∼ Day 3 ∼

A bit surprised to see a village so close to a seemingly endless monster-filled forest expanse, I took a few seconds to just enjoy the sight of the rolling hills coupled with the green lush of the sparkling grass in the sunlight of the twin suns.

On each side of my vision from where I sat on the branch, was two giant hills that ended in cliffs, making it look like they encased the display of the open plains into a naturally formed frame. The sight caused me to be stunned for a solid few seconds, simply taking in the beautiful view.

But before I got ahead of myself, I had to get Hiding advanced before I anything. Luckily it didn't matter if I took a few minutes to pick my advancement since now that there nothing obstructing my vision, and I could guess the human’s destination was the human village. So, I wouldn’t have to worry about not being able to catch up with them.

Skill advancement - Hiding Choose one advancement -Intermediate Hiding- Greatly increased hiding capabilities. -Obscurement- Increased hiding capabilities. Can be activated to create an obscurement effect around your form in exchange for stamina. -Shadow Dancing- Increased hiding capabilities. A slight increase in speed when in dark environments. -Camouflage- Increased hiding capabilities. Increased ability to blend in with the surroundings.

Okay, this time around picking the advancement was not so hard. While Intermediate hiding and Camouflage seemed to be very useful, they weren't nearly as enticing as the other two.

For Shadow Dancing, it sounded really fucking cool. But I could tell that is definitely was more of a situational ability, and I usually didn't like the idea of having weaknesses or being weaker at certain points of the day. That inconsistency would get me killed sooner or later.

So, it was easy to decide on which one to pick, but there are mostly two reasons why I was going to pick Obscurement. First of all, the fact that the active ability could be extremely useful in delicate situations and might just be the exact same skill that Elias guy had used when he noticed my presence and went looking for me; or at least something similar to that skill.

Secondly and the most important reason is that this skill might very well just be the one on the advancement path that could at one point advance into Stealth. So it was basically a no-brainer to pick this one.

-Obscurement!-

[Skill – Hiding has been advanced to Obscurement]

[For advancing a skill you receive 2 skill points!]

I now had seven skill points, but I was going to put it off buying any skills for now. Mostly because I wanted to see if I could acquire a few more points before purchasing a skill, and the fact that I might be able to get some useful information in that village about what I’m going to do next, would probably help me in my decision. By doing this I would probably be able to make sure I was ready for future tribulations and misfortune.

And yes, I was going to attempt and follow the humans back to this village of theirs. It wasn't due to my wanting to reintegrate with human society

-Yes, it might be very dangerous, but what wasn't currently? Each second I spent inside the glade was on a knife's edge. I still encountered various large and vicious-looking predators every now and then in all kinds of forms, only my improved senses and human intellect allowing me to barely avoid danger before I headed headfirst into them.

What I desperately needed other than power and strength was - information. It was vital I figured out more of this world and its machinations before I simply became another lost soul for it to gobble up. If anything, humans should have information. But to be honest, information wasn't actually the only reason...

If wasn't sure how to explain it, but ever since I had laid my eyes on the human adventurers, something weird had been going on inside me... It wasn't that I was hearing voices, but instead, it was like my inner being itself was urging me to stalk the humans. Accompanied by that urge was an intense hunger.

Was this a side-effect of becoming a sanguinite? Humans were prime-targets of mosquitos after all, and who knew about these monster-type mosquitoes? Humans might just be the primary food source for them...

Done with my introspection I retrained my gaze on the party of humans in the distance. Cautiously approaching the adventures again, I made sure to once again keep a healthy distance between us; especially now that there are no trees or foliage to help keep me hidden. Only the slightly tall grass of the rolling plains managed to somewhat keep me fully out of sight.

I simply followed along, making sure to keep a lookout for any unseen predators, and that I myself stayed unseen. Now that the humans had left the forest, they didn't worry about keeping their voices down and the gal named Yrmel had really turned up the volume. Not that I even understood what the hell they all were yammering about.

Their language sounded like if old English and Russian had a baby, making it give off the impression of a very old and unpolished language, reminiscent of most ancient languages from back on Earth before the modern age.

Adding a mental note that I should probably look into a language-based skill with my saved up skill points, I continued to stalk the humans back to this their village.

