I looked around, and only then did it really sink in where I was.
Another ledge. Another cliff.
I turned and shuffled toward the edge, slow and careful this time. The moment I looked down, my body tightened. The drop below made my core twist, and I had to pull myself back before I leaned too far.
A dry scoff slipped out of me.
The lengths you go for some EXP…
I turned away from the edge, moved back toward the center of the ledge, and pulled my focus inward to check my stats again.
HP: 4 / 25
MP: 5
Attack: Lv.2
Defense: Lv.2
Speed: Lv.5
Vitality: Lv.2
Perception: Lv.3
Resolve: Lv.2
I studied the numbers in silence until one of them pulled at my attention.
Speed: Lv.5
That stood out. Compared to everything else, it was high—high enough that I should feel the difference.
I should be pretty fast now.
I lifted my head and looked across the ledge.
…Only one way to test it.
I started running, careful at first, using short controlled steps while I got used to how this body moved. My sticky feet still clung to the stone, but not as badly as before, so I pushed a little harder, then harder again.
I circled the ledge, weaving around broken stone and the dead wolves, building speed with every pass. Wind tugged at my warped face as my steps blurred together, and my body moved faster than it had any right to. I was fast—really fast—and the movement felt wrong in a way that somehow made perfect sense: low to the ground, sharp turns, sudden bursts of speed.
For a moment, I didn't feel like I was copying the wolves.
I felt like one.
I slowed near the cliff wall, my thoughts sharpening as I looked up the sheer stone. There was no safe way down and no clear way back up, so my gaze dropped to my hand as I pressed it against the rock.
It stuck instantly.
Sticky. Always sticky.
I stared at the wall for a second while the idea formed piece by piece. If I could move faster now, and if this body naturally clung to surfaces…
Could I run up the wall?
Not climb it slowly.
Run it—using speed and momentum, then controlling how much I stuck.
I backed away from the cliff face and lowered my stance.
Here goes nothing.
I ran, built speed, and slammed into the wall at full force.
My legs caught first. Then my body held.
For one brief, stupidly hopeful second, it worked.
I scrambled upward, momentum carrying me higher—then my footing slipped. The rhythm broke. My body dragged sideways, lost purchase, and peeled off the stone before I could recover.
I hit the ledge hard, bounced once, and landed flat on my back as pain flared through my side.
HP: 3 / 25
I stared up at the dimming sky for a second, stunned.
…You can't be serious.
The words stayed in my head while I lay there, trying to process how badly that had gone. Then I forced myself to breathe and rolled onto my side.
Okay.
I have to be more careful.
I got up slowly and glanced toward the treeline. The light slipping through the leaves was fading fast now, turning weak and gray between the branches.
Night was coming.
System, if I don't eat or drink… how do I heal?
Sleep.
I exhaled slowly. A comment rose to the front of my mind—something about how obvious that answer was—but I swallowed it before it could form.
I wasn't giving the system another chance to call me stupid.
I found a narrow spot beneath an overhang and curled in as tight as my unstable body allowed. Darkness crept in, and before long, I drifted off.
I don't know how long I was asleep before a howl tore through the night.
My senses snapped awake instantly. The forest went still with it—no insects, no rustling, no small sounds in the dark. Just silence.
I lifted my head, blinking hard as I came fully awake, and realized it wasn't as dark as I expected. The cave mouth was still shadowed and the forest beyond it looked dim and heavy with night, but I could make out more than I should have: edges, shapes, movement in the dark where my old eyes would've seen almost nothing.
I stared for a second, then remembered.
Perception. Level 3.
Even a couple of levels could change this much.
I looked up.
Glowing green eyes stared down from the ledge above, impossible to miss in the dark.
A wolf.
Bigger than the one I'd killed. Heavier. Broader. Built like it knew exactly what it was.
It howled again, louder this time, the sound rolling through the trees and pressing into the cave. Then its gaze shifted and locked onto me.
My core tightened.
This one felt different. Not just another wolf.
A predator.
Then shapes moved.
Three wolves stepped out from one side of it, and three more from the other. The alpha howled again, and two of the wolves—one on each side—stepped forward and raised their front paws.
