*Magma veins attained

*Fire resistance gained

*Magma resistance attained

*Magna resistance overwrites fire resistance!

*Fire immunity gained!

I hung with one arm on the tree, my claws sunk deep into one of the lower thick branches, and slurped one of the last countless magma worms in through my throat as if it were a noodle dish like ramen, and the worm a long tasty noodle.

To be perfectly honest... I wouldn't have expected that myself. I laughed inwardly with the thought and a fiery bloody smile formed on my face, presenting my white knife-like teeth in all their glory.

After my bandit meal, I had made my way to the western part of the forest on the other side of the forest path to take a closer look at this bandit camp and perhaps pick up a few more human tidbits. And as I jumped from tree to tree, sometimes even testing my new skills and reaction speeds by jumping, running and acrobatics, I saw these odd glowing worms under one of the fir trees.

As it turned out, they were worms with veins of magma! And like any good gourmet, I had to try this new dish immediately. The worms tasted fiery, but had a spicy hot note, and a hint of something smoky or burnt. Of course I had burned my mouth with my first bites, but as soon as the first worms were digested and processed, I had built up a reasonably adequate fire resistance, and with each successive bite of these good tasting worms, my own characteristics had swelled until I had not only acquired a fair magna resistance, but even a complete fire immunity! Hah!

And after I had devoted myself to the whole nest of several hundreds of these magma worms, I continued in the direction of the west, towards my actual goal, which I had just set my eyes on at that very moment.

Apparently, the bandits have proven more craftsmanship than I would have expected them to... Whether some of the robbers had previously had a profession as a construction worker or architect? Hmmm... Well, who cares!

In front of me was another row of conifers and behind them I just observed the "camp", or rather lightly fortified buildings, met it probably better.

In front of me was a stone hill, loosely 80 meters in width and 20 meters high, with a 5 meter large cave entrance in the middle, while two stalagtites hung down over the entrance and gave the entrance to the large cave behind it a kind of fangs, which made the hiding place seem much more threatening.

Directly in front of this cave entrance was a row of sharpened wooden stakes, which, when driven into the ground, formed a fairly sturdy palisade five meters high, with a rectangular gatepost and a heavy wooden door in the middle of the same size that could be swung open.

In front of this inner palisade I saw two larger tents, in which the normal bandits probably had their sleeping quarters, if one could assume from the one bandit who came out of one of the two tents, sleepy and with his pants half pulled up.

In the left part, in front of the semicircular inner palisade, there was a pigsty with wild boars, probably gathered from the forest and kept as a source of food.

And finally, what also made me look so puzzled, there was another and long palisade in front of the whole, which also started in a semicircle on the left side of the stone hill and was connected with sharpened tree trunks to the right again to the small hill, with a square wooden double door in the middle, which surely could be pushed open only with difficulty by a single person. While the inner fence ran perhaps 15 meters from the cave entrance on the left to the right in a semicircle, the outer palisade was a good 40 meters long and a few meters higher.

The entire enclosure, so that probably no one could rappel or climb down from the hill behind it into the courtyard or directly to the entrance of the cave without problems, was surrounded at the top of the stones by x-shaped very pointed wooden posts. Anyone who wanted to enter the bandit camp over the hill rather than through the palisades would have to make their way over various sizes of sharpened wooden structures, while the wall down to the compound also had sharpened stones all along the walls of the hill.

While I was looking at the compound of these actually so unkempt bandits with not a little respect, I counted the remaining people I could see from outside the fortified compound, and came up with a number of 5 so far.

So I would have to take care of 5 more snacks - or robbers. And I think after the leader had been by far the toughest bastard to fight, these weak and partly drunk guys should not cause any problems.

The cave in the hill itself seemed to be one big cavity, and a sturdy looking wooden house consisting of whole tree trunks and rough wooden boards stood inside on the right side. One of the bandits who must have been in charge of the last puny bunch had just stepped out of the building and had a satisfied-looking sneer on his face as he tightened his waistband.

I turned my head unnaturally almost 90 degrees to the right while sitting on one of the branches in my fir tree, looking for the best way to get to the camp and the order in which I should kill these idiots.

Having found a way in my head, I stood up, and the branch under me creaked softly, while I stretched with pleasure and enjoyed stretching and enhancing my already strengthened and grown body. I had grown to a respectable 50 centimeters in height after my last meal of muggers, and my previously creepy childlike scary figure had taken on much more human features as I walked less bent over and sat and stood more upright.

With a soft thud, I landed on the slightly musty and damp forest floor, and could not quite hold back my grin of anticipation as I ran my blood-red long tongue over my teeth and lips. Although I now had much stronger human emotions, but saw no problem in solving the PROBLEM of bandits lying before me, or to eat, which left my human emotions totally cold.

Should I get to the point where it bothered me, I could simply turn it down or if it would be too annoying, turn it off completely.

