The titan blinked out of existence, and in its place stood a giant wolf, ten times taller than itself, made of pure darkness, nothing more than a vaguely canine silhouette against a stark white background.

“T̴h̶i̸s̴ ̴f̷o̶r̷m̷,̴ ̷t̵h̶i̸s̵ ̷v̶o̸i̶c̶e̸.̷ ̸I̴t̶ ̵s̴h̴o̶u̵l̵d̷ ̴b̴e̵ ̷l̶e̶s̶s̸ ̶a̸g̶o̷n̸i̷z̵i̷n̴g̸ ̴t̶o̵ ̶c̸o̶m̵p̷r̶e̸h̸e̷n̵d̷.” It spoke, its tone intrigued, its voice drilling into both its ears like the scrape of screeching metal, low and rumbling like a landslide, like grinding boulders tempered by a snarl, like gnashing teeth, yet paradoxically like complete and utter silence.

If the previous sound was an incomprehensible cacophony of thunder, this was a comprehensive noise under layers and layers of conflicting elements that made its stomach churn.

A migraine started to pound in its temple as voice and words finally registered, and it whimpered, flattening its body as much as possible.

“W̴o̸r̶d̸s̸ ̸a̸r̴e̸ ̶s̸o̵ ̸m̵e̷a̸n̸i̷n̴g̸l̵e̵s̶s̴ ̸w̶h̵e̸n̸ ̷s̸p̶o̴k̶e̵n̴ ̷t̴o̴ ̸t̵h̷e̸ ̸w̶e̴a̴k̸.̴” The titanic wolf rumbled, and a tendril of shadow extended out of the side of its neck, before whipping towards the trembling wolf at a speed that was completely invisible to its naked eyes, both of which refused to leave the titan’s paws, each bigger than its entire body.

Yet instead of the tendril annihilating the wolf, it simply passed through its chest, and connected to its soul, prodding around like a needle. A vague feeling of violation, of terrible, terrible discomfort swept through the core of its very being, and the wolf shuffled, trying to make itself even smaller, hoping that it could just escape the odd nightmare it was stuck in.

Not a nightmare. A simple thought invaded its mind as if it was its own, like a reply, and it stopped thinking, every ounce of its attention focused on the visual aspect of emptiness in front of it, clearing its mind. Yet, the thoughts continued to come.

Impressive, to empty your mind like that while so terribly frightened. You could have been a monk, were you a human like your charge.

Human. The two-leggers were called humans?

Yes, but that doesn’t matter. You do not understand the gravity of what just happened. Allow me to elaborate.

The being tried to further invade its mind and try to plant something, and the wolf’s meager mental resistances raised as it tried to force the being out of its mind and soul, yet the ‘battle’ inside its mind might as well have been an ant trying to hold back a dragon.

But the being did stop.

Hm. I’d like to prod around in there and save myself the thoughts, but I'll be courteous and waste some effort on you. Now, allow me to give you another choice, in a less abstract fashion. You did the work of one of my guides by accident, without being able to understand what you were agreeing to. That odd rune in your skull prevented me from putting the information of what each choice presented into you, at least not without killing you on the spot.

What that choice was, was to become one of my own. Or to reject the responsibility and opportunity that that man had given you, and forever be barred from entering Oblivion, doomed for your soul to continue reincarnating throughout the cosmos, unaware of your past lives until the very moment your soul detaches from your vessel, only to forget once more the moment you begin again. The curse of life, discarded.

The wolf squirmed, but remained in its submissive pose, its mind swimming with questions that the being saw, but left unanswered, almost amused at the wolf still uselessly trying to force it out of its head.

You are too small minded to even understand most of the words and concepts I’m saying, and I can only shove so much knowledge into your skull without breaking you when there’s another influence already in there. I will remedy this situation. I will give you a choice, a clear one.

For bringing me this man’s soul, saving my Guides the tedium of doing this themselves, and involuntarily giving me something new to see, you can take this man’s toll, a fraction of his soul, and grow your own with it. Additionally, I will give you a little gift of my own, and send you back to the corporeal realm where you belong.

