Removing the odd mana symbol in its skull made a lot of realizations occur.

And as it stared at the bowl-shaped cup of bone innocently sitting in front of its snout, the upper half of its skull just about done regenerating, it wondered if it was even worth it.

The first effect of removing it was immediate.

It felt dumber.

Not in the sense of when it made a very questionable decision, and wondered what its own thought process was when making said decision, but more in the sense that its thoughts felt sluggish. Complexity mentally exhausted the wolf faster than before, and everything about using [Devourer] became a little slower, a little more… foggy.

It wasn’t a large effect, thankfully. It didn’t feel like it had lost… five points in Intelligence, for example.

More like three or so. Which were… a lot, but it was a manageable loss.

Still, it was unpleasant.

The second realization it had came when it stared at a piece of glowing tube for more than ten minutes, focusing, and not a single word formed out of the aether to tell it what it was and roughly what it did.

Which answered the question of what it was exactly that kept feeding knowledge of various things to do with the world around it.

It also formed another thousand questions it doubted it would ever get answers for, so it didn’t bother sticking to them too much.

Its eyes slid to the right, down, staring at a window that flashed a dozen colors a second with inner light.

This building was weird.

So much flashing light, so much noise. And the way the humans inside were acting was utterly ridiculous. Just a giant mass of… wriggling and jumping.

Was it some kind of mating dance?

Humans were strange.

Whatever this building was, it was a convenient spot to rest and do some minor surgery on itself as it slowly descended down into the human nest.

Some parts of the nest had the unfortunate structure of not being able to be supported by those colossal metal and stone plates that usually held them up, and the end result was something like this. Something accessible, but isolated and most importantly, cornered against the walls of the nest.

It wasn’t like any lucky humans could surround it when the building it was resting on was hanging over the edge of a gaping chasm. The cliff that led down the abyss was just sloped enough for the wolf to feel like it could just scrape its way down should anything unfortunate happen, and a cursory feel with its antennae confirmed that there was only one pipe going through the stone below, and it was clogged.

It stretched with a groan of satisfaction, and lamented how big it had gotten.

The metal crawl space between two welded together buildings wasn’t designed for comfort, it knew that, but it was so very unused to having trouble shoving itself into every little crack it could see.

It had lost that sense of security that came from knowing it could hide behind every small box and fit into every little gap, in exchange for raw power.

It glanced down at its forearm, thick enough to be compared to a human’s knee, wiggling the spikes a little bit for its own amusement.

Worth it.

It yawned, and clicked its jaws shut.

After it had finished sliding down that metal cable and wiggling its body through a bunch of whirring mechanisms, the first thing it had done was simple.

Observe.

Observe everything.

And it learned a lot of things.

Firstly, [Echoes of Oblivion] was far more useful in making itself soundless than sightless. Turns out, being a black hole in space was a lot darker and easier to pick out than just another shadow clinging to the unlit underside of a walkway.

The Skill’s stealth capabilities had mostly been relegated to hiding the glow of its eyes and coating its hands and legs and claws whenever it scraped about or scaled a building. Considering its newfound ability to use [Echoes of Oblivion] to make itself a giant sphere of fog and obscure its movements, the Skill was more combat-useful now.

Thankfully, sneaking came to the wolf naturally.

That didn’t mean it was easy. There was so much light up here.

It was used to flickering lightbulbs, dark alleys and broken networks of wires rendering entire stretches of the nest into complete darkness, vast expanses of foggy windows trapping the lights of the residents inside their little nests, smog and fog everywhere.

Up here, the air was… not clean, it still stank of chemicals a little bit, but it was far cleaner than below. There was no smog, no choking humidity making giant banks of fog it could stalk through. No humans came to tear down and pocket the light crystals either, so there were a lot of them.

And even when the humans were supposed to be sleeping, towards the end of the light cycle they followed, there were people patrolling.

It wasn’t sure what they were patrolling for, but it could take a guess that they were looking for it.

The most useful bit of information it gathered was that humans had the odd tendency to never look up. Stalking prey became trivially easy when it noticed this.

The second most useful thing it learned was that humans liked to walk into strange communal nests then poison themselves until they were stumbling wrecks that could barely tell up from down, much like the building it was currently wedged into.

