Sleep was near instant. The moment it deemed its environment safe, it simply collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, uncaring of the human’s pained grunt as it accidentally flipped her onto her stomach from its sudden yank at her collar.

You have progressed on your Path.

[Hound of The Keeper] Level 9 → Level 16

Available Attribute Points: 7

-Attributes:

Strength ( +0 )

Speed ( +0 )

Dexterity ( +0 )

Endurance ( +2 )

Perception ( +1 )

Resolve ( +1 )

Intelligence ( +4 )

Soul ( +1 )

The wolf didn’t spend even a moment to ‘read’ or consider the symbols, brushing them aside, forcefully telling the symbols to leave it alone.

Surprisingly, it worked, and its body came into ‘view’. Or feeling, rather. It was still a strange sensation.

The damage was much less dire than it had assumed it would be, the points it had in Endurance showing their worth. The problem was that its wounds were still very much open, and bleeding very heavily. It was a wonder how it even had the presence of mind to fix itself...

Thankfully, pinching veins shut was a matter of seconds, however numerous they were, and in short order, it felt like it had at the very least stabilized itself for the blood loss to no longer be a threat.

It started on a quick overall assessment of its injuries. Its bottom right canine had been ripped out of its mouth completely, and its jawbone had broken at the middle point, on both sides. Creating a thin sleeve of cartilage around the bone and its fragments to keep them pressed together, before urging its body to connect the bone again, was a matter of a couple minutes. It assigned the cartilage to be cannibalised by its skill, slowly, just to make sure the bone fixed properly.

Turns out, the amount of lost tissue when bone snapped was actually minimal. It would be very different if the bone was pulverized or outright removed, but a simple break would heal faster than even a flesh wound. It was too microscopic an injury once it forced its bone pieces to press together.

At the thought of a ‘flesh wound’, it focused on where its jawbone limply hung, connected to its head by skin and little else, and proverbially growled in annoyance.

The muscles, tendons, and joints were all damaged. The muscles were torn apart, one of the tendons to the right side was snapped clean, and bits of cartilage around the joint were broken and stripped from the bone, not to mention the obvious problem of the bone being detached.

Pushing the bone back into place was fairly simple, and fixing the torn up bits of cartilage around the bone was a fairly quick process. The muscles would take a bit longer to repair, as the damage was more extensive than simple muscle fibers being snapped, and the tendon was a relatively quick fix. It just had to grab the two ends and stick them together before focusing as much essence as it could into reconnecting the two pieces. It knew that slower healing took less essence to complete, as speed seemed to cost just as much essence as fixing the wounds itself, but it had plenty of material in storage, so it could afford to be a bit wasteful.

Its tail would take a couple days to return to its previous state, but it wasn't a particularly necessary limb, so the wolf didn't bother speeding the regenerative process along, just giving it an average amount of essence.

Miraculously, it had only lost a single canine, the bottom right one, and it sped up its body with the process of making a new one, hoping that the cutting power of its old tooth would somehow transfer.

Because no matter how much it looked into its teeth, it couldn’t find out anything about them, not really. When nearing a bone, it could see the microscopic fibers that it was made up of, but there was no such thing for its teeth. They were just... perfect. Perfectly smooth, perfectly dense, it couldn’t even tell if they were made of bone at all. Just some white, inscrutable substance, harder than anything it could even imagine. It didn't know how to replicate them.

Fixing its right ear was also a rather quick fix, only taking a couple minutes. It just had to grab onto the flopping part of its ear with its mind, yank it back into place, and then use tiny bits of stretchy muscle to connect the pieces and rebuild the veins, cartilage, and skin.

Then it suddenly realized that it had been moving its body this entire time, in a way. It had made muscles, and used them like a tentacle to connect to the other piece of its ear like a spider’s strings to fix the cartilage and skin. It had grabbed pieces of its bones with its mind and pushed them together, used muscles to adjust and tighten them together.

So…

Its leg, from where it was mushed beneath its chest, restricting the blood flow and making pins and needles punch through the skin, slowly moved.

