My head had just finished regenerating from the first wound, but I was still stuck dodging for the moment. The only way I could think of getting close to them was playing dead and hoping that they would close the distance after they thought they got me, but that plan was a bit risky for my taste. If they decided to make sure I was dead by just throwing a rock at my head the plan would fall to pieces. I didn't know how long I would be out of it while my head regenerated, nor did I know what would happen if they decided to eat parts of me while I was out, and honestly, I don't think I wanted to find out.
[Skill gained: Domain]
I faltered for a bit, completely distracted by the appearance of a new skill. Trying to take advantage of the moment, the three of the monkeys hurled rocks at me at the same time.
I instinctively moved as soon as I detected the rocks entering my range. Twisting my body, I slipped between two of them before extending my left arm and grabbing the third that was flying straight at my face.
The rock's momentum continued onwards, shattering the semblance of bones I had in my arm, but I was able to keep my grasp on it and stop its momentum before it reached my face. My arm dropped, retaining its grip as it dangled loosely from my shoulder socket.
The arm began quickly repairing the damage it had taken, and within seconds I regained use of it. I shifted the rock that I had caught to my right hand before locking on to one of the monkeys that I had caught sight of when they threw.
Winding up, I hurled the rock as hard as I could at it, aiming straight for its skull. The rock passed harmlessly about 20 feet below the tree branch it was sitting on.
Well, shit. I kind of forgot that being able to catch one of the rocks didn't mean that I could magically hit my target. That was stupid of me. I think I intimidated that one at least as it hasn't thrown another rock yet. Or it's just hiding and laughing at my pathetic attempt.
Sensing another rock hurling at me from behind, I once again instinctively turned and batted the rock out of the air with the back of my hand. It shattered my hand, but at least it didn't rip anything off so it should heal much quicker.
I kept up this pattern of deflecting or catching rocks while occasionally returning a few throws of my own. Eventually, one of my throws managed to connect, I caught a glimpse of a body falling limply to the floor. Angered shrieks sounded out from around me, and the intensity of the attacks seemed to increase for a bit. Soon though, the attacks ceased altogether. I guess they decided that I was too much trouble to deal with as I didn't seem to be taking any damage.
After a few minutes of waiting to see if it was some sort of clever ploy, I cautiously expanded my senses. They were indeed gone, and they had left the one that I had hit lying on the ground a short bit away.
Relaxing, I expanded my detection back to its maximum and headed over to the unconscious monkey lying on the ground.
Now that there were no more interruptions, I was able to properly examine it. Its long arms were strong and built for throwing, and rather than fur covering its body, it was covered in large scales that almost made it look like it was wearing armor. Its head was less canine like I had thought, and it was more batlike.
My rock throw had seemingly caved in its chest, but it was still barely breathing. As I stepped closer to examine it, the eyes on its bat-like face flickered open before coming to rest on me. The monkey-bat-reptile-like thing made to dart away, but I quickly slammed my foot down on its leg, pinning it in place.
It cried out weakly, making a pathetic pleading noise as it curled into a ball and held its arms over its face.
I stepped forward again, raising my hand in preparation to strike it down before I paused. Something felt off about killing a creature like this. It had given up already, and-
"Weakling. You balk at killing that which tried to take your life. Pathetic."
Roaring, I reached down and ripped the head off of the creature in front of me before turning around and whirling it at whatever was behind me. My system gave me a notification that I ignored, and I growled as I bared my teeth at the world, frantically scanning through every part of my detection radius trying to look for what had said that.
Again, I found nothing. Whatever it was, it could escape my detection, and I didn't like it. I grew the eyes all over my body again, inspecting every part of my surroundings for something off. If I couldn't detect it with my spatial detection, maybe that was the problem. It might be something designed to kill me specifically and could counter my best mode of detection. I reacted too slowly though, as it might have already escaped before I formed the eyes.
I roamed around my immediate area for a bit, looking again for any clues of it, this time using the eyes that I had formed as well.
I found nothing.
I eventually came to a stop in front of the decapitated bat head. I reluctantly had to admit that it was right. Showing mercy like that had been a major error on my part. I had left myself open to being attacked, and regardless, if something had the gall to attack me, it forfeited all mercy I should owe it.
Disgusted with myself for my weakness and with the fact that I was agreeing with the voice, I punted the head into the distance, letting it roll off.
Reluctantly accepting that I was not going to find it this time, I sat down with my back against a tree and inspected my system notifications.
[1 Khyrian Ape Killed: +230 XP]
[Skill gained: Domain]
[Domain (lvl 1)]
[By shrinking the range of the Spatial Sensitivity skill, greatly enhance your awareness of the area and connect it to your nervous system. You will instinctively react to attacks and threats inside the domain. The strength of the effect scales with your Agility, your Perception, and how much smaller you make the domain. The Domain skill cannot be active while your Spatial Sensitivity has a range greater than 30 feet]
The Domain skill seems pretty useful. I guess that was why I was able to start catching and dodging the rocks better. The level of improvement wasn't that crazy, but I assume that it will scale with my growth well seeing as it scales off of two of my stats. It is my first true combat skill, so at least now I have a tool I can use during my next fights.