Or, you can commit to the choice you’re already made, and become one of my guides.

A vague notion of eternal servitude, the endless march of time, and the power it could gain from becoming a guide, all briefly flashed before its eyes.

A strumm of disappointment passed through the being, and directly into the wolf.

I can see your answer before you even think of it. But you are young, and I'll give you another chance, when your time runs out. For now, so be it. Simply think of me when you die, and I shall welcome you. Consider all this as close to an apology as you will ever get out of a deity. Goodbye, little pup.

The faint, near imperceptible tether connected to its soul was severed, and the intrusive presence in its mind and soul faded.

And just like that, the world returned as if nothing ever happened in less time than it took to blink, and the wolf stood frozen in place, barely breathing. For a few minutes, it stood still, terrified, wondering if the titan was still watching, waiting for its reaction, for an excuse to squash it like a bug. Experimentally, it got up on trembling legs, and looked around.

There was something small and squirming in its chest, like a new limb suddenly grown overnight, but beyond that, everything was... alright.

Nothing had changed, the being from before vanished like a particularly vivid nightmare.

Even if it wasn’t.

The wolf swallowed, and after only one more moment of hesitation, it got to work on cutting through the human’s clothes, hooking its canines into the straps of the mask and ripping through them with shocking ease. A few tugs later, the human’s bulky skin-cover was removed and ripped apart, and with one last nervous glance at its surroundings, it bit down on the human’s neck.

Like its fangs weren’t even there, its gums very suddenly impacted rapidly cooling skin, and for a moment it panicked, thinking it had somehow lost its teeth and didn’t notice. It recoiled, and watched the red gashes where its canines had ripped the human’s neck to ribbons from the motion. Just to be sure, it ran its tongue over its teeth, and with its worries assuaged, it bit down once more, ripping chunks of meat out of the human’s neck and into its gullet. In less than a minute, it snapped its spine like a twig, dragging the head to hold it down between its two front paws.

Five minutes of crunching bone later, it threw its head back and gulped down the last spinal disk attached to the head, and got to work on the body.

Realistically it knew it should be beyond full, puking its guts out from overeating. Instinctually, it knew that it shouldn’t be gorging itself so much after starving for its entire life. Yet, even as its teeth tore apart the human’s rib cage as if it was barely there, and started ripping out organs, it simply couldn’t be sated. A shiver of primal pleasure ran through its body, and something in its mind stirred, churning and bubbling and hissing in its ringing ears.

Its mind and body both howled for more, so the wolf continued, uncaring of how utterly impossible it was for it to single handedly consume a human whole. Its biology was closer to the rat than it would have expected, with the lungs, heart and intestines being roughly in the same area.

Yet, it gave that thought nothing but a passing consideration before it rammed its snout into the human’s chest, and started devouring every organ of its upper body, intoxicating crimson bathing its tongue, soothing its parched throat, filling it with energy. After it had consumed the heart,the flesh and collarbones, it turned down and shoved its snout into its intestines. Gripping them between its teeth, it began to pull them out.

In and out, over and over until it’s neck started getting sore from the motion, until finally, a pile of bloody intestines was laid out next to the human’s hips, and with one sharp tug, the intestine pulled on the stomach, and the human’s organs collapsed as any semblance of structure and order was abandoned from losing their base. Livers, flesh, small and big intestine, it all blurred together into a euphoric ecstasy as it binged on the flesh of a man that was alive mere moments ago.

For another ten minutes, it simply devoured everything mildly squishy looking before it, only barely remembering to hurriedly glance around for any prying eyes.

Twenty minutes later, it was halfway down the human’s spine, licking and devouring every tiny chunk of bone and meat that the human had, its tiny snout and even smaller teeth struggling with the bigger bones and muscles of a human large enough that it could have curled up into its chest cavity and taken a nap in it.

Its stomach churned, so full it should have burst ten times over, yet its belly had barely moved, an odd sensation of discomfort and exertion being the only thing that changed about its insides.

The scent of copper and death hung thick in the air around the chem-scorched cobbles of the alley.

