I tore with all my might and my head pulled the tendons and the flesh between my teeth out completely with another yank, which ended in a loud tearing noise. The lifeblood of the stag flowed down my throat and I swallowed loudly and joyfully while my stomach continued to digest and process everything I sent down my throat.

Some time later and many pleasant shudders reminiscent of ecstasy, I amazingly easily broke the antlers of the stag in two with my jaws and crumbled everything into easy to swallow small pieces in my mouth, so as not to waste even a little of my meal.

With a loud belch that sounded more like a horrible monster than a humanoid human being, I fell backwards onto my butt and lay backwards on the forest floor with my arms outstretched.

Soooooo good! Was my only thought as my little tummy made gurgling noises, shrinking steadily but slowly as it digested the whole two hundred kilogram deer. I had grown in the meantime, even if it was surprisingly little compared to all the creatures that I had already digested! My height from foot to head now measured almost forty centimeters, a full ten more than at the beginning of my transformation. But where all the food disappeared to, I could not determine with the best will in the world. Especially when I thought about how many animals and various monsters I had eaten in the last week. Ten centimeters may have sounded like a lot for that period of time, but only if you didn't think about the fact that I had certainly digested two tons of organic material in the meantime.

There had to be some kind of transformation inside my stomach, because I couldn't imagine where all the mass had gone. Maybe converted into mana? Or into a higher density of my body?

Thinking of all the delicious meals I had eaten, I looked again at my old and new achievements since my evolution into a Wendigo.

*Bone structure and density massively increased!

*Cell regeneration strengthened!

*Cell regeneration increased!

*Bat wings gained!

*Sense of smell massively increased!

*Night vision gained!

*Night vision enhanced!

*Hearing massively enhanced!

*Skin like stone gained!

*Magic light learned!

*Mana unlocked...

*Mana integrated...

*Mana successfully integrated into body!

*Body vitality massively increased!

*Resistance to natural temperatures gained!

*Fur like iron attained!

*Body imbued with poison of the aetheric viper!

*Paralyzing secretion of the red huntsman integrated into claws and fangs!

*Various shapeshifting options unlocked, depending on the organisms entwined.

A happy sigh rumbled through the ground for nearly fifty meters around as I recalled my achievements. My voice still sounded like that of a ten-year-old boy before his voice broke, but had a subterranean and creepy depth that vibrated in the surroundings when I wanted it to.

My once light gray skin was now darkest gray and covered with a black fur that was as strong as iron wire and could scratch the bark of a tree like sandpaper. My own antlers on my head continued to be about twenty centimeters long and protruded in small branches backward from my bony skull, while the tips of the bones protruding from my shoulder and back shone greenish and poisonous and seemed almost black.

All in all, my body had become massively denser, stronger, and even heavier than before. I could inject paralyzing poison with each of my blows or bites, and my bones, as you could see on my back, could secrete a deadly poison at the slightest scratch.

Even more remarkable was that the more I devoured other creatures, organic or magical, the more potent the poison of the aetherian viper became. It was almost as if my devourer trait would examine and exploit every biological or magical weakness, the more samples I gave it of the creature or magic.

So I had had some problems with my first encounter with a lone wolf who was probably not on the road with his wolf call, while my poison worked normally as poison just so worked.

When I then dedicated myself to the whole eight-member pack, the poison was already much stronger. Of course, the whole thing only worked because I injected a part of myself, the poison, into the other creatures. So my claw blows or bites did not become stronger, but everything that I produced in my body and infiltrated other organisms or magical structures became more and more potent.

The same was true for my paralyzing secretion which entered the bloodstream of my opponents through the smallest scratches or bites, and the more of something I devoured, the more and stronger it became. When I attacked my umpteenth rabbit, for example, it simply fell over in a shake and twitch and died of heart failure, because I had experiementelly bitten off a whole leg.

With another rabbit I had, by holding it naturally before, only a small sting of one of my claws used and it was for minutes like frozen.

Through such tests on totally voluntary test subjects of my choice I could filter out that it depended on the dosage, but at the same time also on the potency and thus how much my devourer trait already knew from my opponent.

