[Causality cluster encountered, executing harvesting protocols]
…
[Error, excessive causality generated. Finding redirection vector.]
…
[Attaching status to soul]
…
[Status attached]
[Funnelling excess causality]
…
[Causality funnelled, monitoring status for abnormalities]
…
[Evolution module evolution detected, scanning for further abnormalities]
…
[No further abnormalities detected]
[Harvesting protocols complete, redistributing altered nascent soul]
…
[Error, Entities: Set incompatible, Entities: Unset required]
[Scanning appropriate fetuses]
[Approprite fetus found]
[Nascent soul attached to Hybrid: Infernal Lacertine, Sector ¬?A: Ash forest]
[Returning to normal operations]
Awareness comes to you in short, halting, bursts.
First you feel the sharp burning sensation on the inside of your neck, then a moment later you feel dizziness, and a wave of nausea.
Then it's over.
Your skin feels numb, the nausea subsiding, and you can suddenly feel what you instinctively know to be the rest of your body. It all feels... strange.
Then a light burning sensation appears in your centre. A burning sensation that slowly get warmer and sharper, oozing out from your core, as time passes.
A violent panic tears through you, followed by the realization that you're going to cease if this continues. The realization causes you to thrash around, twisting and turning things you didn't even know existed. Something in you saying that it would help, that it would stop the burning.
The same something that said that you would, without doubt, that you would die if you did nothing.
Yet, as the burning sensation continued to worsen, you felt another feeling rise up within you. One you couldn't quite describe.
But while you couldn't describe it you could feel it bolstering you, filling you with a far different, far more pleasant, heat. And soon the new eat was so great that it completely overshadowed the burning, allowing you to thrash with into your prison with such force, with such energy, that it fractured into pieces.
Then, with one final moment of exertion, you dug the harder parts of you into the crack and wretched it apart and burst out of your prison.
The cry you generated, you knew instinctively, was that of victory.
Then you flopped down, relief flooding through your body as the empowering heat vanished without a trace and your core was no longer racked in pain. The aching rapidly subsiding, even as new sensations assaulted you from what you knew to be your sight.
Sight that, as it slowly cleared, allowed you to see that you were surrounded by other prisons – shells. All of which were broken and spilling a dull glowing fluid on the floor.
Everything in your instincts told you that something was wrong, that there should not be glowing fluid spilling from these other shells.
… just as much as they told you to devour the glowing mess.
The choice, which truly isn't even a choice, is obvious to you.
You crawl out of your shell, shaking off the heavy wetness that clung to you, before using the harder parts of your body – claws your instincts tell you – to dig into the ground to then drag yourself forward. Slowly, though growing faster over time, your efforts push you forward. Slowly you grow closer and closer to the small pool of glowing fluids until finally you were close enough.
You shove your head down into the fluid, the food, submerging your entire head into the pool. Then you follow your instincts in opening your maw…
… and then your entire being is filled with power and euphoria.
[ (Plus) 1 strength, (Plus) 2 XP, Hunger reset]
But soon both of those things subsided, and you were left lapping up the last of the fluid. Once you were done you stood up onto your legs, the ground.
And you had stood up just in time too, as a sound – a sharp sound similar to the sound of your eggshell cracking – came from behind you.
Your claws dug into the ground, a forceful exertion causing you to burst forward in a haze of motion, before another digging of your claws spun you around to face the threat.
A long creature, slightly larger than you and glowing dimly, stared at you. Blood dripping from Its torn up body.
A feeling climbs up your spine, a sensation as if something sharp is dragging across your back. For a moment you feel the urge to turn back, to not face the larger, and clearly more dangerous, predator looking at you.
But that urge fades quickly.
The clear scent of blood, the way it shook as it approached you, the acrid fluid covered gashes running along its length – one of them having torn its maw wider than it already was.
Weak! Your instincts blared. Vulnerable, they told you as it slithered towards you. Prey.
It ignited something in you, the heat that rose from that discovery – both literally and not.