I am a bit disappointed with how the fight went overall though. I only really killed one because of a lucky hit, and even then I wasn't able to use my strength to its fullest. I know that I am most likely at my strongest against enemies who fight in close range. I'm going to need to find a way to either deal with enemies from range as well or a better way to close distance. I don't know if splitting my focus too wide will be detrimental to my growth though.
Regardless, I want to see if I can do something with this XP.
[Usurper System]
[Name: ???]
[Race: Paragon*]
[Strength: 10]
[Agility: 10]
[Perception: 15]
[Resistance: 0]
[Level 0 (0/100) | XP: 230]
[Skills: ...]
[Level up: 100 XP)]
[Awoken Flesh (max): Unavaliable]
[Regeneration (lvl 1): 100 XP]
[Spiritual Manifestation (lvl 1): 1,000 XP]
[Spatial Sensitivity (lvl 1): 500 XP]
[Domain (lvl 1): 100 XP]
After contemplating for a bit, I decided to level up once and increase my domain level once. Both would strengthen my domain, which I found important as it was my only combat skill. Leveling up would also increase my all-around stats, and I was also curious as to what increasing my Resistance would do.
[Domain (lvl 1 -> lvl 2)]
[By shrinking the range of the Spatial Sensitivity skill, greatly enhance your awareness of the area and connect it to your nervous system. You will instinctively react to attacks and threats inside the domain. The strength of the effect scales with your Agility, your Perception, and how much smaller you make the domain. The Domain skill cannot be active while your Spatial Sensitivity has a range greater than 35 feet. Potency slightly increased]
[Level 0 -> Level 1 | XP: 30]
[Strength: 10 -> 11]
[Agility: 10 -> 11]
[Perception: 15 -> 16]
[Resistance: 0]
[Spare points gained: 3]
Disappointed but not surprised that my Resistance hadn't increased, I almost immediately put the spare points into Agility. I know that I wouldn't need to worry about dodging attacks once I leveled up my regeneration enough, but raising my Agility also served to help me in my problem of gap closing.
[Agility: 10 -> 11 -> 14]
Confirming my decision, I felt a rush of strength enter my body. I felt my detection range increase, and I also knew instinctively that I was a bit stronger than before. It didn't feel like my agility had increased by 40%, though, which was somewhat disappointing. It looks like the stats don't linearly scale my abilities like I had thought, though with how easy it was to level up I would be surprised if they did.
The difference was still noticeable though, so I wasn't too upset.
Standing up, I walked over to the headless corpse of what I now knew was called a Khyrian Ape. It didn't look like it had shriveled up or anything even though I had extracted its life force to gain the XP.
Now that I had something like this in front of me, I was curious as to whether or not I had to eat with this body. I hadn't gotten hungry at all yet, and when I had formed a mouth it very clearly did not have molars for chewing, but I couldn't help but wonder if I could eat. I spent the entirety of my last life without having a good meal, save for half an apple, and I would be rather saddened if I never got to eat a proper meal. I guess I could always just grow a tongue anyway though, and not having molars was not much of a problem when I could just change the shape of my teeth.
I formed my mouth, ignoring the splitting headache that I was getting from changing form so much today, and leaned over to pick up the arm of the ape. I knew that it probably wouldn't taste good as it was uncooked, but I didn't know a thing about starting a fire and I just wanted to test something.
I put a chunk out of its arm, my sharp teeth easily ripping a piece of it off. I had formed my mouth with a tongue and molars this time, and tried to savor the flavor. It wasn't mind-numbingly delicious, and it tasted a bit like iron, but it was sort of sweet. I actually rather enjoyed the flavor. Now that I think about it, I don't really need to cook the flesh. I'm not human. I guess it would make it taste better, and so would adding spices.
[Life force detected: 7 XP gained]
Now THAT was good to hear. Apparently just killing them wasn't efficient enough to gain all of their life force. Maybe as I grew my methods of extracting XP would improve like the system had said, but for now, it was good to know that I could still get some of the remaining XP.
Plus, it tasted rather good.
Grabbing onto the arm, I ripped it from the body at the socket, barely needing to strain. Taking another bite from the limb, I continued toward my destination. As much as I wanted to finish my meal and eat the rest of the body, I couldn't carry it with me. That would be leaving myself too open, and combined with the fact that I wasn't keeping eyes manifested anymore due to the strain, it would create too much of a risk.
I could always stay to finish it, but I wanted to get through this forest sooner rather than later. I assume it is a rather large forest, and if I stopped to eat everything I killed it would take forever to get anywhere. I didn't mind taking a small snack for the road though.