Another fifteen minutes later, it finally got to the legs, struggling to pull them out of their odd extra skin, which was disgusting and made its stomach hurt. Its ears were ringing, a faint, repeating whistle rhythmic to the drumming of its heart slamming into its ribs. As its mind screamed to eat, eat, devour and consume without a care in the world, its frustration grew, until it eventually decided to just tear the extra skin off with its teeth like before.

The bulky, lead-lined boots and shin guards were caked in burning river fluids, but it didn’t care, clamping its small jaws around the shin and raking its teeth through the metal with only a mild feeling of strain, like cutting through half-melted meat.

But its canines were too small to pierce through the thick metal, and the more it raked its canines through it, the more jagged it became, and the more sharp pieces of metal pierced and cut its gums when its teeth nearly effortlessly sank to the base.

With a snarl of frustration, it moved up to the thigh, gripped one of the exposed leg bones, and started violently thrashing side to side, hoping to dislodge the leg from its confines. Its razor-sharp front teeth only managed to cut off its bulbous tip. It stomped a paw, licking its chops after it hastily swallowed as it tried to figure something out. After staring at the other end of the legs, it dashed to the human’s ankles, and tried to indulge the howling lust for food.

As its canines sank and hooked into the metal where some moving bits allowed the human to move its paws properly, a sound suddenly cut through its surroundings, and as if a burst pipe had covered it in cooling fluid, it went cold, freezing with its jaws stretched apart almost to the point of its bones snapping out of their place around an incredibly bulky, and incredibly heavy foot that it was somehow lifting as it raised its head.

“Renfred! You stupid, bumbling fucking gambler shitpit cunt! Where the fuck are you?!” A gruff human voice screamed from just around the corner, and the wolf stood in place dumbly as it turned to look at the deafening roar, its fur standing on end with such intensity that it almost hurt its skin.

It had to run, to hide. The human sounded furious.

The small, squirming limb inside its chest bubbled and writhed, responding to the wolf’s overwhelming fear, but in the split second between the human’s shoulder coming into sight, and its internal panicked screaming to hide in a place without a hiding spot, something clicked deep in its mind, body, and the limb it suddenly knew was its very soul.

A sensation like when it got shocked by the sparky water spread through its body, yet instead of pain, it brought satisfaction, like the sensation of an unused muscle finally making the neural connections necessary for the wolf to use.

How the wolf used the new 'limb' was less than useless. With nothing but the panicked thought of ‘hide’, it spread out of its chest in an instant, sputtering, dissipating and breaking, some parts of the feeling washing over its fur while others lost contact and dissipated in the air.

As if in slow motion, the two legger turned the corner, and froze.

Across a short, L shaped alley whose cobblestones were utterly soaked in blood and tiny bits of viscera, only about as wide as two men were tall, a small bloodsoaked creature with wide, gleaming pools of hazel stood. A limb covered in lead almost as large as its own body hung out of its overstretched jaws that had clamped onto the metal, covered in flickering, chaotic spurs and bursts of pure darkness, looking at an equally frozen human who stared back in muted horror.

The wolf broke first, hastily putting a paw on the leg in its mouth and kicking it out of its jaws that couldn’t stretch further with a shriek of rent metal, and without even a snarl, it turned tail and ran so fast it had trouble not slamming into the walls of the alleys around it with every turn. It didn’t know for how long it ran, it simply kept going until the shouts of the human in the alley faded, and then the sudden burst of strength it had obtained during its feeding frenzy started draining out of its body, until its limbs started buckling, barely managing to correct itself before it went off tumbling into a wall as a ball of thrashing legs. Yet, it continued running, albeit slower and clumsier.

Eventually, it saw a square shaped hole into one of the metal walls, where some sort of patchwork repair had taken place and promptly failed again, and it dived in without a second thought.

A giant mass of cables covered in some bendy material embraced it like a mattress, and despite its previously terrible experience with wires and sparking stuff, it couldn’t help but appreciate the warmth of the pipes above its head, the cooling blood covering the entirety of its upper body rapidly crusting on its fur and freezing its skin.

