Shan crept through the forest, shuffling through dry leaves and lush grass. After practising crawling for a few minutes, he became surprisingly adept at it. All he did was leave everything to his instinct and turn out it was easy, as if it was natural for him to be a snake.

A snake. He still couldn't accept that fact, but he will follow through with it for now.

He enabled the mapping feature of the system, and it was a lifesaver. It may look like a small thing now, but in some unknown, dangerous places, the help the map could provide would be immense.

All Shan had to do was move around, and the map would recognise any life forms with a threat level. Red meant the highest threat level and orange meant he might get away with it if he was careful, while yellow was something he could deal with ease.

The only downside of the mapping system was that he had to visit that place, also he hadn't analysed it thoroughly ‌yet, like how fast it refreshed the changes.‌ Currently, it had a scope of about two hundred metres radius, which was seriously not a lot. A silver ranker specialising in agility could cover that much distance in a couple of seconds.

There was also the Inventory; the personal spatial storage space to store anything. Well, anything lifeless. He could not put something alive in it, it would kill it like any normal spatial storage space. But it was a vast space, about twenty cubic metres of volume. It was like the highest grade of sub-space, but using it was way more efficient.

Presently, Shan was moving towards a few yellow targets shown on the maps. He was looking around suspiciously, but found nothing around, even after searching for a couple of minutes. The map didn't feel wrong, as he had checked it out before. Probably, it was something utilising a veil, or other stealth ability.

That thought made Shan even more cautious as he condensed some amount of spiritual force in his mouth. There were only three creatures of yellow marking, so he should be able to deal with it if he was attentive.

Just as he was snooping around, a shadow lunged at him. It was swift, but Shan only had to twist his head as a spark of condensed spirit force shot out of his mouth, assaulting the shadow before it could come to a metre radius of him.

The beast lurched away as Shan shot another projectile of condensed spirit force to make sure.

[You have killed a Giant Hamster (Copper- 0.3).]

A hamster? He was cautious of a freaking hamster? Even if they were a metre in size, and weighed ten times his own weight, they were just hamsters. 'I am really growing stupid becoming a snake,' he thought and found its other companion easily.

The two remaining hamsters lunged at him together, attempting to avenge their companion, or just doing stupid things, being stupid hamsters. Shan thought it was the latter. These stupid beasts don't have any camaraderie in them, all they cared about was stuffing their stomachs.

His snake body lurched as he dodged one from the front, while he condensed another projectile in his mouth. His snake form does have some poison, and though poison was not the dominant feature, it could easily kill these hamsters. However, there was no need. Why bother with poison, when you could make it with just some simple spirit manipulations?

Shan shot the Qi projectile at the other one, flinging it away. Now there was only one remaining. The metre-long hamster squeaked as it chased after the snake.

Shan twisted and turned, shuffling in the dry leaves. He was fast, faster than he had assumed to be in this form. With the thought of checking out his physical form, he coated his body with spiritual energy and coiled swiftly for a sudden lung at the giant hamster.

Shan hadn't held back even a little, and seeing the result he had to admit, he really under-evaluated his new form. His full-strength tackle, augmented by the spirit force, penetrated right through the head of the hamster, spraying dark scarlet blood and brown goo in the air.

Gods above, he felt awful with the filth staining his body. He jerked his body frantically to drive away the filth.

[You have killed a Giant Hamster (Copper- 0.3).]

[You have killed a Giant Hamster (Copper- 0.4).]

'Well,' he thought, 'that was easy.'

Shan turned his snakehead towards the corpse and checked the map to find there was nothing else nearby. His stomach growled, reminding him again of its hunger. Now it's time to devour.

Shan's stomach convulsed and churned just with the thought of devouring raw meat, and the meat of these filthy hamsters, nonetheless. There was no problem for him to digest raw meats, but that didn't make it any easier to eat raw, filthy flesh. Sadly, the hunger in his body was not something he could endure for long.

