Learning to hunt

Oh, I should probably warn you about this too.
I write about some really strange stuff, and not in the fetish sense.
I just have a sort of style that most people either avoid, or aren't able to get quite right.

I've been moving through the forest for a few hours now, and it's starting to get dark. In that time, I have learned a few things.

For one, running in this body is quite enjoyable. It's been my main method of movement since I was confident enough to not smash into a tree, and is very good for my bodily control. Getting the right motions took a few minutes, but once I had them I was loping through the forest in that sort of bounding leap that most animals have when they're sprinting.

There were a few slip-ups, but my reaction speed was good enough to save me from any painful collisions with the forest flora. Also, hunger is a thing in this game. I'm not starving to **** hungry, but I should probably find something to eat before the end of tomorrow.

Noticing my hunger had me thinking about what I'm supposed to eat, which caused me to realize that I don't know how to hunt. And that's not even counting my new form.

My best guess would be that I should just follow one of the scent trails until I come across something living and edible, but I don't know what to do after that.

I guess I need to kill it. That's easy, I've played many games before where you hunt monsters, but they're always easy to find and generally attack you first. I doubt it'll be the same here based off of what I've seen so far.

None of the creatures I've come across have had any indication of name or level around them, and none have tried to fight me either. It's incredibly realistic, honestly, but that just makes it so much harder.

After a while of thinking about it, I've decided that stealth is the best option. I'll try to sneak up on something, and then attack when it's close enough that it shouldn't have the time to react.

Assassin was never my most played class, but I've done a few stealth missions before. Of course, they were all assisted by skills and abilities, sometimes to the point that I could bust down a door without being noticed, but it's better than nothing.

Water should be easy to find, so I'm not worried about that. Food is my main priority, well, after shelter anyway. I've been looking for a place to sleep for the past ten minutes.

The forest around me hasn't changed much, other than the level of light of course, and the sun should be finished setting within the next forty minutes.

It's been an interesting start to the game, but now I just want to lay down somewhere and sleep. I've already been awake since the morning in the real world, and now I've spent another half a day in accelerated time with no sleep.

After a few more minutes of running, I come across a small hole in a hill. It looks to be the den of some creature, but by the lack of a strong scent around it, seems to be abandoned.

This is exactly what I've been looking for, and It is just barely big enough for me to squeeze into. It takes a bit of squirming as I try to get through the entrance, but thirty seconds later I'm lying comfortably curled up against the back wall, head set on the ground so I can look out the entrance with three eyes.

It's the same position I woke up in, which is the only reason I was able to find such a comfortable way to lay down so quickly, and I immediately close my eyes to sleep.

That's when I realize that I can close my eyes.

I haven't done so once since I entered the game. I haven't had the urge to blink, felt like my eyes were getting dry, needed to close them when the lighting changed, or anything like that. Even when I had that leaf pressed against my face I didn't think to close my eyes, instead using a tentacle, and I woke up with them already open.

Now, I'm sitting in darkness, contemplating the sensation of drawing the six different coverings over my eyes. It's nothing like closing an eyelid, I can't even feel whatever it is that is covering my eyes, just the muscles used to move them.

After a few seconds, I open my eyes again, then close them once more. I soon find out that each individual eye covering can be moved independently, unlike my eyelids in my human body, and spend a few minutes closing and opening them in idle patterns, getting used to yet another set of strange sensations.

After a while I stop though, closing each eye and actually letting myself drift off into sleep.

I wake early, when the sun is just barely above the horizon. Sleeping was weird, it felt like I never actually fell asleep, and I can remember every sound I heard throughout the night, but it also feels like it's only been a few minutes since I closed my eyes.

I have a feeling that I would have woken instantly if anything happened, but the night was uneventful. Is this what it's like to be a light sleeper? Or is it some other thing the game has changed about me due to my race?

Well, it doesn't really matter, just another odd thing to add onto the pile. I should stop thinking like a human at this point, common sense is just going to confuse me if I listen to it.