Then they slashed into the air.
The night screamed.
Three claw-arcs tore free from each wolf, compressed force ripping through the dark in jagged lines as they came down at me all at once.
Six.
My body moved before the panic could. I threw myself sideways as the first arc carved into the ground where I'd been standing, stone and dirt exploding upward in a violent burst. Another tore past my shoulder. Another hit the ledge wall and sheared a chunk loose the size of my body.
Rocks rained down.
I ducked under one falling arc, twisted away from another, and nearly lost my footing as the ground split beneath me. The ledge was being shredded around me. Every impact carved trenches through stone, blasted dirt into the air, and sent fractures racing under my feet while claw-arcs crashed down in staggered bursts, forcing me to keep changing direction as debris hammered the ground around me.
I weaved, stumbled, recovered, and moved again.
A rock shattered where my head had been a heartbeat earlier. Another clipped the edge of the ledge and burst into fragments across my side.
I kept moving—not cleanly, not gracefully, but faster than before.
My body was reacting before my thoughts could catch up, sticking, stretching, correcting, adapting in motion.
I'm faster, I realized. Much faster.
The alpha howled again.
I looked up just as it rose higher on its hind legs, both front paws lifting at once. For a split second it held there, poised—and then it slashed downward.
Not at me.
At the ledge.
Three claw-arcs ripped free from each paw. Six lines of compressed force screamed through the air, crossing and folding into each other as they tore downward in an overlapping X of pale, violent pressure.
The moment they hit, the ledge detonated.
Stone didn't just crack.
It split.
The cliff face sheared open in a thunderous burst as the strike carved through rock like it was rotten wood, and fractures exploded outward beneath my feet, racing across the ledge in jagged lines.
The ground dropped.
Everything gave way at once.
My heart slammed against my chest and I checked my HP.
HP: 14 / 25
I healed a bit from sleeping.
I hope it's enough.
The ledge split apart beneath me. Cracks tore through the stone in every direction, and chunks of rock dropped away all at once, the dead wolves' bodies sliding into widening gaps before vanishing into the dark below.
I moved on instinct.
Jumping rock to rock, I used my sticky body to cling for half a heartbeat longer than I should've been able to, forcing each landing just long enough to launch again. Then one slab cracked under me and gave way.
I fell.
A chunk of stone slammed into my side on the way down.
HP: 8 / 25
Something inside me went slack, and my next movement came a beat too slow.
Dammit!
Another rock dropped past me, just off my left side. I threw out a stubby leg—and it stuck.
Just long enough.
Control snapped back into me in a rush.
The ground was rising fast now, jagged and unforgiving, and then I saw it: a massive tree, its trunk jutting up through the chaos like the only solid thing left in a world coming apart.
Okay—okay…
I forced my body to angle toward it.
I kicked off. Hard.
Beneath me, the rock I'd barely managed to cling to split apart with a sharp crack.
Speed surged through me for one last desperate jump.
I flew—
—and slammed face-first into the trunk.
HP: 3 / 25
I slid down slowly, my sticky body clinging just enough to keep gravity from finishing me, and hit the ground.
HP: 2 / 25
The world tilted.
For a moment I just lay there, vision swimming and my body refusing to respond. Everything felt distant and muted, like I was underwater.
Then stones cracked above me.
That snapped me back to life.
I forced myself to move, limbs sluggish and uncoordinated as I pushed up from the ground. No time to rest.
The cliff above collapsed completely.
Rocks thundered down. A boulder crushed the tree behind me, snapping it in half with a sharp, splintering crack. I staggered forward, spotted a small cave to my right, and ran for it, throwing myself inside as mud, dirt, and stone roared past the entrance like a flood.
I collapsed against the cave wall.
…I'm lucky to be alive.
I took a moment to steady myself, then checked my HP again.
HP: 2 / 25
I let out a slow breath.
I needed sleep, and that wolf wasn't going to give up. It wanted revenge.
The thought settled uneasily in my chest.
