Chapter 4: Evolving a Conscience

Chapter 4: Evolving a Conscience

I snuck back down the tree and shrunk my body. I’ll take out the two patrolling on the perimeter first. I don’t want them to run the moment I start wreaking havoc. My plan is to pick off as many of them as possible without the rest finding out. I’m not that worried that they will overwhelm me, I just don’t want to deal with ten people scattering in different directions...

Once I reached the two men I waited until the pair were in a spot on their patrol where no one could see them. In one slash I decapitated the pair of them. I’m still about two meters tall at my smallest. It looks like my growth is slowing down, probably because the prey wasn’t that big relative to my full size.

After taking care of these two I grew a little larger so I can scarf their bodies down faster. I don’t want anyone finding the bodies early, this way there would only be blood stains. Still a red flag but not as bad as corpses. It would at least lead to some confusion before the panic sets in.

With that settled I turned around. I climbed up a nearby tree and looked for a good spot to land when I jumped over. I saw one man walking off the side to take a piss on the wall. I leapt over the wall and drove one of my blades through his head and held his body in place to stop it from falling. I then dragged the body behind a house in a shadowy spot and left it there.

I’ll be back for it later...

I renengaged my invisibility and snuck out into the middle of the camp. I saw one of the bandits approaching the pen and I had a suspicion he was about to grab one of the women to have some fun. Well usually when a man decides to have some fun with the fairer sex they would want some privacy...Alll latest novels at novelhall.com

Sure enough he grabbed a young woman with curly matted brown hair and she sobbed in protest as he dragged the woman to her feet. He dragged her over to a nearby hut, I could tell he was looking to enter this one. So I slipped ahead of the pair and crept through the window. It was just large enough for me to slip through. Luckily my body was long and not wide, so I still could fit.

With that I waited in the corner of the room and sure enough the door opened. The man dragged the sobbing woman in and yanked her towards a nearby bed made of wood and straw. The woman tried to struggle but the man backhanded her across the face and tossed her onto the bed. The woman now bleeding from a split lip quietly sobbed on the bed as the man began taking his pants off.

I got behind him and increased in size so I could tower over the bed. I had a plan on how to kill them both at once but I needed to be big enough...

The man growled as he climbed onto the bed and pulled her legs apart. He then tried to position his member at her entrance and as he did so he leaned forward slightly. There’s the moment I’m looking for...

I raised my blade which was almost half a meter long and I stabbed in through the man’s back. I kept pushing forward the blade skewered the woman underneath him. The woman let out a scream of pain as she felt the blade stab into her chest.

“OI QUIET IT DOWN IN THERE!” I heard another man shout from outside.

With that I brought down another blade and stabbed it into her face. Her body twitched for a moment before stilling. I’ll just leave these two here for the moment...

With that I crawled back out the window, I don’t have much time now. The bandits will eventually notice that those are now silent. Which means I need to start my rampage soon. I saw a group of five of them sitting together at the fire. I guess I’ll start with them...

I slithered up behind them and grew to my full size and saw that I was now towering five meters tall. I’ll take them out and then fire some spines at the guy on the watchtower. Don’t want him to escape. The rest will still have to get the gate open. That should buy me time to kill them.

So I raised my blade and slashed at the five of them, my blades now two meters long cut through them like a hot knife through butter. The bandits around me immediately shouted in alarm as my massive form materialised in thin air. I turned and fired a wave of spikes at the man at the watchtower. He was thrown back and was pinned to the side of the watchtower, at this size my spines were the size of a man’s forearm.

The bandits which I hoped will at least try to fight all turned and ran...

Well so much for that...

I hurtled through the camp blades flashing and spines firing. Bodies dropped to the ground in pieces or flew back and were pinned to nearby walls by my spines. Their screams and raw terror was intoxicating.

As I expected I saw about half of them run for the gate. The ones who got there first tried to get the gate open but the ones behind yanked them back and tried to get the door open themselves in panic. In their blind panic they ended up getting in each other’s way, well all the more easier for me...

I sped towards the gate, blades drawn and the men turned and saw my charging form. Their eyes widened in terror, faces now pale as parchment. I could see their pupils dilate as they realised they were about to die... and they screamed...

I slashed at the group of men with all four hands. I ended up cutting them to pieces, demolished the gate and part of the wall behind them. I also accidentally collapsed the watchtower to my right as I caught the supports of the watchtower with my backswing. As I took in the wrecked wall and watchtower I realised my body is harder to control at this size. I guess it makes sense, the smaller something is the easier it is to mess something up when you try to handle it.

