Blue boxes whyyy….

I sluggishly blinked away the sleepiness which plagued me as I woke up to the blinding light of the magic box interrupting me. The room was blacker than obsidian, almost no light permeating the leaves which covered the entrance.

Apparently, even in my sleep, the boxes could bother me with their hitherto unnoticed glow. That could get annoying. I had no idea how it woke me up, aside from shining a bright blue light into the darkness behind my eyelids, but it did. I dismissed the notification, and looked around, my brain slowly picking back up to a normal operating speed.

Your [Blend] has leveled up. It is now level 2.

Uhh…

I felt slow. My thinking was blurred. It was probably the effect of being interrupted in my sleep, but I shook it off and reread the new notification.

Wait… I realized as I lay there coming back to my senses. I’m not sneaking… Or blending. How did it just level up?

This question was like a hot arrow through my chest. My eyes snapped open wide. Blood rushed past my ears, roaring like a waterfall and pulsing like a drumbeat. I slowly peered into the darkness, listening carefully, and slowing my breathing from the panic it had become.

A muffled crunch in the darkness reached my ears. It was followed by shuffling across the leafy floor, and the clicking of what might’ve been claws on stone. A liquidy slap echoed into the room, and I turned my head to the sound, squinting hard to see its source.

Was there a shape over there near the table in the center of the room?

Maybe?

I used a trick I’d learned in my old life to see stars better at night—which also conveniently helped me navigate my house in the nightime—looking at the shape from the corner of my eye. My peripheral vision helped me see the rounded shape clearer. It sat next to the table, moving only a little bit. But the crunching didn’t stop.

Your [Nocturnal] has leveled up. It is now level 4.

The shape became clearer as the black that filled the room became a little more gray. I could see better. The round, slightly moving shape was actually a ball of fur. And it was hunched over. Its shoulders moved, but the rest of the body remained still. I tried observing it in the shadows.

Gorlen [Lvl 3] Your [Observe] has leveled up. It is now level 9.

Before I even read the next box, I realized what it was doing. It was eating.

Hey!

“Grrraaagaa!” the pitiful roar left my chest before I could even realize I was doing it. I jumped to my feet, sprinting over to the rotund ball of fur, and tackling it. The fluffball rolled across the floor and smacked into the wall, a clawed hand reaching up as it groaned.

I looked at the wings I’d left hidden under the flowery leaves on the table. Only a single one remained, the bones of the other placed in a neat pile on the side. The one remaining wing—if you could call it that by this point—was in shambles. More than half of it was eaten, the meat picked carefully from the bone, and puddles of drool surrounded it, leaking off the part I’d made the sneaky intruder drop.

I turned angrily to the offender.

That was my breakfast!!!

“Raaaa!” I shouted, glaring at the thief. I wasn’t going to kill him. He hadn’t attacked me, after all, and didn’t seem to be aggressive. But he was certainly going to pay for eating what I had hoped to get some skills from. Maybe I’d slap him around a little bit with my tail.

Heh. I could always grind some of my less damaging abilities on him as payment.

The fluffball had gotten to his feet, but he wasn’t in an offensive stance. Long clawed hands, similar to those on an anteater, tipped his long furry arms. Two big, black eyes gazed fearfully at me in the dark, reflecting what little moonlight managed to pierce the entrance to the cave.

He trembled, high-pitched squeaks leaving him in spurts while he crouched in an even more condensed ball than before. His stubby black toes peeked out from underneath the shaking mass of dark brown fur.

He was only three feet tall.

And he was terrified.

Aww…

I turned back to the wing, wondering if observing it would do anything for me.

Pterocelaur Wing (Destroyed)

This wing once belonged to a prince of the sky, but it was severed with a powerful attack, and has now been mostly consumed.

Your [Observe] has leveled up. It is now level 10. You may now obtain more advanced details of targets, provided they are a low enough level for you to do so.

Wow.

That wing must’ve been worth a lot of experience to use my skill on, since I'd only just leveled up before, or I didn’t understand at all how the leveling system seemed to work. Could it have been because observing the wing revealed the name of the flying creatures? Or was it perhaps due to the interference of whatever that lightning-fast dinosaur was...

I tried my new ability on the fluffball, expecting the additional information to be as useless for me as the cave description was. But any information is better than no information, after all.

Gorlen [Lvl 3]

This creature is a scavenger that prefers to live in caves. During the day, it sleeps, blending into dark surroundings with a build maximized for dispersing light that may cross its body. In the day, it can almost appear to be a shadow, but in the night, it is nearly invisible. A Gorlen will often follow the hunting trails of apex predators, picking at leftovers they leave behind. It is very intelligent, but very cowardly.

Wow. That was… a lot of information. From what the box said, this guy might’ve been the reason the wall just ended so abruptly when I was exploring earlier. So he’d been living here first, after all. Maybe the cave description wasn’t so useless, after all.

I couldn’t just kick him out of his own home, could I?

I mean… I could…

But that’s not the kind of person I am. My dominant stance sunk a little, and I turned to the leftovers of the wing. I glared at the gorlen.

I’d better be able to get some experience out of this!

Disgusted, I picked up the dripping appendage and ripped off what little meat there was, making sure the fuzzball saw me doing it. Two stubby little ears perked up as he watched me, and the fear left his eyes. Pure sorrow filled them instead. He reached out, but pulled his hand away, lowering his gaze to the floor.

That’s right, I thought. This is mine, thug.

I grunted as I finished the wing and no box appeared. With another glare at the gorlen, I walked back to my nest, deciding to sleep off the irritation.

If this level three fool attacked me in my sleep, he’d be dead in seconds.

Hey, I’m not a bad person for that… right?