolves around me. Each one smelled different, but there was one constant scent throughout each wolf. If I had to guess, I would say that it had something to do with each of the wolves being from the same pack.

My hearing had also improved substantially. What I had thought was a creek a while back I now realized was a river far off to my eastish. From the sounds of it, the river had a large drop off into a lake or pond way further downstream than me.

I wasn’t sure if my other two senses had changed at all since I had nothing to test them on, but I was sure that if I did test them, they would have changed. Maybe not changed for the better like my other two senses, but they would be different. I could already somewhat tell that my sense of taste had changed considering I was starting to feel hungry for some raw meat.

I attempted to stand up… and fell flat on my face. My snout filled up with dirt and grass almost instantly. Note to self: don't have your mouth open when trying to walk for the first time. From my side, the alpha started huffing at me, almost like he was laughing at my embarrassing moment. As if he sensed my growing irritation, the large wolf backed up and gave me some space to try again.

After cleaning out my muzzle, I tried again and stood up successfully… for a few seconds before plummeting into the ground once again. Don’t judge me, it was a lot harder than it looked to stand on four legs. For someone who had never walked on anything other than two legs, this was extremely difficult.

This time, while I was attempting to stand up, I cleared my mind and trusted my instincts… and succeeded for the first time. I played around with this and tested my new instincts before coming to a conclusion. It seemed like I had at least a few of a wolf’s instincts in me. After a few minutes of testing, the result was that I could instinctually stand, but as soon as I tried to think about it, I fell over. I assumed that this would get better with time and I would be able to walk soon, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure.

After standing, I attempted to take a small step forward. How hard could it be, right? As I slammed into the ground, the answer came out: extremely hard. I didn’t even know how I did it, but my legs were all tangled up around each other and my tail. After a minute of flailing, I finally managed to flip myself back over and stand up again, though my tail ached horribly.

For attempt number two, I did the same thing I did when I was trying to stand up. Trusting my instincts, I managed to trot around a few feet. My lesson was well learned from trying to stand up, so I didn't second guess my instincts, even when they felt awkward or wrong.

Now semi-accustomed to standing up, I took the opportunity to look at my new wolf body. My tail was the same bushy appendage that was shown when I was in humanoid form. The only difference was that it seemed a little longer than previously. The coat of fur that covered the entirety of my body was a shade of black that could easily blend in with a shadow. I was way lither than the alpha, but to be fair I was also way shorter. If I had to guess, I barely went up to the knee of an average human. My paws had a frighteningly sharp set of claws on them, the kind that was meant to rip and tear anything to shreds in just a few moments. I kind of wish I had these claws when I was escaping the lab where I was experimented on. It would’ve been nice to tear some of those ‘doctors’ a new one.

After looking at my body, I peered around at the wolves surrounding me. Most of them, except the blind pups, were watching me in amusement as I slowly acclimated myself to my new body. A few of them were even laughing at me, not even caring that I just transformed from one shape to another. I tried to tell them to stop it, but instead of my normal speech, a deep growl curled out of my snout. The wolves laughing kept their amused expressions, but they looked away from me and went back to what they were doing before I shifted.

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A snout nudged my side, causing me to quickly turn around and glare at the offender. The alpha looked at me with a guilty expression before pretending as if nothing happened.

‘Really? We’re just going to pretend like that didn’t happen are we? I saw you sniffing at me. The rest of the pack can back me up!’ I growled out towards the alpha. When I glanced back at the pack in question, they suddenly found the grass extremely interesting. Every single one of them, aside from the pups, focused intently on the ground, not even giving me or the alpha a second glance.

Fine… I would just leave then. I didn’t need pushy males right after I came back to life. I had too many of them when I was forced into slavery, though this type of pushy was different. After all, who would want to touch a creepy grey-skinned person covered in scars?

I stayed true to my thoughts and quickly walked out of the pack’s circle and into the forest. I only gave a small glimpse back as my final farewell before I lost sight of the pack due to the forest covering up the clearing they were in.

As I walked through the forest, I inspected the trees, though not like I wanted to. The forest’s trees were tall enough that a human atop a horse could easily fit underneath them. The spaces in between the trees were filled with different types of plants, mostly shrubs. It was kind of hard to tell directions in the forest, but I thought I was heading eastish. I say I thought because I was heading towards where I heard the river was flowing and had no actual idea where I was.

After a short walk, an amazing scent wafted into my nose. Following the scent trail, it led me to a small clearing fairly far away from where the pack of wolves was. The clearing had about a dozen or so flowers blooming in it, with over half being red and the others being purple colored. The purple flowers started to fade into a white color the closer that they got to the base of the petals while the red ones remained a solid color.

Standing in the middle of the clearing was a deer, peacefully chowing down on some grass. It was a small buck, probably just about a year or two old. It had horns just barely peeking out over the top of its ears. It looked fairly big, but most of that was its fur poofing out and not actual meat. The buck was bigger than me, being tall enough to reach a man’s shoulders while standing normally.

