Chapter 1: New Project
Before I knew it, I was standing in a line.
I was surrounded by people wearing a confused look on their face. It seemed like I wasn't the only one who didn't know what was going on.
The man standing in front of me suddenly started to grope his front, patting across his stomach.
"I, I thought I was gonna die...was it just a dream?"
His hand stopped just above his belly before he stared at them.
(Die?)
My mind went back to my last memory.
I was working on an indie game, but I encountered a game-breaking bug less than a month before the release. My bank account was almost empty and my credit cards hardly had any leeway left in them. I spent the last two weeks trying to rewrite a third of the game to get rid of the bug and put the game into a playable form, sacrificing pretty much all my sleep along the way.
I didn't eat much either during then, not like I could afford the time or money it took to go shopping.
I gambled everything on this game. After years of working dead-end jobs, I had enough and wanted to do something I was proud of. The result was the depletion of my life savings as I desperately coded my own game for over a year.
The night before release, I was suffering chest and head pains, but I bulldozed through that, and managed to send the final build to the publisher minutes before the deadline.
After that, nothing came up. I probably fell asleep, but that didn't connect with where I was.
No, in a sense, it did.
The man in front of me clearly thought he was stabbed and was on the verge of dying, but now he's fine and is standing in a mysterious line along with tons of others who are just as confused as we both are.
(I must've died, and now this is the afterlife.)
All I could do was crack a wry smile at the thought. I gambled a year of my life away, and in the end, I died without seeing the fruit of my labours?
It wasn't like I was hoping to get rich and famous, but at least make enough to survive until I could release another game.
Now I wouldn't know if any of my work would've paid off at all. Even if it had, even if it became some sort of impossible smashing success, I wouldn't know.
Well, I would actually. I wasn't conceited enough to think that such a thing would happen. And I knew my game better than anyone else. It probably would've flopped. The reception to what little advertising I could afford was lukewarm, and the state the game was in at the end was barely playable.
The best I could hope for was paying off my credit card bills and keeping me going long enough to find another dead-end job.
In a sense, it was a relief. Now that I was dead, I didn't have to worry about any of that. I didn't have to go through the crushing humiliation of a year of my life wasted, the thought that the best I could do was virtually dick all.
The line continued to move as I thought to myself.
"She's not here, is she?"
The man in front of me was muttering to himself all this time, his head swivelling around trying to check people out in the line, occasionally returning to hug himself, chewing on his thumbnail.
He must've had a traumatic death if he was acting like this.
It didn't take long before the barren hallway we were following opened up into a large, mostly featureless room. All along the walls were an incredible number of identical doors with a light strip affixed above them. Most of them were red, with a few being unlit. Occasionally one of the red lights turned green, and someone would walk over from the line and enter the door. The light turned red again once it closed.
As I got close to the beginning of the line, I saw a huge man wearing a colourful toga standing guard, guiding each person to the rooms with green lights.
He looked a bit like a friendly police officer I sometimes saw that looked like he lived in a gym when not at work. Well, aside from the toga, at least.
Sometimes people would ask questions or argue with him, but he patiently gave people instructions. When they didn't listen, he dragged them by the arm or collar to one of the green rooms before coming back.
I was pretty curious what was behind the doors. A closer inspection revealed that each one had a plate with a word or two on them, but I couldn't read what was said on them. The script of each was different, and there didn't seem to be any sort of pattern to connect them. It was like each plate was written in a different language.
My curiosity about the doors was growing overwhelming, especially the doors with unlit light bars. It looked like nobody was going into them.
Was it because they weren't currently in use? Or was it a difference reason?
The only way to know was to check for myself, but the guard was paying close attention to everyone in the line.
Not only that, but while I saw tons of people enter the doors, I never saw anyone exit one once. It seemed like people went somewhere else after going through those doors, yet it was strange to think that there was more hallways beyond them. There were simply too many doors, and the architecture needed to make it work was insane.
Then again, if this really was the afterlife, then common sense wouldn't apply, nor logic or physics at that.
A few more minutes pass and I had become second in line, with the fidgeting man being next to dissapear.
Without warning, the giant guard pointed to a green-lit door.
"C'mon, it's your turn"
"Huh? No. What's that?"
The guy started to argue back.
"Sorry, I can't answer your questions. Just calm down and go through that door"
"No way man! How do I know you're not gonna torture me over there?!"
"As long as you stay calm and do as you're told, nothing bad will happen. We accommodate everyone the best we can"
"How can I trust you?! Nobody's come back from those doors!"
I was a little surprised. I didn't think he was in a state of mind to notice that.
"That's because these doors are one way only. You're holding back the line. Please just go through the door"
"Nuh uh. No way! Screw that! I can't trust you at all!"
The man backs away. It looked like he was thinking of making a break for it.
"Whoops, can't have you break the rules"
Faster than I could see, the guard grabbed the man's arm and started to drag him to the aforementioned door.