‹ 30 minutes later ›

I simply watched the adventures walk into the small village, but I still put on an air of caution as I inspected the village. Looking around, I noticed a few oddities. Even though the village was right at the outskirts of a foresty expanse populated by a seemingly endless amount of monsters, they didn't even have a shred of defenses in place.

No walls, no trenches, no traps, no nothing. It just looked like a rather normal and rural farming village. From down on the ground, hiding amongst the tall grass, I spotted at least fifteen houses of wood and one of partial wood, partial stone, looking very much like the town official's house or figurehead. It wasn't hard to distinguish simply due to size and quality of it.

Off to the side of the houses, I also spotted a larger shack of shorts. -Or wait no, is that a barn? Looking closer it did definitely seem like a barn, and it was also the tallest building in the village. Seeing an opportunity to scout out the surroundings, I took it.

While I could've just flown up and watched the village from high above, I didn't want to take the risk. It would mean that I would be directly out in the open, and I didn't yet put my full trust into my Obscurement's active ability since I have yet to even use it. So why take the risk, when I could just spend another five minutes doing it the safer way.

I hadn't come all the way here to die from some stupid carelessness, so I would try and play it safe. While it may be even safer to simply forsake the idea of continuing my trek into this village of rural proportions, I simply couldn't succumb to acting only with hesitation and fear as for all I know, I might be running on a timer before something catastrophic might befall me.

Besides, I still know way too little of this world and its machinations, and the sooner I get this information and can reflect on it, the sooner I would be sufficiently equipped to avoid future calamities and misfortune.

Approaching the barn, I made sure to keep my senses alert. But just as I was about the scale the wooden barn, the scent of something rather musky hit my senses, followed right after by the sounds of suppressed grunts.

Seriously? Out here?

Goddammit...

Trying to ignore the awkward atmosphere as the sounds kept assaulting my hearing, I continued to scale the building. When I reached the top of the barn I noticed an opening in the ceiling allowing me to see straight into it without any obstacles.

Upon seeing the two lovebirds I was a bit stunned for moment. Not expecting an old man in his 60-70s nailing a much younger woman I became a bit baffled.

Fufu- It would seem that this old geezer still has his A-game on.

The escapades only lasted for a few seconds more as they finished and put their clothes back on. But the next thing that happens made me chuckle slightly in realization.

Before leaving, the younger woman stared intently at the elderly man as if she waited for something. Glancing at her, the elderly man only rolled his eyes and rummaged through a nap-sack laying that had been discarded on the side on some hay.

Throwing a bag containing something to the younger gal he promptly left. Opening the bag the woman pulled out some of its contents, which looked like some medicinal herbs, and took a deep inhalation, smelling their fragrance. Seemingly satisfied, she also took her leave.

Haha, that sneaky old bastard.

Not giving them any more of my attention I returned to the task at hand. It only took me to turn around to witness the whole scope of small village as it was laid out bare before my beady insect eyes.

Counting the buildings, I saw about twenty-two buildings. So with my estimations, made with the people milling about outside and the number of houses, I guessed that the population of this village was around fifty to sixty people.

Realizing how small this town was, it made me wonder why those adventurers would be in such a place as this small village? While these adventures obviously were no masters in their respective fields, they were still quite powerful for an ordinary human.

Hmm, I should probably appraise one of the ordinary humans, preferably an adult so I can where ordinary humans lay in the food chain.

Besides that, my only guess was that they had something to do in the glades and this place was just a convenient resting place. Something told me that what they're doing out here had most likely something to do with the horned rabbit massacre. Another dawned on me when I realized that shouldn't there have been more adventurers milling about the glades?

They seemed like prime hunting grounds for newbie adventurers as horned rabbits literally seemed to overflow in the glades. However, these were the only adventurers that I had spotted, and even they were grossly overqualified for hunting innocent rabbits.

Now that I think about them, where the hell had they gone? I don't remember keeping an eye on where they went. -Oh well, I guess I'll just have to make sure not to stumble into them.

Spending another whole hour watching the village go about its daily day as the twin suns began to set, I finally relaxed with a sigh breathed out in relief.

This village was a completely normal village contrary to its particularly odd location, and pretty much the only thing I had to fear were the adventures staying here. Now settled with all the information I wanted I opened my status to inspect where I was currently at.