A sense of jubilation and absurd giddiness went through the wolf.

It could move in its sleep.

It activated [Bloodrush], disbelieving of the fact that the Skills worked in its sleep. Then it grabbed onto its body, and slowly pushed its leg out from underneath it into a better position.

It was a strange sensation. Unlike moving normally, where the mind put forth a command, and the body followed, this was a far more direct method, no middle-man in the form of nerves, no muscle memory to guide its movements with the force of habit. It was awkward, and stilted, and took a lot of focus, but as long as it was in the [Devourer] Skill, it could quite literally walk while asleep, judging by how it made its legs trot in the air as it lay on its side.

Of course, it couldn’t shake away that mental dismissal of its senses, its hearing and smell incredibly muted, and its sight…

It forced its eyelids open. A blurry mess met its sight, and the shackles of sleep threatened to slide away the more visual stimuli its eyes encountered, but in the dark iron pipe they were in, that was hardly a problem. The problem was that the attempt to focus on both the sensation of its body, and the visual stimuli, was quickly giving it a headache.

Maybe it could do something with this in the future. Walking with its mind while asleep, albeit mildly dangerous due to the loss of senses, could be useful for exercising in its sleep, or such things. But for the moment, it was a distraction, so it simply stopped, trying to remember what it was doing before.

Ah, fixing itself.

Some repairs other than the ones it had already done would take a day or two, like the chunks of meat missing, the tip of its tail, and its vocal cords, but the most annoying part to get rid of would be its own reproductive organs.

Because as it had learned, those were nothing but a weak point that it had simply not thought of removing until now. Cannibalizing the organ was a matter of a few days, and rebuilding it for… whatever reason, wouldn’t take much longer. Actually, if it wanted to make pups, it could just give itself a womb and inseminate itself without having to worry about finding a female canine and protecting her, so its reproductive organs weren’t even useful for reproduction.

It paused for a moment, genuinely considering the idea.

It was… weird. Its mind rejected the idea out of some odd sense of revulsion, as it was a male, but it couldn’t deny that having an actual pack of kin at its side was an appealing idea, and that impregnating itself was the safest and best way to achieve that, regardless of how uncomfortable the notion made it.

It was also impractical, as food was already relatively scarce around the human nest, and the wolf had no real idea of how to raise, control, or care for pups, as it had no memory of itself being one, but it was an interesting idea for the distant future, perhaps.

Putting that idea aside for now, it focused on another weak point it had felt acutely during the fight.

Endurance. Not the attribute, but its body’s capability to keep going. In a fight that lasted a mere two or three minutes, it had gone from fresh and hale, to completely exhausted.

It had grown, its muscle mass almost doubling since its acquisition of the symbols, but it hadn’t properly gained the energy to sustain that meager mass and power.

So it focused on its cardiovascular system.

Veins widened and thickened, stabbing deep into muscles that were not supported by a proper blood flow until now, a terrible oversight. Its lungs expanded, as much as it could spare without squishing other organs. It moved its diaphragm down, let its organs shift lower to make some space. The muscles of the diaphragm itself were strengthened, the muscle fibers hardening, toughening, but not multiplying, just to make rapid breathing easier.

It knew that exercise would vastly improve its cardiovascular system, but it didn’t know how exactly, so all its changes were mere approximations and imitations.

For all it knew, it could barely be improving itself compared to normal exercise. When it had some free reign to run around and test its endurance and what effect exercise would have on itself, it would do so, but at the moment this was the best it could come up with.

There was so much more it could fix, that it felt a little overwhelmed with the possibilities, and that was without considering things that it could outright change.

It spent much time considering the natural chemicals its body produced, one of which greatly helped it during the fight.

‘Adrenaline’, that made its veins sing in ecstasy, that helped its muscles push beyond their limit, that made it want to throw away caution and charge into the bloodbath.

It was the equivalent to a minor [Bloodrush], without the added Endurance.

Additionally, its abdomen was still mostly empty.