Despite the scene and everyone staring at the spectacle, the thought that went through my mind first was something quite different.
(This is my only chance)
Without sparing a second thought, I ran while making as little noise as I could towards the first unlit door I saw. I only had one shot at this. While I had no idea what the consequences of my actions would be, I could argue that any punishment they tried to give me for doing this was fundamentally unfair, since there was no indication that I wasn't allowed to do this.
"Hey, wha...?"
Someone noticed and whispered a cry, but I ignored that person. Instead, I quickly reached the door and turned the knob.
It wasn't locked, no was there anything to it beyond what I expected.
Without any hesitation, I slipped past the door and closed it quietly behind me.
The room beyond the door was properly lit, yet there wasn't anyone there.
(Talk about a waste of electricity)
...presuming the lighting was powered with it.
What greeted me was what appeared to be a small office. There was a desk sandwiched between two chairs and a pair of house plants standing in pots in the far corners. I didn't recognize the plants, but that didn't mean much in the first place. The desk was lightly cluttered with some personal belongings and a large crystal orb propped up on a stand.
Aside from the orb, everything on the desk resembled random office toys, but as expected, I didn't recognize a single one. It was like a universal rule that if someone had actually seen your office toy before, it's a failure of an office toy.
Leaving the pointless gizmos aside, the only thing that might've not been useless was the crystal orb. Normally I'd have discounted it as just an oversized office toy, but in this place, my common sense didn't apply.
Without anything to lose, and me possibly running out of time before someone figured out where I went, I tried placing the palm of my hand on the orb.
Reacting to my touch, the crystal orb lit up for a few seconds, pulsating almost like a slow heartbeat, before settling on a dim glow. From there, a pair of screens appeared, one in front of each chair.
They were hovering in the air like holograms.
What was displayed on the screens looked like some sort of form. A profile picture of my face was plastered on the top left of the form. Beside and below it were a series of entry fields, most of which were empty, including my name for some reason.
While both screens looked to display the same thing at first, a few seconds of looking at each revealed a simple difference: the one for the chair away from the door was prompting for additional input.
It looked like normally I was supposed to meet someone in the room, who would fill in the various fields while taking my requests into consideration.
If that was the case, then rather than letting someone else dictate what would go into my information, I'd rather do it myself. At the worst, I'd get booted and forced to go through the procedure properly while under more strict supervision...most likely.
I sat down on the soft office chair and had a closer look.
At the top of the form, the words [New Incarnation Settings] was clearly labelled.
Most likely, the form was to set up my initial starting conditions on my next life.
(To think that these rooms were for setting up our reincarnations!)
If this was some sort of dream, then I didn't want to wake up.
I tried to touch the name field, but it was greyed out. It made sense, since normally your parents would name their new baby, not some sort of celestial power.
The next field was destination world. The word [Terheim] was already set, and touching the field didn't allow me to change it.
(Perhaps the rooms designated which world the reincarnator was going to go to?)
Following that was species. [Human] was placed there by default, but when I touched it, a drop-down box opened up, revealing a wide range of possibilities. The possibilities were nearly endless, but it quickly became obvious that almost all of them were automatic rejections. While most of them were things I'd never heard of, the fact that random animals and even bugs were on the list, the reincarnation process would allow me to become something that wasn't even sentient.
I wholeheartedly rejected that notion.
Lots of the staple fantasy races were on the list as well, but the one that stood out for me was the vampire.
Vampires had it's own unique set of strengths and weaknesses, but that in itself made them more interesting than any of the more typical fantasy races. I just hoped that they weren't considered to be a universally evil race or something.
When I selected vampire for my species, a whole slew of additional options were added a little further down.
The first of the new options was [apparent age]. It seemed like I could select what age I started as. Vampires weren't born as babies in this world it seemed.
I wasn't too surprised by that fact, since most myths have vampires be ageless, so they always had the same appearance as when they turned. I was a bit skeptical about how it would work for someone born as a vampire from the beginning, but didn't concern myself about it. There was no point in worrying about something you had no information about.
For age, I selected 16. I figured that it was old enough that I'd be fine with it for the rest of my next life, yet I'd get a few extra years if I did grow beyond that. Regardless of the world, it was also old enough to be independent, but young enough that I wouldn't be at a social reject for not being already married or something.
The next were a series of options regarding physical appearance.
For hair colour, I selected silver. For a vampire, black and silver are the only real options. I refused any other possibility. My own hair was near black, so I wanted something different for my next life, hence silver.
Eye colour was fixed to red. I couldn't change it.
Same with skin colour. It was fixed to pale.
The next option was height. Rather than simply just a drop-down box, this, as well as the rest, were all accompanied by sliders. The default settings on all of them were [Normal Distribution Random] and the sliders were greyed out.
When I opened the box, the revealed options were various other distribution patterns for random, with manual at the bottom.
I selected manual of course.
For height, I moved the slider to a bit under a quarter from the bottom.
