[Offering accepted.] The words scrolled across his mental screen. [A blood pact has been established. System is updating..]
Rori broke into a scream that made her fall to her knees as her body underwent some sort of change. She got all glitchy as if she was made of pixels, and a wave rippled through her as her body transformed fully into a werewolf for the first time, one body part at a time before turning back to normal.
[system is adapting new pack member to be compatible for user. Downloading learned skills and active skills..Completed. System has been updated.]
Suddenly the girl gave a small yelp and she began staring at the air in front of her. Her arms outreached and waving. "What is this?!" She now had a system screen too that was visible to both her and Retsu. Retsu's screen had a Rori tab and all he had to do to see it was select her name.
Retsu was looking at his own screen with satisfaction. Now he had a way to monitor his health. Right in front of his eyes was a bar that said HP, and one that said his Mana levels. His skills list, his skill level. It was like someone had designed a tutorial of life for him. His issues controlling his wolf were gone. The urges to eat uncontrollably, everything, it was now all listed as skills, and notifications, giving him back control.
He wondered if this tutorial was available for all werewolves, but then he realized that the girl was so intrigued that it must be just for him afterall.
"I wonder what skills we have." He said, taking a seat on a fallen tree trunk.
Undead skills
[skill] Necrotic Claw (unavailable in the sunlight) users claws produce a venom that causes necrosis. The damage to opponent will worsen until it is exposed to sunlight.
[Skill] Plague- bite the flesh of a person to convert them into members of the pack. They will inherit abilities related to the class assigned. A flesh sacrifice is required for higher upgrades.
Retsu suddenly nodded with understanding, so that's why his wolf bit off her arm. He had needed a flesh sacrifice to make her his beta.
Now that she was added to his pack, he could see her stats on a dropdown menu. When he saw her name, it dawned on him that he hadn't asked her what her name was yet. Or if his wolf had, he didn't remember the conversation. He hated that his zombie instincts took over when he was eating. Letting his wolf control his body without his consent. He shook his head and looked at her info page.
Pack members: 1
Name: Rori Richardson.
Level: 5
HP: 500/500
Class: beta
Species: Necrolupus
Title: ?
He paused when he saw that the title feature was blank. Wasn't her name her title? What's the difference? When he focused his attention on it, it opened, allowing him to type with his mind whatever title he wanted to give her.
"What title should I give you as my beta?" He asked, turning to Rori with curiosity.
"A title?" She repeated. He nodded.
"Hmm..how about 'the second fang of the dead!'" She said ominously, twiddling her fingers in his face a bit with dramatic effect.
His first instinct was to cover his mouth and jerk his head away from her, hadn't she learned to keep those meat appendages away from his mouth?!
When he thought about eating her, suddenly an icon appeared above her head, [subject is edible] but he didn't go crazy like before. Probably because now she had some of his venom in her from the plague bite earlier. It meant he had more a a choice wether to bite her or not.
He shook his head and the icon disappeared as she put her arms down. She knew what he was thinking about because his eyes had gotten greener and his pupils had reduced to feral slits for a few seconds. She gave a chuckle.
"What's so funny?" He demanded. "And I'm not calling you my second fang. That makes me sound like a vampire."
She puffed her cheeks in a fake pout.
"What about the 'undying second'?" She said teasing.
"No."
"Beta of the damned?"
"I've got an idea. I'm an alpha, how about I call you the 'Alpha's shadow?'"
Rori thought about it for a minute. "Yeah ok fine." She decided.
"Ok, 'Alpha's shadow' it is." He concluded.
"That's odd" she said.
"What?"
"I'm a werewolf, but my stats say that I'm a Necrolupus. What even is that?"
He responded by extending his claws and slicing her arm off again in one sweep. It began to grow back like before.
"Aaaahhhh!!!" She screamed, holding her shoulder, "why would you do that?!"
"You said werewolves can't regenerate limbs like that and heal that fast without medical intervention, right? You've changed into something more advanced." He smiled, pleased with himself. "So you must be a zombie werewolf like me."
She looked at him like he was crazy. Then she looked at her hands. "But I'm not hungry like you."
Retsu shrugged. "I'm not sure."
Rori's HP went down by nearly half when he cut off her arm which left her scowling at him. Though she had to admit it, being able to regenerate was pretty cool.
After she finished healing though, her stomach began to grumble too. And just in time because they had reached a town as they made their way through the forested path. The system notified her unnecessarily. [Your hunger rises.] Her eyes went wide, "so that is how this works?"
