Over time, the deeper it went, it noticed the rats slowly getting bigger and more twisted. It got a first-hand look at this, as the rats that it ran across steadily became more misshapen and simultaneously more annoying to dispatch without wasting fire or spikes on them.

At first, the teeth were crooked more than it thought possible, much too large, occasionally jutting out of their gums like gnarled branches of spiky bone, almost. Not an issue, but bizarre.

Then, their bodies just started getting weird. Their legs bent wrong, some of them had skulls shaped more like someone made a rat’s skull out of clay before bashing it with a hammer a few times and letting it dry.

It vividly remembered one rat that had one eye in its neck and the other almost on its nose, and the thing couldn’t even move its head right to keep the wolf in its line of sight.

It still ate them after messing with them for a bit, snipping off limbs or seeing how long it could hold them down until their bodies just became too exhausted to even move.

The answer was that they didn't actually do that. They just struggled until their heart gave out and they died. The sheer tenacity was almost admirable, if the wolf didn't suspect that they had no real choice in how they reacted to living things.

Then the tunnels started getting weird. Not quickly, but as the dozens of feet turned to hundreds and the wolf came closer to the center, it was like someone had taken a normal grid of tunnels and bashed them together, mixed them up with surroundings rooms that didn't belong, sumps covered in wires and control rooms mixed with winding, shredded vents.

Instead of there being twenty conventional, natural exits it could feel that led to the outside, there was just this crushed, winding strip of labyrinthian tunnels that led to each other in vast loops, with only six big ones that all funneled towards the nest’s wall and some kind of facility that awaited their cargo there.

Six exits sounded like a lot, but when they all led to two near-identical human facilities, they really weren’t.

It could feel the dozens of humans prowling about inside both, sitting on rafters and checking every nook and cranny, setting traps.

Unfortunately for them, it could feel a fair few more exits they had no idea about, should it decide to leave. But it didn’t want to.

It had to get to the heart of the tunnel system, where it belonged. Back to where it should be.

Not yet though. It was just… too curious to rush.

By the time it was getting close to the middle of the tunnel network, the rats started being larger than the canines it saw in the human nest, easily reaching up to a human’s knees. Considering the wolf could reach a human’s upper thighs, the size difference was slowly shrinking, and the rodents were getting increasingly more…

Some part of itself wanted to say ‘absurd, inefficient, disgusting’, while another felt an odd sense of burning envy.

It wanted to be more too. To change more, to be more. Flesh to flesh, flesh to steel, steel to flesh.

Some had legs almost as long as their bodies, making them stumble and shuffle like crippled heaps of flesh trying to sprint while on mangled stilts. It was ridiculous-

And awesome in a morbid way.

Some, like the one currently trying to kill it, were so malformed that they were just clumps of fur and flesh that had absolutely no resemblance to an actual rodent anymore, and were just… useless. It had no idea how they survived. Maybe they just ate the moss that clung to the walls.

It stared down with a sense of annoyed envy and mildly confused amusement at the enraged ball of awkwardly flailing limbs grinding against its right arm, bashing against it, gurgled whistles coming out of… somewhere.

How did this thing even eat…?

It wanted this. It wanted to change, to change, until it shed its form like a cocoon, unrecognizable…

That… wait, no.

It tilted its head.

It still wanted to be and somewhat look like a wolf, didn't it? Yeah, it did. Impulsive thoughts.

It didn’t really matter.

The wolf brought out its humanoid right hand to grab onto what looked like… the flailing, furred hand of a human toddler with the elbow joint backwards, if instead of ending at five fingers it just ended in two pincer-like nubs.

It lifted the creature by said hand, and satisfied its morbid curiosity by just… holding it up and admiring the thing, almost as big as itself but entirely useless.

It could almost puzzle out where the gurgling sound was coming from, but not quite.

How did this… thing even happen? Why did they only get like this deep in the sewers? They’d been normal, if increasingly big, until the past day or so when it decided to just speed down the tunnels as fast as possible.

It debated how it would even begin to eat this thing, how it could even play with something that was already so deeply tortured by its own form-

A stray drop of liquid went into its eye from the thing’s useless jerking, and it felt a surge of boiling fury spear through its nerves like an electric shock, instant and thoughtless.

It threw the thing into the wall to its right with a crunchy squelch, making it bounce off and leave a smear of fur and goopy flesh behind, then took half a step forward in preparation, ready to crush it to pulp, to beat it into a formless chunk of meat patty, its lips curling back over its teeth with a low snarl.