I guess that's the consequence of killing something in this world…
My perception—still clumsy, but better than before—let me make out the cave's shape: jagged stone, uneven ground, and just enough light bleeding in from the entrance to see where not to step.
I didn't trust the entrance. I didn't trust any of it.
Nothing has been safe since I was born. Every second of this world has been chaos.
So I moved deeper into the cave, slow and careful, my sticky body barely making a sound against the stone.
A harsh squawk cut through the dark.
I froze.
Didn't breathe. Didn't blink.
Something shuffled ahead of me, deeper in the cave. I focused, forcing my eyes to adjust, and slowly a nest came into view, tucked into a hollow in the cave wall.
Eggs.
Some whole. Some cracked. A few half-hatched things twitched weakly—featherless, ugly little bird-creatures barely able to lift their heads.
Then I saw it.
A bird.
Smaller than me. Lean-bodied, with patchy feathers, a hooked beak, and sharp hawk-like eyes that looked far too hard for something built this fragile.
It stared at me.
I took one tiny step forward—more of a shuffle than a step.
The bird squawked again, softer this time, and flinched back toward the nest. It wasn't trying to drive me off; it was trying to stay between me and the eggs without getting any closer than it had to.
I paused.
…It's scared of me.
The realization hit harder than I expected—not because it was prey, but because for the first time since I woke up in this world, something looked at me and saw a predator.
I edged closer.
Now I could see the nest clearly.
Ten… maybe fifteen unhatched eggs. Five already hatching. One mother bird.
Shaking.
Relief washed over me before I could stop it.
This would be easy EXP.
I could level up here, get stronger, and maybe—finally—deal with that damn wolf instead of waiting for it to find me first.
I took another step.
The bird shrank back further, feathers trembling as it pressed itself closer to the nest. Still no attack. Still no real fight in it.
This would level me up nicely.
I raised myself slightly, leaned forward, and gathered myself to lunge.
My body didn't move.
It locked.
A sharp tension seized through me, like every part of me had tightened at once. My limbs went heavy and sticky, refusing to obey.
…What?
I pushed.
Harder.
The bird squawked again.
A surge of nausea hit—except it wasn't nausea. It was deeper than that. A violent recoil crawled through my core like a warning, cold and immediate.
Don't.
The word wasn't spoken. It wasn't even thought.
It was felt.
My chest tightened. My breathing hitched for no reason. I froze there, half-raised, halfway committed, while a sick certainty settled in my gut.
This didn't feel like survival.
It felt like… them.
I forced myself back down. One slow step, then another.
The pressure eased the moment I stopped advancing, like something inside me had unclenched in relief.
The bird didn't attack. Didn't chase.
It just watched.
Then images hit me—not like thoughts, but like reflexes.
Fire. Ash.
My family—whatever they'd been—burning without resistance.
My body jerked. A sharp spasm ripped through my core, like something inside me recoiled from the memory itself, and my limbs went rigid again, refusing to move forward. The taste of smoke flooded my mouth even though there was no smoke, and heat crawled over my skin in phantom waves.
Killed casually.
For EXP.
Something inside me tightened, hard and ugly, like instinct trying to claw its way out of my chest.
I swallowed.
I want to survive. I want to get stronger.
My gaze lingered on the eggs, but my body held me there—heavy and stubborn, like it had already made the decision.
I stepped back.
Fine.
I'll kill predators. I'll kill things that hunt me.
My thoughts hardened, and this time my body didn't fight me.
But I'm not going to become like the ones who killed my family.
I turned away, moved back toward the cave entrance, and sat down against the stone wall, leaning into it as my body sagged with exhaustion.
I need sleep.
And a plan.
I glanced back once.
The bird was still there, watching me. Not with fear anymore.
With something closer to relief.
…I may be classed as a monster now, but that doesn't mean I have to act like one.
Outside, the rubble finally settled and the night grew quiet. I looked back again, more out of habit than reason.
The bird hadn't moved.
Still watching. Still calm.
Then her head slowly turned toward the cave entrance, and she went perfectly still.
My instincts tightened.
Something was out there.
But despite everything, sleep took me anyway.