I wake to the massive status screen floating inside my mind, the name blinking. A few changes seem to have taken place while I was asleep. It seems that I got an upgrade in status now that I have a name. There are 3 plus signs after my monster rank. I don't know whether that's something to be proud of or not, since I didn't spawn with a tutorial. Strangely, my attributes are halved and I scour the status in search of answers. Damn those fucking gods and their machinations.

Cursing me just because I'm a corpse, how rude. Still -50% to all my attributes in sunlight... that's a pretty severe handicap. Since the curse is currently active, it seems I've been unconscious long enough for the sun to rise. At least I don't burn in the sun like a vampire. That's good, right? Let's go with positive thinking.

My thoughts seem more coherent now. My head is definitely clearer, though I maintain the strange urge to say tehehe at the end of my sentences.

I wonder what kind of person the previous owner of this body was, and how a 10 year old child ended up on a battlefield. It must be a tragic story.

All the options I can think of are rather gruesome and depressing, so this world that I've come to isn't exactly a land of milk and honey. Although in my case... I pause, waiting for the insane urge to eat and consume the sweet goop and the melty jelly, but it doesn't come. I'm in control of myself again. Mostly anyway. A small trail of drool still runs down my cheek at the thought of goop, but hey, beggars can't be choosers and even the most amazing corpse-loli isn't perfect, you know?

Now that I can actually form coherent thoughts again, I study my status for anything useful and pause on the blessings tab. Then my eyes go to skills and I resist the urge to chuckle, fearing that another beastly growl will erupt from my throat and somehow turn those monstrous instincts back on. I am loathe to admit that part of me actually liked me when I was a crazy monster, tehehe. Gyuuh. Parting with that feeling is hard.

It's sort of like when I quit smoking, except my current withdrawal symptons aren't really very severe. Not yet at least, but I imagine I have to eat more at some point. Yup, let's not think about that right now. I'll compromise with a tehehe, okay?

Flesh Manipulation Through excruciating effort and pain, the user can manipulate their own biomass. Eating flesh will add to available biomass.

According to this, I should be able to use Flesh manipulation to create new eyes for myself to see with. I have no desire to remain blind, so fixing my eyesight is definitely a top priority. It's cute that it warns me it might hurt and I will probably be in pain when I fucking form new flesh, like duh, no shit sherlock. But I guess the system doesn't know what it's like to endure Frank's careful ministrations for an entire month without relief.

I can only give it a go, right? So I imagine the skill in my mind, coupled with my desire to create new eyes and my knowledge of biology. I hope that the skill will take care of it though, since eyes are rather complex to create from scratch and I'm not some paragon, know-it-all reincarnated anime protagonist with a mysterious ability to pull knowledge out of her ass like she has unlimited access to wikipedia articles.

A strange, warm sensation floods me, then my eyesockets start burning. At first the pain is negligible, but the painful throbbing increases until it has my full attention. I resist the urge to say 'my eye is throbbing' as I hold a hand over my eye. Still I do not scream. Still I do not give in. I have endured pain far worse than this! I grit my teeth. Holy shit! I can actually feel my eyes being formed. I can hear them being formed. God that sounds disgusting. Squishy squishy!

Thankfully, it seems I can guide the process to an extent.

Fueled by my desire to see and see well, I postpone the completion of the eyes and think of all the animals with great eyesight like birds of prey for acuteness of sight and owls for night vision and I just hold the images in my mind for as long as possible. All the while I can feel things happening. Material being compressed and optimized and infused with strange energies.

Yes, let's go! Give me back my eyesight! Damned if I have a second chance at life, but have to spend it as a mindless monster with no eyes. Let's go EYES Wooh!

Congratulations. You have successfully used Flesh manipulation (unique skill) to craft Demonic Eyes of Death's Pursuit (Grade: Legendary, unique.) Nobody else possess eyes that are quite like yours. +10 perception. Warning: A large amount of inferior biomass has been expended.

A sharp pain shoots through me like white lightning and my vision flashes. Next thing I know is that I feel a dull throbbing pain and two streaks of something wet running down my cheeks. I've finally lost my eye-socket virginity.

I'm almost afraid of opening my eyes, but fear or no fear, I have to get my bearings, figure out where I am and what the fuck is actually going on. Now that I have eyes and my mind is clear...er. Clearer. But not yet clear enough for me to stop craving flesh, it seems. Guess creating my eyes took a lot out of me and I might have to eat again soon.

