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.
Chapter 3: The Nature Of Things
After a short break, I got back up and started to loot the bodies.
These goblins were even poorer than the first I found. All I got was two spears, an axe, and three exceedingly dirty loin clothes. They smelled just as bad as the first one I found, so I tied them to the end of one spear and slung both spears over my left shoulder while I carried the axe in hand.
I considered grabbing my broken spear and dropped stone, but I was just about at my limit as to what I could carry by hand.
Instead, I went back and retrieved the rabbit pelt and my last loin cloth, and tied both to the end of my carrying spear before continuing my trip.
As I continued to walk north, I noticed that the ground was slowly sloping upwards. It seemed like I was climbing a gentle hill or something, but the trees blocked my line of sight too much to get a good picture.
(If this keeps sloping upwards, it's probably not the way to civilization, is it?)
I hadn't really thought about trying to find any cities, but practically speaking, that would've been the right thing to aspire to as my first goal, aside from just surviving. But now at this point, I started to wonder how good that would be before I got my bearings.
Just minutes earlier, I lost control over myself. Drinking blood really was a powerful urge. Surrounded by people, I wondered how well I could control that urge if someone got cut near me.
Maybe choosing to be a vampire wasn't such a great idea? Maybe a beast person would've been better? I saw a few of those on the list. But vampires were practically unaging in almost every media. That was pretty hard to resist. Maybe an elf? Some have them also being unaging.
Then again, if I could control this urge, then living in a city wouldn't be a problem. I needed to get practice doing such a thing. Even if I ended up not living around other people like my previous life, not being able to control my blood lust would be a serious detriment.
(But it really was tasty...)
Before I realized it, I was licking my lips again.
(No! No! Bad vampire!)
I hit myself in the head, admonishing myself for getting so caught up in those feelings.
This might be harder than I thought.
That aside, when I was drinking those goblins' blood, I heard some words in my head. I dismissed them at the time because I was so engrossed in feeding, but they sounded important.
The first one, thinking back, sounded like 'You have reached level two!'
The more I thought about it, the more I was sure that's what the voice said. I gained a level, like in a game.
A smile crept up onto my face.
(A level. It wasn't just skills!)
I didn't particularly feel any stronger, but that could just be because the feeling of having my first real meal overwhelmed me.
(But there were more words after that)
After that first announcement, I heard one more while drinking from the second goblin, and then again from the third goblin.
Thinking back, the pretty-sounding woman's congratulatory voice said 'You have gained the [Breeding 1] skill!' and 'You have gained the [Spear Technique 1] skill!'
(Ugh, how terrible)
One sounded good, but the other sounded pretty nasty.
From what I remembered, the [Blood Sucking] skill not only let me drink a creature's blood, but let me absorb their essence as well. I thought that it meant that it allowed me to digest the blood as food, but maybe that wasn't what it meant.
The level I gained could've come from the skill, or from the fact that I killed four goblins already. The [Spear Technique] skill likewise could've come from the fact that I killed two goblins with a spear, aside from the fact that my spear was broken while I used it on the second one. But that nasty sounding [Breeding] skill couldn't have come from anything I did myself. I was a virgin in both lives, so strictly speaking, nothing I've done should've allowed me to earn such a skill in the normal way.
That left only one possibility: I can gain skills by drinking the blood of my targets.
(Wow, just wow!)
I didn't know how hard it was to get skills normally, but this gave me a massive edge! Being able to gain skills I haven't even practised, possibly even raising skills I already had, the extremely high value of blood kept going up inside of my mind.
(This...is going to make it hard to live an ordinary life)
Not like I intended to in the first place. I was going to live how I wanted after all, not conforming to what people expected from me.
But if I was going to gain a lot of skills this way, it was going to be difficult to manage if I couldn't view them when I wanted. Not only that, but it was important to be able to know what the skills did.
While I was in that other space, I was able to touch the skills to get a description. If I could somehow do that here as well, then I wouldn't have to worry about my skills doing things I couldn't predict.
That said, the staple of these game-like worlds was some sort of menu or character sheet opening up through one technique or another.
With that thought in mind, I tried every permutation of opening a way to see my skills and information on my own I could think of.
(Menu. Open Menu. Select Menu. Main Menu...)
Rather than go through the most likely commands first, I tried to keep my trials organized to prevent repeats as much as possible. It wasn't like I was in much of a hurry, no matter how much the thought excited me.
(...Status...oh!)
In the end it didn't take long, and a transparent screen opened in front of my eyes.
The screen was filled with my personal information, as expected.