All it had to do was wait for the inevitable suicidal two-legger that would stumble outside and try to go home to his personal nest.

It was quite boring.

Its eyes flicked to the bony cap still sitting innocently on the dusty metal to its left. It was strange to think this was the top half of its skull just a few hours ago.

There was no mana in it anymore, nor anything useful.

Its human arm extended out of its side to grab it, and it blunted its remaining [Devourer] enhanced teeth as it popped it into its mouth and began chewing on the bone.

It wasn’t sure why, but it was so very satisfying to just be gnawing at something and meeting actual resistance.

It took another two hours, but finally, it found a good target, a lone self-poisoning human who had no companions with him nor stuck to the main, big, well-lit paths.

Just when it was starting to feel that gnawing hunger again.

It could always dip into the underground tunnels for some rat snacks, but after that recent experience, it was very hesitant to do so.

It just made it feel uneasy, second guessing every thought and action, whether they were its own or if the tunnels were doing it, or whether it was just being overly paranoid.

It was annoying. So it wouldn’t go there if it could help it.

The human continued moving, and the wolf prowled above him, claws embedding lightly into a pipe that rimmed some building half-built out of glass.

Antennae and ears both twitched and spun, little balls of darkness obscuring all seven of its searching eyes, and impatience warred with caution as the human turned and stumbled down a long flight of stairs, clutching to the railing.

Thirty two humans to the right building flanking the stairs, moving boxes.

Three on the left one.

Twenty three above, walking on a metal bridge that connected two large gathering spots for humans, packing up their belongings and stalls.

It could pounce now, but…

It wasn’t some preset condition or path that it was waiting for. Planning felt meaningless when its instincts had yet to fail it, not once.

Every time it thought about jumping down and just snapping his neck, there was a hint of reluctance in the background of its mind, that background pressure that told it it was about to make a bad decision. So it waited.

The pipe went into the building, so it briefly jumped up to claw at the wall, then leapt up and grabbed one of the metal fixtures that held up the light crystals, its tails hooking into two others like them.

Another heave, and it was on the building’s sloping roof, the thin lip around the smooth metal greatly assisting it in not slipping off as it slithered to the top.

It moved forward, waiting just a little more.

Then it paused, its head and attention swerving to the right.

Two people were running.

And as far as it could tell, the first was running away from the second.

It briefly wavered, looking down at the stumbling man.

Just from impact alone, it could tell the one pursuing was almost twice as large as its chosen quarry.

That, and it was curious.

It turned towards a stout bridge connecting two buildings, just fifteen feet away and after briefly coiling and tensing its legs, it leapt. Two hands burrowed into the metal and two thinner ones grasped the lip as its lower body swung forward, and with a light snarl of effort, it swung itself up, grabbing the top of the metal bars and kicking to scramble onto the bridge.

It tried to map a route to intercept them, head tilting.

It was hard. Even harder now without the intelligence increase that weird mana symbol had given it.

Humans would one day pay for the ridiculously overcomplicated mess that was their nest, it vowed, as it grumbled and began to jog down the bridge that cut through swathes of buildings like a battering ram.

He breathed in harsh pants, feeling his legs nearly buckle with each step, but forcing himself to keep going, to keep running.

Stupid, stupid stupid stupid!

Bossman had told him a thousand times to just poison their supplies and sneak away.

But he was hungry, like every other kid he knew, so he tried to leave a little bit unspoiled and carry it away under The Guard’s noses.

He glanced behind him, seeing the giant guard still chasing him, looking much less tired than he was hoping for, and quickly turned back around, starting to feel a mind-hazing sense of desperation.

A sense of shame welled up as he wondered how stupid it would be that he might die because he dropped a damn food cube. Oh that kid died ‘cause he dropped a food cube? We’ll mourn but we’re still gonna snicker at him inside our heads!

It was humiliating. He wanted to die fighting a dragon or something! Or not at all, preferably! He was barely twelve!

Drats, rats, rats rats rats and rackbats! Where the hell was he?!

He glanced to the left.

The head of a factory peeked out over a giant, downward sloping mess of thankfully well-lit metal stairs, running in a zig-zag downwards, tunnel entrances and pathways spewing out onto the path.

