A slight detour

The rest of the day passes by smoothly, and I find myself curled up in an abandoned den once more, this one slightly bigger. I realized that I forgot to check my reflection to see what I look like with my eyes closed a few hours after I left the pond, and didn't find any more clear water after that, so I'll be looking tomorrow.

With that thought in mind, I drift off. Similarly to last night, I don't feel like I ever actually fall asleep, though it seems as if only a few minutes later the sun is rising once more.

I pull myself out of the den silently, and immediately set off towards the city. I don't feel the need to eat anything for now, which makes sense seeing as I ate nearly half of that deer which was about my total size. I also ended up drinking for the first time from that pond.

At first I had tried to drink like a dog, lapping at the water, but I soon realized that my tongue isn't flat enough to be in any way efficient like that, so I just dunked my snout and sort of bit at the water. After a few tries, I was lowering just my lower jaw under the surface and letting the water flood into my mouth before swallowing.

It worked pretty well, so I'll keep doing that from now on.

For the moment though, I'm sprinting through the forest at full tilt, trying to get the fastest speed possible while still remaining silent. It's not actually that hard, I'm having more trouble adjusting my weight in time to not lose my footing with every leap than I am avoiding noisy landings.

Of course, I'm far from silent. I can hear my own footsteps and I don't even have any visible ears on my head. Not sure how I can hear at all, now that I think about it. That's not even considering my tentacles too, I could probably hear my footsteps from forty-fifty feet away with them.

And stepping on hard, silent surfaces actually makes it easier to hear with my tentacles. Stepping in mud might be loud to normal ears, but the vibrations are muted when traveling through less solid things, sometimes distorted.

That's probably why I can't hear with them when they're only touching air, though I don't know why normal ears can. Maybe they're specialized because most things don't live with their bodies pressed to solid objects, like the ground.

It would make sense, most subterranean creatures have a form of tremor sense, and that seems to be what I've got. I don't think this race evolved that way due to living underground though.

I'll probably never find out anyway, so no point thinking about it. I wonder if the devs actually bothered thinking that far?

Anyway, I'm getting better and better at moving as the days pass, and I haven't tripped due to an awkward landing yet. I've also realized that my stamina is enough to keep sprinting like this for hours, but I feel like I could easily go faster too.

I'm already moving nearly too fast for me to react to, but it isn't putting any strain on my muscles, and my breathing is just as deep and even as it has been since I entered the game.

Of course, I'd be able to move faster if I didn't have to pay so much attention to my different body parts. But that's the challenge of the game, I have to get used to this body to the point that all my movements are natural and subconscious. Being required to think about moving your limbs is a lot more taxing than I'd have thought before being put in this body.

As such, I don't have the brain capacity to register what I'm seeing at the speed required to use this body to its full potential. That's fine though, I'm already moving at about fifty miles an hour. That's not a speed I ever expected to have while moving through a dense forest.

And with my own power too. It's absolutely thrilling, to be able to move like this with nothing but my body, even if it's not actually my body.

I continue on for another few hours, ducking under branches and jumping over streams as I weave around the trees, finding that I need to make splint second adjustments to stay on track less and less.

Well, I still need to make split second adjustments, but they're not as drastic. When I first started, I was changing my course every other step because I overshot some movement or another, and wouldn't be able to take the course I intended just a second before without breaking my momentum.

Now, the adjustments are more shifting joints and tensing muscles in my legs as I land, so that I can push off properly. I'm not having trouble landing where and how I want to anymore, now that I've been doing this for a few days.

As I'm running, I start thinking about how to make this more challenging, to further increase my learning pace. I'll need to actually have full control over my body if I get into a proper fight, as I won't have time to decide how to use my limbs when my opponent knows I'm there.

With the deer, I spent a good while making sure I had where each limb would go firmly in my mind before I jumped, and I probably would have instantly forgot about half of them if the deer didn't die instantly.

It takes me a few minutes to come up with an idea, but I eventually decide to try chasing any birds I come across as long as they remain moving towards the city.

I soon find myself attempting to catch a small, grey bird, and failing horribly, even though I move faster than it. My experience with predicting enemy movement while fighting in other games isn't helping much either, and before I know it, I'm quite literally jumping between tree trunks in my pursuit of this bird, never crouched against one tree long enough to start falling.

I generally miss by a few meters every time I lunge at it, and I'd have lost sight of it if I couldn't see in nearly every direction, but it's working. Every tree I land on seems to take just a bit less effort to not slip off of.

