It was time. Last check.

Ride of Ancestors

Active I (Deviant - 30%)

Whether man or beast, all are born with instincts built on ancestral experience. However, the scope of this deep memory from which your instincts can draw is much broader than that of others. With them, you can gauge the strength of your adversaries, let them guide your steps in battle, dominance, and love, or simply let them find your way through life.

As cryptic as ever. No matter how many times I read the description, I found no clue to skills secrets. Either it would gently guide me in my steps, or I would fall entirely under the control of my beast side, driven by my urges and instincts. I preferred the former, obviously.

One other glaring thing struck me as I finished my healthy dinner and stood to face the young mossbear again. I realized how stupid it was to try the skill right now. After the skill activation, I could get overwhelmed and become easy prey for the young beast. It wasn’t hard to imagine the result.

Bam! K.O. in the first few steps. Fastest round ever.

Really stupid of me not to try it with rabbits, or better yet, during training with Deckard. Now I was about to pay the price for my hesitation and putting off the issue. To avoid going into the fight completely blind, I took a deep breath and activated [Ride of Ancestors] as I went to take my place.

At first, nothing happened. I took two steps without feeling any change, and it made me anxious. Did I do something wrong? Did the skill require a different approach to use? I thought I’d already mastered the gimmick, and I didn’t need to shout the skill’s name out loud.

But before I could embarrass myself by doing so, my gaze fell on the young mossbear, and everything changed.

[Mossbear: lvl ???]

Well, not everything. The part the system showed me stayed the same, but what the instincts were telling me was...simply unbelievable. So far, I have been able to guess roughly how strong the beast or human was. My best estimate was in the hundreds, though. Like with this mossbear I was facing, I knew it was close to three hundred, but that was it.

Now I could confidently say that the beast was between 290 and 300. It didn't seem to make that much difference, huh? Wrong!

If I had to put it into words, it would be like looking at a system assessment through a fog. So far, the question marks have been very fuzzy, but the fog had thinned with [Ride of Ancestors], and I could read them more clearly. Or, to stick with the fog reference, it was like looking for a house or a road you lost in bad weather. It had to be there somewhere behind that veil of mist. You were sure of it. That’s how it’s been for me so far. Now, thanks to [Ride of Ancestors], I was closer and saw my destination’s outlines.

Silly analogy, I know.

Anyway, still extraordinary for a level one skill.

And that was not all. The same was true of the beast’s mood. It became more apparent to me how much it enjoyed this game we played and how frustrated it felt about not being able to finish me off.

Oddly enough, when I looked at Deckard, the same thing happened. His laid-back attitude was more than evident at first glance, and true to his appearance, he was carefree to a degree. However, underneath that shell of lightheartedness was worry. About what? My instincts didn’t go that deep.

Pipsqueak was fun to take a look at. The little squirrel wanted to explore and find treasures. I could only assume more nuts.

And then there was the ancient beast. The mother mossbear was too much, even for my skill-enhanced instincts. As always, when I laid eyes on her, I was struck with an overwhelming sense of regard and the feeling of being at her mercy. She was simply a magnificent creature.

The roar of the young mossbear snapped me out of my daze and brought my attention back to the fight. I didn’t have to think too hard or read into my instincts to see that I was a step too late. The first move, the initiative I had been counting on so far, was gone, and I was now facing a charging beast.

It was Deckard’s words about the point of training in general, and ultimately the nature of the skill itself, that stopped me from racking my brain on how to get out of this situation and instead give in to my instincts. Something I’ve been reluctant to do thus far and a risky choice, for sure. However, it was the fastest way to find out the limits of [Ride of Ancestors].

And it worked.

I avoided the charge of the young mossbear, even the sweep of its paw, with ease unfamiliar to me. Everything I’ve done to this point, be it training or fighting, has been achieved through my efforts, the blood and sweat of my body. The way I avoided it was pretty much...effortless.

Almost as if my body moved on its own, based on instincts that I’ve loosened the reins on, the ones that threatened to overwhelm my wits while I was under tier three beast change. However, what I feared did not come.

I haven’t lost my sanity and didn’t go feral. If anything, it was the opposite.

Now, without me resisting the beast in me, I should snarl and bare my teeth at the young mossbear. I should feel the senseless urge to defy its challenge and dare to attack me. Hell, last time, I even felt the need to piss on a tree to mark my territory.

And to be honest, I still had the urge. Even now, I was baring my teeth at the young mossbear, snarling at it even, while I was down on all fours, crouching like a beast. But in spite of all that, my reason remained unclouded by the fog of my primal drives.

