6 months and 23 days later...

I stepped out of the thicket of the forest, straight toward my own home. A hedge of closely planted trees greeted me, where once there had been a rough wooden palisade of sharpened tree trunks, now replaced by a natural boundary. The trees, as if by magic, or because I had helped, were all almost the same size and measured ten meters in height, which was about the same size as the largest trees in the surrounding forest. This meant that the trees would not be noticed from afar, should someone climb a tree further away and look at them from above.

I went directly to the middle of the living tree palisade and climbed in short and powerful movements over the tree, instead of using the hidden entrance, through which I could otherwise carry bulky stuff into my home.

I lingered briefly on the treetop and took a deep breath, closed my eyes and simply enjoyed the smell of my work of the past months. Fresh dew, rich earth, diverse animals and so much more greeted my sensitive nose, all of it immediately associated and familiar to me.

A heartbeat later, I opened my eyes again and let my gaze wander over the small clearing in front of me. The animals hesitated briefly and fell silent, knowing that the hunter and master was at home. The inner palisade was also no more, and the former cave was now no longer visible to normal eyes. The courtyard was twice as large as before, and only the enclosures and the large stone-fenced campfire in the middle testified to my presence in this place.

I had built in the last months enclosures with small shelter huts, each with a water trough and food bowl, with a sleeping place for the breeding animals.

In addition to the wild boars, which had already had several new young and multiplied strongly, I had now captured something like chickens, rabbits, goats and even wonderfully singing magic birds. All but the latter were represented in the clearing and the yard had two large fenced enclosures on the left and right sides.

The wild boars and rabbits multiplied furiously, and were a good meal for me when some days I was too lazy to hunt and busy with other things. Especially because in a radius of several kilometers the game and the animal population of the forest had greatly decreased thanks to my presence, and I left the remaining wildlife in peace so that the ecosystem could recover. However, my hunts took me further and further out, which was not necessarily a bad thing when I looked at all my new skills and recalled them.

*Human gene mastered

*Wolf gene mastered

*Wild boar gene mastered

*Rabbit gene mastered

*Treant gene mastered

*Magic Hummingbird gene mastered

*Goats gene mastered

*Bat gene mastered

*Mole gene mastered

*Lava worms gene mastered

*fairies gene mastered

*Living wood gene mastered

And these were only the genes that I had mastered by consuming so much. I could now squeeze myself into different human forms within a few seconds, be it a small innocent girl with puppy eyes, or a strong and over two meters tall muscular man.

I could transform into a tree and strike with my branches at lightning speed, thanks to the treants I had eaten. Spit lava, or simply make my skin or veins glow.

See in the dark as if it were day, or send out ultrasound to probe miles around and have a permanent radar on my mental map.

And said radar, after I figured out how to look at all my genes, was displayed in the upper right of my field of view as a frayed mini-map, updated every second as my ultrasound updated the map of the environment.

I had found out that I possessed a kind of overview, which I could simply call up with my will, and which displayed everything to me in a foreign but nevertheless understandable language. Not directly in front of my eyes, but rather in my head.

Devourer - Progenitor of evolution

Age: 7 months

Mastered genes:

Living wood, fairy, lava worm, mole, bat, wolf, goat, treant, boar, rabbit, human, magical hummingbird

Acquired skills:

Shapeshifting(S), Transform(S), Sword Fighting(D), Dagger Fighting(E), Night Vision(S), Mana Sight(A), Poisons(S), Reading(B)

Resistances:

Physical(A), Magical(B), Fire(S), Lava(S), Water(C), Ice(D), Earth(B), Illusion(A), Blood(A), Poisons(S).

Simple, easy, and exactly what I wanted.

And the designation that adventurers also used, as far as I heard and knew from the few devoured unfortunate adventurers, was F for the weakest level, up to A as the highest, while S stood for "Sage" and represented the mastery. There are supposed to be two levels above that, but I couldn't find anything more than rumors.

At the same time, in a different place...

I had existed.

In the vaults of the black hand, in a small room. With an uncomfortable bed that until now had given me permanent back pain, a gray porridge every day and water to keep me alive.

The heavy iron-reinforced prison door with a small hatch at the top had locked me in, and there was rarely contact with other people. Whether it was someone who brought me the food, or often looked snidely and poured it down, or one of the servants who emptied my chamber pot, but sometimes spilled it slightly on purpose.

And one day the same hooded woman, I had recognized her by her gait and body shape, had brought me a picture book, which she had thrown on my bed without comment but with a malicious laugh, and then turned around again without a word and disappeared just as she had come.

