Stray Soul

As I spotted the hybrids, or whatever they were, surrounding me from the branches and the shadows of the trees near me, I immediately tensed up, and tried to follow their movements with my gaze but before long, I realized what I was trying to do was futile as the critters were just too many in number for me to be able to fallow all their movements, or predict where they were going or what they were going to do.

“Hopefully this is not all their pack, if they even have one, because, if there is more than a handful of them… I am going be in trouble…” I muttered to myself and then started to quickly think about how these hybrids might act.

They are definitely nocturnal predators, and from their small stature, and from their ability to partially meld into the shadows, I can safely say that they are ambush predators, ones that are really good at their job.

And what are ambush predators good at? Surprizing their prey, and quickly getting rid of them of course!

But there is also the fact that they probably realize, to some degree, that I know that they are there… so they might try to take a different approach to attacking me…but they might also use their numerical advantage to confuse me… if they are intelligent enough to do that, of course.

But do they realize I am unkillable as long as I have mana? I think not!

And if they don’t realize I am not like their usual prey, they will still try to aim for my vitals, at least the ones they have access to! And what is a vital area shared by all animals? The throat!

And as I thought that I heard something quiet, almost silent even, coming near my head.

Not having to think long to guess what it was, I quickly pulled my self back, and for a moment, I saw a dark blob passing in front of my eyes.

“Heh, dumb fuc—” but before I could finish my sentence, I felt something slamming against one of my legs, making me lose my balance, and tumble down.

*scree—*

Letting out a screech of surprise, that I quickly stopped, I tried to quickly get up, but before I could move, I saw shadows moving towards me.

“No, you don’t!” I said to the critters, not that they could hear me nor understand me.

Then, as one of them came close to my head, I quickly attacked it with my beak, but it was able to quickly move out of the way.

And as the others approached my body, I quickly began to struggle, trying to take a bite out of the ones that approached my head and neck, while using my legs and claws to scare away the others, while also trying to get back up, which was made a lot harder because of my lack of wings…

Note to self, if you plan on taking the corpse of something with wings, don’t let wild animals eat them.

But my struggling didn’t mean I was able to completely scare them all away from taking a bite out of me, which they did, quite an embarrassing number of times too…

Good thing I don’t actually need most of the meat on my bones, only the leg muscles, and few other ones are important, so I can lose a few bites’ worth!

After what I can only assume to be minutes of struggling, I was able to finally get back up, and when I did, I couldn’t see anything near me.

“So, they are hiding once again… perfect… not.” I thought to myself because, while they were not that strong individually, not that their teeth and claws weren’t sharp, but all it took for me to kill them was a nicely aimed slash with my claws, or me biting them with my beak… if I could catch them, of course.

But now I knew one thing, at least one of them had fought against a terror bird, or something similar to it, because they attacked my vulnerable legs and made me fall down, which I wasn’t going to allow to happen again.

Then I started trying to see one of them, but they weren’t too keen on coming out, until they did, and I felt something’s claws digging into my left flank.

Quickly throwing it off of my body, I turned my head to the side the attack came from but, remembering what happened in my previous battle when this happened, I quickly steadied my grip on the ground, ready for something to attack my legs, or the to trip me down, but when I turned and looked at my back, I couldn’t see any shadows.

“What are they planning—” and my question was answered before I had even finished it with something attacking my throat, but I was able to quickly swing it to the side with immense speed, detaching the hybrid that had attached itself to my throat, and quickly took a swing at it with my legs but missed.

“You son of a—” but seeing that one of my legs was in the air, one of the hybrids quickly rammed into my other leg, making me once again fall down.

“YOU SON OF A—”

Then I started fending off the hybrids, again, managing to get a good hit on one of them with my head, but not my beak, not lethally wounding but incapacitating it for a bit.

Then this rodeo of me getting up, attacking or defending against the hybrids, and then definitely not dropping down because of a stupid mistake continued for a bit.

And after a few more rounds of this I realized something, only 2 or 3 Hybrids were attacking me at the same time, even though there were more of them in hiding.

Then I realized something that was actually quite obvious when you thought about it.

“They are… trying to tire me down?” I said, kinda surprised and at the same time not surprised that they were able to figure out a sensible hunting method for big prey.