My current height was well above average, just a bit over two meters. Frankly, my excessive height gave me no end of trouble, and I was eager to take the opposite end of the spectrum without hesitation. I've always envied people who could fit on a bus seat between two others without problems, or could walk through public places without worrying about hitting their heads on stuff.
Short people always envied tall people like me, but from my perspective, the world was designed for short people, and generally it was at the expense of the tall. At least that was my personal experience.
The next setting was physical attractiveness. That was maxed out. No doubt in my mind, there was no reason to go any less than that. Any debate there was a waste of time and energy.
I continued to play with the sliders a bit, but since there was no feedback, I wasn't sure about the effects. It wasn't like my portrait picture changed as I fiddled with my appearance settings.
Half unsatisfied, I moved on.
The next option almost blew my out of my seat.
The label for the section was [Skills].
At first, I wasn't sure what it meant, but looking further down, the meaning dawned on me. The [Skills] didn't refer to techniques that a person accumulates through knowledge and practice, but are quantified abilities built into the person themselves.
The first few entries proved that point splendidly.
Below the label [Skills] was another sub label [Default Skills], which had a single entry [Local Language] included. Touching it opened a tool-tip that described it in detail.
[Local Language]: Knowledge of the languages used in the incarnated world. Available by default for any users incarnated outside of standard birthing.
In other words, it gave me the ability to communicate with the people of the world because I wouldn't have a few years to learn under parents. It was a pretty considerate skill. It made me realize how odd it was that I could read the form in the first place, but I waved the idea away with the presumption that any power that could reincarnate people across multiple world would find the ability to adjust systems to allow anyone to understand them was a pretty paltry ordeal.
Below [Default Skills] was another sub label [Racial Skills], and under that was the two skills [Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)] and [Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)]. I opened the tool-tips on them to read their descriptions.
[Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)]: Allows one to suck a target's blood or similar fluids and absorb their essence.
[Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)]: Strengthen one's own body as if it were a weapon. Exclusive to claws and fangs for vampires.
The sight of this made me want to jump for joy. It seemed like the world I had inadvertently chosen was ruled by game mechanics. It was like many of those books that had grown popular lately.
The fact that the skills had a [1] on them implied that they could be improved further, and that the world quantified the people's abilities in a tangible way. Once something was systematized, the possibility of loopholes and exploits appeared. The thought of finding such a thing excited me.
Unfortunately, the fields stated that I had zero available points to purchase starting skills. Reexamining the fields again, I saw that [Local Language] cost zero points, [Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)] cost one point, and [Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)] cost a whopping four points. As the latter two were both racials, I couldn't remove either to get some points back. Not like I'd remove blood sucking. If I didn't have that, I doubt I'd survive long as a vampire. I had no idea how normal food would effect a vampire, but I doubted I'd get much nutrition from such a thing. [Local Language] was a freebie, so I didn't touch that even to see if I could remove it in case I couldn't figure out how to get it back.
Below that was a few more options labelled under [Miscellaneous], and among them was one of particular concern for me: [Memories upon incarnation].
The default option was erase. I impatiently changed it to preserve. I absolutely didn't want my memories to be erased. It would ruin the whole point of everything I was doing. If I didn't remember who I was, then it was the same as doing this all for a complete stranger, rather than myself.
The next option I looked closely at was [Starting Location]. The default option read [Racial Default]. The tool-tip only gave the vague message of starting in locations typical for the chosen race. I imagined that simply meant being born from a mother like normal for a human or being more likely to be born in a big city, but the message was too vague and generic to satisfy me. The lack of context made me extremely uneasy.
I went through the options, but they were all pretty vague and generic. Each one was in the vicinity of something generic, like a city, lake, mine, mountain, etc. This form was probably made to work for any world, so there probably wasn't any options to get more specific than that.
Then I noticed one option that was a bit different from the others: [In the vicinity of rich resource deposits preferred by chosen race]
The tool tip implied that it would put me near a location that was one of the highest concentrations of resources that were considered extremely desirable by the race I chose. The impression it gave was that for a place with lots of small rodents and birds for a fox, or maybe a literal gold mine for humans?
Just like the others, it was vague, but it felt more reliable than the others. Especially when I had no idea what kind of landscape would be preferable for vampires, nor what kind of association other races had with them as well.
Finally, I reached the bottom of the form, and a strange field was waiting for me.
[User Privilege Level]
When I opened the drop-down box, it revealed four options: Minimal, Standard(default), Moderator, Administrator.
I selected the fourth option without any hint at hesitation. When the admin option exists, always pick it. That was my belief.
But before closing the box down, a warning window opened up.
[Warning, administrator rights can only be given to a limited number of users per world. In addition, rights cannot be changed until user returns to the Life Settlement Facility. Available administrators in chosen world: 1/1. Do you wish to proceed?]
It was a bit unfortunate that if I hit yes, I'd be taking the only admin slot for the world, but I couldn't bear with not taking the privilege while I had the chance, so I unwaveringly hit yes.