-Status!-

Status

Information Attributes

Traits. Titles. and Skills -Name- "???" STR 6 Skills 10 ⇒ 11 -Race- Sanguinite VIT 9 Traits 3 -Sex- Male AGI 12 ⇒ 13 Titles 0 -Rank- I- DEX 8 ⇒ 9 Skillpoints 2 ⇒ 7 -Level- 2/20 INT 14 Resistances

Health 40/40 CHR 0.60 ⇒ 0.73 Physical Resistance 0.855 ⇒ 0.899 Stamina 16/16 WILL 13 Magical Resistance 0.139 ⇒ 0.145 Mana 0/0 MAG 0.30 ⇒ 0.33 Mental Resistance 6

Hmm, not much. But I did only get one level and drained four rabbits since I last checked.

-Well, at least I have seven skill points.

Before choosing a new skill to buy I looked through a mental list of things that I was either in need of or could at least help my current situation.

I already knew in terms of defensive skills, seven skill points weren't going to help all that much. While the enhanced exoskeleton skill should be somewhat beneficial, I doubted it would help me much right now. And currently, I had an idea for a skill that was all too precious to in my current situation.

I decided to look up some language-based skills.

-Skill shop!-

Skill shop Search > Language ≤ 15 Skills Name Type Cost Requirement -Language Learner- Information 2 INT - 9 Increases the speed at which the skill holder learns a language. -Language Adaptability- Information 5 INT - 13 When exposed to a basic language of the world of Eve, the skill holder automatically learns the language over time. Amount learned depends on the amount of exposure. -Basic Universal Translator- Information 15 INT - 25 The skill holder can understand, read, and speak any basic language of the world of Eve when exposed to it.

Phew, that's quite the skill - Basic Universal Translator.

I sat the search inquiry to the cost of fifteen points or less, to make sure I didn't pass up on an amazing ability by preemptively buying one for only the current amount I had instead of saving up a little more.

But while the universal language skill seemed extremely valuable I was nowhere near that intellect requirement, and besides, I couldn't make myself spend fifteen points on just a language skill when I could get one that's a lot more cost-efficient for five points.

Decision made, I purchased the skill.

-Language Adaptability!-

[Skill - Language Adaptability has been added to the skill list!]

Looking outside from the barn, that I had appropriated for myself, I saw that dusk had already fallen. Buzzing out of the barn I looked at the now silent village.

Time to eat!

Yes, I was going to try my hand in preying on a human. I had already looked in and around the barn, in search of any animals of husbandry or similar, but surprisingly enough, there were none from what I could see. So essentially the only food source in this entire town was the humans themselves; if you excluded the occasionally scurrying rat that is.

But the lack of animals wasn't the only reason as to why I had taken up the challenge to rob a human for some of their blood. First of all, I was desperately curious at just how much they would give me in both terms of stats and experience. Secondly, I doubted there would be too much risk involved seeing as any normal humans would be unable to catch me with my current speed and ability to fly.

Lastly, and also what had been the main determining factor in my decision to go through with it, was that for every minute I spent in the vicinity of the humans, my instincts were screaming for me to go and drink their blood. It had become clear by now that my sanguinite race was deeply inclined to drink human blood, and the more I tried to restrain the lust, the more my mind started to become a haze of conflict.

So I simply decided to give in, as I had spent quite a while making sure everything was in order. Flying through the air, I relished the feeling of flying out in the open coupled with my newfound speed and agility from all of my evolutions and skills. The house I was approaching is one that I had scouted out before and chosen as my target.

This house was slightly bigger than the other houses and a bit further from the grouping of which the other houses found themselves in. This was the main reason why I had picked this house. But it was also because I had already registered where each adventurer had taken refuge for the night, and this house was one of the houses farthest from them; meaning that I shouldn't have to worry about them apprehending me if anything went horribly wrong.

Approaching one of the windows, which seemed to have been broken some time ago and simply covered up with some cloth, I squeezed myself in using my exoskeleton to cover the areas where exposed glass would have otherwise have hit my body.

Managing to get through the shattered window, without hurting myself, I dropped to the flooring of the house instead of flying. Due to my dark vision, I had no trouble seeing in this coupling of a kitchen and living room that I had found myself in.