I had also experimented with the other new abilities, such as my bat wings, which I could sprout from my back, or anywhere on my body, on demand. Of course, it was nonsense to let my bat wings grow anywhere on my body, but at first it had been quite funny to wave my arms while bat wings sprouted from the crooks of my arms.

Unfortunately, much to my displeasure, the bat wings were too weak and too small to carry me, even with wings growing neatly out of my shoulder blades. To solve this, I would have to, instinctively just knowing, get hold of a lot more bats or devour other creatures with wings to create a combination.

Especially considering the hundred kilograms of weight I now possessed in my child-like forty centimeter body. I was not fat! It was simply the density of my bones, my steel-hard muscles, and everything in total that had not gained in mass but in density in leaps and bounds.

I sighed once again in contentment as I reviewed all my accomplishments, and a small swarm of mist escaped my mouth as I stared up at the starry sky while the last of it digested in my stomach. The nebula was also something new, but apparently something that older and more powerful wendigos developed. Just as the dead wendigo had exhaled a miasma as a mist, so had my growth also developed this light mist, which I could now produce with someone breathing out. Or not, if I didn't want to, since this was also an element of shape-shifting that I could control and influence as I pleased.

Suddenly another thing occurred to me and I pushed myself off the ground with a short jump and landed gracefully with both legs on the ground without any problems.

If EVERYTHING I produce inside me could infect and harm other organic or magical things, what about my NEBEL? Could I breathe on a rabbit and paralyze it? Could my mist give off poison? Uhhh... Time for another test!

With these enthuisastic thoughts and another idea I jumped like a playful very creepy child in a jump and run through the forest and looked for my next victim - ehm voluntary test subject!

My hearing, smell and eyes had improved so much when I had taken on the characteristics of the animals and monsters I was devouring, that after only a few minutes I had made out the first rabbit.

Joyfully I hung with one of my clawed hands on a tree and dangled quietly like a hunter from the creepiest horror movie five meters above the ground and watched the rabbit, which sat with a kind of premonition and put on little ears in the middle of the grass and had made himself as small as possible.

Then let's see how much you like my mouth odor, huh? It went through my head with childish curiosity, when I was in the fraction of a second on the rabbit and nailed it so simply like a leaf in the wind on the ground. With a grin not of this world, I approached the panic-stricken little rodent, whose eyes were almost bulging out of their sockets, and breathed gently directly onto the rabbit's snout and nose.

The eyes bulged out a bit more than before, the animal's little heart raced to bursting point, and then abruptly stopped as it inevitably inhaled the white mist. The heart pounded only once every few seconds, and the eyes had retreated, even though the panicked look in the middle of them had not become one bit less fearful.

The rabbit had to witness in stiffness what was happening to it and did not know how to deal with it while a deadly hunter breathed into its face.

Almost three minutes later, about as long as a small prick with a claw had stunned the rabbit, the animal slowly began to move again and wriggled with the last will stronger and stronger, until it squeaked and the heart suddenly stopped, the light in the eyes of the rodent simply extinguished.

Ahhhh, too bad. Now I need another test specimen for my poison cloud! Oh man... Well, goooooood. What the heck.

Not a minute later I had found the burrow of the previous rabbit and maybe the partner, or sibling, under my hand. Another breath, this time not white but clearly poison green, came out of my nostrils and mouth, directly into the respiratory tract of the rodent, which breathed in and out in a panic, hyperventilating.

Only a few seconds later, green veins spread under the skin of the rabbit, which stood out the most in the eyes that were bulging out and until just now still showed red veins, where now poisonous green pulsating ones replaced the red.

Less than five seconds later, the rabbit twitched and jerked spastically under the hand and died in agony with twitching and white foam in front of the mouth.

Interesting! So I can also exhale everything and do not necessarily need direct physical contact. Just like with the miasma of the dead wendigo, huh? Although that seemed to be some kind of curse, the principle is probably the same. Horny shit is hot. If I keep growing like this and eventually create mists like this, I can certainly mix them with paralyzing poison as well and paralyze everything in my mist circle! What possibilities...

Definitely satisfied with myself and all my great new toys, I finally decided to take a direction and wander a little further than I had the previous week. The forest, I had noticed, was gigantic in size and I had not once seen anything other than this forest in the whole week of murdering and devouring. However, I strongly assumed, and hoped, that there were other thinking creatures in this world, other than the few animals and smaller monsters I had hunted so far.