But I'm having trouble using my tentacles to help me. It just takes too much focus to use them, and I can't manage it while chasing this bird. This is exactly why I'm chasing it though, so I can work on using them without thinking.

And because I want to know what the bird tastes like.

After about ten minutes, the bird ends up veering around and flying back the way we came, so I give up on it and start looking for another as I continue.

I'm not exactly sure where the city is, but the general direction should be good enough. Well, I can't miss it once I get close enough. There should be roads, right?

Maybe people only travel with air based vehicles here. Eh, even if they do, I should still be able to find the city, even if it's by following some low tier orbital ship or something.

It takes another minute to find a new bird, this one about the size and appearance of a hawk but with the stark black and red coloration of a cardinal.

I turn slightly to approach this one, and it takes off from its branch the moment I do. I manage to follow it for about thirty seconds before we break into a clearing, and it immediately rises a few meters higher before alighting on the roof of a short spire to my right.

The spire is connected to a wider base, and is one in a set of two, the other matching it from the opposite corner of the small structure before me. The structure itself is made of grey stone, with dark blue-ish grey shingles making up the roof. It's set into the base of a small hill, and looks to be the entrance to a larger complex dug into the earth.

All thoughts of the bird leave my mind as I notice the building, my attention instead focusing on the empty archway in the center of the wall facing me, and the depiction of a winged skull protruding from the wall above it.

The entire thing seems old and weathered, I note as I take a step closer, but still looks in a way, pristine. There's no moss or vines growing on it, and there's not a single shingle missing, but the stone has also been smoothed down, as if exposed to the rain for thousands of years, and there are no sharp angles to be seen.

Overall, it looks like a dungeon. A low level, beginner dungeon, but a dungeon nonetheless. Of course, it might not be, but now I'm too curious to stop, so I slowly make my way to the dark archway.

Nothing tries to jump out at me when I near, so I stick my head in and look around. Beyond the entrance is a short hall, only twenty feet long, and when I reach the other side I step out onto a circular platform. The platform ends about ten feet from the door in either direction, and there is nothing but darkness beyond.

The room I'm standing in is large, probably taking up most of the interior of the hill, and appears to be circular, with a domed ceiling. I can just barely make out the opposite wall, I'd say maybe sixty feet from the edge of the platform, I'm still going off of the guesses of my own body length though.

I'm not able to notice anything else from the door, so I continue out onto the platform. I walk all the way up to the edge, looking down into the darkness below, my tail still swaying in the hallway behind me. It's a bit shocking how long that thing actually is sometimes.

There are a number of pillars rising out of the darkness, circling around the chamber and ending with flat tops. The tallest is to my right, stopping about ten feet below the platform, and is also ten feet away. The next is ten feet below that one, and they continue like that in a counterclockwise path along the outer edge of the room, each with a ten foot gap between it and the next.

It looks like a parkour puzzle room. I wonder if there are traps in the walls?

Anyway, this is probably some form of dungeon. I walk up to the edge closest to the first pillar, looking down at it apprehensively. While I don't really have the facial expressions to show it, which is odd seeing as this is a lack of movement I'm feeling rather than a sensation I've never had before, I'm still not sure if I'll be able to get down there.

Temporarily distracted by the lack of feeling in my facial muscles, I spend a good minute standing there trying to make random expressions and not getting any response from my body.

Huh, it seems I've got the perfect poker face now.

I probably have an unsettling appearance due to my lack of emotion though, you can't even learn anything from the direction my eyes are pointing.

I need to jump ten feet to get to the next pillar, but I also need to drop ten feet too. I'm hesitant to try, **** by fall damage is never fun, but I should also be able to make it. I'd never trust myself to in the real world, but this body should be easily strong enough to do it.

My main worry is overshooting and crashing into the wall before then falling to my ****. I think I can do it though. I've already been standing here for a few minutes undecided, but I really want to know what's in this cave.

I've always been the exploration type.

Deciding that it'll be fun either way, I take a moment to steady myself before launching off the edge of the platform. I land directly in the center of the first pillar, and then nearly roll off the edge as I fail to catch myself properly, tumbling onto my side and rolling a few feet until I loose momentum.

I stand up after a second to orient myself, then look over the ledge right beside me to the next landing. Well, I'm not dead yet. Might as well keep practising.

The next jump goes a bit smoother. I manage to catch my weight with my paws but still end up stumbling a few steps, and immediately move onto the next platform.

As I continue downward, I feel myself rapidly becoming more accustomed to this body, and by the time I make it all the way around the room, I'm barely stopping before immediately jumping to the next pillar.