The picture book became my most valuable treasure from that day on. As macabre as it was in my subconscious, it was somehow my possession, even if I knew that in truth I did not own it.

And even though the content was cruel, and depicted a sheep girl happily skipping across a green meadow, only to be hunted, tortured, dismembered, and other unspeakable things done to her, this picture book brought me variety and color in my gray existence that I had endured down there.

But all that stopped when a stern gray-haired man told me to eat a few days ago and threw me two pieces of gray clothing. It would start soon, he told me. The mayor's son was already looking forward to his initiation rite, he told me. And left again.

I had existed.

Until that day, I had somehow just existed.

And then this message came, and it had burst out of me that night. I had cried myself to sleep, all the things I had heard and witnessed about the mayor's boy playing out before my eyes. Why had he been taken into the black hand? Were his deeds welcome here?

I had cried and sobbed, and the picture book came to my mind. The things that the sheep girl had to go through after being hunted down and caught.

And now I was to be hunted, the man had told me at the end. By the most horrible and brutal person in the small town.

That night I ceased to exist.

A spark arose, a glimmer that told me that I had to escape. That I had to experience the worst if I did not escape. Unspeakable torments would follow, things that in the picture book or from the descriptions would not come close to what I would then have to experience with my own body.

And so I had cried myself to sleep.

A few days later, the glimmer had grown into a small flame, and when the gray-haired man picked me up, he had grinned smugly and contentedly.

And now I had been abandoned. I stood at the edge of a path, a trail through the forest, and was supposed to hide, to run, to try to escape.

They encouraged me to escape from the mayor's son!

And so I ran, not questioning the point of it all. With my 10 years, because I had had birthday sometime in the last month, I could not understand why they had fed me for months, and now just before even roughly packed and bathed. Although the bath had been more of a rough immersion in a cold water basin, and the person who washed me and scrubbed me rudely.

But now? Now I should try to run, hide, and not get caught! Was I that lucky? Had someone taken pity on me and helped me to escape?

I did not know.

But the flame inside me was burning, and my legs were burning even more, my muscles had not been used to the stress and strain for a long time, perhaps because they had never been.

So I ran into the forest, no direction taken, and just tried to get as far as possible.

Seconds passed, and soon became minutes.

I didn't know how much time had passed, but as I ran straight ahead, not even thinking that I was making too easy a target, I heard a noise behind me.

Heavy boot steps, as they had always worn by my father, slapped evenly on the forest floor, always in the same rhythm. I didn't dare take a look behind me, because the danger was too high that I would fall again over one of the countless tripping hazards of the forest and fall down. Branches, roots, stones, uneven ground. So much that had let me fall over and over again since I started running because I was careless and inexperienced inside the forest.

Suddenly the footsteps behind me had stopped, and I heard nothing again.

Had I imagined that? Am I hallucinating things?

I didn´t believe so, because they had told me several times, that it was a hunt. Even if I just had tasted freedom...

And I was to be hunted, even after I thought I could escape and someone helped me.

My aching and sore feet carried me on until I stumbled, fell to the forest floor, and scraped both knees again on a protruding root.

A short cry of surprise sprang from my lips, and I quickly sealed my mouth with my hand while I panicked and looked for my pursuers, or THE pursuer.

But no one came, and I exhaled my held breath slowly, relieved not to be caught yet. I felt over my two knees, and hissed suppressedly but still loudly, as the pain of the two open wounds pulled up my legs.

And as if it wasn't bad enough to be sweaty, scared and full of self-inflicted open wounds and bruises everywhere, something cold settled on the back of my hand.

Something cold and wet. I stared at my hand and, as if in a trance, lifted my backhand closer to my face to see what had dripped onto my hand.

And another cold, wet something landed on my reddish nose, and I squinted at it to finally realize that it was an isolated stray snowflake.

"Oh no..." I whispered helplessly, oblivious to the seasons down in the basement of the Assassins' Guild and in the dark as the months passed. It was snow season, and the months of ice, as they called them here. The sun season and its months were over, and in the ice season the ground froze and snowstorms came and went.

And now, of all times, during my escape, even the weather had to throw a spanner in the works. I felt like crying, but I couldn't sit here moping for another second; I had to keep going.

So I stood up with difficulty and with aching limbs and bones, slightly shaky, and ran on, in a slightly different direction than before. My feet were like lead, and did not want to be lifted properly, which ended more in a running slurp and constantly increased the danger of falling again.

In one of those waking moments when I was thinking about not falling, something stabbed my left calf, and a surprised squeal escaped my lips unintentionally.