With that, all the fields were completed, so I hit complete at the bottom.
[Confirm settings]
Of course I hit ok.
With a smile, I sit back. I had no idea if what I did would actually do anything, and even if I had succeeded, I had no clue as to what came next.
To me left was the sound of paper being rolled out.
I sat up in surprise and grabbed the sheet as it came out from a slit on the left side of the desk.
When I looked at the sheet I was lightly pulling on, I saw the details of the form I had just completed was being printed out, starting from the bottom.
While I wasn't sure what would come next, it looked like I had done everything right up to this point.
Suddenly, a pillar of light descended from above, surrounding me. Little motes of light rose up and my body felt like it was losing it's weight.
*Rrriiippp*
While I was distracted, I accidentally pulled too hard on the printed sheet and it ripped into two.
Before I could do anything about it, the light grew stronger, blinding me. My feet rose off of the ground, then everything went dark.
Chapter 2: First Steps
I opened my eyes.
When I came to, I was lying on a patch of grass under the shade of a tree.
Sitting up, I had a look around.
I was in the middle of a forest. The trees were pretty big, but I could see the dark blue sky easily in the many breaks in the canopy.
Through one particularly large break, I could see the peak of a large mountain. I repeatedly blinked, confirming and reconfirming what I could see surrounding that peak.
...For some reason I could see the stars even though it was the day.
...For some reason there were three suns, each a different colour.
...For suns, they weren't that bright. I was forced to squint, but I didn't get bright spots in my eyes for looking directly at them.
Still, it was a strange feeling to see a red, green, and blue sun rather than a single yellow sun.
As weird as it was, such a thing was a minor point for me right now. It was much more important for me to get my bearings.
The last thing I remembered was confirming the form entry in that weird office after slipping out of that strange line.
(That's right! I reincarnated!)
I quickly looked down to confirm my new body, but my excitement was quickly washed away with confusion.
The view as I tried to look down at my hands was pretty alien to me. The various shapes and sizes didn't match up with anything I was used to. My hands were tiny, and my limbs were slender. On top of that, it looked a bit like someone stuck their butt in front of me, but at an impossible angle.
A quick glance around me confirmed that I was alone, so I raised my hands and grabbed hold of the bulbous mounds that were blocking my sight.
I could feel my fingers sinking into the soft flesh as I squeezed.
My mind reeled. This feeling that was foreign to me was clearly being transmitted to my brain.
Hoping against hope, I put a hand between my legs and felt around, but that last desperate wish was shattered when a completely alien sensation started to signal my brain.
No longer having the energy to keep myself propped up, I flop back down onto my back and stare at the sky.
Now that I was looking at it more properly, the sky was strangely dark looking. It was more of a dark blue with some splotches of colour here and there, along with all the stars and three suns. It was hard to imagine it was the midday sky, but everything below that suggested it was so.
The vegetation around me didn't look too different from Earth, but the sky, and of course my own body was.
I looked at my own hands. They were tiny and so frail looking. My arms were like sticks. It wasn't like there wasn't any meat on them, but even the bones underneath were small. My fingers overlapped when I wrapped them around my wrist. I couldn't do that before. They wouldn't even touch.
There was so much I didn't know about myself or this world.
No, in a sense, I didn't know anything yet. It was possible almost all my knowledge and common sense didn't apply in this world. There wasn't anyone around me to help either, so I was stuck figuring it all out on my own.
Being dropped into the wilderness with nothing to my name, I had to start with survival in mind.
Rather, I didn't even have a name, now that I thought about it. I could certainly use the name from my last life, but considering how much changed about me, it didn't feel right.
Well, my name didn't matter if I didn't have anyone to call me by.
I dug into my memories, and found some stale, half-baked knowledge about survival that I picked up randomly online at some point.
"When it comes to survival in the wilderness, always keep the rules of three in mind" I mumbled to myself.
The cute, high pitched voice that reached my ears made my back itch. It felt so unnatural for such a sound to come out of my mouth, but I had to get used to that.
(The rules of three state that you can only survive for three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food, and three months without hope)
Well, I was breathing fine, so I had already cleared the first step. The second was my next concern. Shelter didn't refer to a structure hide in, but rather something to generally protect yourself from the elements. In other words, clothes. Something I was really lacking in.
I looked at my bare skin and sighed. If I was looking at this body from the third person, I'd have been pretty excited, but the first person perspective ruined it for me.
The three hours without shelter most likely referred to suffering from exposure and freezing to death, but I wasn't cold in the slightest. The environment didn't feel particularly warm, but I didn't feel cold despite that. Even still, I did want to protect my dignity at least, even if nobody was around to strip me of my modesty.
After that, water was next on the list, and food after that. There was no harm in looking for all three at the same time, but it was important to properly prioritize.
With that thought in my mind, I quickly rose up, and almost came crashing down just as fast.
My centre of gravity had drastically changed, making it more difficult to stay balanced. Not only that, but my legs were further apart than in my last life, making my steps awkward.