The fact that I kept my wits about me was simply baffling. It really was strange to have all these urges, to be aware of them, knowing what they meant, why I had them, and yet find it all natural. Scratch an itch behind the ear with the back leg? Perfectly normal, right?

Just kidding, I didn’t actually do that. Not in the middle of a fight. However, I did have the itch and the urge. That had to wait until after the struggle, though.

This time I didn’t go on the offensive as I had in every round before. Instead, I tried to discover the new me, this unexplored inner self of mine that has been exposed to me and been allowed to embraced without much fear.

My legs, as they had in the frantic escape here to Esulmor from the northern eagle, shifted, adjusting to my four-legged posture, and I started to move between the roots with unprecedented ease. Not so easy to stumble when you’re on all fours instead of just two feet. Add to that my dancing lessons, which I found useful even for this kind of movement, and the young mossbear became far too slow and clumsy a beast to do me any harm.

That is, as long as I kept my distance. Get too close, and my odds of ending up torn or with broken bones grew significantly. It wasn’t long before I began to use my wings more to my advantage, feeling the nuances of the wind more keenly and sort of intuitively knowing when it was best to lean on the air and when to slip through it.

Sadly, with that came a firmer realization of my inability. In my current state, I was simply unable to fly. But the wings allowed me to move faster and jump further. The same was true for Sage. Whether it was the ancestral knowledge that slumbered within me was questionable. Yet, I found my tail far more helpful than ever before.

It wasn’t long before I mustered the courage to jump onto one of the massive roots of the World Tree sticking out of the ground high above and bounce off it onto the back of a young mossbear. I did nothing there apart from issuing a playful hum and immediately jumped away. After all, it wasn’t meant as an attack, just a kind of dare, a test of what was feasible for me now.

While it brought me delight, my stunt was not met with the same response from the beast. This game of cat and mouse was not the kind the young mossbear wanted to play. Its frustration with the ongoing struggle was more and more evident in its reckless attacks when it was frantically trying to catch me and hurt me.

To no avail.

With newly found confidence, I started to make short forays. Quite a difference from my previous fighting style, where I tried to stay by the beast’s side as long as I could. Now I didn’t see that as the most effective way to take the beast down. The way was to stay mobile, to use what I had been bestowed with to the fullest, and thus not give it a chance to catch me.

Okay, even with the newfound knowledge streaming from the ancestral experience, whether mine or the beasts whose blood now coursed through my veins, I saw no way to defeat the young mossbear. That simply wasn’t in my power to do so. However, what my body and instincts were telling me, showing me and driving me was the best way to fight this struggle while severely limited by the extent of my experience and skill level.

That’s why, despite the tremendous change in my approach to the fight, I ended up in a pool of my own blood yet again. Worse, given how I pissed off the young mossbear, I end up more broken than ever before.

“Still with me, Little Beast?” Deckard asked as soon as the beast released me from its maw to regenerate under the mother mossbear’s moss.

“Y-yeah, oddly enough,” I said with an effort, gritting my teeth in pain. Unsure of exactly what the beast had broken, it hurt like a bitch.

“Good. At times, it seemed like you lost it and turned into a real beast.”

“I-I felt like one.”

“So, you’ve lost control?”

“No, tsss...” I hissed in pain as something in my hip popped back to where it should have been in the first place. “Ah, that’s better. No, [Ride of Ancestors] is not the skill I feared. It even made it easier for me to use [Beast].”

“Interesting. Do you want to tell me more about it?”

“If you tell me what’s going on with the World Tree, any updates?”

“Still just a tree. Your turn.”

I took it to mean that nothing worth mentioning had happened while I was discovering my beast self. “Honestly, I don’t get it, Deckard. I thought my instincts would overwhelm me with that skill.”

“It sure looked to me like they did. Not saying it’s bad. You fared much better there than you ever did before.”

“Yes. I did. I’m aware of that, and that’s my point. I was aware. I haven’t lost my mind in my instincts, urges, impulses, or whatever you want to call what drives the beasts. I was aware of everything I was doing and why, as strange as it may sound.”

He paused, raising his eyebrows. “You were going all wildcat-ish on purpose?”

“The what?” I asked, thinking back on how I’d acted. “Okay, I got a little carried away, trying out the skills possibilities, but yeah. I saw it as the best way to approach this fight.”

“And it worked. Not what I taught you, though.”

“You didn’t teach me much yet,” I blurted back, instantly regretting the words I’d let out of my mouth. “I mean in terms of fighting. The drills and dance steps have proved extremely useful here.” There, saved.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Little Beast. You’re dead right. Maybe that’s actually the reason you were running around the mossbear like a wildcat and not dancing with it like a seasoned fighter.”