I worm my way out of the small burrow, shaking loose bits of dirt and dust off as I stand. Shaking myself like a dog might is actually quite easy, and I didn't really think before doing it.

After a second to look around- uh, stand in place while observing the surroundings, I turn and set off at a run in the direction I had been traveling the night before.

Swinging my head around while breathing shallowly, I quickly pick up a scent that smells alive. It's more a mix of different scents that I've come to associate with animals in this forest over the past day, but with the way it all mixes together it seems like one unique scent.

The creature I'm tracking isn't something I've seen before, so I have no idea what it might be, but I hope it's something edible and not a raid boss level beast.

Thinking that far, I slow down, suddenly a lot more cautious of the surroundings than I have been so far. I don't know where I'll respawn if I die or how long it will take, and getting one shot by a dragon doesn't sound good with that in mind.

The next minutes are spent slowly creeping through the trees, attempting to move as silently as possible as I follow the trail. I'm moving along a small, winding path- a game trail, I think -and I'm pretty confident it isn't a dragon I'm tracking now. It could still be some other powerful being though, so I remain cautious.

As I move, I'm getting better at being quiet, but the fact that I can see the ground and have padded feet is probably the main reason for that. Placing my feet on things that don't snap with my weight is definitely helping though, and I'm experimenting with exactly how I place them as I go.

It's going to take a while before I can be considered a natural predator though.

After a while I start to smell water along with the scent I'm following, and a minute later I start hearing quiet huffing up ahead. That reminds me that I'm supposed to be pressing my tentacles against the trees around me, and the moment I do the sounds from up ahead become louder, but also different.

The main thing I hear is footsteps, echoing around from a number of positions I can't make out with my limited experience in this type of hearing, but I can at least tell that there's more than one.

Or it's something like a giant centipede. I'm hoping it's a herd of some type of herbivore.

I can't see anything through the trees around me, but they sound relatively close, so I stop advancing and pause to think about how to continue.

There isn't much wind blowing with how dense the forest is, so scents are staying relatively centered on their origin, or the path said origin takes, which is probably the only reason I've been having such an easy time tracking things. This also means that they shouldn't notice me unless I move into their sight or make too much noise.

If it's a giant centipede then I'm not going to try to fight it.

I decide to try climbing a tree. It should give me a better line of sight and they probably aren't looking up. Moving over to the closest tree large enough to hopefully support my weight, I start climbing in the same way I did up on the cliff.

It goes relatively smoothly, if a bit slow because of my attempts at stealth, and I find myself standing on a few decent sized branches, concentrating on controlling my weight distribution so that I don't bend the branches too much, after a few minutes.

I wrap each of my tentacles around other branches within reach, using them to further disperse my weight, while leaving my tail free for balance. It seems to help, so I slowly start moving forward, only ever taking one limb off a branch at a time.

An NPC Taedreno would probably be able to do this as fast as they walk normally, but I'm moving along at maybe a few feet every thirty seconds. I don't really have any accurate measurements, but if these trees are the same as on earth, then I should be around four and a half feet tall at the shoulder, and maybe six feet long if you don't count my tail.

That makes my tail about nine feet long, nearly ten with the spike cluster added on. That reminds me, I haven't really experimented with the spikes yet. I think they're supposed to be both poisonous and detachable, the description mentioned that somewhere.

I'll get to it when I'm done with my current goal.

My tentacles are actually longer than half the length of my tail, but only appear that long while held in the normal position due to them having to curve around my head. And I'm glad for that, because it would probably be a bit harder to do this if I couldn't reach nearly the entire length of my body away from me with them.

I haven't actually held them straight back towards my tail yet, another thing to try once I'm done here.

In my time contemplating my approximate size, I've managed to move another few trees closer, and I'm finally able to see into the small clearing before me.

The most notable thing is a small pond, maybe two or three times my length- again, not including my tail -and looks to be the result of a dip in the ground being in the path of a stream.

There is a bit of space between the forest and the water on this side, creating a nice open stretch with enough room for a dozen deer sized animals to stand comfortably.