To think simply standing was so difficult in a new body. I wondered how much of that was attributed to my differing sex and how much was simply because it was a new body.
I took a few careful steps to confirm my new balance before taking a look around.
There really wasn't much remarkable about my surroundings. I was surrounded by trees, ferns and bushes grew scattered all around, with patches of grass marking where the light of the sun filtered through the broken canopy.
To my side, though, there was one thing that was out of place. Aside from myself, of course.
That was a flimsy piece of white something that didn't look natural at all.
I picked it up and had a glance, to reveal that it was that sheet of paper that I grabbed right before I was transported to this new world. The top of it was ripped off so my old portrait wasn't on it, nor was the first few settings.
The first line was torn, making it hard to read, but I made out the words [Sex: Female]. The entries below that were the appearance settings I went straight to after I selected my species. It was pretty obvious I skipped that line because my eyes were attracted by the options below it. To think I made such a blunder.
It made me worried I had skipped over any other important information and I skimmed through the form just in case. In the end, I didn't see anything else wrong. When it came to oversight, that seemed to be the only real blunder I had made back then, but it was a big one.
I didn't want to live out my second life as a woman, but it wasn't like I had a choice. I had no idea how to get back to that strange space aside from dying, and even if I succeeded, there was a high chance that I wouldn't be allowed to get all the things I wanted, like keeping my memories, or remembering my past, or especially preserving the knowledge of my previous lives. Not being able to be the same sex as my previous life sucked, but it wasn't as bad as it could be, and it was only a matter of time before I got used to it.
I scratched my head, but gave up thinking about it. Survival came first, and the consequences of my mistake could be left until I met some of the locals.
Stepping away from the tree I arrived beside, I took the torn paper with me. It was the sole physical memento I had of my previous life, even if it neither existed while I was alive, nor did it have any information regarding my old self, but I was reluctant to dispose of it, and leaving it for someone else to find was dangerous.
I folded the sheet and held it firmly in the palm of my left hand as I started to trek across the forest, careful with my steps. I was barefoot, so any little thing could cut my soles, limiting my ability to get around many-fold.
My balance was extremely unsteady, but the actual act of moving around was surprisingly easy. Either my new body was stronger than my old, or I was simply that much lighter. Or both. Most likely both. The last year especially I spent most my time secluded indoors as I worked my failure of a project.
I couldn't help but keep touching my chest as it swayed. If anything, I was really starting to want something to hold it in place. I dreaded the idea of having to run while the pair of flesh globes bounced around trying to get me to trip.
Frankly, it might've been because of my perspective, but they were big. Not as big as some other women I've seen, but way bigger than what I'd have liked on myself. Which was to say I wish I didn't have them in the first place, but that was nothing more than denying my reality.
The reason felt a bit different, but I did need to adhere to the second of the survival rule of threes.
With no particular goals, I headed towards the mountain I could see through the occasional break in the tree-line, the only distinct landmark I had.
As I walked, I admired everything around me, staring at one new sight after the next.
The strange shapes of the bushes to the large trees that rivalled the tallest I've ever seen in pictures.
My feet frequently stopped. At first it was because I lost my balance while staring at something as I walked past it, but eventually it changed to me just stopping to have a closer look at things. Sometimes it was an oddly shaped leaf on the ground, or others it was a bug I've never seen before crawling or flying around.
This world was simply mysterious, and surprisingly beautiful. That thought was even more impressive considering that I was fundamentally the indoor type in my last life. Maybe it was because I was happy with everything I could see from my computer monitor before, but here, where I had to physically move to see something, walking around and exploring was an exciting experience.
That said, I was worried about my ability to survive on my own. I had never taken any survival courses, and the closest thing I did was some outdoor activities during summer camp as a kid. I did read some bits and pieces on the field online, but it was all fragmentary, and hardly from reliable sources. Even more importantly, it was all knowledge from Earth. It was easily possible that none of it applied here, a world with three suns.
But there was nothing I could do but keep trying things until I find those that worked, and hence I kept walking. I picked up a rock and a strong looking stick for self defence. I didn't know if I was weak, but the stick took quite a bit of effort for me to break to size. Hopefully it would work as a decent club. Hopefully I wouldn't have to find out.
As I continued to walk, I noticed that the suns were moving to my left in the sky, suggesting I was moving north. Or south, depending on what the standard orientation was in this world, if there was even a common consensus regarding it.
I was growing hungry as the hours passed, but it was hard to find anything. I had no knowledge regarding foraging for food, especially when it came to figuring out if anything was edible or not. I tried sniffing a few fruit I found hanging in some of the trees, but they didn't smell very appetizing at all. Wary about eating something poisonous, I avoided them, but if I didn't find something to eat soon, I might be forced to gamble on it.
Suddenly, I smelt blood in the air. The scent was surprisingly strong, and it was easy for me to follow it.