Instead of answering, I breathed a sigh of relief. Under the glowing moss, the pain attacking my mind had finally faded, bringing me some much-needed ease. However, I didn’t need [Inner Perception] to know that my body was far from fully healed.

“The skill description talks about the memories of my ancestors. I would have thought that from my human side, it should be able to draw as much as from my beast side,” I said, stretching slightly under the moss. “But so far, it felt like I’ve just been able to make better use of what I’ve learned only on my own.”

“I think you’re on the right track, Little Beast.”

“Meaning?”

“Think about it. It’s a fresh skill. Expecting it to tap into the experience of ancestors thousands of years ago is a bit much. The furthest I could see it going in your ancestry is to your parents. Were they good fighters?”

Mom was. She fought to the last minute with that damn cancer. Not the fighter Deckard had in mind, though. “Not really. Neither were my grandparents.”

“There you have it. The only human fighting experiences you can draw from are your own, and so you leaned more towards the bestial ones.”

“Ah, I see. Since [Ride of Ancestors] is a level one skill...actually level three...shit! I’ve gained a hell of a lot of skill levels in that short amount of time.”

“Yeah, you got a class level too, two actually,” Deckard remarked as if it was no big deal. Well, level 104 was a far cry from his, so...kind of understandable. “But for your information, you’ve been fighting here for over two hours. I’d say that’s enough for you to benefit from it. Anyway, are you going to check the notifications now or finish your thought?”

Some of my skills were pre-tier-up, so I was torn to ditch Deckard. I really was. The man could wait. However, there was one thing I still couldn’t get my head around regarding [Ride of Ancestors], so I suppressed my urge to check my Status Screen and get my thoughts back on track.

“As you said, since [Ride of Ancestors] is a level three skill, it only tapped into a fundamental knowledge of the beasts dormant within me. Nothing too deep, nothing that tells me how to use the abilities of my tail, mane, or heart.”

“You scratched the surface, so to speak. But? There is a but, isn’t there?”

“As I said, it eased my problem with [Beast]. I’m sure if I gave in, changed as I am, I’d go feral, unable to control myself. Yet with [Ride of Ancestors] it didn’t happen, and I kept my wits about me, stayed in control. How is that possible?”

Sure, I had some working theories, but I wanted to hear his take on things. After all, he had a hell of a lot more experience with skills and how they work than I did.

Deckard didn’t answer me right away, thinking about it. “The first thing that comes to mind is your [Indomitable Will].”

“I didn’t use it at all,” I argued.

“I didn’t say you did. It could be a subconscious thing. Nevertheless, I believe you’re on the right track blaming [Ride of Ancestors]. We as humans have lost touch with our instincts and in return have gained sanity. That might be part of the reason. The beasts as such, on the other hand, know how to deal with instincts and live with that pull their whole lives. It could be either of those two or a combination of both.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.” I really did. And like Deckard, I was torn between whether to think it was my human side or the bestial one that kept me sane. Quite possibly, as he said, a combination of both.

“My advice, Little Beast. Don’t dwell on it too much right now. There’s no guarantee you’ll keep the skill, and if you do, you’ll have plenty of time to rack your brains about it.”

True, if I keep the skill, which I was now strongly inclined to do, I will have all the time I want to work out what kind of shit [Ride of Ancestors] was actually doing to me.

I was about to thank him for the advice when the roar of two beasts rang out across the expanse beneath the World Tree. One belonged to Esu, the other I had no idea. Well, it was a mossbear, that was for sure. A pissed-off one at that. My guess would be an adult mossbear. They were the only ones who dared to defy Esu, challenging him and testing his patience.

“Stay down,” Deckard told me as if I would otherwise dare to break free of the mossy hold and stood up. “I’ll check what’s going on. You check your Status Screen.”

“Yes, sir,” I growled playfully and complied.

Name: Korra Grey

Race: Human/Beast

Gender: Female

Age: 29

Main Class: Deviant of Humanity

Sub Class: Slave

Level: 102 -> 104

[Unspent Stat Points: 2]

Constitution: 102 (39)

Strength: 60 (25)

Endurance: 34 -> 37 (27)

Dexterity: 33 (25)

Intelligence: 23 (12)

Wisdom: 21 (11)

Two levels. That was great, fucking great, but it paled in comparison to what happened among my skills. Several of them have reached the next tier.