With a mild shiver, it licked its bleeding gums, and after several lengthy minutes of no danger coming, it relaxed, its panting tongue lolled out and dripping blood onto the crimson-painted cables.

It shuffled its body deeper into the mass of soft cables until it wasn’t visible from outside, emotionally and physically exhausted beyond what it thought possible. The moment its eyes closed, it rested, [Restful Awareness] rapidly bringing it back to some semblance of consciousness.

You have opened the Unique Path: [Hound of The Keeper]

Do you wish to follow it?

The wolf's lucid dream presented a choice, and the wolf focused on the symbols, trying to better understand the choice before it with all the caution and fear of an animal not wishing to confront something as dangerous as the being of darkness again.

Visions flashed and swirled before its eyes. The rough concept of The Keeper, sitting in its incomprehensible realm as it contained Oblivion, countless little threads connecting its soul to puppets who flashed across the wolf's world, and traveled through their chains to present souls to be cast into the rift of nonexistence, taking their toll. And one of those threads extended down to the wolf, yet it was no tether nor restraint like the others, but rather, a connection. And through that connection, the Keeper would accept a trade. The wolf could expend some soul to channel the essence of Oblivion through its own soul, and expel a weaker, dilluted and finite version of it.

The visions flashed, and the wolf saw itself hurling a small sphere of pure nothingness through the chest of a human with nothing but its mind, leaving behind a round, cone-shaped hole as the sphere rapidly diminished, until it exited through the human's back, barely the size of a tooth, and shot off into the distance. Another scene depicted a spear rushing through the air, the air around it whizzing by so quickly that splinters of wood split off and dissapeared.

And just before it slammed through the wolf's head and skewered it, a large, roughly circular film of undulating darkness quickly formed in front of the wolf, the blanket of darkness diminishing into a paw-sized hole of nothingness as the spear simply dissapeared into it in the blink of an eye, before fading away to nothing, a tiny bit of soul returning to the wolf. And finally, it saw itself use the odd thing it had done before, when the human surprised it, but flawlessly.

It took the essence of nonexistence, and like tearing its fur off, took away its echo, a harmless darkness that covered the wolf like a second coat of fur, turning it into a being whose footsteps brought no sound as it stomped on thin pipes without even a whisper of banging metal. And then, with fine control the wolf could never manage right now, it saw itself dashing around the lower canals as nothing but a vague shadow, barely visible by only the fact that it was moving at all.

Just as it thought that, the vision changed, showing how it looked when it stood stock still.

Or rather, it felt like that was what was being shown, because even the wolf couldn't figure out where its body was supposed to be in the vision, until a black bump on top of a nearby pipe several feet off the ground suddenly got up on its legs and walked off into the darkness.

The instant the vision ended, the wolf accepted with a sense of giddiness and awe it had never felt before, its tail wagging in its sleep.

-You have obtained the Unique Path: [Hound of The Keeper]

-You have Leveled Up. Level 0 → Level 1.

-You have unlocked Attributes.

-Attribute Points Available: 1

-Base Attributes:

Strength ( +0 )

Speed ( +0 )

Dexterity ( +0 )

Endurance ( +0 )

Perception ( +0 )

Resolve ( +0 )

Intelligence ( +0 )

Soul ( +0 )

The wolf focused on each word to parse their meaning, but the moment it understood that 'Endurance' meant something like a combination of physical toughness and stamina, it instantly chose it.

Endurance ( +1 )

The symbols continued moving across its dream-sight.

- Acquired Skills:

You have gained the Skill [Mental Resistance - Level 1]

You have gained the Skill [Soul Perception - Level 1]

You have gained the Skill [Mana Perception - Level 1]

You have gained the Skill [Mana Manipulation - Level 1]

You have gained the Skill [Echoes of Oblivion - Level 1]

You have gained the Skill [Bloodrush - Level 1]

-[Mental Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 1 → Level 28

-[Corrosion Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 4 → Level 5

-[Restful Awareness] has Leveled Up. Level 3 → Level 5

-[Iron Stomach] has Leveled Up. Level 3 → Level 4

-Acquired Titles:

Witness of Divinity: You have seen a being of divine nature in their own realm, a tiny glimpse into the truth of the world itself. Your illuminated gaze pierces through any and all falsehoods.