I finally manage to see the floor once I'm just one jump from being directly under the first platform, the only one that isn't a pillar, and I find myself just ten foot above a cold stone floor, made up of simple tiles. Everything is the same dull grey, with the lighting level very low, but I can still see relatively fine.

I drop the last few feet to the floor, turning to face the large stone doors on the opposite side of the room. They're thirty feet tall, and decorated with a depiction of what seems to be a demon on either side, vicious looking humanoids with horns, wings, and a tail, and are left slightly ajar.

The gap between them is about six feet wide, a bit more than necessary for me to fit through, and beyond them is a high-ceilinged tunnel, about as large as the doors themselves.

The door is set in the wall between two pillars, directly opposite the entrance above me. I walk towards it with the same pace I approached the entrance, not quite cautious but not carefreely either, more casual.

It seems abandoned so far, and I don't see anything indicative of a dungeon beyond the doors, so my curiosity is only rising as I get closer. I step into a deserted hall, passing through the doors unhindered, and continue silently walking.

After a few minutes of walking, I find a corpse leaning against the wall. It's the only thing I've seen other than plain stone walls so far, a dried out husk of a human, seemingly dead for quite the while.

It's... not what I expected to find. There's also nothing I can really do about it, so I continue on after a brief moment of hesitation, only showing in the slight slowing of my steps.

As I'm stepping past the corpse, it lunges at me. I don't have time to think before decaying hands are grasping at my face, and the next thing I know the zombie is impaled through the chest by a seemingly flower of blades, hanging in the air a few feet away from my head.

I then realize a moment later that it's my tail the corpse is hanging from, and that the cluster of spikes at the end has fanned out into a literal ball of pointy ****.

I didn't even think before I did it, it was an automatic reaction. Something attacked me, so I stabbed it.

Is that what my problem is? I'm thinking too hard about how to use my body?

It seems to be the case, seeing as I didn't think at all here and it was so easy to stab the zombie. Moving the spikes on my tail is such a weird experience. I can't feel the spikes themselves and can only know how spread they are based on how much strength I'm putting into the muscles they're attached to, with the spikes wanting to naturally close back into a pod if I stop holding them open.

Kind of like making a flower bud bloom...

So now I'm part cat, squid, and plant?

I feel a hint of amusement at the thought, turning my attention from my own body to the dead human currently holding my spike cluster open with its flesh.

I shake the tip of my tail slightly and it easily slides off, falling lifelessly to a heap on the ground, landing with a dull thud. There's nothing stuck to my spikes, but I doubt they're in any way clean, so I'll have to find out how to wash that part of my body later.

I'm not licking rotten human juice off my tail. The smell's bad enough.

The air down here is stale and I'm moving though, so I quickly leave the smell behind after a few meters of walking. I continue down the tunnel, trying to let myself just walk, rather than focusing on every step, and it works out surprisingly well.

It's another ten minutes of walking before I find another corpse, and this one lunges at me before I near it, stumbling the few feet of space before my head in a singleminded haste.

I whip my tail at it, making sure to take a mental step back and just do it, and the still closed cluster at the end impacts it's head with a crunch. I'm getting better at this, I think.

I find one last corpse before the end of the tunnel, this one similarly dead after one hit with my tail. I'm trying to keep any contact with them away from my face, as the smell is horrid and my sense of smell is much stronger than it used to be.

The hall ends with a flat wall, and an open arch made of stone bricks, about eight feet across. There is a warm light coming through the opening, and I move forward slowly.

Stepping out of the tunnel, I find myself standing on a sort of balcony, looking over a large room. The stone in this room is of a lighter, brown color, dyed a warm yellow-tan by the braziers along the right and left walls. The far wall has another double door, this one closed and nearly as tall as the room. About fifty feet.

Short spikes of stone sticking up out of the ledge in front of me hint at there once being a railing here, and there are a few steps leading down to the floor on either side of me, about ten feet away each. The edge of the balcony is only five foot from the door, meaning that a portion of my hindquarters is still in the hall, and the drop to the floor is only six feet.

While the fire burning in each brazier is large, it doesn't look like enough to light up the whole room, and I don't know how I could see on my way here, now that I think about it.

Eh, it's unimportant at the moment.

The room is also a bit more decorated than anything I've seen so far. It's about seventy feet from wall to wall, in each direction, and the door on the other side is fifty feet wide. The door itself has five large circles composed of strange symbols on it, and I can see similar circles mirrored on the floor.

I have all of three seconds to take this all in before I notice the ten corpses staggering to their feet around the room.