Skill Used: Swarm Command (Dominate Remaining Skitterers)
Ruel attempted to use the freshly absorbed pheromone ability to assert dominance over the two remaining Cave Skitterers.
Result: Partial failure.
Partial effect: Confusion.
Neither obedience nor aggression.
The two Skitterers trembled.
Their legs twitched in contradictory patterns—forward, backward, forward.
Mandibles opened and closed without purpose.
The pheromone signal screamed submit while every fiber of their being screamed abomination—kill it—flee from it.
The conflict broke them.
One collapsed—legs folding beneath it, body curling into a defensive ball.
Not submission.
Not obedience.
Simply shutdown.
Overwhelmed.
The other shrieked—a thin, broken sound—and bolted.
It scrambled up the tunnel wall and disappeared into a crack no wider than Ruel’s skull, vanishing into the deeper labyrinth.
The curled one remained.
Twitching.
Unresponsive.
Ruel stood in a tunnel painted with carnage.
Charred husks.
Crushed chitin.
Paralyzed bodies still faintly twitching.
The coordinator’s headless corpse dangling from the wall where his claws had pinned it.
Eleven dead.
One incapacitated.
Three fled.
The violet light between his scales pulsed steadily—brighter than before.
Hungry.
Four uneaten corpses remained on the ground.
Each one carrying fragments.
Potential.
Power.
DEVOUR whispered.
More.
Take more.
Waste nothing.
CURRENT STATUS:
HP: 87 / 105 | Health: 82% | Mana: 85 / 100 | Stamina: 62 / 90 | XP: 75 / 200
Skills Acquired This Fight: Venom Spit (Minor), Wall Cling (Minor), Swarm Command (Minor)
The incapacitated Skitterer twitched at his feet.
Still alive.
Still carrying whatever fragment it possessed.
The three charred corpses from his initial breath attack remained unconsumed.
And deeper in the tunnels—where the fleeing Skitterers had vanished—the chittering hadn’t stopped entirely.
It had simply grown distant.
Wary.
They would return.
With more.
Ruel didn’t hesitate.
The hunger wasn’t metaphorical anymore.
It was a system—a mechanism built into his void-scarred flesh that demanded input.
Every corpse was a locked box.
Every fragment inside was a key to something greater.
He started with the incapacitated survivor.
The curled Skitterer twitched as his shadow fell over it.
Its legs spasmed weakly—some broken reflex trying to uncurl, to flee.
Its compound eyes reflected violet pinpricks.
Ruel’s jaws closed around its midsection.
It screamed—a thin, reedy sound that cut off wet.
He bit down.
Swallowed.
Felt it die inside him. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
DEVOUR ACTIVATED
Target: Cave Skitterer (alive, incapacitated)
Living prey yields stronger fragments.
Absorbing…
Fragment Obtained: Tremorsense (Minor) — Detect vibrations through contact with stone surfaces.
Range: 10 meters.
Can sense movement, footsteps, and burrowing through solid ground.
The world expanded.
Not through his eyes.
Through his feet.
The stone beneath his claws suddenly hummed with information—micro-vibrations painting a picture of the tunnel system around him.
He could feel the distant skittering of the fled survivors.
Could feel the slow drip of water fifty meters ahead.
Could feel—
Nothing, far below.
An absence.
A void in the stone that swallowed vibration.
He filed that away.
Three corpses remained.
He ate them methodically.
Not frenzied.
Purposeful.
Jaws cracking chitin, throat working, the Devour ability cycling through each body like a processor parsing data.
DEVOUR ACTIVATED
Target: Cave Skitterer (deceased — charred)
Absorbing…
Charred remains yield diminished fragments.
Fragment Obtained: Heat Resistance (Trace) — Marginal improvement to fire/heat tolerance.
Negligible on its own.
Stackable.
DEVOUR ACTIVATED
Target: Cave Skitterer (deceased — charred)
Absorbing…
Fragment Obtained: Heat Resistance (Trace) — Stacked.
Heat Resistance upgraded: Trace → Minor.
DEVOUR ACTIVATED
Target: Cave Skitterer (deceased — charred)
Absorbing…
Fragment Obtained: Chitin Plating (Trace) — Negligible hardening of scale edges.
Stackable.
Requires further absorption to manifest physically.
The last body went down like ash and wire.
Ruel licked his jaws clean—tasting char, venom, pheromones, and something else.
Something that tasted like progress.
TOTAL DEVOUR RESULTS:
Fragment Status
Venom Spit (Minor) Active
Wall Cling (Minor) Active
Swarm Command (Minor) Active
Tremorsense (Minor) Active
Heat Resistance (Minor) Passive
Chitin Plating (Trace) Dormant — needs more chitin-based prey
XP Gained: +35 (incapacitated kill + consumption bonuses)
Total XP: 110 / 200
The tunnel fell silent.
Ruel’s belly was full—distended slightly, scales shifting to accommodate the mass being broken down and converted within him.
The void-cracks along his body pulsed in slow, rhythmic waves.
Digesting.
Processing.
Growing.
He found a shallow alcove where two tunnel walls met at an angle—defensible, narrow enough that nothing could approach without funneling into his Tremorsense range.
He pressed his back against the stone and lowered himself down.
His right hind leg still tingled with residual paralysis.
He closed his eyes.
Rest.
RESTING…
Recovery over time:
HP: 87 → 97 / 105 | Stamina: 62 → 90 / 90 | Mana: 85 → 100 / 100 | Paralysis: Fading…
Faded.
Agility: 20 → 25 Restored to full.
Ruel woke to silence—and to his Tremorsense painting the darkness.
Nothing approaching within 10 meters.
But deeper—far below—that void in the stone remained.
Something that ate vibrations.
Something that existed as an absence.
Ruel stretched in the alcove—each limb extending, claws scraping stone, testing the restored function of his right hind leg.
The paralysis was gone.
His body felt whole.
More than whole.
Different.
He flexed his foreclaws.
The edges were slightly harder than before—the barest suggestion of chitin reinforcement layering over dragonscale.
Invisible to the eye.
Perceptible to touch.
He needed to understand what he’d become.
TRAINING: VENOM SPIT
Ruel faced the tunnel wall.
He worked his jaw—feeling the new glands seated behind his lower fangs.
A pressure built.
Chemical.
Acrid.
He spat.
Skill Used: Venom Spit (Accuracy Test)
Ruel attempted to spit paralytic venom at a specific point on the wall (roughly 3 meters).
Result: Success.
A thin stream of translucent fluid arced from his jaws and splattered against the stone—exactly where he’d aimed.
The venom sizzled faintly against mineral deposits, leaving a wet stain that glistened in the dim bioluminescent glow of fungal patches.
Good.
Short range.
Accurate enough.
Not powerful—but a tool.
An opener.
TRAINING: WALL CLING
He turned to the alcove wall.
Placed one foreclaw against it.
Willed the adhesion.
His pad gripped.
He placed the second claw.
Pulled himself up.
Skill Used: Wall Cling (Sustained Movement)
Ruel attempted to climb vertically and traverse to the ceiling.
Result: Success.
Ruel scaled the wall—each claw finding purchase where no grip should exist.
His body hung at impossible angles.
He reached the ceiling and clung there, inverted, tail swaying beneath him.
The world looked different from above.
Tunnels became corridors of opportunity.
Ambush points revealed themselves.
The ceiling was his now.
He held for ten seconds.
Twenty.
Thirty—
His left rear claw slipped.
He dropped, twisting mid-air, landing on all fours with a thump that echoed down the corridor.
Thirty seconds.
Enough for an ambush.
Not enough for sustained travel.
Yet.