My eyes glowed blood red, and I dropped to all fours as I sprinted sideways toward the camp without making a single sound.

Where the bloody hell is the boss? He should have been back by now...

Don't tell me that the adventurers have found us?!

I shuddered at the thought of the torture that awaited me in the city if we were caught. Sure, the nobles in the surrounding countryside were at least as twisted and disgusting bastards as we were when it came to rape, desecration and all, but no one wanted to be on the other end and be the one who was treated like that!

With a dissatisfied grumble and my until now felt joy, I fiddled with my cord, which tied my pants around my waist, while my magnificent part in the pants was almost directly hard again, when I thought of the horny thing that the boss kept with him in the hut for our games.

How she had screamed again today! Quite the opposite of the broken things, when we had used them too often and too long, and we could only dispose of them.

I strolled half lost in horny thoughts and half trying to suppress my pessimistic thoughts through the inner palisade of our camp and clicked my tongue disapprovingly, when Karl was still slightly drunk with his head first on his stomach in front of the tent and had apparently fallen asleep again with only half pulled up pants.

"I swear, if the boss doesn't decapitate him, I'll do it soon..." I hissed in disgust at the sight. Sure, we all liked to drink a lot every night, while women were passed around after the boss had had the first run with them, but Karl was a whole different ball game when it came to unreliability and getting so drunk that you had to take care of him like a handicapped person the next morning.

Our newly appointed pig breeder, meanwhile, was taking care of the recently caught wild boars to my right, where we were lucky to have found a whole family of 9, which had only cost us the life of one unimportant person! Of course, the wild boar mother had fought for her young, but we had simply sent the poor bastard forward, and while he had bravely died for we could take care of the nasty beast and thus bag the 9 little wild boars.

The other two people remaining in the camp were just tiredly patrolling the left and right sides of the outer palisade.

I stretched in the cool morning air and breathed in the fresh misty haze of the forest as I rubbed my eyes and gleefully let out a long yawn.

"First, some breakfast..." I mumbled and strode over to Karl, who unfortunately also had the cooking area by the campfire. I contorted my face in disgust to a grimace of disgust as I even perceived an acrid and pungent smell that crept into my nose, when I immediately saw the vomit next to Karl.

"What the fuck has that fucker been feasting on? That looks like blood, bah! "

I settled down on the opposite tree trunk as far away from him as possible and took the ladle in my hand to stir the still warm broth over the fire.

One bowl and a few movements later, i was spooning my broth with unfamiliar pieces of meat and vegetables in it, and i just couldn't take my eyes off karl. Something was nagging at me and I just couldn't figure out why I kept looking at the sleeping idiot, even though he more than slightly disgusted me.

He had probably stepped out of the tent, thrown up while he was fiddling with his pants, only to fall right back asleep. It's not like this hasn't happened to him before, but what exactly is this creeping feeling that something is wrong with the situation this time?

I mean, he's just sleeping in his vomit? He's sleeping...?

I abruptly dropped my bowl on the floor as I stood up, not even noticing the last of the contents running warmly down my pant legs. "Karl?!" I shouted now in near panic as I hurriedly ran over to him and dropped to one knee. Carefully and with a bad premonition, I grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around.

A cry rang out in the camp and of all things it came loudly from my throat! Startled and horrified, I scrambled backwards and away from Karl, from the corpse! He was indeed lying in his puke, but instead of sleeping, someone or something had torn a bloody gaping hole in his throat and killed him.

"We're under attack!" I yelled out as I hoisted myself to my feet, still scrambling backwards slightly, and quickly looked around for the other bandits in the camp when I heard no sounds of agreement or other screams.

I turned around with a heavy stomach and saw the other two guards, who had just been patrolling, also lying lifeless and at unnatural angles on the ground, as if they had collapsed on the spot and a puppeteer had cut the strings of life.

In confusion and pure panic mixed with a good portion of fear, I turned around to the inner palisade and was about to run to bring myself to safety inside, when a wet breath touched the back of my neck. "Who is attacking?" Came in a smoky but still very human voice, had it not been for the aura and the smell of death and blood, which wafted with the breath over my neck and up to my nose.

When I turned around trembling, death sitting in the truest sense of the word in the neck, my eyes widened with unspeakable fear when I saw the creature from the depths of hell standing in front of me, which looked at me with a bloody wide grin and tilted his head questioningly.

A kind of wendigo creature not a meter tall stood in front of me, and before I could think about that again a warm foul-smelling liquid ran down the insides of my thighs, a hot pain exploded in my chest. I looked down at myself and saw how a black hand with long, slightly curved claws slid straight out of my chest at the level of my heart, and the last thing I saw just as my body toppled backwards was how the horrendous figure with a long, blood-red tongue licked the blood off his clawed hands.