As the smell of that red scarlet nectar washed over me, I felt a kind of weird feral happiness. I laughed and turned around to see the last remaining few bandits trying to climb over a section of wall. Again these idiots tried to get up first and ended up slowing each other down. I charged them with my vision now turning red and their hearts pulsing brighter than ever in my vision. I could have used my spines to kill them but it was so much more fun to use my blades...

When I was upon the four of them I opened my jaws and snapped up the one at the top of the wall. I closed my teeth around his body and it was snapped clean in half, his lower body tumbling back down into the dirt. The others shouted as they tried to run, three quick slashes later and there were now six pieces staining the dirt red.

Unable to resist, I snapped up one torso as a quick snack and I turned around to see a few stragglers running for the now destroyed gate. One of them even managed to get a horse and was riding towards the opening. Well horse or no, I was much faster and soon I was upon him. I opened my maw and snapped up the man right off the horse. At the same time I slashed at the horse and the horse’s body rolled away in two halves. I raised my head and swallowed his whole body. Enjoying the feeling of his body sliding down my throat. The few remaining behind me were now running towards the large house, as far as I could sense there were only these few left and I could smell something in the big house.

Achieved [Equus Genome] Level: 1 / 10

[Muscle Strength] improved

[Bone Density] improved

Well those were pretty boring upgrades...

Then again I guess horses were boring...

After I finished up the horses I moved on to the human corpses. This time there were more than thirty bodies for me to eat. So I was sure I would get another genome upgrade. I got halfway through the bodies when I heard the voice sound off in my head.

Achieved [Human Genome] Level: 3 / 10

[Advance Cognition] improved

[Colour Perception] improved

[Fine Motor Skills] improved

[Auditory Communication] improved

Ok so more of the same, pretty boring. When I finished the rest of the bodies nothing else happened. It looks like the requirements for upgrades increase as the stages go up. I guess for stage 10 I’ll have to eat a whole city or something... that’ll take awhile...

Would that be even worth the effort? I mean that would probably take days... or maybe stronger humans are worth more? Like those Gold Ranked adventures? Well I’ll find out if that's true at some point, I mean the plan doesn’t change. I just have to keep eating them...

That leaves one last thing, the unconcious girl in the house. I didn’t sense any movement in the house the entire time I was eating, I guess she’s out cold. Well I might as well finish her off and move on. Judging by the sky it’s going to be night soon, I guess soon I’ll be a day old. Feels like more has happened today than my entire past life...

I wonder what my life will be like in this world? Will I just live alone? Maybe I’ll make some friends. I have a feeling this life will be quite lonely...

Wait wait wait... did I just think about being lonely and having friends? Is this the [Advance Cognition] talking? Well I do have a way to test this... it’s lying unconscious in that house...

When I reentered the house I saw the girl was still unconscious on the bed. I could see bruises have formed around her throat, making a blue and black ring around her neck. Her nethers were also red and swollen probably from what that bandit did to her.

Well I should probably kill her and get this over with. I transformed one of my hands into blades and raised it preparing to stab her in the head. Then I saw her shift slightly and she turned to the side. Her eyes scrunched together and she curled up into a fetal position. I could tell her eyes were darting around under her closed eyelids. It looks like she’s having a nightmare, then I saw tears flow out from under her eyelids. Again I felt bad for her, this time the feeling was stronger...

Crap looks like my suspicions were right, eating humans makes me grow a conscience. This is quite ironic... I get the ability to feel guilty about killing humans by eating humans...

To be fair she was unconscious the moment I found her. I think that bandit lord probably choked her out while he was defiling her. She won’t know what I am, she’ll just wake up to this destroyed camp...

I don’t really have a reason to kill her... if she saw me then I know I can easily kill her because she’ll put me in danger. But now... she’s no threat to me, and I don’t really want to keep eating humans. The last thing I want now is a full blown conscience.

I mean even now what I feel isn’t exactly pity it’s more like I feel it would be a pointless kill. Like why kill her? There’s not much reason for it, she’s so small she probably won’t make a dent in my growth. If I keep eating humans this feeling bad thing is going to get worse so I don’t think I want to eat her because of that. So what? I just kill her and leave her corpse here? What’s the point in that?

With a sigh I turned my blade into my taloned hands and turned away. At the opening I turned back to take one last look at her and pondered how this is the first living thing I let live so far. For better or worse I’m smarter now and not some dumb ferocious monster. Being smart is good, right? When I really need it I will be able to better strategise...

I took a final look at the quietly crying girl on the bed and muttered one last thing.

Good luck...