A growling came out from behind me, almost making me jump out of my skin before I realized what it was. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t another creature growling at me, but my stomach. I didn’t realize it before, but I was starving. And the deer in front of me smelled like the most delicious piece of venison I’ve ever had.

How do I attack it though? I’ve never fought something with teeth and claws... Do I just bite at it? I wish this wolf thing had a manual… I wonder if I can just let my instincts take over, like how I was learning to walk.

My instincts took over, making me slowly creep up on it while close to the ground, which was unlike how I wanted to kill it. Originally, I had wanted to sprint at it full force, but this method was better. When I was just a few feet away, the deer went rigid and froze, completely alert, but it was already too late. Right before the deer could dodge away and book it, I lunged towards it, snapping my teeth onto its throat. It tried to shake me off, but it couldn’t do that so well since I already had my teeth locked on. After just a few minutes of biting and tearing, the deer dropped dead at my feet almost crushing me in the process. That would’ve been awkward. What would they put on my tombstone? 'Wolf turned into meat paste by falling deer'?

[Ding! XP Gained!]

Ah, shoot… I forgot that I would have to relevel myself back up all the way. Right now I was just a weakling, so just a few deers could level me up. This was just a reminder of what I needed to do. I needed to make a plan later tonight on what needed to be accomplished before the Cataclysm of the Gods arrived.

At the very least though, I needed to attempt to get to tier ten. In my last life, I barely even did anything, mainly because I was a slave… I couldn't let that happen to me this time too. If I had more time, I could level up through other means, but since I only had two-ish years, I would have to level up through the fastest way I knew how: killing. Maybe I should look for a dungeon or an entrance into the Myzn?

In the galaxy, there were gates spread out across the planets. By entering these gates, a person could enter a dungeon. These dungeons usually had monsters inside of them or were fragments of broken realms. Scientists had concluded that the dungeons were either summoned by or made by the ambient mana in an area.

The monsters inside the dungeons were typically formed through condensation of the ambient mana, though some were born naturally by breeding. In some of the higher leveled dungeons, you could cut open a monster to get something called a mana core, which was the condensed mana of a monster. They were exceptionally valuable and were used for many different things, like being used as an ingredient in creating weapons and armor.

Depending on the difficulty of the dungeon, a group of people could get higher or lower rewards and XP. I had been through quite a few of these before with mast- Terry, though I never got anything from them since he would always take the rewards.

The Myzn was different. In my past life, there wasn’t much known about it, but I did know the bare minimum. The place connected different realms and realities through an infinite labyrinth. The biggest problem was that there was no level cap in the Myzn. I could just as soon run into a level one monster as a level 1000. It was a high risk, but the rewards were also high. I had only been in the Myzn one time, and I almost died instantly to a Myzn guardian, which was a sentient creature that spawned upon hitting a certain milestone while in the Myzn, such as staying inside for a month or killing a thousand monsters. That expedition was also where I got the item called the [Creator’s Phoenix Feather]. Luckily, the item was bound upon pickup, so Terry couldn’t steal it from me. That item was probably the only thing that I owned, though he did take out his aggravation on me for ‘stealing’ it. Repeatedly. I thought the item was what the system used to resurrect me, but I wasn’t sure since I was only half lucid back then.

The scent of the deer’s blood drew me out of my musings. If I had been a disassembly expert, I could get a nice cut of venison and know exactly what to eat and what not to eat. Unfortunately, the anatomy of a lot of creatures was quite expansive, so I didn’t actually know what to eat for this particular one.

While I didn’t have skill in disassembly or even a butcher since deer were a common creature, I did have my lupine instincts. Doing something that I had been doing quite common, I let them take over. They drove me to start eating at the flanks and internal organs, which I would’ve never done as a humanoid. If I was a humanoid, I definitely would’ve aimed for the muscles and flesh of the deer. It was slightly disgusting to think about eating the liver, heart, and kidneys, but it tasted a lot better than I would’ve thought. At the very least, it was nothing compared to some of the puke-worthy things I had to eat while I was in the lab.

Once I had eaten my fill, I backed up from the corpse. I didn’t have to worry about leaving the carcass around since unfinished wolf kills were usually preyed upon by birds and small rodents. I could even see a few flying scavengers in the trees already, waiting for me to leave. I turned around and walked away from the corpse.

To my great shock, a little elf girl was standing directly behind me. She was shaking with fright and had tears tracing paths down her cheeks. Her eyes were a dark gray color, framed by dark blonde hair. Her ears, as one of the distinctions of elves, were like sharp daggers sticking out of her head. She was probably around five or six, but I had a hard time telling since I was basing my estimation entirely on her height. Whereas I was as tall as a person's knees, she was just short of their hips.

As soon as I saw her, I had just one question: why was she crying?