-Acquired Traits:

Timid (1 / 5): You have fled from danger equal or lesser to yourself multiple times. You are slightly faster when defending, and are slightly slower when attacking.

Scavenger (1 / 1): You eat the unwanted remnants you can find rather than what you can hunt, trade, forage, cultivate, or steal. You are harder to notice when intending to scavenge, and easier to notice when intending to hunt.

The wolf mentally went through all the changes and roughly understood what had occurred as it swept through them, its mind unable to read the text but deriving meaning and information from them regardless.

[Bloodrush] was essentially that sudden boost of strength, endurance and speed it had gained when it started trying to eat the human's legs, something that could be activated with a thought, lasted for maybe half a minute, and the wolf had to wait for a while to be able to use it again.

[Mental Resistance] was... some type of mental wall that would block things like 'The Keeper' from delving into its head, assuming they were a couple million times weaker than it.

The skills with 'Mana' or 'Soul' in them only provided it with definitions and ideas so abstract and strange, it couldn't make heads or tails of them, only that they were about seeing, and moving whatever 'Mana' and 'Soul' was.

It kept 'reading', and paused when it finally understood what ‘Timid’ was describing, after a few moments of focusing on it.

Was the human who was roaring and screaming equal to it? Or lesser? The idea was ridiculous, simply by dint of size. The human had towered over it, twice to thrice as wide and four to five times as tall, covered in thick extra skins and plates of lead. But the odd symbols in its mind were what had given it its newfound vigor, the very reason it was even alive right now. And if something had the power to help the wolf like that, not only was it friendly, it probably knew better than it did by a longshot. Additionally, the way the creature of darkness had planted information in its mind was oddly reminiscent of how it kept getting definitions and random tiny bits of knowledge in its mind, and even more reminiscent of the way the odd symbols of its mind kept seemingly pulling information out of the aether and into its brain.

So, maybe… maybe it could kill a human in a fight?

But why would it risk such a thing? There were more than enough other creatures in the nest for it to eat if it could even entertain the idea of attacking a human. It felt like it could definitely defeat one of the giant rats now, at the very least, so it would start there.

Its thoughts drifted back to the words, wishing to refresh its memory, and the information spread itself before him at the mere hint of its intentions.

-Species: Wolf

-Name: None

-Path: [Hound of The Keeper] Level 1

Base Attributes:

Strength ( +0 )

Speed ( +0 )

Dexterity ( +0 )

Endurance ( +1 )

Perception ( +0 )

Resolve ( +0 )

Intelligence ( +0 )

Soul ( +0 )

Available: 0

-Racial Skills: [Pack Hunter], [Quick Learner], [Devourer]

-Acquired Skills:

[Pain Resistance - Level 17]

[Infection Resistance - Level 7]

[Poison Resistance - Level 12]

[Corrosion Resistance - Level 5]

[Disease Resistance - Level 4]

[Magic Resistance - Level 4]

[Mental Resistance - Level 28]

[Electricity Resistance - Level 2]

[Restful Awareness - Level 5]

[Tough Skin - Level 2]

[Iron Stomach - Level 4]

[Mana Perception - Level 1]

[Mana Manipulation - Level 1]

[Soul Perception - Level 1]

[Echoes of Oblivion - Level 1]

[Bloodrush - Level 1]

-Acquired Titles:

Witness of Divinity: You have seen a being of divine nature in their own realm. Your illuminated gaze shatters all illusions, and pierces through any and all falsehoods.

-Acquired Traits:

Enduring (1 / 5): You have felt the chill of death multiple times, and survived. You are slightly tougher.

Timid (1 / 5): You have fled from danger equal or lesser to yourself multiple times. You are slightly faster when fleeing, and are slightly slower when attacking.

Scavenger (1 / 1): You eat what remnants you can find rather than what you can hunt, forage, cultivate, or steal. You are harder to notice when scavenging, and easier to notice when hunting.

Many of the things listed were small improvements it wouldn’t have even noticed or paid attention to had it not checked using the odd symbols and the info they gave it.