Enough procrastinating! I force my eyes open wide against the sharp sunlight and just freeze for a moment, the view of the blue sky above is so breathtaking I forget myself for a moment.

Holy gods, the clouds are so clear. Fluffy white clouds like cotton candy. I wonder if they are edible, tehehe.

Okay, eyes GET!

Since I'm sprawled on my back, I slowly sit up and prepare myself mentally for it. No good. I topple forward on all fours, heaving. So many rotting corpses, so much blood. Maggots everywhere, grotesque heaps of mutilated rotting corpses... I heave and heave, but nothing comes out, only strangled sounds. Disgusting, more than disgusting... it is hell. But this is nothing to me! I can deal with it. After all, Frank... prepared me for this kind of thing.

After awhile, I sit back up and swivel my head around. Mountains of bodies, some reduced to little more than brown bones in a black soup, lay about on the ground. Maggots infest the corpses. A severed arm lays not two feet from me and I can see clearly the maggots eating away at it. Oh my fuck. I swoon for a moment. That shit's what I was calling a melty jelly on a stick. AND IT STILL LOOKS APPETIZING GODDAMN IT.

Haah...

The battlefield seems to have been in this state for awhile, left relatively undisturbed. There are some blackened and burned stone ruins in the distance on one side that looks like it could be the remnants of some large building, maybe a castle? But part of the building has disappeared into a hole. Behind me I see a large imposing forest. And piles and piles of corpses on scorched, desecrated ground with their weapons, armor and clothes untouched. Strange. Usually after battles are finished you get the grave robbers and looters clearing the place, but not here for some reason.

In the distance, I can see some corpse homies enjoying a meal and by the gods are they nasty looking. Imagine the most disgusting zombie you can, then add some weird cancerous growths and postules to its back and black slimey pus oozing from huge ulcers and... well you get the picture.

Suddenly anxious, I inspect myself. My legs have retained most of their flesh, though its decomposing a little. My left foot is almost all bone, and my right foot is about fifty-fifty. Judging from the size of my legs and feet, this certainly is a child body. Same dealio with my hands. Some of my fingers have most of their flesh, but the index finger of my right hand has zero flesh and is just a bony protrusion.

I wiggle it in a come here motion toward my corpse homies. Tehehe. I'm glad they don't obey me. I don't want to be anywhere near those disgusting things. Though I suppose I am a bit horrid looking myself, it's still nothing compared to those monstrosities. I guess I'm not all that bad looking, all things considered. Yes yes, I'm quite good looking for a decomposing corpse, alright?

There aren't any mirrors around here for me to conveniently gaze upon my face and admire myself. I'm sort of curious about how my eyes look, but I dread discovering how fucked up my face is. I run a hand over my head to find it mostly bald, with a few patches of long frayed silvery blonde hair here and there.

Well, there goes my dreams of becoming a L'Oréal hair model. Tehehe. I glance around myself, because this body of mine is bare to the bone. Almost. Corpse JOKE, yahaha.

All I have is a pair of decaying brown linen pants. They're little more than rags, and shorter than hotpants. Short enough to be indecent. I shudder. I do not want to check the genital situation right now. No sir, no mam, no way, no day.

I jump to my feet, feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed despite the 50% stat reduction from the curse and the minor detail that my body is decomposing The sun is out and it's a great day to not be tied up in Frank's basement. Now let's see if I can't equip myself with some dead soldier's gear and go slay those monsters over yonder ho!

I'm one of those monsters though, but let's ignore that little fact for the moment.

After some careful scavenging, I've managed to find a short sword that's not rusty and bent out of shape, along with a small round metal buckler. Although they're nothing special and basically trash drops, right now they're more than sufficient. 1 is infinitely greater than 0 and even if these two items are the real life equivalent of Grey items in WoW, I'm still happy, alright? Swords are cool, okay? I've always wanted a sword in real life, goddamn it! What's wrong with that?

Channeling my inner adventurer, I equip the small buckler and short-sword and stand straight and proud. I am become loli--- I mean death... uh...

The corpse homies have no idea what's coming. They're still milling about and eating with abandon. Little do they know the loli---death that's about to descend upon them.

Closer and closer I sneak. The ground occasionally squishes uncomfortably beneath my bony feet, but I try to not pay too much attention to what I'm walking through. When I'm only 10 meters from them, I squat down behind a pile of corpses consisting of men in dull metal armour and horses. Poor horsies.