The faint tug of a Skill leveling up in the corner of its mind briefly distracted it, and for a moment, it felt something like the most tiny, imperceptible caress of a string against its mind, shifting just enough for the wolf to feel it, like a weight that it had grown used to and forgotten was even there.

It hesitated, feeling its anger waver, something in the back of its head reeling in confusion.

Why was it so angry?

...Why was it even here? It could leave without going anywhere near the center of the sewer system. There were unmapped shafts everywhere. There was absolutely no need for it to be getting so close to some place so obviously dangerous, even if the prey got bigger and bigger. Why was it only questioning what it was doing now, after several hours or days trying to get to the center of the tunnels?

A vague sense of disconnection filled its mind and body, and it stumbled in place, taking a step back. It stared at a pair of furry arms, both humanoid, both right.

It felt like it was observing something through a pane of glass, like it was using puppet strings to make the limbs move, like they weren’t even its own.

Why had it been wanting to change itself so much? It made sense, of course. It knew that it had that subconscious block, it knew it needed firepower. It wouldn’t revert the changes, they were amazing.

But that itching sensation, that frenzied feeling that just told it to change, right now, as much as possible, more, that was not something it had felt before. On one hand, it made sense. It had almost just died multiple times in a single day, just a bit ago. It made sense to want to change, hard and fast.

On the other hand-

That weird mana symbol it had felt etched into its skull, ages ago, briefly flared, and it felt its thoughts scatter for a moment, [Mental Resistance] straining, allowing it to realize what was going on. It felt the body’s head shake with a growl, and felt that confusion evaporate.

It opened the Symbols, that tug of a level-up still insistent.

[Mental Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 29 → Level 30

It stared for a few moments, brows furrowing, the gaping chasm between mind and body groaning wider.

It tugged the puppet strings. The arms moved, back and forth. Sluggish. The puppet was weak.

The misshapen ball of flesh rolled and scrambled towards it again, and the wolf used the puppet’s right arms to drag it to the side, into the waters. It let the thing drown in the current, standing in place.

It thought back to how it kept getting increasingly impatient, angry. The first stages of it were normal, they felt fine. It was right to be angry at the humans, it felt nice to toy with them a bit before eating them.

But as it thought back, it began to wonder if its normal, usual self would toy as much as it did with the rats it found deeper down.

It thought back to one of the larger ones it had caught, one that it had grabbed onto with its human hands and held down while it ate it alive, reveling in its enraged, agonized screeching, and started second-guessing whether that was its own mind or something else influencing it.

Of course, it didn't feel bad for the thing. It didn't even feel remorse.

But usually, it wouldn't come up with something that bothersome just to satisfy some newly-grown sense of... sadism, or whatever it was that had guided it to do that.

It thought back to what it had felt when it saw the rodent it had just swept off into the waters, a sense of vague, reverent awe and respect, before the thing attacked and more normal feelings slid into place.

It focused further.

Why had it wanted to get to the center of the sewers so much, why had it felt a sense that it belonged there, that it should be there?

Back to where it should be, it remembered thinking, and it wondered what that even meant. It didn't belong anywhere.

Something was wrong.

[Mental Resistance] was always on. It was always at full power. It had learned its lesson a long time ago when some human had muttered 'control beast' and forced it to obey, that it shouldn’t put the Skill down.

So, it focused on the Skill, sightless eyes staring into brick, the puppet’s body still.

A minute passed, five.

Occasionally, it could feel something brushing against its mind and inflaming certain things, finding its feelings and subconscious desires and just… gently brushing against them, tugging them forth. Digging them out, selectively. Twisting them to some unseen purpose.

Something was trying to influence it. Control it. And it was somehow getting through its Skill.

This was not the same thing as what it had felt from the pitch black titan that gave it its Path. That was like two clawed gauntlets, forcing their tips through the seams at the gates of its mind and forcing them wide open so it could walk in, unashamed and uncaring of its notice.

This felt more like imperceptibly thin spider webs, weaving themselves through the gates’ seams, something so subtle and ramping that by the time something else might have realized what was happening, it would be too late.

Was that what had happened to the human before? That half-metal corpse? Is that why he'd lost his mind?

[Mental Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 30 → Level 31

It had to get out of here. Now.