(Hmm...[Name:]...it's blank)
Not like I really expected much from that field. It wasn't a priority, so I left it for later.
([Species: Vampire], [Sex: Female]...)
I've already been reminded of those two facts more than I liked today.
Below that, I started to find actually useful information.
------------------------------------
State: Normal
Level: 2
XP: 8/12
HP: 32/32
MP: 20/20
STR: 6
CON: 9
AGI: 12
DEX: 11
INT: 10
ANI: 8
Skills:
Default Skills:
Local Language
Racial Skills:
Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)
Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)
Breeding 1
Primary Skills:
Spear Technique 1
------------------------------------
I could clearly see my information put into quantified values. When I touched each part, I was able to get a tool-tip filled with the selected item's description, just like in that other space.
Level: The collective strength of a person's base abilities. Raised by gaining XP.
XP: The representation of spiritual growth when slaying foes or through actions of intense labour or creativity.
It looked like I could gain levels though means not just by killing monsters, but the description was a bit vague. I'd have to experiment with it. Not only that, but looking at the values themselves, I was probably one or two goblin kills away from reaching level 3.
I wondered if I also got XP from sucking their blood?
[HP]: Hit Points. The amount of injury one can sustain before perishing.
[MP]: Mana Points. The amount of mana available within one's body to be used.
[STR]: Strength. One's ability to exert physical force upon the world.
[CON]: Constitution. One's ability to resist injury.
[DEX]: Dexterity. One's ability to move accurately and precisely.
[AGI]: Agility. One's ability to move quickly.
[INT]: Intelligence. One's ability to manipulate mana to create a phenomena.
[ANI]: Anima. One's ability to resist unwanted magical manipulation.
The attributes were pretty straightforward, and pretty much as expected. Though it was notable how low my [STR] was, without something to compare against, the numbers themselves didn't mean much to me.
[Breeding 1]: Allows one to breed with other creatures, regardless of compatibility. Offspring will always be of the parent with the higher [Breeding] skill.
[Spear Technique 1]: Increases one's ability to use spears and spear-like weapons.
Well, that answers my question on the [Breeding] skill. The effect was a bit depressing, but not really surprising. Goblins were often depicted as a monosexual species that captured females to propagate. This looked like proof that they were also like that in this world.
It was a depressing skill to have, but I just had to avoid using it.
(Did I just decide to become an eternal virgin?)
Actually, looking a bit closer, the skill was greyed out. There was the fact that it was classified as a racial skill. Maybe because I wasn't a goblin, the skill didn't work for me? I hoped that was the case, but I couldn't help but worry that if someone saw I had this skill, they'd label me as a slut or something.
On the other hand, the [Spear Technique] was pretty nice. I hoped that I could figure out how to make my own spears or get my hands on a quality one to take proper advantage of this skill.
As I was thinking about my skills, a new sound entered my ears. It was faint, but it was the distinct sound of water.
Despite some problems, I couldn't help but feel that my first day's been pretty fortunate so far.
I was slowly, but steadily getting stronger, gaining useful equipment, even if they were exceedingly primitive, found a good way to feed myself, and now I found a water source. I was still naked and I hadn't found a single hint of real civilization yet, but considering I basically started with nothing, I felt like my progress was pretty good.
And being naked wasn't as bad as I feared. It was still embarrassing, and frankly I was glad I hadn't found anyone yet due to that, but this area was sufficiently temperate. I hadn't felt cold even once since arriving.
For once in my life, luck was really on my side.
Even if I had to die for that to happen.
My steps hurried. While I wasn't thirsty, I felt dirty. Touching those goblins so much made my body grimy and the feeling was disgusting.
I burst out from around a large bush.
What greeted my sight was a small river flowing roughly from the northwest to the southeast. There weren't any signs of any creatures nearby aside from some animal tracks. It looked like it was a popular watering hole, but despite that, it was currently deserted.
Not minding such a detail, I hurried to the water's edge and put my things down before quickly wading into the knee-high water.
As I was about to bathe, I noticed my reflection in the water.
I haven't had a chance to actually get a look at my new body yet, so I was quite curious as to how I looked.
Though the rippling water, I could more or less see my own face. Starting from the top, my hair was an elegant, shiny silver, long and straight, coming down below my hips. My eyes were large and round, appearing to be half-filled with wonder-lust and curiosity, and half-filled with penetrating intelligence. Below that was a small, bit of a button nose, with slightly pouty lips, all framed by a small chin and round cheeks.
The reflection was like a cute girl that was still halfway into becoming a beautiful woman.