So it quickly made some glands within the flimsy cage of bone in its abdomen that would slowly but surely produce this chemical and store it in sacs just beside the glands. The sacs connected to the bloodstream in a simple one-way valve system that was used in various other parts of its body, and it surrounded them in a thin sleeve of muscle that could squeeze, and force adrenaline into the bloodstream. Getting muscle memory to connect to its brain took a bit longer, but it would be complete sooner than later, and it would have adrenaline whenever it needed it.

The sacs were rather large, and the glands were rather small, but that was alright. It expended some essence from [Devourer], a tiny amount, that would be dedicated to creating the chemical alongside the glands just to boost production.

If and when its body would start building a tolerance for this natural chemicals, it would simply wipe that tolerance away to maintain its potency, allowing it to always have an additional, and natural boost in any fight it got into.

After applying these changes, it was displeased to note that they would, for one reason or another, take a couple days to be made. It still wasn’t sure of what factors made a change take less or more time, but the Skill wasn’t very forthcoming with how it worked.

Another quick check of its injuries revealed some sort of… blight, an unknown something that the wolf knew was detrimental to itself, some sort of infection, or poison. Destroying it was laughably easy however, as it simply turned to its own immune system, and buffered it with as much essence as it dared to, with the vague direction of attacking the foreign filth.

The infection would soon be gone entirely, so-

The hand that rested on its fur suddenly tightened to the point of mild pain, and the wolf was thrown out of its rest. Its eyes flew open, and its head rose and swerved to observe its surroundings. The downwards-tilting pipe was secure from the poison, as it couldn’t rise upwards, and it could neither hear nor feel any rodent approaching, just a few of them in neighboring pipes.

Seeing no danger, it flattened its antennae and turned to the whimpering, squirming human as its hand tightened and jerked, her paw clenching its fur. Likely having a nightmare. It carefully aimed with its hind paw, and roughly shoved her uninjured shoulder, simultaneously annoyed and sympathetic.

It had things to do, and while it knew nightmares sucked, its rest was far more important at the moment.

The human thankfully startled awake, so it went back to sleep with a grumble, ignoring her words again.

It took a minute, but it returned to its body, just observing, not doing anything for a few minutes. Absent-mindedly, it fixed all scrapes, bruises, minor injuries, and returned to a mindless fugue of hesitation.

Its changes would kick in, some soon, some later, but now it was out of ideas, and was more concerned with a different problem.

Frankly, it had forgotten about the human until now.

And it wasn’t sure what it wanted to do with her.

It didn’t particularly need her. She’d helped it finally understand how to use the [Echoes of Oblivion] Skill, and it was extremely grateful for that, but her usefulness had pretty much expired now. The wolf could learn words and how to speak them, as well as what they meant, simply from observing other humans, and watching her move her mana around had stopped being useful to the wolf.

Until now, she wasn’t a liability. In that fight to escape the poison, she’d more than proven her worth, even with three semi-useless limbs, keeping the rodents off its back, giving the wolf some boosts in Speed and Perception that greatly helped.

But now it was in unknown, unfamiliar territory. Dangerous territory. Dragging her around would slow the wolf down, hurting its stealth capabilities. And the tightness of the pipes made it difficult to properly drag the human along.

This was territory that the human would be nothing but a liability in.

And yet, despite all that, it didn’t really want to leave her here.

It could acknowledge that at this point, it was simply acting on emotion, but it had never spent so long with another living being, never slept alongside them for days on end, never shared its food with another.

This was the first connection it had ever made, and some primal, social part of its mind that had grown atrophied, was now preening in contentment just from being around the human. If anything, she was like a… giant, weakling pup that the wolf had been taking care of for a week or more.

In the future, this connection could yield great things for the wolf. Maybe the human would give it food on a steady basis, allowing it to taste and experience more things without putting itself in danger, maybe the human would give it ideas and talk to it, when it could finally talk back to her. Maybe the wolf would be the one to need her assistance, and she would come.

