Ryan sighed and looked at the forest of large dead trees, he had been walking around for what felt like an hour but he had seen nothing other than the dead ecosystems and stone tablets that were everywhere.
What interested him about them was that each block had a different carving in them. There had been some weird hog, bear, snake, and bird drawings in them. He had been careful since he didn't want to be thrown in the air again for touching them. He did however experiment and tried to touch them with a branch however it was as if they were shielded by some force field and no matter how hard he tried the branch never touched the stone.
He tried kicking a rock at it and he still shivered when he remembered the speed that the stone was thrown back. Ryan was thankful for his Powerful legs skill and cat-like reflexes otherwise he would have probably suffered some head trauma.
He had walked into the forest in order to reach the hill that he could see from the distance that way he would have a better view of wherever the hell he was. The other reason he headed towards the forest was because the flat land he was on and the stone tablets reminded him of a graveyard and that creeped him out.
Even if the forest was not much better he thought that at least he would stop having to see the stone carvings, however, it turns out that they were there as well. After walking a good distance he decided to lay down next to a tree and get things straightened out.
'Alright so let's see how I got here, I just survived an attack by two clans, I summoned a demon that killed quite a good amount of my enemies. After that, I tortured them and got some information from them and then got them to hand their souls to me. Then I took a quick dip and went to sleep next to Star Light. Boy does that make me sound evil.'
He looked up at the large moon that was in the sky and sighed "Does me being here have anything to do with the two souls that entered my body? Or is it some sort of side effect for summoning a demon? No that's not right otherwise it would have been in the description of the skill."
As Ryan tried finding out what was going on he started hearing some odd footsteps coming from the direction he was previously walking in. He quickly ran and hid behind one of the trees and waited to see what was going on.
After about a minute of hiding, he was finally able to see the 8 human-shaped silhouettes. He began getting scared since he could only imagine what humans would do to him if they ever found him.
Another minute passed and now Ryan was fighting the urge to scream as his fur was standing on end and he felt his blood run cold. In front of him were not simple humans instead they were skeletons that were walking, they were actually moving by themselves!
That's when he remembered what Star Light had said that very day about undead when she had seen how scared he was. As he remembered her Ryan couldn't help but think of how the independent and strict she-wolf would feel when she found out about her leg. He remembered her big speech about how only the strong survived, 'Would she be alright or will she see herself as dead weight? If I get out of here I have to find a way to help h...'
His thoughts were interrupted by a white light, one of the skeletons had touched a stone tablet and was engulfed by a bright white light. After a few seconds, the light disappeared, now instead of a scrawny skeleton what took its place was another humanoid monster.
This monster was no longer just bones, instead, it had skin that seemed to be rotting. It began making some strange sounds and walked into the stone tablet. At first, Ryan thought that the zombie had become stupid and was going to hit itself on the stone but that didn't happen. Instead, the tablet seemed to become like an illusion and allowed the zombie to pass through it.
Another skeleton was waiting and after its group member had disappeared it followed the same steps. The other 6 skeletons seemed to ignore their comrades and continued on walking. When they were a good distance away he walked closer to the tablet that had such a different reaction than others. The etching on the tablet had a drawing of what seemed to be a zombie. He put a paw on it and once again he was sent flying.
He looked at it in a daze and shook his head to help get rid of the dizziness "Is it possible that this is the evolution that the god had talked about?
Ryan followed the other skeletons to see what they would do. Not long after he had reached them 3 of the skeletons stopped and lined up in front of a tablet. This time when one of them touched it and was engulfed by the light it emerged with a red boned body that seemed to be oozing lava from cracks in its bones.
It also walked into the tablet and the others began following the procedure. He silently and carefully sneaked past them and began following the other 3 skeletons that continued on walking. After what felt like another hour all three of them stopped and lined up on a tablet that had a carving of a skeleton but surrounded by some sort of smoke or at least that's what he got out of the picture.
When the skeleton emerged from the light he was surrounded by a dark, black mist. Ryan took a closer look and found that the eye sockets on the skeleton had a red light to them. It raised its right hand and the black mist around it seemed to start condensing on his hand and forming a large dagger that seemed to have become physical.
Looking at the monster's eyes made Ryan feel extremely uncomfortable and he decided that he had seen enough. 'My hypothesis of this place being where monsters evolved seems to be true and according to the god the evolutions that I have to follow are Horned Wolf => Wolf Kobold => Kobold King => "Demi-human Variant'' => Werewolf ...…. Wait a minute, does that mean that I'm going to have and find these evolution tablets in such a big place like this? You damn old man, you seem to have left a pretty important part out. Not only does there seem to be thousands of tablets in this never-ending place but there are also other monsters that are evolving.'
Suddenly as he began turning away from the dark skeletons he heard a snapping sound that came from below him. He slowly looked down and found out that he had stepped on a small branch, 'Shit, just my luck'.
He quickly looked at where the skeletons were and found two pairs of glowing red eyes looking at his direction. They raised their hands and pointed at him, the mist around them began condensing into arrow-shaped objects that were suddenly sent flying his direction.
Ryan immediately turned around and began running as fast as his Powerful Legs skill would allow him, "Damit, why. Seriously just had to happen to me when I was about to leave them."
As he ran, he turned around and found that the skeletons seemed to be following him, the bad part was that they were flying. After seeing them chasing after him he suddenly found that he could actually run faster than what he thought.
Ryan's stamina was depleting very quickly, no matter how many turns he had taken or how many times he had tried to hide the damn skeletons would find him every time. "Looks like this is going to be an end of me, just cause I stepped on a stupid branch."
As he was losing hope Ryan began to smell an extremely pungent odor. He looked at where it had come from and saw a big and fat man. The only thing was that it had pig-like qualities, it had the head of a pig and a large stone hammer.
He hesitated for a second and took a deep breath before he ran towards the monster at full speed. The pig-headed creature turned around and tried smashing him with his large hammer.
Ryan jumped to the right at the last minute and hid behind a nearby tree. When the Skeletons caught up they began attacking the creature. One of them created blades and continued to shoot them at the pig-man. The other one flew back into the shadow of a tree and disappeared, Ryan quickly looked around to see if it was sneaking on him but he was relieved to see that instead, it ambushed the pig from behind.
"Phew looks like I'm good for now."
He quickly turned around and began to run away from the fight with the little energy he had left.
Meanwhile, from behind one of the trees, a silhouette of a large wolf showed itself as it's pair of eyes that glowed white were glued to the figure of the small pup that was running away.
"Not bad, if the wolves under me had the courage and persistence of that pup I might even attract the attention of my lord. Well, maybe not quite to that level but at least my unit would stop being the worst of the horned wolves hehe."
The body of the wolf began dissipating and becoming one with the wind that blew in the direction that the blue pup had run towards.