Opening your maw you hiss at it before, with a tensing of something within you, letting loose a mass of glowing saliva. Which then flew through the air, shedding small flecks of sparkling mass as it did, until stopping with a shower of sparks as it made contact…
…directly with the fleshy surface of the prey slithering towards you.
It reeled, the plume of sparks covering the entire side of its head, a shrill hiss coming from it as it began thrashing around. Its body arcing, contracting, and impacting the ground in rapid sequence as it slowly got away from you.
An attempt that was, or would be, futile.
Because you had picked up the delectable scent that wafted from it, and so were already advancing upon it. An easy effort, with how it could barely crawl away from you.
It tried to fight back, as you intuitively knew it would.
But that too proved futile, with it barely having any strength to do anything but try to pathetically miss in its attempt to bite you. Even as you tore into the gashes in its side, tearing off chunks of meat and spraying blood into the air, and slowly drained it of its remaining strength.
Finally, after you'd torn out a sizeable amount of meat, it collapsed onto the ground. Its death all but assured.
But despite its completely spent strength, it's all but confirmed death, you did not wait for it to die. No, your instincts did not allow you to do that. So instead, following those same instincts, you grab the gash in its side, the one that extending its already wide mouth, before slowly prying it apart.
Flesh tears with short burst of squelching rips, the body weakly bucking with each burst, the size of the maw until you are met with some resistance.
*crack*
Then something cracks, and suddenly the thing is limp.
You immediately tear into the flesh, ignoring the twitch's that ran along it with every bite.
[Fire serpent killed and eaten] (Plus) 40 XP gained
You've reached Level 4 ( (Plus) 1 strength, (Plus) 1 magic)
[Spit fire] (Plus) 2 Level's - (3/10)
? (3/10)
[Achievement: Giant feller]
It was some time later when you'd finally managed to stuff the last of the meat down your gullet, and you were completely stuffed.
Not that it stopped you from also shovelling the eggshells down too. Your already full stomach being distended with the excess content, to the point that it made you feel as if you would throw everything up if you were to be hit.
[Hunger increased to 'Over-stuffed']
But regardless, with those eggshells now in your stomach, you were finished with your meal.
Which meant that you were, all of a sudden, far more aware that you were out in the open. An awareness that pushed your instincts into overdrive, and led you to quickly take a look at your surroundings, searching for any more threats that'd try to devour you.
You found nothing that could be immediately dangerous.
In fact, as you looked around at the tall black columns – trees – and the glowing cracks that ran across the floor, all you found were a few small creatures around you. Both above and below.
But then, as you began to waddle away, you stopped. A familiar scent registering as you took a deep breath, taking in a rush of scent tinged air. The scent of food, yet also more.
Slowly but surely, you crawled up to the source of the scent. Lying low against the ground, your belly dragging on the floor, as you approached the source.
And soon you had reached it.
It was nearly triple your own size, even after your growth in size, and clearly far stronger than you, yet you felt no urge to flee.
There was not even the slightest bit of caution towards the giant mass.
The multiple holes near its neck, all leaking glowing blue fluids, made it clear that it could not harm you, that it was very dead.
Which meant that it was simply a large pile of food.
Not that you could really take advantage of that, being completely full as you were, and so you just moved on to trying to find a shelter instead. Which… didn't go too well.
At first, you'd tried to climb the nearby trees, intending to climb into the branches, yet their bark was too hard for your claws. After that, you turned towards finding a shelter on the ground… which also failed as there appeared to be no good shelters there either – most of the good ones being too small for you to squeeze into.
Eventually though, with a haze of lethargy beginning to set in, you settle for a suitable shelter. A knocked over hollow tree trunk, blocked on one side due to being that side being buried, that you could crawl into.
And while it didn't really satisfy your instincts in any way, you were too exhausted to truly care as you simply crawled in and lay down.
Which is how you slept for the first time, barely hiding from the black rain inside the hollowed trunk.