But truthfully, all those thoughts were merely the wolf trying to justify why it was prepared to put in so much effort into keeping her alive. It was well aware of that fact, but it couldn’t help itself.

It liked having her around, even if she tried to attack it once. In what felt like a lifetime ago, it remembered understanding just how truly alone it was, the last of its own kin, the only wolf it had ever seen, feeling its heart crushed by loneliness. That emotion felt so far away now, so muted when it simply stuck around the human, her petting hand like a brush that painted over that feeling with every stroke.

Maybe once she was better, she would turn away and never come back, but that was fine. It still wanted to try.

Sure, it knew damn well that if push came to shove, it would turn tail and run to preserve its own life, whether the human survived or not, but until that moment came, it couldn’t find it in itself to abandon her just because she was mildly inconvenient.

It could eat any human, any one of its canine kin, but this particular human was… it was the wolf’s human. As long as she acknowledged that the wolf was in charge of this bizarre, makeshift pack, it would protect her.

That was a good point for its thoughts to reach absolvement, it believed.

Then the human started making her sad yipping noises again, and the wolf woke up again. It tried to snarl, only for a wheeze to come out.

Right, it forgot about that.

It activated [Logotexnia], and with a bit of focus, managed to push some air out of throat and use the mana of its body to weave sound waves into the air, into a rough approximation of its snarl, letting its fur bristle in warning. Getting woken up constantly was getting really annoying.

The human once more woke up, and stiffened, the light scent of fear entering its nostrils as her sounds stilled.

And now it felt bad.

Great.

It let up and relaxed, cutting off the sound of its snarl. It quickly fell asleep again, the human petting its fur, a luxury it was unused to.

With one last check-over to make sure it didn’t miss anything to improve or fix within its body, it called the symbols back with a thought, which surprisingly worked.

Available Attribute Points: 7

-Attributes:

Strength ( +0 )

Speed ( +0 )

Dexterity ( +0 )

Endurance ( +2 )

Perception ( +1 )

Resolve ( +1 )

Intelligence ( +4 )

Soul ( +1 )

Seven whole points. And it knew exactly what it was going to put them in.

Speed ( +1)

Intelligence ( +5 )

Endurance ( +7 )

For a moment, it felt its bones turn to steel, its flesh harden into marble, the beat of its heart a thunderous boom, its very body suffused with a feeling of invincibility. Unfortunately, the feeling faded quickly, yet not entirely. Its body felt harder, tougher, lighter. Every breath felt unnecessary, as if it could just stop breathing and its body would keep working for hours on end, vitality and power seeping into every fiber of its body.

It was intoxicating. Addicting.

It wanted more.

Knowing that it had no more points however, it ushered forth the rest of the symbols.

-Acquired Skills:

You have gained the Skill [Sonic Blast - Level 1]

You have gained the Skill [Tremor Sense - Level 1]

-[Pain Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 17 → Level 19

-[Restful Awareness] has Leveled Up. Level 6 → Level 15

-[Tough Skin] has Leveled Up. Level 2 → Level 4

-[Mana Manipulation] has Leveled Up. Level 4 → Level 6

-[Bloodrush] has Leveled Up. Level 3 → Level 5

-[Logotexnia] has Leveled Up. Level 1 → Level 4

It ‘stared’ at [Restful Awareness] in mild confusion tinted with disbelief. Nine whole Levels. Just for moving around a bit in its sleep? That was absurd, if it actually had any effect. And the tremor sense Skill meant that…

It could get more Skills out of its [Devourer] Skill by changing its body? If it added a venomous tooth, would it get some Skill about venom then? That seemed like it was heavily incentivising the wolf to stray from its original biology, even if the only thing [Tremor Sense] did was make interpreting the signals its antennae picked up a little bit easier and a little bit more accurate.

With the symbols having nothing else to show it, it returned to its body, and got to work on making a skin sack full of hyper-nutritional blood for the human to drink. Just to make sure it wouldn’t be a hindrance, the wolf made the sack thin, without blood vessels, and without any pain receptors. The blood it put in there was… not exactly blood. It removed much of the blood plasma and filled the liquid with tons of nutritional things it usually found in meat, even if it wasn’t exactly sure what they were, a lot of water, and filled it chock-full of vitamins, as many as it could.