Sighing, Shan approached one of the hamsters. 'Here goes nothing.' He jerked his head to bite. Surprisingly, he didn't feel even a bit wrong about eating raw, filthy flesh, and that feeling twisted his stomach even more.

'I'm really a reptile now.'

[Do you want to loot Giant Hamster?]

The familiar transparent text appeared in his consciousness again, reminding him he could try the Looting feature of the system.

Shan frowned, or at least, did the mental equivalent of frowning. Would looting take away his food? There were two more corpses, so there was no problem in finding out. He affirmed with a mental command, as soon, the metre-long corpse vanished into mist and smoke as if it was barely an illusion.

Shan had his fair share of weird, strange encounters, but this surprised him a lot.

[Beast core (Copper) has been added to your inventory.]

[Purified giant hamster meat has been added to your inventory.]

[You have gained 7 evolution points.]

[Congratulations! You have learned Spirit Manipulation, Copper 0.1.]

'Right, the system has inbuilt spatial storage,' he mused and accessed the inventory to bring out both the beast core and the purified meat. 'Looks like looting is a lot better than devouring raw flesh.'

The message about learning Spirit Manipulation didn't alert him, but the next two messages did.

[Congratulations! You have advanced to Copper (0.1) rank.]

[1 attribute points each has been added to your four attributes. You have gained 1 free attribute point.]

Shan felt a swirl of spiritual energy inside him, progressing him to the next level. His body heated up the very moment as the power rushed all over his body, empowering him to the next sub-rank of copper. The process didn't take long, about a minute or less, but he certainly felt a little better after it happened.

Shan felt how powerlessness can hurt like. It was awful. It was like some part of him had been torn apart. That was how intoxicating the power was. You will be fine without it, but once you hold the power, you'll never be able to live without it. Even though the advancement was little, the first step on the path, it reminded him of how intoxicating holding the power was.

However, the advancement didn't solve the problem with his hunger. Far from it. It actually made him even hungrier. Well, he had purified meat with him, so there was no problem stuffing his stomach with it.

Even though the meat was still raw, it seemed a lot better than before. Without minding, he ate all of that, and next came the beast core. He ate that too. If it was his human body, it wouldn't be possible to do that, but this form could digest anything. The spark of Hunger was no joke. The hamster beast core was a low-grade beast core with a lot of impurities, but his stomach would eliminate all the filth out of it to take the purest spirit energy.

'That solves one problem,' he mused. 'Guess, I don't have to worry too much about resources anymore.'

And the horrifying thing was that he was still hungry. Sighing, Shan approached the other two corpses to loot and devour. All that earned him 16 evolution points in total, but that number seemed scarcely low to evolve anything.

That was a relieving thought to have, since it takes a lot to grow the ranks, from daily meditation and visualisation to the consumption of various materials such as pills, potions, spirit fruit, and other heavenly ingredients. He almost got it covered till the gold rank since he was an elite gold ranker before. However, this time, his path was a lot different.

On each rank, Copper, Iron, Silver, Gold, one had to integrate a Spark into their body and soul to advance further. Hunger was the first spark that he never chose, but seemed to come along with the Snake of Infinite. Well, he was not sure whether or not he could choose the next ones. Well, that thought was for later.

Shan opened the status screen again to find out the whole deal about the evolution points, and as he assumed, the numbers were barely anything.

Evolution Points:

Evolution points let you advance your abilities. To advance abilities in the sub rank of copper, you have to convert evolution points to Copper Evolution points. (100 evolution points equal to 1 copper evolution point.)

Abilities:

- Myth Transformation (Unique, Inherited Legacy Ability): Copper 0.0 (Progress: 0/10)

- Bonding (Unique, Inherited Legacy Ability): Copper 0.0 (Progress: 0/10)

The meat and cores, they solved the hunger problem for now, but Shan was sure, it was only the start for his starving stomach.

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