Could he try to change course? He had no idea what was in the countless holes in the wall and tiny alleys he ran past. What if it was a dead end!?

He glanced to the right.

A steep cliff-like expanse of metal, leading down to some kind of… open sump.

Too far, this stupid path was way too long-

A strange whistle-crunch preceded the sound of a large, shuffling thud, and when the steady tempo of the guard’s booming steps and heavy breaths stopped with it, he chanced a glance behind him, to see what stopped the man, if his chances of living had increased.

Then he allowed himself to slow down, blinking in confusion as his dead sprint slowed to a jog, then stopped entirely, turning around, breathing in harsh pants.

The zig-zagging path stretching down to the sump didn’t leave much room for curves. He was on a giant stretch of cobbles, a straight line he could see from beginning to end.

And the Guard had collapsed on the ground just up said stretch of cobbles, completely unmoving.

He caught his breath for a moment, wondering if this was some strange feint and if he should just keep running.

Then the light caught and reflected off the steady stream of blood slowly coating the guard’s head from a wound he was too far to see, and his eyes widened.

Paranoia settled in.

He whipped his head up to the pipe-covered sky, to the left and right, before turning around, eyes wide and searching as his burning lungs protested.

Nothing.

What the fuck?

He turned back to the Guard, and felt his heart stop as his eyes rested on an empty path, nothing but a dragging smear of blood left behind to signify the man ever existed, leading into one of the countless pitch black alleys weaving between the staircases.

He hadn’t even heard a whisper, not even the drag of clothes.

He felt himself quiver before an involuntary whimper left him, and he stumbled back, turning around and sprinting harder than before, eyes wide in terror, every shadow another gateway for the unknown entity that did that to jump out from.

He didn’t know if Bossman would even believe him when he told him how he got away, but that was a far distant worry as he wheezed and ran and ran and ran, too terrified to stop or even look behind him.

After two days of prowling about cables and slithering on the underside of bridges and walkways to dodge the lights and eyes that tried to follow it, getting a taste of proper meat was like…

Okay, it didn’t have a comparison it could think of, but it was good. It felt great.

No mangy, sticky fur, no stupid crunchy bones with every bite, just red, squishy, meat. And thin, rubbery skin. Human skin was so smooth and light on fur. It was great.

Humans were the best food ever.

Maybe it should have waited a little more before snatching the corpse off the street, but the human pup didn’t see it.

Part of the reason it did that instead of just grabbing the pup too was simply the thrill. Another part was how damn skinny the pup was. It could eat four or five rats and get the same amount of essence, it just wasn’t worth the hassle.

Besides, seeing its bewilderment and fear was incredibly amusing.

It squinted as it dug its snout out of the human’s chest, staring into the distance.

It could still see him, just barely. Stumbling and looking around as if expecting the wolf to jump at it from every shadow.

Its tail wagged in amusement as it snorted, and dug back into the ribs.

One of its least favorite parts of a human.

On one side, the meat between the ribs was always nice and tender, and crunching and biting the bones was fun and felt nice in a… primal, instinctive kind of way.

On the other side, it was one of the most annoying parts of a human to eat. No endless meat or organs, just a bunch of awkward bites with four chunks of bone in it each.

The body began to slide off the pipe, and both its tails whipped down to nudge it back up, its human arms grabbing onto whatever they could reach to keep it steady.

Maybe it should have brought him to a flatter surface to eat, but it was just so hungry it didn’t even consider it.

It’s instincts weren’t screaming at it, so it was probably fine.

It was gnawing on his upper spine when it felt it.

The suddenness of a sensation that was familiar just a little bit of time ago made its whole body jump in surprise, partly because it was used to hearing, smelling, or feeling every surprise possible, at least during the past week and a bit.

Its head jerked up and to the side to try and stare incredulously through the floor twenty feet below, its hands all almost clasped together from the involuntary jump. For a moment, it was shocked into stiff silence, and by the time it realized that it wasn’t its sight that was tilting but its entire body, it had already begun slipping off the pipe, its legs already off.

It yelped, before trying to claw at the pipe, and only managed to bring the half-eaten corpse down with it as it dropped down.

