DREADWOLF

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Sometime later Rain climbed down from the tree and wandered into the clearing. Dead mushroom monsters littered the ground. He counted sixteen, the other surviving mushrooms had wandered off into the forest.

“Dammit, I only got two of them, and one of them got turned into ash!” grumbled Opal appearing at his side.

“That was a pretty clever plan but I’m not sure I wanted them dead.”

She glared up at him. “I did it so you can eat them.”

“Woah, woah, I’m not eating levelers!”

“What? Why not?!”

“I’m… I’m just not okay. Look, help me with these mushroom monsters, go grab the bits that satyr chopped off... and get that half-elf’s body out of my sight.”

The goblin gave him a suspicious look but started to do as he said as he stepped over to the nearest mushroom. He had yet to eat today so he was especially ravenous, drool was already starting to drip from his mouth and his stomach growled irritably. Without preamble he leapt on the mushroom and ripped a mouthful of mushroom flesh free, it parted easily beneath his teeth and he was able to consume it swiftly. Two bites, four bites, six, he gorged on mushroom, but rapidly began to slow and then come to a stop.

“Bland! Oh gods, why is this so bland! Uggh!”

He tried rolling the mushroom around in his mouth, scenting it, swallowing it quickly, but to no avail, the food remained unbelievably bland and papery, like eating a block of tasteless plant fibre.

“To the bottom of the ranking with you.” He growled as he mentally placed it below anything he had eaten so far.

He looked down at the masses of mushroom bodies with dismay and slumped his shoulders.

“Well the sooner I’m done the sooner I can find something appetising to eat,” he sighed.

He went back at it, this time with significantly less enthusiasm. Ten minutes later he had managed most of the first mushroom monster and was beginning to digest. He curled his toes in anticipation and stretched his claws out along with his arms. His stomach gurgled and then began to shrink down. He closed his eyes waiting for the feeling to hit... and waited... and then a feeble sense of growing rolled through him, barely a whisper. He opened his eyes.

“Is that it!? This stuff is terrible.”

“It’s food, It should make you bigger yes? Why isn't it?” said Opal from where she had been watching.

“Yes, it should, but I am like a wolf, a carnivore, so maybe whatever causes me to grow doesn't work as well with, uh, not meat. Carnivores don’t fight their way up the food chain to eat vegetbles.”

Opal raised her arms up and looked at the huge pile of mushroom flesh she had pushed together and then dropped them and sighed.

“You grew, you definitely still grew right?”

“Yeah, a little bit. It’s enough to make me want to eat the rest... even though I hate myself for it.”

He went back to eating. And eating. And eating. At some point he had given up speeding through it and had resigned himself to a miserable grind. An hour later he found himself on his back as Opal pushed mushroom bodies and limbs toward him. He genuinely began to wonder if it would ever end, but eventually the last chunk of bland mushroom was choked down. He estimated he’d gained less than an inch of height even after eating so many.

“Urggghhhh. If I ever see a mushroom again it will be too soon.”

“But I can find a live one in the woods and you can kill it. They’ve gone dormant again so I will have to go throw sticks and stones to wake one up and lead it here, It’s food, that’s good right?”

“No, I don't know If I can kill them and even if I could it would only make me grow a tiny bit, not worth it. It’s better to go find real meat.”

“We do have real meat you know.”

“That meat being the half-elf…”

“You should eat her.”

“I… I don’t want to.”

“But why! She’s dead, she won’t care!”

“She’s not a monster.”

“But I’m a monster! We both are!”

“We’re different.”

“How!? I think and feel just like her. You were happy to kill and eat so many goblins just like me.”

“...”

“The only difference between us and them is that they have the ability to level by killing monsters.”

“I...I…Gods, let me look at the body.”

Opal grinned wickedly and grabbed him by the paw and towed him through the trees to the small plateau. It was covered in roots for hand holds so they had no trouble scrambling up its side. On top the goblin led him to where she had made camp while Rain had been eating. The body of the half-elf half-felis was laid out and stripped naked nearby as though prepared for Rain. He gave the goblin an annoyed look, she’d never intended to let him avoid it.