I didn't have time to get distracted and couldn't look to see what had hit me, but suddenly had a rush of sweat. Whether this was caused by the wound on my calf or by the sudden reappearance of the boots that followed me again and trampled clearly closer and louder somewhere behind me on the forest floor, I did not know.

Sweat beaded my head, my back and everywhere else on my body and flowed down after a few seconds sticking under the gray clothes on my body.

A hiss in the air, a buzz, and a thud in my neck, and a pain exploded in my nerves. I stumbled, and just managed to catch myself on a birch tree next to me before I fell.

In the meantime, the snow had grown so much that more and more flakes were hitting my face, and even the wind was increasing, blow by blow, in a biting cold.

Suddenly I felt something that didn't belong there.

A warm and humid wind blew at rhythmic intervals down my neck, and goose bumps shot down my spine. My shoulders tensed, and I swallowed hard when I knew that this must be the breath of a person behind me.

I stumbled forward, and my right foot caught at that very moment in the root of the birch tree that had just supported me, and I fell painfully in a sideways twist onto the cold and lightly snow-covered ground.

My gaze recognized two pairs of black boots, which went on in elegant black pants.

Was it now...?

Inevitably, as if I had no will of my own, my head and gaze wandered upward along the body of my pursuer, for what else should this person be. And I saw my worst nightmares come true.

A sweetly smiling boy, only a few years older than myself, grinned kindly at me. But behind the eyes it flashed maliciously and dangerously, and I knew the face all too well from afar.

"Gotcha!" He declared, still smiling the same as before, as if his face was frozen in that grimace of a smile. How he managed to do that despite moving his mouth to talk was beyond me.

I just looked at him with widened and panic-stricken eyes, like a frightened deer when it had been surprised by the light of a torch.

"Don't be afraid, my sweet!" Came the sugary sweet and clearly lied words from the mouth of the monster in front of me, but my body clearly no longer wanted to obey me properly. "I have given you two... substances injected. One is a light variant of a paralyzing poison, which makes you react more slowly and strengthens your senses. And the other?"

He reached out his black-gloved hand and gently grasped me under the chin like a fragile doll. "The other is a magical concentrate that allows me to give the orders!"

And suddenly his other palm flew out of nowhere and smacked me full broadside in the face. Exactly on the place of my jaw, where the woman at that time had broken my bone and this had never healed properly until now.

I cried out in pain when the bone fracture broke open further than the first time, but could not move and could only open my mouth to scream!

The hand on my chin immediately grabbed and clawed painfully into my rough, cold skin. With a jerky movement he pulled my head towards him, and the other hand I suddenly felt painful in my hair. He grabbed my long brown hair and yanked it back so that my head tilted painfully upward, looking him directly in the face.

I cried in pain and sobbed, but could not do anything else, because something inside me had snatched control of my body.

" Atta bitch!" Followed his statement, and a contradictory feeling spread inside me, as if my disgust and animalistic fear were fighting inside me with an ecstasy that wanted to overwhelm me with feelings of happiness.

Tears ran down my face, and my facial expression kept changing from fear, panic and pain to a kind of lust for more. My body didn't know what was happening or what to do.

"Hrhrhr... How I love that confused, panicked, lustful look!" And with another tug on my hair, and a firm grip on my chin, something warm pressed down on my lips, pushing its way between them. Something warm, wet explored uninvited the inside of my mouth, and I knew immediately what was happening. Fearful and yet somehow paradoxically excited by it, I could only stare into the eyes of my tormentor, who stared back at me and savored my reactions.

"Ahhhh, this poison is just AWESOME!" Hissed the young man when he had released his mouth from mine with a smacking plop.

His hand wandered unbidden into my cleavage and grabbed me roughly by my still growing breasts, pinching roughly and hard into my nipples which had become hard due to the snow and...

Tore with a jerk my top in two. I swallowed again, heat and shame shot into my face, and my cheeks glowed. I could not move my head and my body and hide my exposed, and he looked at me like a hungry wolf.

His other hand came out of my hair and grabbed my back, and came out with a very familiar whip. This variation had even been used by my father sometimes with me, when I had no more work to do outside for a few days, and consisted of several leather straps that were knotted in front. With enough momentum they left red welts and with frequent use also cracks in the skin.

He stood upright again, and without me being able to do anything, my body disobeyed me again, and also stood upright like a puppet with puppeteer, my arms left and right trembling and weakly stretched by me.

"That's it. I'll show you what it means to obey me!" And before I knew what was happening to me, he tore down my pants with his other hand and exposed me down below as well. My shirt hung in tatters and covered nothing around the front, and now my pants were also hanging on the floor.