Falling twenty feet flat on its back would have probably at least fractured a rib before.

Now, it felt like someone slapped its back a little harder than they should.

It snarled, and threw the corpse off its body, scrambling to its feet and then just… staring at the floor, trying to stare through it in vain, seven eyes all wide and searching, as if any one of them could stare through solid iron somehow.

It closed its peripheral eyes, using only the front ones, and fractionally relaxed, blinking rapidly as it digested this… incredibly sudden revelation.

Its human was alive.

Its human was alive and fighting something.

Its weak, skinny, crippled nuisance of a human was fighting something.

And it couldn’t tell what way she was positioned, if she was on top or bottom, if her moments indicated an offense or a beatdown, but it could guess from its memory that unless she was fighting a rodent or something, she was losing.

For a moment, it felt its fur turn to furious spikes, a shiver of fury raising them in a bristle that likely made it look half again as big as it truly was, its teeth curling into a soundless snarl.

It had already lost its pack once, and it did not want to do again, especially in a more permanent matter. Having its human by its side remained as the sole, genuinely pleasant bundle of memories it had of its life.

But no matter how much it wanted to sprint to the nearest ledge and jump off to reach her, it knew it couldn’t possibly get to her in time.

It had no real way to measure, but she was just…

So incredibly far away.

How the hell did the humans bring it up here so fast?

Then it remembered.

A strange metal cage, attached to a gigantic, mind-bendingly large tower, crawling up its spine on giant cables.

It didn’t have eyes to the outside world then, stuck in a little cage with a blanket on it, but it remembered feeling the scrape of metal going up and up and up near endlessly.

Its tails idly swished as it thought, slowly stalking forward, its meal forgotten.

If it could reach that giant tower…

No, if it could just use the humans’ stupid platforms…

With a new goal and a clear destination in mind, it decided to wait until the sensation of presence faded.

The fight continued, and it stood there, anxious and angry, feeling something but knowing it was impossible to help.

Almost thirty seconds later, the feeling faded.

It didn’t snap away, so it assumed that she won.

A squeaking rodent, attracted by the scent of fresh blood, wiggled out of a rusty pipe, and the wolf ignored its screeching as it approached, simply using the bone-blade in its back to impale it through the back, before curling the tentacle to bring the weakening rodent in front of its snout.

She felt that, right? Did something as weak as a rat even register to [Pack Hunter] as a fight?

It had to get to her. It wasn’t sure of the logistics of dragging her with it or how it was going to keep growing and running from its pursuers with her, but it didn’t much care about such details either at the moment.

It calculated the distance to the sump a couple hundred feet below. With a flick, it tossed the rat away and crouched low, and rushed forwards, leaping over the railing, using it as a springboard to go even further.

The sludgy, dirty waters were a perfect cushion for such a drop, thick and gooey and always frothing just enough to be soft on the impact as it crashed shoulder first into the concrete wastebox’s insides.

The chemicals didn’t even hurt anymore, a mixture of its own toughness and its mana cells working with its immune system to quickly identify harmful intruders and eviscerate them.

It still tasted horrible though. It had to find some water to get that taste out of its mouth later.

As it clawed its way up the stone walls and out onto a small field of gravel and pipeworks, it broke into another sprint and wondered how exactly it was going to go about using the human lifts.

It loved its slime tentacles so much.

This was so much more fun when it was hanging under the moving lift rather than sitting on top of it.

And it didn’t even have to put in any effort, beyond sneaking under the station electrical wiring to grab onto a lift as it detached.

Getting to just limply hang from the underside and watch the pretty lights below was just so worth it.

It was magical.

And very time efficient.

It crossed about a day’s worth of distance in about thirty minutes. It hadn’t realized quite how slowly it was making progress when it constantly had to be paranoid and check every human’s stride and posture, try to see where their gazes were directed so it could leap across a rooftop without someone seeing and notifying the people hunting it.

Because they were still hunting it.

Half-heartedly, like some pathetic predator that had lost its… ‘prey’, and just couldn’t give up without trying for a little more.

But it could still feel them.

It was mostly all the darts and vials they carried that betrayed them.

