As I pushed my body up to its feet I found myself moving joints I definitely hadn't placed before, my body felt tougher than it had been and I noticed that I could feel things as if my body were an actual body. I managed to drag myself out of the relatively sizeable hole I had created for myself, finding that the control of my body felt intuitive and natural.

I moved further away from the edge of the river for fear of falling in again at some point and decided to do a jump to start off with. I managed to leap up about twice my height, which was probably mostly due to the fact that I was very light at the moment. I burst out into a jog and found that I whilst I felt quite fast, my tiny stride meant that I wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. The upside was that I didn't seem to be getting tired. That seemed fairly sensible considering I was now made of dirt.

I managed to sort of shimmy up a thin tree and dropped off of the bottom branch about 7 feet up. I landed awkwardly, despite being able to perfectly sense how I was going to land. That was going to take some getting used to. That venture had lost me 2 health and they hadn't come back until I had spent mana to create new compacted dirt and fix my leg. There was no pain but it did give me a vaguely uncomfortable feeling that made me want to fix it fairly quickly. Almost like indigestion but in my leg.

Next, I used my grabber hands that somehow now had a joint in each digit to grab a stick and start waving it around. I viciously attacked a tree with it, slowly working on teaching myself the easiest way to swing it. Not being able to feel pain and not getting tired made this a surprisingly fruitful endeavour, I was pretty confident I would be able to adequately club anything that came my way with my new found weapon. Which was quite lucky because I hadn't considered that all my bashing was making noise.

A giant furry creature leapt out of a tree onto the ground near me, It was easily the size of a van, bright orange and sinuous muscles that stretched taught as it padded along towards me. I was still as can be as its claws, like sharpened picks, tore deep indentations in the ground as it walked. Yellow glowing eyes with huge slit pupils gazed at me, causing me to freeze in fear.

It was a moment before I remembered that I was small and it was not, in fact, a giant but rather a regular sized cat but that did not change my instinct as for when it hissed in my face I slammed my stick against the side of its head. The cat rolled with the blow and leapt back, clearly a little dazed but in no way seriously injured. Its riposte came in the form of a bat from its claw that left me with gouges in one of my arms and sent me flying to the trunk of the tree I had been wailing on.

It pounced at me which I saw clearly with my senses, there was no way I would be able to move out of the way so I swung wildly with my stick, doing something I had not previously considered. My shoulder moved in a way that would be impossible for a regular joint, working exactly the same in the opposite direction and my stick landed squarely in the face of my attacker. This time my strike had been strengthened by the momentum of its pounce and it was sent off course and rolled along the ground.

I took the time to get to my feet and start on the attack. It had also managed to get to its feet though it had clearly managed to hurt its foot and blood was running freely from its nose as it hissed at me. Before I reached it I jumped, avoiding a swipe from a paw and putting extra force behind my swing onto its head. It was once more dazed and had clearly been hurt but it managed to bite onto my leg whilst I had been falling through the air. It swung its head from side to side which caused my leg to completely separate from my body and I was sent over its shoulder.

In my impromptu flight, I managed to grab onto the back of its neck, with my injured arm and began to repeatedly hit the kitty with my stick as it hissed and bucked around. It quickly began to slow but began to roll back and forth, putting uncomfortable pressure on my core and making me lose my stick and my grip. Unfortunately, I then noticed something I hadn't earlier. The cat was wearing a thin collar which my one leg had gotten trapped in and I was left dangling by my foot.

I brought my fists down in a rain of blows upon whenever I could, each time sending my body bouncing around from both the attack and the fact the cat was running around. Eventually, the cat somehow managed to fall into the river and was quickly taken by the quick water here. It began splashing around in even more of a panic and I switched tactics. Instead of attacking with my fists, I took control of some water and manipulated it into the cat's throat, where I used it to block its airway.

I had to fight constantly against it and it used up my mana at a prodigious rate, in the meantime, the cat had managed to crawl back onto dry land but was desperately coughing and hacking. Eventually, not long before my mana ran dry it finally lay still.

Ginger Tabby lvl 5 defeated

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I untangled myself from its collar and flopped onto my back, I opened up my status screen.

Race: Golem core (Lesser) (Flawed) Master: Unbound Core Stats: Soul Stats: Body Stats: Core Rank: F Level: 2 Resistance: 1 Control: 10 Strength: 2 Soul Rank: A- Evolution points: 10 Toughness: 1 Intelligence: 10 Toughness: 2 Body Rank: F- Magical perception: 1 Wisdom: 10 Dexterity: 3 A golem core, enchanted by a novice enchanter and animated by a mediocre mage it is weak and fragile. Inhabited by the soul of a sapient creature (human, non-native) it has tremendous potential for growth. Inhabiting a crude dirt body. Health: 7/10 Mana: 1/100 Health: 2/20 Health regen: 1/hour Mana regen: 1/min Health regen: N/A Mana: N/A Mana regen: N/A Stamina: N/A Stamina regen: N/A

My body had barely survived that fight, it had been intense, dangerous and exhilarating. I did my best not to think that I had just killed something for the first time and that it had most likely been a family pet. I felt an odd mixture of pride and repulsion at that pride but I managed to square it away under the column of survival. I had been attacked and had not been killed by the first hostile creature I had encountered in this new world and was stronger for it.