Authors Note: Plot bunny the second, a Gamer style prototype main character in an as-yet undecided setting.
You have consumed: Animal: Boar
Gained skill: Animal: Boar Physiology!
Animal: Boar Physiology
Active: Increases Damage Resistance, Damage Threshold, and Pain Reduction
Passive: Applies active bonuses at 1/10th rate.
Well, that's something, I thought, as my tendrils finished licking up the remains of wild boar I'd just surprised. It'd been 3 days since I woke up in this god-forsaken wilderness, and this was the first thing I'd had that'd actually taken the edge off the sense of gnawing hunger.
I stood up from my crouch and stretched, mourning the loss of the sensation of feeling my joints click as I did so. It was a weird thing, to mourn the loss of something negative, the stiffness that came from being in an awkward position, but everything I didn't have anymore just added to the sense of disassociation, making me just that bit more inhuman.
Not that I needed much help on that front, as I watched my arm reform from a mass of tendrils back into a functioning human arm. I'd been like something out of a horror movie ever since I'd woken up here. As far as I could tell, I was piloting around some kind of weird carnivorous meat suit, and I had no idea what any of the controls were. I'd figured out eating, in-as-much as trying to put plants or leafy greens down my throat just made me nauseous, and I no longer needed to actually use my mouth for eating, as being near something and simply wanting to eat it would cause parts of me to lash out into tendrils and tear it apart, followed up with absorbing any of the parts the tendrils touched, in something I was aware should disgust me, but instead gave me an odd sense of satisfaction.
Well, maybe not that odd, I thought, bringing up the skills list with a thought. The little box filling up the top-left corner of my vision was the other weird thing I'd run into since I woke up three days ago. This had only popped up when I'd eating my first animal (a squirrel that had got too close to me as I failed to get to sleep that first night, before I figured out my new body no longer required sleep), informing me that I had gained the benefits of squirrel physiology, something that would no doubt leave people shaking in fear of me. Behold, my incredible bonus to climbing and teeth growth speed! Fear my ability to gentle nibble at you!
Still, I looked at the skill list. Squirrel was sitting at level 6, due to me having eaten 17 of the buggers. Each of the levels seemed to require one more victim than the previous one, thus forever denying me the dream of super squirrel powers. I had fox physiology at level 2, having run into 4 of them, and that increased my Stealth skill, something that would no doubt be much more useful if I ever figured out how to use the active ability of any of these skills. The only reason I kept trying to hunt animals down was the constant hunger I was feeling.
Glancing at the third skill, boar, just told me the same as the pop-up I'd seen earlier, so no surprises there. The fourth skill, though, that was a surprise, especially as I'd not seen it before. I mentally brought it to the front.
For consuming three land mammals, you have gained skill: Prey Vision!
Prey Vision
Passive: Land mammals you can consume now glow red to you. This glow can be seen through walls, and up to a range of 20m.
Huh, well, that's weird, I thought, as I looked around, catching sight of a squirrel at the edge of my vision, it obviously not having heard the glorping sounds of me devouring a boar. Weird, but promising.