A lone human covered in pointy sticks, or arrows as the symbol in its head had called them, was a little suspicious. But a human covered in pointy sticks and twenty clinking needles presumably full of annoying poison? While another very similarly weighed one was always somewhere nearby?

That was just insultingly obvious.

It also made picking them off one by one all the more satisfying.

It let its head hang backwards, tails lazily wagging as they hung down, and opened all of its eyes.

It really liked the pretty lights.

Maybe it should start stealing those light crystals the humans used. Not only would more darkness be good for it down there, it could probably just… dig a hole somewhere and stash them in there.

Then it could nap on a giant pile of light crystals.

That sounded like a very nice goal to have.

It would unfortunately have to wait for the more pressing goal, which was to make sure its weird, fragile stick of a human didn’t die again.

Well, not again, but… yeah.

The eye on the back of its neck turned leftwards, staring at the approaching station.

With a sigh, it gathered all of its limbs, and pressed close to the underside of the lift, trying to remember how the box fit into the platform and what parts had gaps so it wouldn’t get crushed on docking.

The individual lifts were a lot more frequent, and significantly faster. So it decided to hitch a ride on one of them.

Additionally, they combined its two favorite things.

An isolated prey without escape.

And an equally desolate destination.

The boxes were pretty secure, at least without the wolf clinging to them. If the human noticed the added swaying, he didn’t much show it.

When it reached down to swipe its claws through the lock mechanism, and a shadow covered the little window that was the only gateway of the man to see the outside world, his reaction was much more fun to feel.

Unfortunately, or maybe thankfully, nothing terribly exciting happened from there. The human tried to grab the door handle and keep it shut, the wolf yanked it open the moment his hand was on the knob, and as it yanked the door open, the human came with it, screaming.

A tail whipped around his neck before he could fall down into the abyss of lights and wires, and snapped it with a jerky twist.

Then it just slid into the metal box, dragging its food in with it.

Eating with an open, unobstructed view, made it feel surprisingly…

Content.

They knew they were both alive. Or so it could guess.

Still, it made sure to try and pick off one of its pursuers every once in a while, just to let its human know where it was.

Its spikes proved immensely effective when aimed at the head. Only metal partially stopped it, and even then, the one human who had a head covering of metal got knocked out by the force of the thorn slamming into the side of his head and an inch or two into it.

So its fights were all very, very short.

Maybe if they were harder it would have leveled up more than just a single level in its Path, but it couldn’t complain much about that when it was leveling up so fast in all other aspects.

It briefly flicked the symbols open.

-Species: Wolf

-Race: None

-Name: None

-Path: [Hound of The Keeper] Level 30

Base Attributes:

Strength ( +1 )

Speed ( +6 )

Dexterity ( +0 )

Endurance ( +10 )

Perception ( +5 )

Resolve ( +1 )

Intelligence ( +6 )

Soul ( +1 )

Available: 0

-Racial Skills: [Pack Hunter], [Quick Learner], [Devourer]

-Acquired Skills:

[Pain Resistance - Level 28]

[Infection Resistance - Level 9]

[Poison Resistance - Level 29]

[Corrosion Resistance - Level 8]

[Disease Resistance - Level 4]

[Magic Resistance - Level 6]

[Mental Resistance - Level 32]

[Electricity Resistance - Level 4]

[Restful Awareness - Level 34]

[Tough Skin - Level 18]

[Iron Stomach - Level 7]

[Mana Perception - Level 15]

[Mana Manipulation - Level 17]

[Soul Perception - Level 4]

[Echoes of Oblivion - Level 22]

[Bloodrush - Level 18]

[Logotexnia - Level 17]

[Sonic Blast - Level 8]

[Tremor Sense - Level 7]

[Maddened Frenzy - Level 6]

[Mana Conversion - Level 20]

[Danger Sense - Level 5]

-Acquired Titles:

Witness of Divinity: You have seen a being of divine nature in their own realm. Your illuminated gaze shatters all illusions, and pierces through any and all falsehoods.

Glutton Beyond Compare: You have eaten multiple times your body weight over a single uninterrupted period of consumption. You gain +1 to Strength and Speed while your stomach is adequately filled.

