Now believe me I'm no expert but It's pretty normal for a guy to be nervous around a girl and vise versa. It is caused by a mix of anxiety and fear of rejection resulting in a minor or major number of nerves when conversing with the opposite and even same sex.
How ever the feeling of nervousness I was feeling was entirely different as I looked at the female white mantis climb towards me.
Funny enough due to me constantly being compared to a mantis over the years resulted in me knowing my fair share of facts and trivia, like how actually they have 5 eyes, are one of the few insects that can perceive depth and most importantly FEMALE MANTIS EAT THE MALES!!
Looking around me I couldn't see any way out of this situation aside from jumping down and climbing down past her.
Obviously neither of the options were very good as one results in me going splat and the other warrants being eaten
My newly acquired mantis instincts told me two things, either stand my ground and make myself look big or ahem "introduce" myself before being eaten
Seeing as I was a former human the second option didn't really hold any value to me and to be realistic, she was like 4 meters tall so making myself big wasn't much of an idea.
Looking around once more a noticed that the trees were much closer together at the tops so if it came down to it, I could hop to another tree
As I watch here slowly inch closer and closer, I noticed that she was both injured and in the process of cleaning her Blades instead of holding them In any form of striking pose.
When she was about 5 meters away, she stopped and looked at me.
"What are you doing in my tree freak?"
Well, my first thought was that I guess normal mantises don't like variants which suck and the second was that I should probably find a way to talk myself out of this
"Kekeke I wanted to see the view" dammit there we go again
"I'm not interested" she said with literally zero hesitation
"I meant the forest" I responded gesturing to the visible not fazed by the look of disgust that looked weird on a bug.
"oh, I see"
"Yes, so I will just be…" I said beginning to slowly move backward on the branch as to create distance to prepare to jump to the next tree
"You're after my tree!!" she then began to brandish her arms and the wicked sharp blades that were attached to them
"What no I'm not I was just" I didn't get to finish as she began to close the distance and prepare to strike
Despite being a variant and being already a class two monster, I wasn't sure I could beat her because as far as I could tell she was both bigger than me and likely the same Class meaning I was at a disadvantage.
However as far as I could tell my skin was much stronger than hers giving me the advantage of defence so provide, I was able to keep out of her grasp I should be safe.
As she got closer time seemed to slow a little and my thoughts accelerated
Should I run or fight
Is it safer to jump or attack?
However, there was one major factor in my mind the one I hated to think of:
Cultivation
As told to me by Barry within this world there were two types of beings. Those that are human and those that aren't, humans gain strength through the integration and consumption of materials such as pills, herbs, and the cores of nonhumans, which strengthened their soul and body allowing for the use of energy such as chi and intent as well as the use of martial techniques. Concerning nonhumans they had a similar approach except while humans used the energy within the materials they consume and slowly integrate it within their bodily system and spiritual core as to reduce the risks to themselves and build a greater foundation, nonhumans such as the monsters within Death Forrest did not try to integrate it slowly and as such gained strength faster but at the higher risk of damage and pain as well as massive changes to their body when they moved up classes.
However, when a nonhuman reached the fifth class of Shifter, they gained the ability to change into a partially human form allowing them to safely cultivate.
As much as the idea made me hate myself, I needed to reach that class so I could cultivate and as such could not run whenever there was danger
This was the factor that convinced me to instead fight the Cleary deranged female mantis and as such in order to surprise her I grit my teeth or guess in this case mandibles? And charged at her.
Now both me and the mantis before me had little experience fighting in general as mantis are ambush predators but I decided to use her height and size and advantage against her as a lowered myself as far as I could and slashed upwards at her extremely thin chest.
While the cut didn't reach as far as I would have like it left a fair gash on her and gooey clear blood flowed out.
"SCREEEEEE!!" she yelled in pain
And I took this opportunity to go for her already wounded by who knows what abdomen and stabbed both blades on my front arm into her and refused to let go as she struggled
Whether out of desperation or it was my instincts I began to chow down on the part I had grabbed mindful to make sure she couldn't grapple me in turn.
I held on to her and continued to bitt her as she continued to struggle until I had eaten enough to see exactly what I had been unconsciously looking for
Her spiritual core!
It was white like the rest of her body and pulsing with light.
As she continued her struggle I reached in with my mouth and took hold with my mandibles before ripping it out with all the strength I could muster.
Kekeke Fun fact when the spiritual core of any creature is removed from the body it will almost always kill them provided, they don't have multiple of an ungodly healing factor
Sadly, as she died, she fell off the tree and guess who was still attached to her?!
As we fell toward the ground off the as I will remind you extremely tall considering I just fought a 4-meter-tall praying mantis as a 2-meter tall one!
Thankfully as I fell my life's memories flashed before me and I remembered one small teensy tiny fact that would have saved me a lot of effort
Male mantis can fly