No, focus Alyce. Gripping the short sword tightly, I walk out to meet my corpse homies for a duel to the death. As I emerge, I find them with their attention focused elsewhere and I hear it too. It sounds like... someone cursing, profusely, loudly, vigorously. I have little time to be impressed by the chant-like string of curses, because the corpse homies, scenting living prey, take off running towards the sound.

The man's cursing voice suddenly grows quiet as he can no doubt hear the loud crashing sound of the corse homies inelegantly tearing their way through the foliage on the outer edge of the forest. I chase behind them as they disappear into the woods, crashing through berry bushes and leaving behind a black trail of pus and ooze in their wake. Very nice, corpse homie squad. Very nice indeed...

A man's life is at stake, so I hurry after the corpse homies. There's an army's worth of corpses behind me. Let's not add to that, shall we? The corpse homies don't count by the way, since they are already dead and I'm definitely not, okay? Goddamn it!

Suddenly, all sounds cease. I break through a wall of verdant green to find four corpse homies surrounding a very stocky man slumped against a tree. I can hardly see his armor for the enormous, black beard flowing down the front. He is still, perhaps unconscious. But I remember his extremely impressive swearing from just moments before. I gotta save this man at all costs. Such glorious swearing cannot be extinguished! It must live on.

I have no time to waste, so I sprint towards the corpse homies just as they are preparing to dig into the downed man. "Fight for the fuck!" I yell as I swing the short sword. It comes out as incoherent growling, but I don't really care. It's the thought that counts, right?

I'm not nearly tall enough to properly decapitate the corpse homie I targeted without channeling my inner Jedi Master Yoda, but I manage to slice cleanly through its leg with a wet thud. The others turn as one to look at me, but I'm already spinning and swinging for the next one. I slice across the corpse homies midsection, surprised at how easy it is to cut these things. It's like cutting butter. Very disgusting, rancid butter, but butter none the less. I can't believe it's not butter.

Then I'm toppled to the ground from behind and curse my stupidity. The corpse homie whose leg I managed to amputate obviously didn't die. Now it's clinging to my leg, clawing, biting and snarling like an animal or rather, a zombie.

The others come for me as one and I grit my teeth and curse the gods and my own stupidity. Why did I think I could 1v4 these walking abominations so easily. In a child body, with a shitty trash tier sword and -50% to all my attributes. Yeah, I'm a gods damned hero.

I swing my blade outward in a sweeping motion in an attempt to keep the charging corpse homies at bay, but just before they fall on me, the world turns white. I still feel my sword biting into the advancing corpse homies despite the fact that I can't see anything for the white light pulsing outwards. I flail the sword about in the whiteness. The blinding white light continues for a few seconds before abating.

Congratulations, with the assistace of ??? you have slain three level 2 Undead Ghouls and one level 3 Undead Ghoul. Congratulations: Level up! 7 Attribute points available for distribution. Due to your status as a legendary grade monster you gain extra points. +10 to Constitution.

Absentmindedly, I drop the short sword and buckler and fall to my knees. On all fours, I grasp a handful of grass and rip it from the ground in frustration. Leveling up is good and all, but I failed.

I didn't save anyone.

That white light pretty much disintegrated the corpse homies all without my interference. God fucking damn it, I'm still powerless. Still useless. Still the same old piece of trash. I feel something wet roll down my cheeks and I don't give a fuck anymore. Maybe it's tears, maybe it's some disgusting black ooze. Who cares?!

Shaking with anger at myself, I slowly rise to my feet and turn towards the man, finding him awake and staring at me with wide eyes. I must've been quite a sight, because the man suddenly slumps as his eyes roll back and he loses consciousness. Great Alyce, you're so hideous that men faint when they look upon your wretched form. Weh. Let's hope it has more to do with the man's exhaustion and wounds than with my hideous appearance. Yep, let's think that.

Shit. He could be dead. I force my legs to work, my feet to move. One step after the other, I approach the odd looking man with the extremely impressive beard. I chuckle darkly to myself as I reach him. Really, a dwarf? The gods of this world must've had no imagination to come up with the same old fantasy races as inhabit earths fictions.

I crouch down in front of the dwarf, realizing that he's actually quite massive, easily twice my size in height as well as width. ABSOLUTE UNIT. If all dwarves are as massive as this bloke, then an army of them would be scary as fuck. Small, my ass. Actually, my ass is small, but let's not contemplate the state of my liliputian posterior, shall we?

