What was it about that guy’s arm?
Even though he hadn’t managed to land his attack on me, he still kept charging all the way through and ended up stabbing his own nose.
That was the key.
Thanks to that, I was certain his attack was something like a gun.
Once something is loaded and fired, it only goes in a straight line, so it can’t change course halfway through.
The reason his body twisted when he first tried to attack me was because the pain had thrown off the center of his entire body.
The moment he showed me that, my instincts clicked into place and I started to picture his certain defeat.
His stupidity helped too.
Instinctively, without thinking, he must have wanted to smash the thing that was hurting him the most right now.
That was the problem.
I had his neck in my jaws, so what he instinctively aimed for was my head.
My head wasn’t small.
But compared to my body, it was definitely a smaller target.
That made a flexible dodge possible.
And it was only natural that his irreversible attack ended up piercing his own neck.
“Kheh, kkehhuahhheh... Aaaagh!!!”
He was still alive even after his throat had been pierced.
Considering he could still make that kind of sound with his vocal cords destroyed, maybe that was just one of his traits.
Persistent.
No, looking at it again, he was barely hanging on to life.
...Well, it didn’t matter anymore.
He was just my food now.
And so I waited for him to die, nice and leisurely.
I didn’t want to be beaten to death by his desperate thrashing in his final moments.
It was probably about five minutes later when the relaxed meal began.
I only truly came to my senses about thirty minutes after that.
For a moment, I was horrified by the corpse that had been reduced to little more than muscle and bone, and then my memory came rushing back.
“...I did this to that monster?”
I don’t know.
What exactly did I do?
It was impossible to understand, and yet for some reason I could accept it.
After all, I was the one who had done it, with my own body.
Even if I didn’t want to accept it, I couldn’t help but accept it.
I attacked.
I won.
I killed him.
And then... I ate him.
The sensation of the intestines’ chewy, springy texture and the soft texture of the flesh still lingered faintly in my mouth.
The feeling of gulping down blood and wetting my parched throat still remained in my gullet.
Only the muscles were left uneaten.
They were so dense that even though I could pierce them, I couldn’t cut through them.
Aside from that, I scraped everything clean.
Eyeballs, tongue, brain, cartilage—everything.
I ate every part that could be eaten.
For some reason, even though I had eaten more than my own body weight, I didn’t feel especially heavy.
I did feel full, though.
No. Come to think of it, the fact that I could even eat more food than my own body weight was strange to begin with.
...Now that I think about it.
Strangely enough, I didn’t feel like vomiting at all.
Maybe... because this was very different from when I ate a human.
This wasn’t a human, and it wasn’t even similar to one... so maybe that was why.
Because of that, unlike before, I didn’t feel much resistance.
And then....
[Main Quest (NEW): Accept your identity as a monster (0/1). Time limit: (7/100) hours]
[Reward: Fully restore all stats, +40 distributable points]
[Failure: Death]
[Stats]
[Name: A “truly” ordinary lizard monster]
[Disaster Level: Wolf (promotion conditions not met)]
[HP: 45/45]
[ST: 10/10]
[AP: 14/20]
[SP: 0/0]
[MP: 0/0]
[Distributable Points: 0 (+18)]
[Skills (2/10): [Super Instinct] LV4, [Sharp Claws] LV1 (NEW)]
A blue rectangle appeared again with a ding.
This time, unlike before, a few things had been added.
“...Stats?”
It didn’t take long to understand what the displayed numbers meant.
Probably my current condition.
But with nothing to compare it to, I had no idea what it was supposed to mean.
So was I weak? Or strong?
For now, I figured weak was more likely.
As I kept my doubts in mind and looked down, I noticed [Super Instinct] written after the skills.
...This thing called stats definitely seemed to be quantifying my current state.
After all, there had been a few times when instinct had helped me break through things.
Still, just in case, I scratched my forearm once with my claws.
Riiip.
“.........Huh?”
...Wait.
That shouldn’t have caused this much damage.
That’s strange.
I had only meant to scrape the skin a little and make a minor scratch.
But like cutting paper with scissors, it cleanly split not just the skin but the flesh and muscle inside my forearm too.
Fwoosh!
Blood immediately began spurting out.
I hurriedly grabbed my arm and tried to stop the bleeding while thinking it over carefully.
It hurt like I’d been burned, and it was burning hot, but that only snapped my mind into sharp focus.
When I scratched myself a few hours ago, it had only left a mark on the skin.
I don’t know why. Why?
For a moment I was flustered, then I remembered there had been something else next to [Super Instinct].
But the stats window had already disappeared.
Even if I thought about what I should do, nothing came to mind.
Except for one thing.
“...Stats.”
Come to think of it, my voice had a pretty heavy tone.
As I had that thought, the rectangle showing my stats appeared once more.
Probably... the [Main Quest] could be summoned the same way.
That was my guess.
For now, I focused on the stats again.
[HP: 42/45]
HP had gone down.
That meant the result of injuring myself was being reflected there.
So one scratch with my claws had taken away one-fifteenth of my health.
...No, bleeding this much, maybe a loss of 3 was actually pretty mild.
Since nothing else had changed, I turned my gaze back to the skills.
[Skills (2/10): [Super Instinct] LV4, [Sharp Claws] LV1 (NEW)]
NEW.
So, in simple terms... that had just been added, right?
What had caused something like that to be added?
No matter how I thought about it, there was only one answer.
“...Consumption, maybe.”
This was probably a trait of the monster I had just eaten.
By devouring that thing... I must have obtained those unusually large, hard claws.
That must also be why my arm had been sliced open like paper.
Then the conclusion was simple.
Every time I ate someone, I gained some trait of that being... in the form of a skill.
...I had no idea why or how it worked, but if I started nitpicking every detail, there’d be no end to it.
Besides, I didn’t even understand why my existence was shaped like this in the first place.
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