I had often had to endure something like this with my siblings and parents, and sometimes they had also played "piggy pig" with me, in which I had had to follow them on a leash around the throat... Naked.

I had not felt shame in this sense for a long time, but no one had ever stared at me as lustfully as the mayor's son was doing now.

A visible bulge built up between his thighs under the black fabric, and he noticed my fear-filled look down, whereupon he grabbed his crotch obscenely with his free hand. "Already horny for it, or what?" He asked me in a hoarse voice. "But you'll have to wait a little longer for this reward, sweetie!"

A whip cracked through the icy forest, and the leather straps slapped my skin against some resistance, and I let out a loud scream, which ended in a whimper. I knew it was over. I just wanted to die...

My flame, which I had previously believed would help me, had betrayed me. Made me believe in false hopes. Convinced me that I could escape.

And now I found myself in the clutches of this perverted monster, who felt like inflicting pain on me and wanted to do many other things to me.

More screams echoed through the approaching evening, only slightly suppressed by the snowdrifts that blew around us, and occasionally interrupted by the resounding lashes.

My skin was burning and hot. I felt... good. And yet terrible, aching, cold. The poison inside me was still fighting me for dominance, and the desire for more pain and torment was struggling with said pain, cold, shame and fear.

Suddenly, my mind had already shut down, something touched me between my legs. Roughly, imperiously, and with pressure. Something pushed... into me! My eyes widened again and my lips trembled, greeted by the lustful boy in front of me, who had rosy cheeks and was licking his lips. His other hand was in my crotch!

"You will scream to feel more pain WHILE we do it together!" He told me with anticipation hiding behind his voice as his body came closer. His filthy mouth pressed right onto my ear, creating a hot yet tickling sensation on my neck, "And you will beg...-"

'No...!' my voice was trapped, not being able to leave the chest where it had been placed in. I couldn't believe something like this was happening to me, it all seemed like a nightmare but I knew better. His hands touching my arms made my skin crawl in shame, his obnoxious laughter that echoed through the dark woods and the life flowing out of me as the thin strand of hope I once had, was nothing more than a faraway dream. All of this was too real to be something so easy and futile like a bad dream.

'Why...' I couldn't understand why something so horrifying had happened to me.

Was it my fault? Was it his fault? Was it God's fault?

Tears ran down my warm cheeks before falling into the dry dirt, humidifying it alongside the coldness of the night. It was then that, suddenly, the darkness and the large oak trees surrounding me started rotating, over and over again. I could feel my consciousness beginning to fade and I prayed that it would happen right now. I didn't want to feel anymore of this torture. I just wanted it to stop.

Unexpectedly, I feel something leaving my numb body and, a couple of seconds after that, a thick, warm and smelly liquid fell on top of my body, adorning it as if it was the winter snow. 'Is it... over?' a new strand of hope was created, making me wish for a moment of rest, for a moment to heal, for a moment to breathe.

And suddenly the world exploded around me.

My body, which had just been standing frozen in place, shivering in the cold of the snow, slumped to the forest floor as a warm, thick, smelly liquid ran down the entire front of my body.

It was immediately warm because the liquid was steaming in the cold! My eyes had reflexively closed, and I opened them again, staring at the forest floor at my bare feet. The color red filled my field of vision, and my hands, which I just looked at in bewilderment, were as red as everything else I saw.

Slowly, carefully, I lifted my head and froze again.

This time not by a strange might, but out of bewilderment, when I found the remains of my tormentor lying slightly above me diagonally against the tree. His corpse, for what else could one call the remaining piece of flesh, was slipping down the tree trunk in a red streak.

A branch cracked to my right, and my head, still not understanding what had just happened, or who had saved me in my distress, slowly swung over to the source of the sound.

A pair of green eyes, human in all but color, stared back at me.

The snowstorm had increased further, and all I recognized was the two meter tall black form of a creature, a kind of skull mask, red glowing runes engraved on the bone, and beautifully branching antlers protruding from the back.

The mouth was slightly open, revealing razor-sharp and jagged rows of teeth, while a greenish thick mist flowed out of the mouth and rasped on its way down to the ground. The snow and wind had seemingly no control over this particular mist.

I... smiled.

The creature snorted. The eyes briefly flickered a more intense green.

I was glad. I was grateful. Whatever this creature was, it had saved me from worse. And I gratefully gave myself up as a meal, for it had saved me from hours of agony.

A shaky and grateful smile was the last thing I could manage, and then collapsed on the forest floor, exhausted, with heavy cold limbs and a grin on my face.