The tree he's leaning against is almost bending back beneath his weight. Iron symbols and rings are artfully braided into his huge pitch black beard along with various leather straps holding it all together, forming an impressive looking art piece.

I reach a shaking, skeletal and decomposing hand towards that glorious beard, almost afraid to sully it with my disgusting digits. But I have to. I move the beard aside like a curtain to gaze upon the man and see if he's wounded. My eyes widen as I see the tip of a sword sticking through the man's chest, glowing with a pale blue light.

I can still hear him breathing, sucking in rattling wet breaths as he fights for his life. Was he perhaps betrayed by his comrades and left to die here? No warrior worth his salt would allow himself to be stabbed in the back unless it was a surprise attack. At least that's what my anime otaku derived knowledge of such situations tell me.

I carefully tap my bony index finger against his metal plate armour, wondering how by the seven holy fucks this glowing blue sword managed to penetrate it. Damn it. I don't know shit about healing, but I can't just sit here and watch as a magnificently bearded, gloriously swearing man passes to the afterlife.

A half open bag lies near his slumped body, but all it contains is some dried meat strips and a metal canteen smelling of alcohol.

Wait, strong alcohol can disinfect a wound, and these two things have been lovingly wrapped in a long piece of cloth. It has to be cleaner than anything I can find back at the battlefield, so I pull out the alcohol and the cloth. Taking my short-sword, I make appropriately sized strips of cloth and try my hand at making a bandage. It's partially successful.

Congratulations. Through a desperate action you've managed to craft a shoddy but working bandage.

Well, thanks for the heads up system. Truly fucking helpful aren't you? How about a tutorial? No? What about a convenient skill? I thought so... Bastard.

I move behind the dwarf to see if I can't find the hilt of the sword. I know pulling it out will cause some bleeding, but with the way it glows eerily, I think it might be best to risk removing it. I got my trusty bandage and alcohol, so I'm all good thank you very much. Though it would be nice if the system would magically grant me the ability to heal wounds with magic. Come on, it's a fantasy world, so give me magic goddamn it!

Looking down at my decomposing hand and the exposed bone of my finger, I realize that healing magic probably ain't gonna happen. Besides, I get a bad taste in my mouth even just contemplating my reliance on system granted skills. Stupid system!

The man is sturdy as fuck, a huge block of meat. The sword is buried to the hilt in his back, but I manage to find it. I just hope my strength is enough to pull the sword from the stone, figuratively speaking.

"Not nervous at all. Haha." I mutter to myself. It becomes a strange sounding growl, but I'm used to it at this point. What's a girl to do when she can't let out her frustrations? So I grasp the hilt, grit my teeth and pull.

At first the sword doesn't budge. But then slowly, slowly it gives, sliding from the dwarf with a sickening sound as metal scrapes against both metal and flesh simultaneously. I wince and feel phantom pain as I remove the sword with excruciating slowness from the man. Oh God oh god.

The unconscious dwarf grunts and lets out some wet choking sounds.

Shit shit shit. Blood gushes forth from the wound. I throw the glowing sword to the side and make a panicked fumbling grab for my homemade bandages, now desperate to stifle the flow of blood.

"Come on, come on you big bastard." I mutter to myself. It's a strange whimpering growl this time. I surprise myself with my own skill, somehow managing to bind the man's wound. The bandage is almost immediately soaked through and I realize I didn't pour alcohol on his wound. So I grab the canteen, open it and tip it over. Golden, strong smelling liquid pours forth from the canteen and the dwarf lets out a hiss. I grab my second bandage and wind it around the man. It too, is soon soaked through.

Tears are streaming down my face now, and my hands are shaking. It would be nice if being an undead would save me from such emotions, but I guess life is crueler than that eh?

Just as I'm thinking that the man is going to bleed to death, a very faint white light begins to glow over the wound and I stare in amazement as it slowly stops bleeding.

I collapse to the ground and lie there cheek against the fresh smelling grass in a daze. I can even scent a flower nearby, it smells nice too. Nice and full of life. Not sickly sweet, but fresh and lively like a good perfume. The grass and the earth and the flowers and the fresh air of the forest, all alive... unlike me. Grotesque, monstrous me.

Somehow, a small smile creeps up on me. He will live.

"Tehehe." I giggle out loud, then close my eyes and give in to exhaustion, letting myself take a well deserved nap.