Looking around I spotted a door that was slightly open, and from what I could smell and hear I knew that there were two people in there. Slowly approaching the door I had to nudge it a bit more open to squeeze through. Getting through, I froze and cringed as the door, which seemingly has never in its entire life been oiled before, squeaked loudly.

Standing in muted silence for about ten seconds or so without any reactions sounding, I let out a sigh of relief. In front of me was a bed, where I could see two pairs of human feet sticking out under the covers.

Moving over to the left side of the bed I climbed carefully up the wooden railing instead of touching the mattress made of both cloth and straw. Looking at the faces of the humans I became quite surprised.

It was an elderly pair of a man and a woman, but it was the elderly man that had caught my attention in particular. It was actually the exact same one who had been nailing the younger woman in the barn earlier that day. Looking over at the elderly woman to his side, I couldn't help but give a silent laugh to myself.

That old fox, tsk-tsk.

Well, anyways I began to quickly scout out and analyze my approach here, but firstly decided to appraise them both before doing anything else.

-Appraisal!-

Appraisal - Maliek

Information Attributes

Traits. Titles. and Skills -Name- "Maliek" STR 6 Skills 5 -Race- Human VIT 7 Traits 0 -Sex- Male AGI 5 Titles 0 -Rank- H DEX 6 Resistances

-Level- 16 INT 8 Health 42/42 CHR 6 Physical Resistance 4 Stamina 20/23 WILL 5 Magical Resistance ??? Mana 0/0 MAG ??? Mental Resistance 1 Class Tier -Main Class- Apprentice Healer 1 -Sub Class- None None Appraisal - Yieve

Information Attributes

Traits. Titles. and Skills -Name- "Yieve" STR 4 Skills 2 -Race- Human VIT 6 Traits 0 -Sex- Female AGI 6 Titles 0 -Rank- H- DEX 7 Resistances

-Level- 12 INT 8 Health 34/34 CHR 8 Physical Resistance 4 Stamina 15/18 WILL 5 Magical Resistance ??? Mana 0/0 MAG ??? Mental Resistance 1 Class Tier -Main Class- None None -Sub Class- None None

I could definitely conclude by now that magic in this world seemed to pretty rare and special. It was always something thing I couldn't glimpse from Appraisal.

I then moved on to their stats, which to be honest, seemed pretty pathetic. Well, I was pretty sure that an ordinary adult male had some slightly better stats than these, but I would guess that the reasoning that Maliek's attributes being that low was due to his old age and the atrophy that inevitably followed.

Another thing to take into consideration is the fact that he had a strength attribute of four, and mine was 6. But I was quite sure that in terms of actual strength between me and the old man, that he was intrinsically stronger.

This is most likely due to not only my small stature but also he has the weight advantage. Coupled with things like weight, size, body composition, muscle make-up, and functionality of which were all better than yours truly.

Done appraising them both I decided to make my move, as I could no longer postpone this. By now, being in such close vicinity to a human, the urge to drink had become ravenous and barely restrainable.

One problem had already arisen before I could begin though, as I had originally wanted to go for his neck. But since his head was resting somewhat on his shoulder, it was effectively blocking access making that approach unavailable. If I had to go from the other side and make an attempt on the other side of his neck, I would be directly between the woman and him, so that was also a no-go.

Inspecting the elderly man a bit more, I found a solution. One of his legs was fully exposed revealing his thigh, which made me remember one of the humans' biggest artery, the femoral artery.

Located right in the thigh, a high amount of blood passed through and was directly connected to the aorta artery making access easy. Preparing to puncture straight into the blood vein, I moved slowly so as not to disturb and wake him.

Hoping he wouldn't feel my sting, I also prepared myself to inject all of my paralytic compound into him if it went south. Penetrating his skin, I still held my attention firmly directed towards his state and possible reactions. It seemed that he definitely felt a sting as his facial expression changed slightly causing a minor pang of worry to erupt in my heart, but luckily it wasn't enough to wake him.

Successfully hitting the artery, I began to very slowly to drink. But as soon as the blood entered my body, my eyes figuratively widened in shock. While I had essentially been unable to taste any of the blood I've consumed over the last few days, human blood seemed to have a whole different quality about it, that simply couldn't be explained by words.

It was obviously once again my sanguinite race having a hand at play here, but in the rapturous feeling of drinking human blood, I couldn't care less at the moment.

So I began eating, unrestrained.