-Acquired Traits:

Survivor (3 / 5): You have felt the chill of death many times, and survived. You have fought against impossible odds and won. You are significantly tougher than your frame might suggest.

Hunter (1 / 2): You hunt living creatures, whether it is for survival, sport or personal gain of one manner or another. You are slightly harder to notice when intending to hunt.

All that progress, and it hadn’t even been trying too hard. [Restful Awareness] was an incredible Skill.

Its human didn’t return the favor of getting into frequent, if short fights, unfortunately, so it was all it could do to just keep heading down, very roughly in the direction it felt her.

Its sense of orientation was impeccable, thankfully. It wouldn’t have survived long in the human nest without it. It had only lived as long as it had because it remembered spots and could just let instinct guide it to them again and again. It still remembered a leaking pipe that dripped water into a nice convenient puddle on the floor, the place it drank most of its water from before the symbols came.

And it still remembered some nest full of meat that had a nice human owner that would sometimes toss it some small snacks of intestine and the like.

It thought of briefly visiting him, but wasn’t sure for what purpose.

It wasn’t like it could eat him. It felt weird and wrong to do that after he was one of the few that had helped it survive as a pup. Trying to thank him felt equally strange.

The point was, it was good at orientation.

So even if every lift added another tangled string to the yarn ball that was its path, it still felt pretty confident that it was going the right way.

And when it finally found that… utterly absurd tower that sat in the middle of almost every single miles-long plate in the human nest, it found its descent going from fast to rapid.

Climbing under a bridge and waiting for it to extend towards the colossal monstrosity of rumbling metal took a bit of effort, as did quickly scrambling across the underside and into the gigantic mess of interwoven, criss-crossing latticework of metal beams as thick as thirty humans sitting side by side.

Its claws were sore by the time it felt secure to take a breather.

Getting to the center so it could find a straight metal beam without much chance of interruption was genuinely difficult. Even with its vibration senses, it constantly had to dodge out of the way of a shifting compartment of steel, or an outlining spine of rattling, blocky chains that were dragging some cage of humans up the outer rim, having to constantly be wary of something about to smush it to paste.

It was a shifting labyrinth of metal and gears and hissing pipes and iridescent steel and very strangely glowing liquids being sprayed into the moving mechanisms to vaporize the grease and oil build-up.

It avoided contact with those nozzles.

But when it got to the center and found a straight beam that wasn’t ridiculously thick, all it had to do was wrap two tails around it, dig its nails in, and just begin to slide down.

Beside a few hiccups where seams and unexpected bolts and shudders almost made its claws slip out and forced it to tighten its tails and stop for a minute or two, it continued sliding down like a plummeting speck of shadow, catching faint glimpses of light and activity through the tiny gaps between the endless machinery spinning all around it.

As it stopped to try and find some still place to rest, it idly wondered…

If humans could build things like this, wouldn’t… everything be a human nest of some sorts?

If it went up an unfathomable distance for example, how clean and orderly would the human nest get? How many humans were there in this nest? Was there a limit?

Or was the entire world their nest?

The idea of angering the entire world felt like a very bad one.

But at the same time, running…

Running was starting to grate its nerves.

Cradled in a hammock of wires as thick as its own legs each, between two rumbling blocks of gearwork, it went to sleep.

When it finally started getting somewhat close to where it had felt her, bar a couple thousand feet, it had to pause and go out for a quick snack, noticing its reserves going low again.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t find any of its usual playmates. The humans hunting it must have lost whatever trail clued them into its location when it went into the large tower. So it moved to grab someone random off the streets.

And it ran into a curious sight.

The humans were fighting.

Not its own human, unfortunately- or, fortunately, actually, she was pretty weak.

Just… some giant crowd of humans.

One group was dug into some large factory complex, with trenches of gravel and makeshift barriers everywhere, peeking through the windows and walkways above to toss fire-bottles and little rocks that exploded down at their assailants.

Glowing stone… insect-like things were moving with them, like the stone humanoids down by the burning rivers, except these had drills on their front, and constantly moved back and forth in bizarre, start-stop manners, scaring away the red ones and then skulking back into the factory’s makeshift defenses.