[Behemoth] reaches TIER II [Wrought Hide] reaches TIER II [Call of Nature] reaches TIER II [Spatial Domain] reaches TIER III [Striving Mule] reaches TIER II

Class Skills (8/8):

Indomitable Will (Passive V): lvl 121

Master’s Shield (Active II): lvl 23 -> 24

Behemoth (Active II ↑): lvl 9 -> 11

Wrought Hide (Passive II ↑): lvl 6 -> 10

Unbending Resilience (Passive I): lvl 5 -> 8

Fierce Pounce (Active I): lvl 7 -> 9

Ride of Ancestors (Active I): lvl 1 -> 3

Call of Nature (Passive II ↑): lvl 7 -> 11

General Skills (10/10):

Eleaden Standard Language (Passive I): lvl 8

Perfect Equilibrium (Passive II): lvl 26 -> 28

Spatial Domain (Passive III ↑): lvl 28 -> 30

Beast (Passive III): lvl 34 -> 38

Never-Dying (Passive III): lvl 42-> 45

Tail of Poison Empress (Active II): lvl 14

Heart of Magic (Passive I): lvl 9

Striving Mule (Passive II ↑): lvl 9 -> 11

Dancer’s Stride (Passive II): lvl 15 -> 18

None to Squander (Passive I): lvl 8 -> 9

At once, my troubles with [Ride of Ancestors] were forgotten, and I threw myself into figuring out what had changed in the skill descriptions and what else these tier-ups have brought me.

Behemoth: lvl 11

Active I (Slave - 10%)

Whatever you use to attack, be it claws, fists, or fangs, you do it with the proper weight behind it. When you kick, it is no longer the tantrum of a little puppy but boot of a behemoth that shakes mountains. When you satiate your hunger, you can choose up to 55%(50%) → 66%(60%) of consumed food to be stored as an energy reserve, bringing your weight up but not your size up to that of the behemoth.

The amount of stored energy can reach 1.6(1.5) → 2.2(2.0) times your regular weight, and with that, your [Constitution] and [Endurance] grow up to 16%(15%) → 27%(25%).

Tier II - Still more of a puppy than the true behemoth you are, yet one that is hard to cuddle in one's arms without causing oneself serious back pain. Your weight should not be underestimated as well as the sheer hardness to kill you that comes hand in hand with it.

Your [vitality] and [vigour] are increased by 11%(10%).

Wrought Hide: lvl 10

Passive I (Slave - 10%)

The delicate skin of humans is not to be bared in battle, unlike yours. Every scratch, every cut makes it stronger, and your fur is no different. Whether burnt, torn, or cut off, it will grow back tougher than ever before, making it your shield like your hide is armor to you.

The [toughness] and [resilience] of your fur and hide increased by 38%(35%) → 55%(50%).

Tier II - You showed you're no stranger to a fight and don't shy away from getting hurt. You bled, shed your tears, but pushed on, further honing your hide.

The [resistance] of your fur and hide increased by 27%(25%).

Call of Nature: lvl 11

Passive I (Deviant - 30%)

No matter how it came to be, you're more than a mere human torn from your roots. Connected to your nature stronger than any beast, you can call it to its full potential. Whether it's a human or beast trait, it will be 26%(20%) → 39%(30%) more prominent, and if you were to use the talents you've been pursuing to acquire, you'd find them 45%(35%) → 65%(50%) more powerful.

Tier II - To embrace our nature, what we are is nothing to be ashamed of, but hard for many to do. You've done more than that and revel in nature of your own. For that, you'll find using your talents 26%(20%) easier.

Spatial Domain: lvl 30

Passive II

You are the mistress of the surrounding space, and nothing in your domain will escape your attention. The space you can consider your own reaches 3m → 5m from your body, and as you grow stronger, your reach will grow too.

Tier II - You may be a master in your domain, but the dull space outside of it has been out of your reach so far. That plain colorless world has gained more shades to it, and you can now perceive it more clearly within a range of 6m → 10m.

Tier III - As your awareness of your surroundings grows, so does your defense against the prying eyes of others. Being it someone of a lower level than you, they will find it hard to read you.

Striving Mule: lvl 11

Passive I (Slave - 10%)

You've got the tenacity of a striving mule. You want to get things done, strive to reach your destination, and endure through the rough times, no matter what. For that, for the pursuit of your endeavors, your [Endurance] is increased by 27%(25%)→38%(35%).

Tier II - It's hard to persevere in your endeavors when each step taken is harder and harder to endure. But, you sought to achieve your goals despite the hardships thrown your way like the true striving mule you are.

The [stamina] and [tenacity] of yours increased by 11%(10%).