As each second went by, my abdomen kept increasing in size, showing the red glowing lines and the red blood through the slightly transparent film. The old geezer kept getting paler and paler, as I had no longer control over how much I was drinking, but then suddenly something very bad happened...

[Maliek has taken 1 damage!]

Opening his eyes wearily, Maliek tried to focus through the haze of both drowsiness and exhaustion of missing a large quantity of blood. But it was apparently very hard for him to even form a coherent thought as the loss of blood had also made him somewhat delirious.

In a moment of horror and panic, I pumped all of my paralytic compounds directly into his system before he could do anything. I knew he wouldn't be paralyzed for long since he was a lot bigger and more resistant than a horned rabbit, so I had to bail immediately before the whole village was alerted.

But to my shock, my body wouldn't respond to my commands and continued to ravenously devour his blood. My instinct had completely taken over and was slowly killing the man.

With the slight exclamation of breath leaving his lungs, making a whimper, I got this message.

[LVL: 6 - Human "Maliek" has been slain!]

[You have been rewarded with 350 points of EXP!]

[Congratulations! You've reached level 3]

[You've been rewarded with 1 skill point for reaching level 3]

[Siphon]

[You've consumed the blood of a Human]

[182 points of EXP has been acquired and stats have been added]

[Greater Puncture has reached LVL: 2]

I-I... just killed someone?

This was my first time killing a human. But something was off...

Shouldn't I feel guilt? Shouldn't I feel shame? Wasn't 'sentient' life supposed to be something sacred?

No guilt, shame, or sadness permeated my mind, instead, I just felt an odd mix of different feelings. I could distinguish a sense of disgust, not directed toward myself, but at the sight of the man's corpse and how easily he died, still affecting me as I myself was also a human only days ago.

Another feeling to could be picked out was something not restricted to killing this human, but simply whenever I killed anything. It was the feeling of power and dominating your opponent.

One of the last feelings in the mix was... sympathy. My human self projected itself on this man and created this sense of sympathy as all other humans do. Most of the time when people think that care for other strangers' lives, it's often just them projecting themselves on them creating sympathy thus making them think they actually care.

It's quite funny how it is literally ingrained in our DNA combined with society and their imposed values, which make emotions cloud our view of the reality of this cruel and harsh world. All this made me realize a thought which the life of modern society on earth had alienated me from.

Good and evil, what bullshit, sentient life isn't sacred, it's just as valuable and worthless as any other life... To be honest, killing a human felt like simply taking the life of any other animal, the only change being that one was just a bit more intelligent.

It makes you think, should I really value a creature just because it's more intelligent and all other life is fair game? But then what about the giant dire wolf, who clearly had the sparkle of deadly cunning in his eyes. He was most likely even more intelligent than this man, so is it okay for me to kill the dire wolf if I won't kill this man?

I mentally sighed as all of these thoughts raced through my head. But my contemplation suddenly got chased away as the woman called Yieve next to the dead body of Maliek stirred, most likely due to that slight whimper of Maliek or possibly some other reason.

"Hmmm...? Maliek?"

Seeing Yieve's hand stretching sleepily over to touch his dead and gaunt face since due to its lack of blood, I immediately activated Obscurement.

"Maliek? Sheiva, then broaska Maliek?" - Yieve

It didn't take long before she began to make shrill screams as I immediately started looking for a way out. I climbed down the bed without making any noise or disturbance, while keeping an eye out for a window or anything that might provide me an escape from this shitty situation. But there was none.

Shit!

With worry taking over, I quickly turned around and hastily moved towards the door. But just as I was about to pry the door open and make my escape, I see the front door suddenly get kicked in as a stocky frame of a familiar man comes rushing in.

What the fuck?! How is he already here? -Fuck!

Before I managed to panic any further I turned around and scuttled in under the bed. The stocky man was that Hannard, and he immediately came charging into the bedroom.

Goddammit, just my luck. But how come he's already here? I made sure to check that everybody had already receded into their respective houses, but even if they hadn't been asleep, they shouldn't have been able to close the distance between the houses in an instant like this.

He began to talk loudly with a hurried voice to the screaming woman, and over the next few minutes, multiple people also came rushing into the bedroom. By now I could now see the boots of three other familiar people who had left a lasting impression in the glades.

-Ugh, I'm so fucked...