The unsteady reflection made it hard to see clearly, but she looked like she'd grow up to become a top-tier woman.
If I met her in my previous life, I wouldn't have hesitated to tap that ass.
That's a lie. If I had actually met her and she tried to talk to me, I would've been completely intimidated by her. Not only were her eyes pretty striking, but the thought of interacting with a girl who was leagues out of my range would've instead made me break out in a cold sweat.
And that girl was now me.
I was never a popular guy in my last life, rather I was mostly a loner in general. I had no idea how to act with a face like then when the time came to actually talk to someone in this world.
Frankly, the thought alone was a bit scary.
I shook my head.
There was no point in worrying about something that might not crop up in a while.
I pulled back a lock of hair that fell into the water when my fingers touched my ear, but the shape wasn't familiar. It was pointed, like an elf's from fantasy tropes, but it wasn't too long. The point only stuck a couple of centimetres further than human ears.
Vampires often had pointed ears like this, but a lot of the time their stories were on Earth, so it had nothing to do with any other species. It made me wonder how they compared the elves of this world however. Would people who saw them think I was an elf? Or maybe a half-elf? Were halves even possible? If such a thing was on the species list, I didn't see it. but the list was insanely long, so I could've easily just missed the entry.
Turning my mind back to present matters, I tried drinking some of the water. Despite being cool, it tasted extremely stale to me and difficult to swallow. It made me pretty sure that vampires didn't need to drink water. Blood was probably enough hydration.
Finally, I got down and sunk my body into the river.
The cold water ran over my skin, but the feeling of it taking away the dirt and oil from my skin as I wiped my body with my hands was invigorating.
I paid acute attention to every little unfamiliar curve of my new body as I explored it for the first time while I washed. It was ironic that the first woman I got to intimately touch in years ended up being my own body.
Taking my time, I made sure to remove every trace of the muck from those goblins off of my body.
When I was done, I lay on the riverbed, enjoying the feeling of the water flowing over my skin.
I didn't notice it before, now that I was paying attention to it, my skin felt more sensitive. While I wiped my body, I could feel every detail of my fingers on my body, and now I could feel the tiny whirlpools of water as the river flow broke against it. I wondered if it was because it was a new body, or it had something to do with being a vampire, or if it was something else.
Not like it mattered. It was a nice feeling.
After a few minutes of rest, I got back up and wiped the excess water off of my body.
Strangely, while my body had chilled a little, I didn't feel particularly cold. Was the water warmer than I thought, or did it have to do with my new race?
Packing that thought to the back of my mind, I went over and grabbed the pelt and loincloths I was carrying around and dumped them into the river water to wash.
Almost immediately a black haze drifted from the scraps of leather I got from the goblins and flowed away with the water.
I hoped that it was just dirt, not something dangerous for anyone who decided to drink down river.
Taking my mind off of my unfounded worry, I thoroughly washed the rabbit pelt. No matter what I did though, the inside stayed wet and sticky, and pieces continued to peel off. It was feeling like a lot of work I didn't know about was still left to be done if I was to actually use it.
Next I started on the dirty leather left by the goblins. These were a much bigger ordeal, but it was still in the realm of my knowledge.
I rubbed the black sheets against each other and against the sand in the river bed, and plumes of black fog erupted and were washed down. The sight was a bit unnerving, but I took it as proof that the leather was getting clean.
After what felt like hours, but was most likely less than 30 minutes, all four loincloths had become a light brown colour. With a careful sniff, I confirmed that almost none of the stink remained.
Happy with the result, I tossed all the clean hides to the side and I scrubbed my hands with the sand on the riverbed, removing all trace of that goblin stink.
Once I was finally finished that too, I sat down under a tree beside the river to rest. My hands were red and my arms sore. Even my back hurt, after being hunched over for so long. But at the very least, the looted leather was now in a usable form. It wasn't ideal, but I didn't have to worry about getting some sort of strange infection from them anymore.
I leaned back against the tree and looked up at the sky.
For some reason, it had started to grow even brighter than before. The sky to the east had grown to a bright red.
(Was there a fourth sun in this world?)
It was the only explanation I could think of, and frankly, it wouldn't have surprised me.
As the sky grew brighter, rays from the fourth sun started to peak through the breaks in the canopy. The river was quickly engulfed with light so bright it reminded me of when I'd focus sunlight with a magnifying glass to make a newspaper catch fire.
It was a bit difficult to look at, even when squinting, so I turned my head away while I waited for my eyes to adjust.
What greeted my sight were more points of bright lights that fell through the smaller gaps between the leaves as they slowly moved while the sun rose.