The half-elf had been bisected from armpit to neck across the clavicle. Her eyes stared sightlessly up at the cavern ceiling. She had the typical eerily perfect elven features but along with that she had tipped cat ears poking from her long hair, a cat tail, and where she would have had ordinary elven legs she instead had furred digitrade cat legs, her pale skin transitioning into white cat fur about six inches down her thigh.

Rain grimaced. He’d known a number of elves and half-elves in his previous life. They strictly went into the ‘people’ category whereas goblins were obviously ‘monsters’. Of course, his current situation was forcing him to rethink things. Monsters were a lot more ‘people’ like than he had imagined. It made him doubt everything he’d been taught.

“This is the way of animals and monsters. Once something is dead it is dead and nothing but food to keep others alive, arrogant levelers just like to pretend they are different. If you don't eat her some other monster will. Just eat a bit, you’ll see it's the same as anything else.”

Opal held up one of the half-elf’s hands and Rain dropped to his knees and took it in his paws. He eyed the hand. This hand had held a magic staff once. It had protected and healed people. Now it was nothing but meat. Like at the butcher’s shop. It was only the preconceptions of his past life that stopped him. He was a monster now. Things were different. His new monstous instincts were roaring in his ear, Eat! Eat! Eat! This is food, you need food, you are a beast, a monster, you live to eat! you eat to live! Devour!

“FUCK!!” He bit down on the hand and severed her fingers, blood exploded in his mouth washing away the taste of bland mushroom and setting sparks of flavour dancing across his tongue.

“Oh no, she’s delicious.”

He couldn't control himself and he tore into the half-elf like a ravenous wolf, consuming her from fingertip to shoulder in seconds, bone and all, then savagely rending flesh with whetted teeth and eagerly shoving it down as his taste buds were electrified. He growled deep and low as he gorged himself, a ball of nothing but the instinct to devour, subsume, gobble up all that was in front of him. He ate her in her entirety, all of it, even the fragments of her skull. He belched noisily as he slumped on the grass, his stomach well rounded.

His gut snarled to life and began to digest as he squeezed his eyes shut and splayed out his limbs. Growth surged up within him more than ever before and he let out a long satisfied groan as he felt his paws moving across the grass as his arms lengthened, bone creaking and muscle expanding, his toes curled and stretched in joy and his spine arced. By the end of it he was slumped on the ground breathing hard and sweating.

“F-fuuuuck. That was better than anything I’ve ever eaten and more than I’ve ever grown at one time. Levelers. I need to eat more levelers.”

He lazily rolled his head to see Opal openly shoving her hand down her shorts and rocking back and forth. She eyed his body hungrily then seemed to realise he was looking at her. She froze in shock for a moment then snatched her hand up before blushing furiously and turning away.

“You like it, don’t you? The growth.”

Opal’s shoulders tensed.

“You like that I’m growing and getting bigger. You really like the growing size difference between us.”

“N-no, I d-don't know what you’re talking a-about.”

“I know you like it, even though you won’t admit it,” he taunted, amused at her embarrassment.

“I k-know your secret too!” she yelled back at him with a voice higher pitched and more wobbly than normal. “I know w-why you didn't know about underground forests, and know about levelers, and why you didn't want to e-eat them!”

Rain frowned. Did she figure out I used to be human?

“You were a monster slave, born into it, outside of a dungeon. You were brought up around levelers and taught their ways, you then escaped when they took you to this dungeon. It’s the truth isn't it? Isn’t it?” said the goblin, her breath rapidly getting heavier. “And now you can eat freely instead of the scraps the slavers gave you, now y-you can g-grow b-Bigger!” The goblin swallowed, the blush on her face only deepening.

Should I tell her I used to be a human, a leveler? No, it may put a wall between us, levelers hate goblins and goblins hate levelers. Wait, why do I care what she thinks? I don't care, right?

He looked up from his musing to find Opal stumbling toward him and tearing at her clothes, breathing hard, her eyes alight with a different kind of hunger.

“Wh-What are you doing?!”