It still had no idea what soul, mana, and ‘divinity’ were, and trying to focus on ‘Echoes of Oblivion’ provided nothing but hazy images of moving darkness rather than the detailed visions of before, but it was enough for it to feel at least a little aware of what was going on with itself.

The second it had finished seeing what had changed, the process of deconstruction started, the human it had eaten being picked apart in its stomach and mind both.

Information flashed, embedded and collected, full of holes yet more than enough to understand to some minor degree of depth of how a human body worked. Where to strike, what the weak points were. Their olfactory senses, the range of vibrations that their ears could pick up.

Dozens upon dozens of names flashed past and into its mind, interlocking functions unwrapping and stretching for it to better see how they functioned.

And it was in awe.

The human brain’s mental acuity was over three times better than its own. Their sight was roughly three times better, their sight range longer and with the ability to see new colors the wolf had never even seen before. It had some vague notion of green, light yellow, and light blue, but that was all it could really see beyond varying shades of shadow. Humans could see so much more.

That wasn’t all. Their joints allowed for so much flexibility. They could twist their arms around in ways the wolf couldn’t even dream of without something important snapping and breaking. The way their chest was structured allowed their arms to spread, and if the wolf could replicate that, or find some way to make its own paws do the same, its sideways maneuverability would be incredible. Its own body was built for rapid forwards movement, but if it could incorporate their pectoral muscles and arm joint structure into its frame somehow, it could have amazing mobility in all four directions. The secret was in the shoulders, but it didn’t quite know how to replicate that on itself without sacrificing forwards speed.

But if it combined the best aspects of its paws and the hands of a human, it could climb and manipulate things so much easier. It could even use their devices, like ladders and the metal grips they used to drop down to the canals without it having to risk its life or waste half a day to descend. Not to mention it could use its claws to actually attack rather than just using them to gain traction on the ground when it ran.

Yet, when it entertained the idea of adding any of those useful features, it became aware of what it was adding them to.

Its own body.

It could examine itself now. It could see all the badly healed fractures, the infection that had rendered its left ear useless permanently. It could see the utterly indestructible material its teeth and claws were made out of, yet not its composition, or how to recreate them. It could see some of the things that made its body so incredible, yet at the same time, so horribly vulnerable. Even compared to a human.

A single layer in its ribcage? Why do that if its body could have another set of flexibly movable bones underneath the gaps just to ensure its organs were safe from small stabby things? Why was its stomach so important yet so exposed? Why was its spine so… fragile? Why was its tail so useless? Why was its natural lifespan so horribly small compared to humans?

The questions piled on and on as it mentally checked itself from top to bottom, and eventually it noticed something, a new growth running down the insides of its snout, slowly but surely. The antennae it had wished for. It was just starting, the nerves being constructed by its body, inert and only foundational, until the proper receptors in its brain were constructed.

But the visible confirmation that all the bits of this process had a true point, a real impact on its body, chased away the bitter anxiety of a body whose imperfections were all laid bare and criticized. However, as it mentally stepped back from viewing the fine details, it noticed something else.

Another bit of floating information in its mind. A jumbled mess of flesh, fat, organs and crushed bones, floating in nothingness, waiting for the wolf to tap into.

And tap into it, it did.

With as much caution as possible, it looked to the ‘hormones’ its body produced, and found the thing that caused it to grow, aptly named ‘growth hormone’, along with another more complicated name it couldn’t quite grasp yet. It used the human’s bones to make its own better. Stronger and heavier, if only by a little bit. It assigned the human’s flesh and organs to be quickly digested, and gently nudged its body to produce a little bit more growth hormone, enough to grow bigger just a bit faster, but not enough to cause complications in its body, one that it wasn't entirely knowledgeable about right now.

Caution above all else.

It used some bits of cartilage to reinforce weak joints, some bits of flesh and blood to replenish that which it had lost from its bleeding mouth, and after some serious deliberation, tried to do something a little more complicated.

Adding more tendons.