As one such point slowly made it's way closer to me, I amused myself with the image of a giant with a magnifying glass trying to burn things using the sunlight.
But against my expectation, a sudden pain flared on my arm!
It was like someone was scraping the point of a red hot iron rod against my skin!
It wasn't just the feeling, but I could smell the scent of burning meat as well!
In a panic, I roll over and get away from the spot I was at, and hid my body on the other side of the tree I was leaning against.
I looked at my arm, trying to figure out what just happened.
To my surprise, my right arm and a part of my torso was had black burn marks on it, complete with smoke rising from it. The shape was like if someone unsteadily tried to draw a line across the side of my body.
I thought I was attacked, but the burn marks looked drastically different from any sort of attack that I could've come against, unless if someone tried to use a laser against me.
The thought was stupid, as everything so far suggested that this world was most likely more primitive compared to Earth. At the very least, goblins wielding stone weapons most likely wouldn't exist if the technology to create a portable laser weapon existed.
I tried to wrap my my mind around what happened when I noticed that there were quite a lot of those bright spots moving around in the forest.
They weren't as bright as the ones before, as my eyes had mostly gotten used to the light, but those spots were obviously just the light of the fourth sun passing through the gaps in the foliage.
But something suddenly felt off in my mind as I thought that.
(Why is the fourth sun so much brighter than the other three combined?)
It wasn't just that, but things that I just passed off as different because this wasn't Earth and was governed by rules that I didn't understand, might not have been as different as I thought.
It was weird to see stars in the sky during midday. It was weird that one sun would be so much brighter than three others. It was weird that I could stare at any sun without suffering from bright spots at the very least.
And, why could vampires walk around in broad daylight without any consequences?
The answer, they couldn't.
I made a fundamental presumption that was entirely wrong.
I arrived in this world, not during the day, but the night.
Vampires were creatures of the night, so it was a given that they'd have superior night vision compared to humans. It was a given that they'd primarily operate during the night and hide during the day like any other nocturnal creature. And, as with the common lore of vampires, it was given that their biggest weakness was sunlight.
My burns didn't come from someone with some sort of mysterious weapon out to take my life or something, it was the effect of being under direct sunlight.
Suddenly those bright spots moving around started to look much more threatening than they did mere seconds ago.
Here I was, under the flimsy and unpredictable shade of a forest, and dawn had come.
I didn't have a moment to lose.
Without any real options, I turned around and started to stab at the soil in between the roots of the tree I was hiding under with my claws. The canopy didn't offer reliable protection against the deadly sunlight, and if the wind blew, the movement of the rays would be completely beyond my ability to predict.
I needed solid cover, and the only thing that could give me that right now was the ground itself.
Not worrying about the fact that I was scraping away the skin on my hands, I desperately dug, flinging soil behind me.
My heart pounded in my chest more than it ever had. I could smell blood as my hands bled from the reckless digging, but rather than stimulate my appetite, all it did was remind me of my mortality.
Quickly, as fast as I could.
As the minutes passed on, as the brighter the surrounding world became, the more I was pressed into a corner, both figuratively and literally. I started to push my body into the small hole as I dug it. I was desperate for the small, tangible safety from the greatest threat to my life.
I didn't know how long it took. Possibly mere minutes, but it felt like hours. But I managed to dig a hole big enough to fit my entire body inside of awkwardly, lying on my back, my legs folded above me, I covered all but a small hole to both breathe through, as well as to see, even if the world outside was inverted from my position.
Even still, I was careful about it. The hole was small and level to the ground. But just in case sunlight poured through it unexpectedly, I held onto some loose dirt to fill it in, even if I risked suffocating because of it.
I bared my fangs as I glared at the world that was so bright it almost hurt my eyes.
(Damnit! How could you? How could you take away half the world from me?!)
Hate filled my heart as I stared at the moving bright spots created by my nemesis.
In my head, I understood that the hate and anger was completely unjustified, that it wasn't a malicious attack by someone out to get me or something. But emotionally, I couldn't accept it. I had known when I chose to become a vampire that I most likely wouldn't be able to walk around during the day. I knew, but I didn't realize how different it was to know when compared to understanding.
Now, squeezing my body into a tiny, dirty hole, the feelings that welled from within were as dark and dirty as the dirt around me. I couldn't accept the fact that I was being denied the daytime, even though almost all living creatures on Earth, including myself, were forced to give up between a third to half a day just to sleep.
Such logic couldn't temper my thoughts as I just stared and loathed.
The fact that my wounds wouldn't stop throbbing didn't help in the matter.
Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
0 Power
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