There was barely a breeze blowing, so the smell probably wasn't coming from far away. But the strength of the scent probably meant that there must have been a lot of blood around. The worry that I was heading towards the scene of a slaughter was diminished by my hunger. The thought of fresh meat almost made me drool a bit.
I quickly moved from tree to tree, peeking out before each dash, trying to keep myself in cover as much as possible in case some great danger was responsible for the scent.
It wasn't long before I found the source of the smell, only to be greeted by a single small creature dancing around a small fire while holding the body of a bloody rabbit.
No matter where I looked, there weren't any other creatures nearby. My first reaction was annoyance that my initial reaction was so far off the mark, but it was quickly replaced by the thought that I had found an excellent opportunity.
The creature was humanoid, and was holding what looked like a rabbit in one hand and a simple spear in the other. It was pretty short and it's skin was moss green, and its face was ugly as all hell. It was entirely naked aside from a dirty loincloth that looked to be little more than old pelt hung around it's waist with string. It was yelling out while dancing in a circle. The yells didn't sound like intelligible words, and more like random animal howls.
It didn't look to be much more intelligent than a chimp.
All put together, it looked pretty much like that one fantasy monster: goblin. If my guess was right, then it was the cockroach of the fantasy world, meaning that killing it was a good thing. There wasn't anything to feel bad about the act, or rather, I'd be doing the world a favour by doing so, and I'd get an easy meal as a bonus.
With my mind made up, I threw the stone I was holding past the goblin. It sailed cleanly through the air and thumped hard against the ground.
The green stubbie dropped the rabbit and looked towards the sound, holding it's spear in both hands.
At the same time, I jumped out of my hiding spot behind a tree and dashed at the goblin. A few seconds late, the monster noticed the sound of my footsteps rushing towards it and turned to look my way.
"Hyaaah!"
I yelled out as I swung my stick with all my strength, doing my best to ignore how cute my yell sounded.
The goblin turned it's body to try to intercept my attack, but it was too late, and the blunt end of my stick smacked it clean in the forehead, knocking it down to the grown with pure force.
Hardly without any hesitation, I raised my improvised club and swung it again, impacting it against the goblin's skull. And again, and again.
By the time I stopped, it's head was clearly caved in, and any residual twitching had nothing to do with it's ability to fight back.
I fell onto my butt as I breathed heavily. It was the first time in both lives I've ever killed something bigger than a bug.
Despite that, it didn't feel as bad as I feared it might. I wasn't sure if I was inclined towards such a way of life in the first place, or I was more desperate than I realized and that just made it easier for me to throw away any previous inhibitions than I would otherwise.
The smell of blood was stronger than ever, and I could even tell the difference between the rabbit's blood and the goblin's blood.
Unexpectedly, it did nothing but stimulate my appetite even further, so without further ado, I took the goblin's spear and used it to cut open the rabbit.
The rabbit was a bit bigger than anything I've ever seen on Earth, but what really made it stand apart was it's incisor. In particular the top ones. They were much bigger and sharper than what rabbits normally had. It reminded me of the pictures of beavers I've seen before.
Frankly, they looked pretty dangerous for something that people normally associate with cute. It was a reminder that my common sense didn't work in this world.
I took the goblin's spear and used it to cut the animal open. The spearhead was made of stone, chipped into a pair of edges, and kept in place with some sort of string. The basic design was the same as those primitive spears often found in museums.
This, combined with the fact that it was wearing clothes, even if it was just a loincloth, compared to me, who was naked and wielded nothing but a broken branch, made me cry a bit on the inside. A fantasy cockroach was living a more civilized life than I had managed since coming to this world.
I, a human, the species of tool makers was beaten at that very act by a goblin.
(Wait, homo sapian meant wise man. Homo hablis was the handy man. By that logic, humans aren't defined by their ability to create and use tools, but their ability to use their heads)
I satisfied myself with those thoughts and continued to skin and cut up the rabbit.
Once I was done and lay the cut chunks of meat on top of the flayed hide, I went around and gathered small sticks and used them to spear the meat and stuck them near the fire the goblin had been dancing around.
Frankly speaking, the smell of the cooking meat wasn't that appetizing, and I couldn't help but keep checking to see if I had burned any of it or not. Instead of a nice roast or barbecue, it smelled like just burnt meat to me. Maybe it was because there wasn't any seasoning, or maybe that was the nature of this rabbit?
After a short while, and constant checking, I removed a fully cooked piece of rabbit meat and bit in.
End result: it was terrible.
It was sinewy and tasted like wet plaster, or at least what I imagined such a thing tasted like. I forced myself to chew the meat, but the juices that came out just made it worse.
In the end, I forced myself to swallow it, but even the feeling of the lump going down my throat felt bad. I couldn't help but wonder if I'd get sick eating something that tasted so terrible.
Just looking at the rest of the cooked meat made me groan and I just turned my back to the fire.
By accident, I ended up turning towards the goblin corpse. Without the smell of burnt meat constantly overpowering my sense of smell, I could smell the goblin's blood clearly. For some reason, despite how bad the meat was, the scent stimulated my appetite again.