Retsu looked at the notification it had sent her and smiled. "This just got a whole lot more interesting.]
Down the mountain was the kind of town that had one gas station. There was a bar, a tattoo parlor, a diner, and an insurance agency, but the rest of the shops downtown were either closed or empty. Then there were around a hundred houses surrounding the Main Street, which had a few other shops lining those other streets. A bakery, and a car repair shop. The gas station doubled as a grocery store. It was quaint.
Retsu headed towards the diner but Rori stopped him. "Wait, we've got to conceal your um…" she looked at his feral looking eyes and his pale skin, his sharp teeth and sharp, bony fingertips. As a werewolf, she had features like that, but only when she was mad. she defaulted to looking like a human otherwise.
"Think about being human." She said, you have to conceal your features."
He nodded. He looked at himself for the first real observation. She was right, he didn't look like he was held together very well at all. Even though he was alive, his flesh had started to rot. He hadn't realized it before, but his claws that he thought they were, were actually made of bone, and his flesh of his fingertips had been torn off in order to use them. Now that he had the system, they hadn't healed this time. Odd. Maybe the system has something like that, Like a regeneration ability like she had, he thought. Though her body regenerated on its own, maybe he had to actually click on it? He opened his information tab and scrolled. He had no passive skills. He frowned. Why was his beta more advanced than he was?
And why did he not have the rapid recovery skill? He searched three times, but there was nothing. Afterall, she shot him with a shotgun and he had lost a leg. Now it was back, right? There had to be a way he did that.
If he used his flames, would he be burned now too? Normally his flesh healed the minute the flames affected him, if that skill was locked, the system could be a death sentence!
After scrolling though all of his skills though, he was sure of it, Rori's skills listed [rapid recovery: active] under her skills. Apart from that, she had a [partial transformation] skill and a [full transformation] skill. Clearly werewolf skills she already knew how to do before she got the system. It seemed like everything that she learned in the real world, transferred to the system in some way. But not all of his skills had.
Like his fire for example, it was listed under his skills menu, that was available. But aside from that, none of his other skills had to do with werewolf things, and he was sure he had done werewolf things before having the system, like how had he managed to eat all of those sheep?
"Wolf! Are you still there?" He asked the wolf.
Its voice had gone silent. He didn't miss him, but what the heck?
He seemed to mostly have zombie skills, so maybe he had to earn the werewolf stuff back? But why? While useful in combat, his zombie skills didn't help him look like a living person. He needed skills like Rori's!
Rori pulled out some meat from her inventory. That was what the system called her hammar space now. Another werewolf skill that Retsu didn't seem to have. Why was it even called an Alpha system if his default skills were zombie skills?
"Here, eat some meat, maybe you'll regenerate with this."
He ate it greedily. It probably just made him more feral offering him meat like that. His HP went up by 100 points after he ate the meat, and his hunger went away, but his rot didn't.
Waste not want not! The voice of his wolf suddenly said in his head, surprising him.
What? Did you think I was gone? Hehehe he laughed. You're still a werewolf, don't worry yourself. He said. Now eat your food!
Retsu looked at the arm on the ground. He didn't need his wolf, not really. Maybe it was better just being a zombie. The icon appeared above it when he inspected it. [item is edible. Substance: Necrolupus meat. Durability: 10 minutes remaining]
He gave a sigh. "That's super gross." He told his wolf, and then picked up the arm and tore off a huge bite as if it were a turkey leg. Two more bites and it was just a bone. Then he crunched the bone too. His sharp teeth and crushing bite seemed like it could tear through anything.
[Congratulations! New skill unlocked, Essence absorption.] suddenly, he felt himself regenerating and flesh wove its way onto his bony hands. A gap near his jaw which allowed one to see his teeth through his cheek closed up. He felt warmth return to his skin, and as he watched, it also gained color.
He read the skill discription, [user has the ability to borrow the skills of others temporarily by consuming their flesh.]
Oh! So he could heal because she had a rapid recovery skill. All he had to do when he was injured was eat some of her flesh and he would be fine!
Essence absorption had a time limit though. It seemed like consuming her arm bought him 4 hours of looking normal.
"Well that's really dark and tragic." Rori said as she realized that his need for flesh wasn't just going to be ground beef, but he indeed ended up planning to eat bits and pieces off of her as if she were a meat tree. And not to satisfy hunger, but to maintain a normal appearance.
Then his eyes returned to normal, still green, but he had green eyes before becoming a zombie, so yeah.
He must have been borrowing her partial transformation skill to do that.
Oooo he was going to like this system.