“Heh, good for me then because I am literally un-tire-able… wait a second.” then I willed my mana counter up.

Mana Points: 27/67

“That’s… not good.” I said as I realised that their plan was kind of working.

Then I started to think about what to do, I could always just decide to wait this out but… I really doubted that they would get tired before I ran out of mana. But I had also injured some of them, while they were not fatal injuries, they would surely slow some of them down.

What to do, what to do…

And as I was thinking, I suddenly had the urge to slap myself in the face, but sadly couldn’t because I didn’t have any hands.

“Fuck, I am so stupid!” I said after realising something that I should’ve realised before.

The only way the Hybrids could injure me or technically kill me was through ‘tiring me out’ so, making me lose all my mana. And how did I lose mana? Through moving my body!

Well, I technically lost some as kind of upkeep of sorts, but that amount was negligible at worst.

So, I could just literally sit around, do nothing, and wait for them to slam themselves against me, and then do something!

… or I could lure them in…

The whole reason these creatures were attacking me in low numbers, even though they had many more members, was to tire me out before they tired themselves out, so I could just… ‘be tired’, act sluggishly, and slowly, making them think I was finally tired, and they could move in for the kill...

Then, after a few moments of deciding how I would put on this act, I put it in action!

Reacting to their attacks slowly, but while still making sure I didn’t fall because… well, I had embarrassed my self enough this night already, no need to embarrass myself anymore.

Then, after a few minutes of continuing this ‘sluggish’ act, I realized more of them were attacking me, and I also realized that they seemed to have stopped caring so much to hide themselves…

After a bit of carefully counting them, making sure I didn’t count the same ones twice, I finally found how many of these hybrids were attacking me.

It was 5. Fucking 5. Not 10. Not 9,8,7 or 6. But fucking 5.

I honestly felt a bit insulted after realising how little of them were here… not that it really mattered though, as I was getting ready for them to get just a bit too lax around me, and I was also sure I didn’t need to kill all of them.

After all, why would they continue bashing themselves against a foe that took out most of them?

I needed to kill 2 or 3 of them at best before the others ran off… at least I hoped so because killing all 5 of them quickly would prove to be a challenge.

Not that killing them would be hard but catching them would.

Then I waited for a few more moments, waiting for a few of them to be too lax to escape from me too quickly, and after a minute or 2, my moment to shine came.

I saw 2 of them slacking off a bit away from me, while getting to them would take some time, it wouldn’t be that long.

Waiting for their next attack to come before I acted, trying to injure or incapacitate as many of them as could so I could handle them later, I hit a hybrid that had launched itself from the branches above with my beak, sending it flying for a small distance then, as I hit the flying hybrid, I dashed to the 2 that were slacking off a bit away from me, putting a couple of points of mana into my legs just to make sure I reached them.

Realising that I was just acting, the Hybrids scrambled to escape, but I was on them before they could run off and practically dropped myself on them, crushing their bodies under my weight.

Getting up as quickly as I could, I then spotted the one I hit with my beak, confused and bleeding a little, then I quickly rushed towards it, but this time instead of crushing it with my weight, I hit it with my clawed feet, puncturing its body.

This body after all was not in too good of a shape, and what was stopping me from just acquiring a new body right here and right now?

After it dropped to the ground a bit away, I was sure it was dead, and focused on my surroundings, trying to see if any of the remaining ones were trying to come up to me and attack me.

And after waiting for a bit, I was sure that they had ran off.

Quickly coming next to the corpse of the hybrid that I had carefully killed, I crouched down to the ground, and started leaving the body of the terror bird, and moving onto the body of the Hybrid, wondering if I’d get their shadow melding ability which would, hopefully, make me invisible in normal nights where there was no full moon.

And as I once again lost my senses for a moment, just for them to re-appear as I switched bodies, I felt… uncomfortable.

Not uncomfortable as in, oh fuck I need to shape my soul to fit this new body.

But as in… I just didn’t fit this body.

I could feel parts of my mana cloud being unable to enter this body even after I started changing the shape of my soul to fit it better.

Simply put, this body was just too small for me.

“But why? Just a few hours ago I was in the body of big bug and this problem didn’t exist. Did something important happen in that time frame…” I started thinking to myself, and quickly came to a conclusion.

“…It’s from the fucking rank up isn’t it?”