The change would take an hour or two, so it simply allowed its body to fade away, its mind finally resting along with its body.

When it was done sleeping, it got up, letting the human’s petting hand slide off, and with a low groan, put its butt high in the air and stretched its forelegs as far away as they would go, its chest brushing against rusty iron with a low yawn.

Nothing felt quite as good as a long nap.

Its jaw wasn’t hanging anymore, as jawbone was back in its place and the muscles were mostly repaired, but it was still quite tender and painful. It poked the small nub of bone coming out of its bottom right canine with its tongue, noting that it felt exactly like its other teeth, much to its relief.

It turned around to the human, who was still doing something weird to her arm with mana, and lowered its head to hook its top canines through her right shoulder garment. With a minor bit of readjustment, it wrenched its head to the side to flip the human onto her back.

With a bit of groaning and a lot of effort on the human’s part, they managed to turn her around, despite the pipe’s relatively narrow confines.

The wolf lifted its right paw, staring at the jiggling sack of skin attached to the inside of its foreleg. It was weird. And mildly repulsive, which was a rare thing for the wolf to think of anything, when it had to swim through literal rivers of shit more than once in its life.

Regardless, it wasn’t like it was going to wound itself to feed the human some blood, so this would do.

It lowered its right paw and lifted its left to poke the human’s mouth covering, and after a moment of incomprehension, she understood, voluntarily lifting the fabric and opening her mouth.

It put its left paw back down and lifted its right paw again, as far up as it could, and awkwardly twisted its head, trying to find a decent spot to poke a hole in. After a moment of visualizing, it quickly poked a hole into the sack and hurriedly lined up the thin stream of pink-ish blood to land in her mouth, bits of the liquid being wasted on her collarbone and hair.

Its consistency was more like water, and the human’s confusion was almost a tangible thing that hung in the air as she hurriedly gulped down the liquid.

The steady stream slowed to a trickle, and the wolf, deciding the human had enough and growing annoyed with holding the awkward pose, curled its leg inwards and quickly bit off the skin sac, chomping it down and hurriedly swallowing it.

It had a very strange taste.

“What the fuck…” The human whispered, sounding awed, and seeming far more… energetic, than before.

That was odd, especially considering that her arm was infected, but the wolf didn’t pay it much mind, flaring its antennae and using the help of [Tremor Sense] to figure out a decent path to the surface, almost dragging its snout across the pipe's confines. It didn't find much.

The pipe they were in continued to climb upwards for two hundred or so feet, at a thankfully low angle, before curving to the left, and going downwards.

Dragging the human up a steep slope would have been a pain, even with its nigh inexhaustible body.

It couldn’t really feel anything beyond that, so it focused on what was around them, just in case.

A bunch of haphazardly, chaotically placed pipes that were either just holes in the stone, or pipes of iron that snaked through the stone, none of them leading to any kind of open air, and more often than not, having more than a couple of things walking around within them.

As fun as a fight was, the wolf wasn’t exactly looking for one, so it was going to avoid anything alive for as long as possible.

The pipe they were in was relatively safe, at least, so it was going to drag the human and itself a bit further along and then stop to rest again just before the bend. It didn’t really want to explore the unknown with half-healed injuries and with half its minor improvements not having kicked in yet.

As it hooked its canines onto the front of the human’s collar and started dragging her up, it was mildly surprised at how helpful and aware the human seemed, using her left arm to assist the wolf and barely making any sounds. She even gave the wolf one of her buffs to speed them along, which made the awkward backwards shuffle a little less tedious.

Maybe she wouldn’t be as much of a liability as it thought.

-

(If you are reading this story on any website that isn’t RoyalRoad.com, you are reading stolen content from a free site that runs no intrusive or obnoxious advertisements. Just google "RoyalRoad Fleabag" and you'll get to my story on the site it was meant to be hosted on.)