It tugged the body’s strings, and the puppet sluggishly turned. A whisper of doubt crept into its mind as the mana construct in its skull briefly came into awareness again.

Cold, calculating fury coiled around its lungs, and it turned [Pain Resistance] all the way down, before extending its right secondary arm in front of it, palm open.

Then it spewed a short burst of fire onto its furless paw, and the gaping crack, that widening chasm between its body and its mind, it thinned.

Not enough. Even on bare skin, it was too tough to feel real pain from fire, not quickly.

It brought the hand up to its mouth, and with the puppet's teeth slightly blunted, it raked them through its paw, stopping just before the bones, blood hissing and boiling as it began to mix with the burning slime.

The pain of its flesh splitting, without even a single level of [Pain Resistance] to assist, was enough for the chasm to snap shut.

The feeling of looking through its own eyes like a telescope, the feeling of moving its body like tugging at a puppet’s strings, they just puffed into smoke, the pieces of itself clicking back together in an instant.

It shook its head again with a snarl, its fur bristling across its back as it regarded its surroundings with eyes that had life renewed in them, suspicious of everything and anything as it clenched its fist shut, smothering the fire, reveling in the pain to keep itself present.

It could feel exits. Small shafts, tubes melted through iron and stone.

They were too distant, too difficult to access.

It could make its own entrance to them.

It didn’t trot nor lightly prance forward, it ran.

Away from the center of the sewers, up.

[Bloodrush] activated, once, twice, three times.

It rushed to an endless shaft made of stone to its right, nestled behind a tunnel wall. It was a familiar sight and feeling, but one without pipes going through it like the last one it had been in, instead just metal frames that would occasionally brush against endless metal cables.

Digging through six feet of stone sounded difficult, and it would have been, had it not had the human arms to shovel the debris out of the makeshift tunnel between its legs as its main arms focused on raking through stone and breaking off chunks of it at a time.

It took three long, mildly paranoid hours before it judged the stone to be thin enough.

It punched through, clumsily, not having all that much space to move its arms in the jagged tube it had clawed, and used its human arms to assist, punching through the stone a second and a third time.

Then it squeezed through, growling and snarling in effort as it contorted itself to fit its upper body through, right shoulders and head first, legs scraping at dusty rock to push itself forward. It could still faintly hear the trickle of rushing water from behind it as it breathed in fresh air for the first time in about a week.

It took a short moment to breathe it all in, turning its head to look down, its two right arms bracing against the stone.

The shaft was looked like it was more than a thousand feet tall, which was a rather strange thing, because it felt like the stone and metal plates holding the smaller human nests up were not nearly that thick. And this entire sewer system was held within one such plate.

Still, it couldn’t exactly complain, as it could see the end of the shaft, a tiny block through which light came in from below.

It would take a long time to get down...

Or it could just...

It eyed the thick steel cable a foot or two to its right with three critical eyes, squinting in thought.

Its fur was starting to get really, really, really warm from all the friction.

Still, it was having a lot of fun right now.

Sliding down the metal cable was just… fun.

A little terrifying too, because it was going down head-first when the nearest flat surface was likely more than a thousand or more feet below, but it had two tails, two legs, four arms, and a tentacle, all tightly wrapped around a six-inch thick cable made of steel.

Short of a fireball exploding in its face, nothing could make the wolf detach.

It tried not to ruminate too much on what it had learned in the tunnel system, but it was difficult not to, when the ride was this long.

First things first, it had to get rid of that mana symbol in its skull. It hadn’t done anything before now, as far as it knew, and [Devourer] was definitely not connected to it, so it felt more than safe enough in removing it.

No, it felt safer to remove it, actually. It had no idea why the thing started acting up in the tunnels, nor why its first action thus was to try and make the wolf go deeper, try to control it. It didn’t make sense. It made the wolf not just uneasy, but downright scared.

It felt like if it wasn’t for a very set amount of coincidences and events, it would have never been able to feel the construct, nor resist it. And where would it be now? What would it be now?

It didn’t know. It just knew it would have to dig out a large portion of its upper skull completely, and shift it out of its body before replacing it.

It was going to be such a chore, and likely dangerous too, so the wolf began mentally preparing itself for another half a day or so of sitting around in some nook and cranny somewhere with half its skull missing until it grew back.

How joyous…

But the alternative was far, far worse.