It was strange that when the scent of cooked meat was disgusting to me, the scent of blood smelled delicious.
I unconsciously licked my lips.
As my tongue ran whetted my lips, it ran across my elongated canine.
The strange feeling made me realize my mistake.
These canines weren't those of a human, at least of the kind I was familiar with. That was because I had not only changed my gender, but my species as well.
I had completely forgotten about that fact due to the fact that I had been wandering around under the sun without any problems. It wasn't like there weren't any vampires that couldn't handle the sun fine in fantasy stories, but I just presumed that being under the sun equalled not vampire.
With that said, I couldn't help but stare at the base of the gooey mess I had made earlier. The goblin was getting cold, and a lot of the blood had already been soaked by the ground, but there was probably enough for a small snack.
My revulsion of drinking it's blood was actually much lower than I expected. It was probably related to how good it smelled and how hungry it was making me.
With a bit of trepidation, I flipped the goblin corpse onto it's front and put my lips to it's throat...and almost hurled.
Now that I was so close to it, the goblin's body odour became overpowering. Combined with the disgusting meal I just had, my body tried to reject everything it didn't like all at once.
I wished I had a bucket of water with me, but without such a thing, I grabbed some of the cooked meat and rubbed it along the goblin's neck. Careful as to avoid burning myself I held the meat using the stick. It was weird using perfectly good food to clean something so dirty, but for me now, meat was little better than garbage.
Once I had removed as much of the foul odour from the goblin neck as I could, I threw the remains of the rabbit meat into the fire and tried again.
The neck was slick with grease, but the smell was much more tolerable. With a bit of nervousness, I used my fangs to bite into the neck, then sucked the trickle of blood that came out.
The blood was a bit thin and tasted like a frozen dinner salisbury steak drenched in cheap gravy, but for me right now it was like drinking artisan honey after being starved for a day!
Forgetting myself, I sucked harder on the puncture wound. In the back of my mind, I was aware that I wasn't just drinking through my throat, but also through my fangs. It turned out they were hollow, and I was able to suck deeper using them.
I was ecstatic, and kept trying to suck more blood out even after the trickle ran dry. In a desperate attempt, I raised the goblin's legs up, hoping some blood welled further down the body after it's heart stopped. I was rewarded for my efforts with a few drops, but even that ran out much faster than I desired.
I released the goblin's corpse and flopped onto my back.
I grit my teeth in frustration. It was like being served a tiny sample of a dish from a first class restaurant after spending the day starved while waiting in line, only to be told I wasn't allowed to eat anymore.
(If only I remembered I was a vampire faster, I could've drank all of that goblin's blood.)
Such thoughts weren't productive in the slightest, so after a few minutes of rest, I got up and got ready to move out again.
I grabbed the goblin's spear and the rabbit pelt. It wasn't properly processed, but I figured the pelt could be used to make clothes once I worked on it a bit, and the spear was better than anything I could make on my own. In addition, I removed the goblin's loincloth. It was the dirtiest thing I've ever touched, previous life included, but if I could make it even remotely clean, it would help to restore my modesty.
That said, it stank to high heaven, so I hung it on the end of my new spear and carried that on my shoulder so I could stay as far away from the smell as I could. I also grabbed the rock I originally threw. Despite how primitive and simple it was, it had a variety of uses.
Now ready, I took off, continuing in the same direction I left off.
As I walked, I opened up the sheet of paper again. I had forgotten I was a vampire, so I wanted to confirm what settings I had set. For now, the important ones were my skills and the admin privileges I got. The latter I had no idea what to do with, or even what it was for, but the former suggested that I was capable of using special abilities. I had three skills according to the sheet: [Local Language], [Blood Sucking I (Vampire)], and [Natural Weapons I (Vampire)]. [Local Language] was pretty useless until I found someone I could talk to, [Blood Sucking] I had demonstrated already. I hoped to be able to use it again soon. [Natural Weapons] was the last, and the only one that was likely useful, but I hadn't tried yet.
The [Natural Weapons] for vampires were their claws and fangs.
I looked at my hands, specifically my nails. They were long and pointed, but hardly looked like claws. More like just typical women's nails, though on the shorter end of even that spectrum. Playing with them revealed the truth though. They weren't flexible like normal nails, and resisted my attempts at bending them. Not only that, but they were sharp. Very sharp. They really weren't like human nails, and more like the claws of the cat I used to have, despite it's shape.
Not only that, but when I tensed my fingers with the will to claw at something, they grew in length and curved inward a bit, showing their true form.
Aside from that, my fangs obviously made good weapons. Human teeth worked decently as weapons if you ever had the chance to actually use them, and my fangs were much longer and sharper than any human teeth. Even without any benefits given to me by my skill, they would've made fine weapons, presuming I got close enough to bite my enemies.