The second group was trying to get into the building complex and was vastly outnumbered. But they also knew how to fight, and were far more organized, so they were somehow not quite being repelled yet. They threw mana stuff at the defenders, fire and glowing spears from a particularly large human that sat at the back of the attackers, while a large detachment of the attacking group was locked in melee on the ground floor and around the wire fences.

It was interesting to see how humans fought. Not individually, but as a… a pack?

On the right corner, it could see another group carrying ladders, likely trying to sneak in through the upper windows.

It was such a strange thing to see. It knew humans fought, of course. Pack members did that all the time too, at least from what it had observed.

But never like this, never on such a large scale. Pack fights were scuffles, a lot of snarling, posturing, intimidation and domination, establishing a pecking order of sorts, the bigger dog asserting that it would be the one to get most of the meat.

So combined with previous things it noticed about them, it had to wonder if humans even worked in such a group. It had thought humans were like a… massive, cohesive, loosely-connected pack. All of them, the nest itself.

That notion had been challenged when it realized that humans weren’t exactly united in the task of hunting it, only a tiny group seeming to work towards that goal.

Now, such a notion was shattered.

Were humans split into many different packs? It certainly looked like that. Even their coverings- their ‘shirts’ and ‘pants’, they had a kind of color pattern and similarity to distinguish group one to group two.

That was…

Convenient, actually.

It probably meant humans wouldn’t get too upset when a couple of their kin vanished in the alleyways. It had been worrying that it was slowly drawing the ire of the nest in general with its actions.

Now it knew it wasn’t. Or was… reasonably certain.

Humans were weird, there was always the possibility they considered this some kind of ritual. Or maybe they were just play fighting but very roughly-

A man in red took one of the flaming bottles to his head, and his screams carried up to the wolf’s perch.

Maybe not.

It had been idly glancing at another set of human packs fighting below as it jogged across a rooftop, trying to puzzle how to get closer to where it had previously felt its human.

And as if mere thought summoned her, it felt her, and its jog froze, almost stumbling over its feet from surprise.

She was so close.

She zipped around, fast enough to make it mentally blink in confusion, her attention jumping in a circle as she moved back and forth, but not away-

She was surrounded.

Its fur slowly began to bristle.

She turned, slowed, thrashed, fighting someone. Something impacted whoever she was grappling with, and then she began running out of the encirclement.

He wasn’t sure how she healed so fast, or how she ran so damn fast, but it didn’t matter. Someone was hunting her. More than one two-legger. Too far to feel them, but not for long.

Maybe complacency from the long stretch of silence had led it to unconsciously slow down again, to try and not attract attention. Now, it immediately gave up on any notion of stealth.

Its mind strained to not slip as it punched the metal with a deafening boom, denting it inwards, focusing on the vibrations, mapping a path, some way to get to her, to find her quicker and kill whatever worthless meatbag was interfering.

Its lips curled into a soundless snarl as its tails hooked around smoking exhaust pipes, two human arms hooking their nails into the seams of the roof, its own fingers burrowing into steel.

It leapt off the roof, sailing in a near-straight line for a bit before slamming into the steel floor fifty feet below with a roll and a grunt of pain. It ignored the fighting humans who shouted and leapt away from it, breaking into a dead sprint towards a railing about two hundred feet ahead.

One of them moved as if to hit it with a lead pipe as it passed, fast and hard.

The tentacle in its back whipped out from its sheath to shoot a spike into his forehead and straight through it. It sped past them into the alley before his body hit the floor.

Wisps of smoke flickered and clung to its fur in random, agitated bursts, a burning fury rising up in its chest, into the back of its throat, pressing for release, for a howl. A howl it kept down, clamping its jaws shut as its brows furrowed into a glare, venomous thorns rising across its shoulders and forearms.

Finally, action.

Finally, it was getting its pack back..

It leapt onto the railing and off of it, spreading all its arms wide open. A couple seconds of weightlessness and then its limbs clamped shut around the light pole crystals that raced up and down for hundreds of feet, swinging once from momentum before sliding down.

It ignored the crack and sparkles of light crystals disconnecting and snapping as its weight barreled through the flimsily upheld lights, and a tide of darkness followed it as it descended.

-

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