If it was understanding the information before it correctly, tendons lead to increased muscle mass, vastly increased strength, and it was something its body could do naturally, completely on its own, rather than something the wolf would have to irrationally worry about crippling itself with if it did something wrong.

It took a long, long time, even in its dreamspace, but it eventually managed to mold a functional shape in its leg bones and joints for the new extra tendons to run through, with heavy, heavy assistance from the odd presence in its mind that made the ‘text’ symbols appear. Of course, it was just a sort of direction more than anything else, and the physical changes would take a while to appear, but it was a great start.

Those changes complete, it returned to its previous grafting procedure, and quickly chose to have its eyes be more humanoid in structure but not appearance, enough to be able to see more colors, see further and sharper and still maintain its superior night vision by keeping the reflective lining behind the retina. It thinned the nictitating membrane around its eyes, and made it denser instead, both to reduce the blur in its vision, and to not lose the extra protection the membrane provided.

It thought long and hard about the human brain, yet it was just too complex to feel safe picking it for itself with such little information. That, and something warned that it would have to change both its size and current skull structure to accomodate a brain of such complexity and size.

Besides, what if it ended up feeling, thinking, and acting like a human while stuck in the form of a wolf?

Even if it wasn’t stuck in the form of a wolf, it liked being a wolf, for all the good its species did it. It didn’t want to be a human, neither in its brain nor in its body. So as tempting as it was, it felt like it just didn't know enough about the structure to apply it to itself without breaking or making something terribly wrong.

The eyes were surprisingly simple, but that was about all it could really use right now, besides their excretion system for cooling themselves off. Excreting fluid to cool themselves off using air currents was an interesting design, but unless the wolf could figure out a way to be able to turn it on and off at will so it wouldn’t accidentally boil or freeze itself to death by messing around with its body’s poorly understood heating and cooling mechanisms, there wasn’t enough information for it to work off, and its mind was already heavily struggling to understand everything it was being jammed full of, even with the odd floating symbols helping it so much. If it was awake, it got the feeling that not even a fraction of this would have been possible.

But why did it perfectly understand how cockroaches worked after having only one bite of them, despite the comparable complexity of their forms, yet the human body that had taken almost an hour to consume was… vaguely interpreted, but not yet understood?

Despite eating them, the amount of material on them was barely equivalent to the human’s fist. Six whole cockroaches were barely big enough… to...

Six.

It was the number.

It understood cockroaches perfectly because it had eaten six of them, or so it thought. The exact number was half-forgotten, and it did not particularly matter the specifics, but it understood what it needed if it wanted to survive, and maybe even thrive.

It had to get smarter, stronger and bigger. It had to eat more humans, which it could only feel comfortable doing if it could at least double its current size. Maybe triple it?

But then it would be too large to pass off as just another canine, and the bigger it was, the more attention humans would pay to it, making it harder to hide, blend in with the other canines, and maybe even make them recognize it on sight if they caught it eating one of their own.

So… why even fight?

The human had succumbed to the poison, and died without the wolf even having to do anything.

If it could somehow make its own poison… or.. No, venom. But the only way to make it would be to eat extremely dangerous, poisonous creatures, wait for its body to create the venom glands, and find... some way to put that poison into the humans, and then wait for them to die.

Too… unrealistic. And scary, and risky. And lots of other things it didn’t quite have the words for.

An ambush… it could work. Jump out of nowhere, bite a hole into their glass-mask thing, and wait for the human to die again. An ambush would be its best chance… Which the last trait, ‘Scavenger’, made much more difficult, but not impossible.

It’s only safe course of action was to keep running from danger using the ‘Timid’ and ‘Scavenger’ traits, until it could find another lucky break, and grow big enough to start fighting and hunting humans.

It had to be smarter. If humans could make such incredible things with only three times the intelligence it had, it could only dream of how much more fluid and effortless it would be to use its ‘Devourer’ ability when it understood the human brain structure enough to mimic it. Among… well, everything else. It had no illusions about its intelligence, and the floating symbols definitely helped it understand its place.

It was much smarter than any animal should be, but not smarter than any human.

For the remaining time of its rest, the wolf posed countless questions and clarifications to the floating symbols, most of which were ignored.