But with such game-like elements in play, I couldn't help but wonder what other game-like features existed in this world. Was it like a lot of the stories where there were levels and stats as well? If that was the case, then I'd definitely need to figure that sort of thing out.
As well, how to get new skills, on top of how to raise the skills I already had. Did they go up through usage, or was there more stringent requirements? Could I learn new skills by doing things, or was there something specific I needed to do to get them?
(For that matter, since this was a fantasy world, what about magic?)
If magic existed, I really wanted to learn the skills for it. I wanted to know about anything and everything that was impossible on Earth.
Instead of getting distracted by every new thing I saw, I ended up wandering around while my mind floated through the clouds as I thought about the possibilities.
Suddenly, I heard a strange yelling.
I perked my ears and heard more yelling. Rather, it sounded more like the cries of a wild animal, rather than coherent yelling. And it sounded familiar as well. It was similar to the cries made by that goblin.
It sounded like there were three distinct voices, but since the goblin cries were pretty incoherent and carried little meaning, it was difficult to tell. That said, I quickly crept up, dropping everything but my weapons in a bush.
When I peeked out from behind a tree, I saw three goblins squabbling, just as I expected. It looked like one was trying to get the other two to do something, but they were mostly ignoring the first one's demands, occasionally taunting as extra measure.
I felt pretty pathetic. The first time I got to see any social interactions in this world, and it was a group of squabbling goblins. Their so-called speech wasn't even coherent enough for my [Local Language] to pick up as anything intelligible.
Be that as it may, I was already licking my lips. I had a prime opportunity to get three goblins worth of blood right now if I succeeded. I couldn't forget the taste of my first kill.
All three goblins were dressed just like the first one I found, naked aside from a single loincloth each, and each carried a primitive weapon. The one yelling at the other two had a stone hatchet, and the other two spears like the one I had.
Considering the difference in length, the spears were a bigger threat to me, since I also had one, though since they were only about two thirds my height, my overall reach was better.
With that in mind, just like last time, I opened up with throwing my stone past the group.
When it impacted the ground, all three jumped and looked at the source of the sound, tightly gripping their weapons. The moment their heads turned, I sprinted out from my cover. I made almost the entire distance before they realized the real threat was behind them.
With a great swing, I bashed the first spear wielding goblin in the side of the head with my stone spear. A satisfying crack resounded, and the smelly green creature fell over lifelessly.
Without losing any momentum, I tightly gripped my spear and thrusted out with it at the second spear wielding goblin.
But to my surprise, while the spear did hit it's mark, the head broke off from impacting the monster's skull. I had damaged the cheap weapon in my last attack, and now it didn't do nearly as much damage as it should've.
Unperturbed, I take another step and try thrusting again. The initial impact knocked the goblin off balance, giving me a big opening. This time, the broken shaft found it's way into the ugly face's eye and broke through the thin bone behind it, braining the creature.
I tried pulling my weapon out, but it got caught and the goblin came with it, as if it had some sort of morbid attachment to my weapon. I let it be with it's fetishes as I turned to the third goblin empty handed.
The green cockroach had a look of shock at the fact that I took out two of it's comrades so quickly, but it composed itself when it realized that I had let go of my weapon.
With a sneer, it raised it's weapon and charged at me.
I, in the meantime, grinned and counter-charged.
The ugly goblin, surprised at the gap between us closing much faster than it anticipated, hesitated before swinging it's weapon. A fraction of a second too late, instead of burying it's stone axe into my body, it's shaft hit my left shoulder as my extended arm stabbed into it's chest.
The light quickly faded from it's eyes, but I was too busy to worry about that. Instead, I closed my fist and pulled on it's ribs, bringing it close to me, and I bit into it's neck as fast as I could.
The sweet taste of it's blood flooded my mouth, intoxicating me.
Words entered my head, but I was too preoccupied to worry about them.
Instead, I revelled in being able to taste this living nectar once again, and I desperately sucked it up, as if someone was threatening to take it away from me.
But the feeling disappeared all too soon. There was so little blood in the bodies of these goblins.
I limply dropped the goblin's body and turned around.
There were two more bodies on the ground.
The ecstasy of drinking blood made me forget, and I quickly rushed to the next body to fill my stomach of the honey-like fluids. Then once again on the third goblin.
With all three goblins drained of all of their life fluids, I collapse onto my back, rubbing my warm belly. I couldn't help but grin. I wasn't full, but I was satisfied. Never before had I ever felt so satisfied by anything.
I thought about how I didn't like blood much in my last life, and how it was thrown away by the meat industry like sewage, yet all I could think about was how much of a waste such an act was. If I was still on Earth, I'd have gone to one of those factory farms and found a way to buy it all.
I'd swim in it, and drink until I burst.
Without any hint of my smile fading, all I could go was giggle. I didn't even notice how girly and cute sounding it was, nor the disparity between my expression and my thoughts if viewed by an objective third party.
While basking in the afterglow of my meal, I was unable to realize how much my thoughts had changed already while I rested.
Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
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