And that is exactly what I see. There are only eleven after a quick count, and they look mostly like the deer from earth. They all have bone white antlers though, and their necks are thicker, kind of like a moose's. None of them are facing me, with most faced away and drinking from the water, and from what I can see most of them are also female.

I'm not sure how to continue from here. They seem oblivious to my presence, and I could easily jump over them and into the pond from my current position, so they're definitely in range, but I'm uncertain as to exactly what to do now.

Well, first I should pick out a target, I guess. Are you supposed to shoot the male or female?

Eh, it's a game.

Most of them are female and none look pregnant, so I decide to go for the closest of them. Looking down at it, the deer look-alike is two in from the edge of their line by the water, on the far right side.

The one to its right is also drinking from the water and the last on that side is staring cautiously into the forest to my right. None of the ones from the center and left side of the herd are looking in this direction.

Now, the closest I've ever been to this experience is when I was waiting to ambush a few player killers with a friend, and I had a crossbow then. This race is obviously made for more close range fighting, seeing as I don't have a crossbow. And then there's also the long claws and many sharp teeth.

Those tail spikes will probably be useful in close quarters combat too, and these tentacles probably mean this race excels at grappling.

Okay, I have quite a few ways to kill the deer, it's just that I've never used any of them. Well, I have to start somewhere, and I'm also going to have to eat it raw.

I guess I should use my mouth to attack, which will let me hold onto it with my claws. I can jump from the tree and land on its back, that should give me the best chance of not letting it escape, and biting into its neck should be the fastest way to kill it.

Okay, that should work.

I shift my posture, hind legs bunching against the tree trunk behind me as my tentacles slowly release the surrounding limbs. I take a moment to judge the distance between us once more as I wait for it to start lowering its head back down to the water after glancing up to scan the surroundings, then kick off the tree the moment it does.

Oh fuck, I hope blood tastes good.

I reach the deer a moment after that thought, its muzzle just barely touching the water. My front claws touch first, digging into its shoulders. An instant later all four of my tentacles are winding around its antlers as my full weight impacts with its form, last set of claws finding purchase between its hips and flank.

I clamp my jaws around the back of its neck, biting down hard and jerking my head back. A large chunk of the neck comes with me as the deer's legs buckle under my weight.

The taste of blood floods my mouth, and then I notice the shape of my tongue as the liquid washes over it.

It makes me pause, to notice that my tongue is now much longer than it was as a human. I sit there motionlessly atop the now very much dead deer, as the rest of the herd reacts to my appearance with panicked braying as they take off into the forest.

It's only been a few seconds since I jumped and so much has happened, while I'm still sitting here focusing on my tongue.

The base of my tongue is thick, positioned in the back of my throat and is nearly as wide as my mouth, about four inches. It then tapers off into a point along its length. From what I can feel, I can probably extend it a foot past my snout if I open my mouth.

I haven't opened my mouth once since I woke up in this body, nor moved my tongue. I don't need to lick my lips to moisten them anymore, apparently.

Huh, it's sort of like blinking. Are there any other things I'm not realizing I've stopped doing yet?

Well, not off the top of my head.

After a few seconds of twisting my tongue around in odd directions, I remember that my mouth is still filled with blood, which causes me to instinctively swallow.

The feeling of a chunk of flesh traveling down my throat is about as weird as having a tentacle for a tongue. I get over it quickly, it's more interesting than uncomfortable.

I then focus back on the deer corpse beneath me. While blood doesn't really taste good it's not bad either. And I'm still hungry.

Ten minutes later, I'm lying on the grass a few feet from the deer carcass, licking blood from my fur while basking in the early morning sun. I'm licking my fur clean rather than jumping into the pond because it works, and as practise for manipulating my tongue.

I also see why animals like basking in sunlight now, I could stay like this for hours and the sun isn't even that high yet. I have a city to get to though, so after a few minutes of relaxing once I'm finished cleaning myself, I **** myself to get up and head back into the forest.

I'm not sure how much farther I've got to go, but I'll get there eventually.