I read the above information while chewing on some Krok meat. Truthfully, kobolds taste rather gamey, and I’d much rather eat a raw rat than raw kobold. But at the time, I had few options and a great deal of practice forcing myself to eat things with unsavory flavors.

On the plus side, I found Krok’s flesh as soft and easy to rend as wet cat food. My jaws were now 4x stronger than they’d been yesterday, so I was able to crush the rib bones and bury my face in Krok’s innards to reach the slightly better tasting organs inside. Krok’s heart was actually not bad, taste-wise.

*Crunch*,*Rip*,*Num Num Num*

Title Gruesome Eater awarded - Your act of messily eating a sapient creature raw would make the sturdiest stomach flinch. Your powerful jaws have shattered bones and feasted on the still bloody heart of your enemy. +1 rank to intimidate skill, 1.25x damage multiplier with bite attacks +50% resistance to nausea effects. Your intimidate skill has evolved to (grandmaster). Your karma has been reduced by 5 points. New karma rank: somewhat nasty.

I paused to daintily lick my blood soaked nose. I was pretty much full, yet there so was much Krok left. Normally I would try to bury my left overs, but since I had an inventory... oh wait it was full. Not by weight, but by number of items.

If I had some sort of pouch, I realized, I could gather the coins into a single grouping, and maybe they would count as one item: a pouch of coins. I eyed Krok’s loincloth. No, not only did I lack the hands to fashion that into a container, but even I found the stench beyond my ability to handle. That damp piece of crude fur could only be cleansed by holy fire.

I opened up my status screen instead, and put a point into amplitude. That gave me an extra inventory slot which I used to store Krok's forearm. It was the work of but a few messy bites to separate a ten pound chunk of Krok for later, and inside my Dimensional Storage, it would not rot. I now had food for several days. “Dismembered kobold limb, 11lbs” is what my inventory screen read. I tapped the name and corrected it; “Krok drumstick, emergency rations.”

I still had 5 stat points left. I raised my strength by 2 points, bringing it to 10 at a cost of 3 stat points. Then I added one to both attunement and constitution, bringing them to 5 and 10. This raised my total hp to 120 and my total mana to 60. Round numbers are best, I thought to myself after the brief spasm of pain passed.

I also had 4 ability points that I could use on my two existing abilities (Dimensional Storage and Reanimate Insect) or my newest ability that I’d just earned upon leveling:

Insect Bomb ability (novice) - force any reanimated insect you control to explode. The explosion deals damage proportional to the ability rank, bonus damage equal to caster’s amplitude x 10%. Damage is also influenced by the level and size of the undead insect being exploded. Certain bugs have additional special effects when exploded. Example; most poisonous bugs will produce a poison cloud when detonated.

That bit about amplitude was pretty much in every skill, I realized. My pounce damage bonus, for example, had also increased from 280% to 300%. In general, amplitude of 5 meant everything that used mana would do 50% more than it would with 0 amplitude. But what would increasing an ability to apprentice do? Should I dump 3 ability points into Insect Bomb to get it to the journeyman level? I had visions of my cat toys turning into rather amusing fireworks for me to play with. But, I wouldn’t actually know how effective my Insect Bomb actually was until I had more undead beetles to play with.

My first cat toy was off in the distance, lost, and I could only order it to head back to me without knowing how long that would take. I needed to find some more beetles to squish, to see what the limit was on how many cat toys I could have at once before I decided if I wanted to give them up by exploding them. Could I re-reanimate them afterwards? The ability text did not say.

I would hold off on spending my ability points for now, who knows if I would get another ability soon? I was pretty lucky, every level had a 39% chance of giving me a new ability, which wasn’t bad.

After my meal, I was absolutely covered in blood. The rambling thoughts above were what kept my mind busy while I hopped on a large grey boulder and groomed myself. After several minutes of vigorous licking I felt clean again.

I had the nagging suspicion I was forgetting something, but with a full tummy I was feeling a bit sleepy. It had been a long time since I’d last slept. I should probably nap after a hearty meal like anyone sane would.

Wait, that triggered a memory. Was I waiting for someone else to nap after a meal? Nah that sounded silly. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Now this next part is purely speculative, but here's how I imagine it went down:

Nuuk felt a bit anxious. Krog had taken a very long time, no Kobold would spend so long looking for grey shaping rocks, they were all pretty much the same, after all. If the rock was too big, you just hit it until it was smaller. Krog wasn’t that picky.

Something must have happened to Krok.

Maybe he hit his head? If so, Nuug didn’t care.

Maybe he found more good mushrooms? If so, Nuuk wanted to go steal some.

Maybe “tiny god” thing Krok scared of was actually real? If so, Nuuk definitely didn’t want to go find out what happen to Krok, but that seemed unlikely. Tiny god not real.

Maybe Krok was being a crybaby and crying his eyes out at the cluster of grey stones? Krok was runt of litter, sent out to hunt his own food while the rest of the pack ate tasty cat people. Maybe he was making the whole story up to try to fool Nuug and was now crying because Krok’s plan failed and he would go hungry tonight?

That seemed more likely. Nuug would go check on Krok to see if Krok was actually crying like a runt puppy being bullied by the pack. Nuug could use a good laugh.

Nuug walked over to the grey stones, ready to laugh at Krok’s expense. But when Nuug reach the stones, he saw Krok, dead in a big pool of blood, chest torn open, heart mostly eaten, one forearm torn off and missing. Nearby on one of the rocks, a trail of blood led from the body to the form of a small creature that was so confident that it had actually fallen asleep right next to the corpse without even bothering to hide.

A small grasp of fear escaped Nuug’s lips. How could something so small cause so much damage?

The tiny terror spread its mouth incredibly wide, showing off its tiny sharp teeth, then arched it’s back vigorously while stretching its paws out as if to suggest, “these are the paws that shall rip out your heart!”. Then it glared balefully at Nuug, surely promising a terrible and painful death to the kobold who dared disturb its slumber.

Nuug screamed loudly and ran back to the camp, yelping the whole way, leaving yet another trail of urine to follow.

The stupid kobold had interupted my nap, I thought resentfully, as I watched him run away. I’d just fallen asleep and been lying there with mostly closed eyes when the kobold’s soft gasp had caused my ears to twitch and brought me back to alertness. Then the kobold screeched and ran off without apologizing! How rude!

Finishing my careful muscle loosening warmup, I decided that I would go teach the remaining kobolds some manners, since they could not be trusted to let me nap peacefully after my meal.

Status Screen Name "Unknown" Species "domestic cat" Level 3 Jobs "Insect Necro." Physical Stats Strength 2+2+6=10 Coordination 14+4=18 Constitution 5+1+4=10 Mental Stats Intelligence 4+4=8 Willpower 6+4=10 Empathy 1+4=5 Magic Stats Amplitude 0+1+4=5 Attunement 0+1+4=5 Luck 9+4=13