Lyrhea couldn’t help but wonder exactly what kind of things these so-called ‘Racial Features’ were supposed to be, but based on her new appearance, she assumed they were something that no Human would ever be able to do without extreme biological and mechanical body modifications. She could have gone through with the Tutorial if she felt like it, but right now she wanted to explore her new condition on her own terms.

She ran one hand across the side of her face and around it, feeling where the bone and skin and tissues had twisted to make her look more serpentine. Her eyes, of course, were now devoid of the normal circular pupils, and now sported a slender reptilian slit shape instead.

“I guess that fucker was right after all…” she muttered. “I do have eyes like a snake…”

She continued to run her fingers and hands over herself, feeling the various bone and muscle changes that she now sported, along with the feeling of certain organs just not feeling ‘normal’. For instance, she could feel her rib cage, and she could feel part of her gut, and yet while they seemed to only have undergone minor restructuring, she knew deep down that they were radically different.

Likewise, she found she was now able to partially unhinge her jaw, and that within her mouth her teeth had changed completely. Her canines were now longer, thinner, and if she wasn’t seeing things, had a small hole in each one near the tips.

The rest of her teeth had also changed, taking on more curved and thinner forms, almost as if their purpose now was not to cut and grind but to act as a cage to keep the things inside her mouth and throat from escaping. She figured that she could still use her teeth as a Human could, but now they were altered and more specialized to a lifestyle of making her simply swallow her food whole.

“Heh…” the newly-reborn snake-human hybrid laughed dryly and in mockery of herself as she thought of how she would now need to find things small enough to fit down her throat without her needing to chew. “I’m pretty sure someone would pay quite a lot for that to happen to them.”

And, while she would have loved to continue to explore the changes in her form, she soon had other, far more pressing issues to deal with. A squeak of unusual intensity and depth snapped her out of her exploratory phase and sent her eyes darting over to a section of the bathroom that she had not explored.

Cautiously she moved towards a stall that had collapsed due to damage to the metal joints and, against her better judgment, she reached towards the fallen plastic to try and pull it off. She did, though, halt her movement when she heard another, even more unwelcome sound.

“The map says that it is in here! I call first dibs on the First Blow Xp!”

It was that group of five people again. They really did want her dead due to no fault of her own, and they were here to finish the job.

Lyrhea looked around quickly. If she was to take them on in a fight she would be not only at a numerical advantage but also one based on equipment. While they had thrown stones at her, they had also been carrying melee weapons, while one even had a pistol on their belt.

Why they hadn’t killed her from afar with that gun, she didn’t know, but regardless she was in danger and needed to escape once again. The second deep, loud squeak from under the fallen bathroom stall gave her an idea, and she looked upwards and let the plan come together.

She reached up and used the damaged sink as a step-ladder to reach the ceiling, moving a few tiles aside and almost slithering into the crawlspace beyond them. She then, before sliding the tiles back into place, yelled out at the top of her lungs a single, simple command.

“I’m in the bathroom, you assholes! Don’t disturb a lady while she’s taking a shit!”

She kept one of the tiles slightly open and smirked as the five people rushed in and began to turn the bathroom upside down to find her, eventually resulting in them pulling the fallen stall apart and revealing a rat the size of a German Shepherd which immediately lunged out and dug its teeth into the neck of one of the five humans.

The battle that followed was short but brutal, and eventually, the rat lost, though it did indeed exact a high price from the five, now four, humans, all the while Lyrhea watched with both concern and glee as the humans retreated to lick their wounds. With the immediate threat gone, Lyrhea snaked her way out of the crawlspace and surveyed the damage, noticing something that the humans clearly had either ignored or just not realized was there.

The giant rat had been protecting something, and that something was a group of five babies. Lyrhea leaned in closer and reached out to pick one up. She felt a strange sensation overwhelm her, and before she could realize what she was doing she had stuffed one of the live rat pups into her mouth and swallowed it whole and alive.

It took her far longer than she would have liked to realize what she had just done and she immediately began to attempt to clear what she assumed would be a blocked throat, all while also hoping to vomit out the creature she had consumed out of disgust. However, the object had already gone down her throat and into her stomach, creating no blockage at all despite the rat pup being the size of a human fist.

“WHAT. THE. FUCK?!” she cursed to herself as she stumbled and collapsed on the ground. “What the fuck was that?!”

She got her answer a bit later than she would have liked when the screen appeared again, and its message was neither pleasant nor unpleasant to the being who was slowly losing her grip on her humanity.

Hidden Objective Complete

Eat Like a Snake

You have discovered a quirk about your own biology. Anything you can fit into your mouth can be swallowed whole, regardless of its makeup. Consuming live prey will result in extra XP and potentially other benefits. As you grow more powerful and become more of what you are destined to be, your potential gains from consuming whole, live meat will increase.

Reward(s):

Passive Ability Granted [Serpentine Eating]

Passive Ability Granted [Prolonged Digestion]

Favored Food Permanently Set to [Whole, Live Meat]