With these thoughts and a slight jump in my steps, I ran off, much faster than at the beginning of my development, and sprinted off joyfully in a random direction. Over roots, along trees, jumping over treetops, and instinctively chasing away every weaker animal and monster that became aware of my bloody aura. As I ran, I thought once again, as I have almost every day since I landed in this world, back to earth. And if I missed my old one, or what new emotions came up that maybe weren't there yesterday. But nope, nothing new. I was just... relatively logical and cold when it came to my emotions. I knew in the back of my mind that I should be feeling something, other than the joy and pure freedom I was experiencing, powerfully overshadowing everything else. But there was simply nothing I missed. Or regretted. Or anyone else who missed me, except for the few elderly grandpas and grannies who had slipped me food here and there... But other than that? Nothing. Pure nothing, no worries, no scruples.

My life on earth had consisted of survival and struggle day after day, watching powerless scenarios beyond good and evil, how others had exploited their physical or immaterial power against weaker parts of society. Rapes, murders, mutilations. Just as once one of the blood-hungry gang members in another part of town had cut off one of his fingers because he had stared at him in hunger delirium.

Did he miss the Earth, his home world? Not in the least. Did he enjoy the mass carnage of the local forest population? No, not quite. But did he find it important to survive himself, in the sense of the right of the stronger? Yes, he did.

So, even if he didn't necessarily like the killing of the creatures, for whatever reason, his growth from the bodies of all his prey gave him immense satisfaction and gratification, knowing that this was the only way he could survive in the future.

So he came to terms with it, emotionally totally unaffected by the fact that he saw other creatures as fodder for his own future and strength. A necessary evil to survive himself. So why should he find it morally reprehensible?

Suddenly, a familiar smell snapped him out of his train of thought, and a sound of metal on metal, and short screams wafted towards him from further ahead.

Blood hung in the air, and a desperate struggle was taking place a few hundred meters ahead of him.

Finally, other people! Or, at least, other intelligent beings who were fighting? I'm not even a human myself anymore. I laughed inwardly, but was full of anticipation to finally see the first real inhabitants of this world.

On silent soles I jumped from tree to tree, and the only thing that announced my emergence was a quiet scraping and scratching, as my claws effortlessly penetrated the trees and brought my forward momentum to the next tree. The sounds I made at this point were as minimal and soft as a gentle breeze, so I didn't worry that anyone would normally be able to hear me.

So I approached the dying sounds of battle in front of me and the trees became lighter, indicating the end of the forest.

With a final leap and a quiet, imperceptible rustle, I landed in the canopy of the last tree in front of me and looked down at the trampled earth in front of me, which made a five meter wide path through the forest. An overturned wagon, apparently belonging to a merchant with his family and two guards who were no longer alive, was in the middle of the path, while ten dirty-looking and crudely yowling bandits were having their way with the merchant's daughter, who was being plowed with the last of their strength and whimpering noises by a rude one-eyed fellow.

When the bandit was just finished, the others, some of whom were still buckling their pants, jeered and shouted obscene approvals at the guy. But what no one saw was the tearful glistening in the eyes of the young girl, who threw herself forward at exactly the right moment, tore out the dagger from the belt of the ruffian and slit her own throat with a single jerk.

Before the bandit knew what had happened, the naked girl was already lying on the floor, gasping, and after a few moments had a blank look in her eyes, which caused an irritable debate between the human bandits. They argued loudly with each other and pointed accusingly at each other, and mainly at the last rapist, while they were probably angry that the prey had dared to sneak out of their lives just like that.

Interestingly, this also answered one of my own questions. I couldn't actually understand a word of what the men were saying out loud, so I scratched the back of my head with my clawed hand, just below my antlers.

I would like to get to the... extremely morally questionable fellows there, but against ten of them? Difficult situation. From a moral point of view, I was even looking forward to devouring this gang, since they then served a higher good, namely me! Even if I did not find the action of the bandits good or bad, I still knew from my old life that it was not in order. Emotionally, it had left me cold, but in principle, I wanted to somehow like to tamper with them. Just as they exploited other helpless people, I wanted to exploit these men. And their bodies. I chuckled inwardly and rubbed my imaginary hands.