A short swing to the tree on my right brought me closer to the bandits and the overturned wagon, so that the majority of the men would no longer have me in sight when I grabbed the ugly guy who had just disappeared to pee on my side of the forest. I showed my needle-like teeth and grinned outrageously. Who would have thought that I would be so quickly offered an opportunity to "try" the ugly little fellow? But when the heated discussion about the death of the merchant's daughter was still in full swing, this bandit had only waved disdainfully at the others and said something in this foreign language in guttural sounds. At least it sounded to me so! And had marched directly in my direction! While still other bandits on both sides of the path looked out for other wagons, was the man but considerably stupid so alone in the forest to disappear. I mean, who knows what kind of dangers lurk here! A wolf could come by for a quick afternoon snack, or one of those blood bats. Or even me! And my grin widened even more, even more unnaturally than before and twice as wide as he had ever seen on a human on Earth before, he was sure of it.

So I sat on the tree as the ugly guy below me marched into the forest and grumbled something to himself and apparently cursed. A short swing later, I continued to sit totally unnoticed on a tree a little deeper in the forest, where the bandit was just fiddling with his belt buckle. Whether he peed here now? Ahh, no. Pah. He must be taking a shit... Urgh...

With the monsters and animals I had always unconsciously not thought about it, but to see this person now as he pulled down the blood-stained and very dirty pants to lean with his back against the tree and let a shit, it made me a little bile high. I ate many things, but certainly not the feces of other creatures! At least not consciously, disgusting!

My grin had only slightly weakened and now seemed disgusted consumed, just like my mood and inner thoughts it just gave.

The pockmarked one hundred and sixty centimeter tall bandit grunted like a pig and had a concentrated expression on his face when the first piece of misery plopped on the floor. I had to suppress my very human gagging in disgust and held my left hand in front of my mouth and briefly looked away. Am I really doing this now while the idiot ropes one down? Honestly, really, truly? Urgh... Is there a better way or opportunity? Nope. Fuck it.

I tried to block out the strained grunt and the rising smell and, holding my breath, crawled up the tree the bandit was leaning against in his active business, and started crawling down his back upside down. With deliberation and much effort, more mental at what was happening in front of me than physical, I was now directly a few centimeters above the head of the bandit, who was looking down and seemingly proud of his result. Disgusting!

Without giving it a second thought, and just as the guy below me was wiping his butt with one of his sleeves, my left hand snapped down directly over the bandit's mouth to stop him from screaming.

So far I had not had the opportunity to test my strength against other people, but I was very sure that I must be stronger than this fighter, if I was physically very good even against bears and wolves.

A muffled startled cry, as expected, came from the bandit as my black clawed hand sealed his lips and he grabbed my arm with both arms in panic to free himself. To my renewed displeasure and boiling rage, he smeared part of his business on the black fur of my arm, which in turn elicited another groan from him because he scraped his forearm on my iron-hard fur. I disgustedly ignored the head cinema that just shot through my mind and did not look closer.

With another crawling step upside down my head came from above exactly in front of the bandit, who stared at me with plate-sized round eyes abruptly filled with fear and once again screamed louder, as if on a spit. I could even imagine with the absolute best will in the world how I looked right now in the eyes of the bandit, how I hung there like the horror version of spiderman right in front of his face and looked at him with a twisted unnatural grin.

But instead of a kiss as I had seen it in the spiderman scenes on screens, I opened my mouth a little bit and extra slow to show him in full my beautiful little bites. He should finally see very gently, what kind of "kiss" awaited him, so with tongue and teeth. I would devour him, with skin and hair!

The little guy screamed even more shrilly, and if I hadn't pressed my hands so hard on his mouth, a cry of alarm would have reached the other bandits by now at the latest. But as it was, I just giggled in my devilish child's voice and enjoyed the horror show to the full. How the man's hair stood up in a jerk, how he looked at me with more white in his eyes than probably ever before in his life, how he tried to struggle and tear himself away, his panicked scream. I enjoyed it, just as the guys had enjoyed going down on the girl. I enjoyed my power, how my hand was the only thing holding the bandit to the tree with all the wriggling and frantic waving of his arms, but he just kept rubbing himself bloody on my hedgehog-like fur. I chuckled maliciously and slyly while my other hand slowly ran over the bandit's forehead with the claw on my index finger, leaving a small trail of blood. Suddenly, another smell assaulted my sensitive nose and I wrinkled my nose as I smelled urine and saw a liquid flowing down the man's inner legs from the corner of my eye. "If your flesh wasn't so IMPORTANT to me, I would kill you and leave you right now! What a disgusting little creature you are!" I whispered with a grimace directly into my victim's face, which probably sounded more like a squeaky and deep thing than an actual voice. I knew how I sounded, but apparently I had made a much stronger impression with my voice than I had ever thought, because the bandit's bubble was now finally deflating as if the dam had broken. Oh, and I had forgotten about the mist that had been wafting out of my nostrils the whole time I was breathing and was now even flowing down some parts of the man's face as he talked. With another giggle at my creepy appearance, I finally decided to kill my victim before the other bandits wondered what was going on.

My right hand became a straight palm, claws slightly curved but all pointing in one direction, and with a single movement my hand sank unresisted through the right auditory canal of my victim, through the skullcap, directly into the man's brain.