As its mind wandered, it started developing some kind of abstract theory that maybe the tunnels were just evil. Maybe it was making odd connections and nonsensical theories, but something about it just clicked. It explained a lot.

Why were the rats completely insane and psychotic?

Well, they lived in the tunnels, didn’t they? The wolf had no doubts that if it lived its entire life with those strings winding around its thoughts, it could end up like them itself. Though not the same, but similar. It still had no explanation for most of their behaviors, like rushing at anything alive except each other. But maybe the tunnels treated different things differently?

Another question. Why had that human gone insane and killed himself?

He stayed too long in the tunnels, most likely.

Why were those experienced, dangerous humans almost running through the tunnels in their search for the wolf?

They likely felt the strings too, or at least knew about them. They were rushing to stay down there for as little time as possible.

The more it thought, the more little strings and theories kept popping up. It remembered the human that had killed itself, covered in metal that in hindsight, looked more like it was consuming him. It remembered the deformed human that it had seen clinging to ceiling pipes shortly before it lost its own human.

It remembered that envy it felt towards the malformed abominations, how it too wished to change, that odd… panic, almost when it decided to add all these spikes and flame-throwers on its body.

What about that golem made of steel it had fought, back when its human was still on its back? Was that really one of those constructs the humans created down by the burning rivers, but instead of being stone it was iron that they used, or was that just a human who had been consumed by the metal?

It started to feel like the tunnels were some kind of… alive, sentient thing, a corruptive presence, the more it thought about it.

It was all centered around change. Forming and deforming, without much cause nor reason. One human turned fleshy and elongated and strange, another was eaten by metal. How and why?

It would also explain why the rodents’ biology was so much better suited to something smaller. Why they kept getting more twisted and bizarre and bigger the deeper the wolf moved. Logically, their biology shouldn’t even work. Many of them shouldn’t even be alive. That clump of flesh and limbs could definitely not hunt nor feed itself.

Did the tunnels sustain them? How? Mana?

Why did the tunnels under the human dwellings want to twist and change things? Even the tunnels themselves at some point looked like they were being affected, the closer it got to the center. It remembered looping spirals and crushed hallways and vents merging into each other, how it had wondered, briefly, if its antennae were acting up, or if what it was feeling was actually real.

And why did the symbol in its skull seem to be connected to the tunnels? It had never activated or done anything before then. The wolf had almost forgotten it even existed.

It was like it was sorely placed there to make it easier for the strings to infiltrate.

Why hadn’t it activated the last time it was in the tunnels then, with the human? Was it too far from the source of this… presence, or corruption? Or had it activated and the wolf just hadn’t noticed?

It did vaguely remember getting delirious and angrier over time back then, but it was so much milder and slower. Considering its circumstances back then, it was just natural. Additionally, most of the time it had spent in those tunnels after killing the roof-tumor, it was going upwards.

And who or what put that damn symbol there? The wolf knew it hadn’t, and it knew [Devourer] definitely hadn’t. Why had they put it there? Was it born in the tunnels and released outside? That didn't make sense. There was nothing like itself down there, not even close. Canines didn't exist in the sewer tunnels.

Did the tunnels put the mana symbol there in its skull, to lure it deeper in the future somehow?

But that also didn’t make sense. It vividly remembered its first memory being one of itself waking up as a pup in a giant, broken box made of wood, somewhere around the burning rivers.

It had dreams of sleeping in a pile of kin under yellow light, but those were dreams. It couldn’t trust dreams to be memories rather than wistful constructs of its own mind, borne out of desire for a pack, not really.

So it considered its first memory to be that box.

In hindsight, why did it wake up in a broken box in the middle of nowhere, all alone?

It had so many questions about everything.

It was frustrating. So, so, so frustrating, and its head felt like it was slowly being filled with dry cotton, one wad of it being added every time it spiraled back to the same question or formed a new one.

After such a tiring day, such an overwhelming week, it just wanted to relax.

So it just let its head hang limp and stared at the slowly approaching lights below, feeling oddly content and lazy, consciously emptying its mind for now.

It could, and would deal with all this later. It would find a little hole to do skull surgery on itself soon.

It would ask the humans about the tunnels when it knew how to speak. When it had room and had well and fully escaped the reach of whatever group it was that seemed dead-set on hunting it.

Now, it just watched the pretty lights, letting the rope-like texture of the metal wire caress the underside of its chin like a mild massage.

-

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