A short, last, twitch and spasm went through the body of the bandit as his brain was pierced once from right to left by my hand, and not a second later I had a lifeless corpse in my left hand, which now held the body effortlessly upright at the throat in front.

As simple as I had thought it would be... But to be honest, this one was the smallest and perhaps weakest of them all. And I should not underestimate the number of bandits. As soon as they realize that this one won't come back, it will get hectic for me... Let's see what happens. Now let's clean up this disgusting THING before I can even start to devour it.

With this short inner confrontation with myself, I crawled on three limbs, while my left hand continued to pull the human by the throat, backwards upwards into the treetop.

There I tore the clothes of the bandit with quick movements and short aids of my claws from the body and wiped him clean with an extremely disgusted facial expression, while my head was as far as possible from the stench and I only wanted to look out of the corner of my eye, as I wiped the man's ass downright.

Not even a minute later, and with the help of a leather pouch with water that I had found on the former bandit's belt, the guy was cleaner than he had probably ever been in his lifetime. Ready to finally be a real snack for me.

I started with his limbs, but left the disgusting dirty fingernails and toenails alone as I feasted my way from the outside in. His butt I left disgusted in peace, while I had no qualms even his genitals to eat, because you never know what kind of properties I could get so. Maybe I could take on a human body someday. It would be quite strange not to have biological characteristics like genitals, wouldn't it? Definitely. So that has to go in, too.

But I certainly didn't need the butt, nor the intestines, which reminded me too much of the fresh memories I had witnessed.

Five minutes later, there was nothing left but a bloody piece of butt that led to a large part of the bowel and then suddenly broke off, where I had started to be less picky again.

A belch escaped my throat and I leaned back briefly in the treetop to give my stomach and the devoured trait time to digest and assimilate everything in peace. It continued to rumble for some time, and just as I sat up in satisfaction, a call came from the road, or rather the earthy path, in my direction.

Before I could take a closer look at who was coming to look for his mate, the usual messages briefly obscured my view, which I briefly skimmed.

*Human genes discovered...

*Human genes are assimilated...

*Mild human emotions are integrated...

*Mild human emotions successfully processed.

*Human body can now be mimicked very roughly.

*Thought processes of a thinking race have been integrated....

*Speed of thought processes increased.

*Internal mana capacity has been moderately increased.

*Sapient being skills were learned to the lesser extent.

A flood of information swarmed my head and I suddenly knew MORE. My thoughts, I realized only now, had seemed normal fast before, but now I realized how viscous my head had worked before!

My head suddenly worked as clear as never before, and a small sting of guilt flew past me as I became aware of what I had seen with the girl and what I had just done. But as quickly as the most minimal feeling of guilt in the world had appeared, it had disappeared again.

I opened my hands for a test and watched in amazement, as if it were the first time I had been able to open my hands. My nerves, my reaction and even the feeling on my skin felt different. Just more real and more accurate.

I blinked and another grin came over my lips as I suddenly knew how to swing a sword, a dagger and a club. At least roughly and rather clumsily, but I suddenly just knew! As if I had had these weapons in my hand before.

Or how to make a campfire, even if I somehow already knew this information roughly from my old life, I suddenly had the MEMORIES in my head, just as if I had already done it all once here in this world. Everyday things flooded my head, even if they were only fleeting feelings and memories, but it made me happy.

A renewed shouting suddenly tore me out of my euphoria, and I looked down where one of the other bandits, who had previously guarded the road on the right side, had stepped between the trees looking for his buddy.

Oho, directly the next tasty morsel! Yummy. Was all I could think of after the flood of experiences and new skills, while the man cautiously stepped closer and looked at the pile of poop at the foot of the tree, which was the only memory of his buddy left in this world. Except for the clothes and such, of course.

This time I didn't waste any thought on stealth and just dropped silently onto the bandit, who was looking questioningly to the left and right with his sword drawn, almost as if he expected the dead bandit to call out "Surprise!" or "Boo!" from the side.

But what came rather as a horror variant of a surprise, was a child-like creature from above, which landed directly on the shoulder of the bandit and just as the man raised his weapon in fright and wanted to scream out, a small fountain of blood splashed to the turd on the floor, when the throat was torn open by my right claw without comment.

A bloody gurgle, followed by a gush of blood from his mouth, was all the bandit could manage just before he went down on his knees and tipped almost dangerously close forward into the remains of his dead friend.

NOPE! I'm not washing you too! Stay here! I screamed inwardly as I slid down from the dead man's back and landed on the ground with a soft sound, only for him to pull the man backwards by his clothes onto the forest floor and have him topple over in the other direction.

With an annoyed grunt, I took an effortless sideways step and dodged the dead man as he hit the ground with a thud.

Then I should hurry up with this one before the others come too!

I pulled the guy sideways, now consciously ignoring the trace I left on the ground, around the tree and crawled with the dead weight on one arm up another tree and there between the branches in the treetop. There I cut and tore now more practiced the clothes of the bandit, used briefly a little water from another water hose, and consumed also this fellow in record time until I plopped backwards again on my butt to digest.

This time it didn't take long and several angry screams came echoing into the forest from the path, but no other person ventured in between the trees, wisely for them.

I could not wait this time to digest in peace, and swung me with a small groan and partly full stomach quickly to the front trees to look at the event and the tumult I caused on the earth path.