Beast Slayer
The beast landed and as expected, it attacked Kyriaki, ripping up his clothes into shreds, revealing the three claw marks on his torso.
The beast, with a ferocious roar and swift as the wind, took a large bite out of Kyriaki's abdomen area, leaving a bite mark in his internal organs.
He naturally screamed out in pain before fainting due to the amount of blood lost. His intestines were gone and his liver as well. His heart could be seen beating, but eventually it stopped. The beast spat out his intestines from its mouth and grinned.
It would be the end of their life here for a normal human. However, unfortunately for the beast, Kyriaki was no normal human being. Just as it started to walk away, there was the sound of something heavy crashing onto the ground echoing through the air.
In response, the creature swiftly turned around to witness the arrival of another figure, standing assertively beside the fallen man. This time, it was a woman. Her silhouette exuded a captivating blend of strength and grace, with long, slim limbs, sleek black hair cascading in a straight line, curving at the bangs, and eyes that had sharp edges.
Her pupils were cold looking at the beast and a smug grin appeared. She wore the clothes the previous person wore, a simple grey t-shirt, white lab coat and grey pants, which made the woman look like a tomboy.
"I forgot about this. Well, it came in handy," she said, drawing her short sword from its sheath on her waist. It was the same short sword that was stuck in the beast's neck which suddenly disappeared then reappeared at the same time Kyriaki died and the time when the woman suddenly arrived. "It's time for round two." she announced.
With no delay, the woman started to run straight for the beast. Her movement was the same as Kyriaki's, and to the woman's luck, it hindered the beast's movement for a split second, but it was enough to gain some considerable ground.
As the woman closed the distance, she wielded her sword with a proficiency that defied her appearance. The beast, disoriented by the synchronised onslaught, attempted to retaliate, but it found itself caught in a relentless dance of blades. Her speed was immense though her power for each strike was nearly non-existent.
The beast, realising it faced a formidable opponent, shifted its tactics. With a powerful swipe of its paw, it aimed to knock the woman off balance. However, she sidestepped the attack with remarkable agility, her focus unbroken. The dance continued as more and more shallow wounds appeared on the beast's skin.
It was breathing heavily and with its body slumping and obvious signs of fatigue, the beast finally ran out of strength and fell to the ground. In response, the woman held her arm high into the air and struck a victorious pose.
She then tossed the short sword into the air and caught it in a reverse grip fashion before striking the beast's heart and vital organs and then ripping them out.
"That's for payback, you little son of a bitch." she scoffed at the beast, but by then, it was already dead with no signs of consciousness remaining.
"Hm? What's up with the extra weight I feel on my chest?" she looked down. What she saw was her breasts. It is one of the major differences between male and female bodies and how they are biologically structured. Every single female will have breasts from the day they are born to the day they die.
However, the woman seemed perplexed by the sudden appearance of these biological features and tilted her head sideways in confusion. "Ah. Am I a female..?" she mumbled. "No wonder I felt something was off. I guess my little guy is also gone."
The mysterious woman turned out to be Kyriaki—the female version of him at least. Kyriaki was a person who wouldn't fuss about one's gender, nationality or cultural background, but would rather judge other people on their personalities, traits, strengths and those individual things, so he wasn't a person to be angered or annoyed by materialising in a female's body.
In fact, there are several categories in which females perform better than males such as in tasks that mainly involve focusing, impulse, mood or emotional control. And those traits are what a researcher like Kyriaki would need. The ability to better focus on a task would be a massive benefit to Kyriaki as he would generally be studying one topic or subject for hours on end.
"Let's return home. I'm tired." she said.
Kyriaki left the dead carcass of the beast to rot as the sun continued to go down and climbed the stone hill to the small cave where she called home. The temperature will continue to drop to around 10°C or lower by nightfall, so she needed to create a fire before that time arrived, otherwise, it would be hard to survive the night.
It didn't take long for Kyriaki to return back to her base, and it was just in time before the sun completely set. Now in pitch darkness, Kyriaki blindly searched around the cave for the flint and stone that he used to create a spark previously.
The noise of two rocks banging together was all there was for ten minutes. Eventually, one spark was large enough to land on a dry leaf and it caught on fire.
"Finally!" she yelled out in frustration. Her high-pitched voice surprised herself, or her male consciousness. It also made some birds in the nearby trees flee the scene in fear, which Kyriaki didn't mean to do. "Whoops. I'm still getting used to the female body. Now I wonder... is it in a pattern?" she glanced at her short sword. "If I die again, would I be a female or a male? My old self, the 'original', then a male, now a female, then a female again, then a male again? Does it work in that order? Or is it a fifty-fifty split? Hmmm. The possibilities are limitless... I should do some experiments sooner or later if I want to understand this power. Anyhow, let's cook dinner first."
Currently, in the cave, there was a small fireplace with a ring of stone surrounding it near the centre of the cave, with dry wood stored at the very back. The height of the cave was merely three metres at maximum and less than a metre at minimum. The entire cave is made out of rough, unpolished stone of a grey tone and the interior was quite bland.
There was also a small pile of yellow grass acting as Kyriaki's bed for the time being. "I was never proficient at cooking... I wonder why I feel like it's natural to me now?" she wondered. Ever since Kyriaki's reincarnation into the female body, he, well she, for the time being, felt something was off. No, it wasn't the strange feeling of having breasts or the disappearance of his little guy, but rather his skills.
He is extremely familiar with his own skills, such as being a beginner in martial arts or hand-to-hand combat, while being proficient in marksmanship. However, now, in his female form, it was like his abilities did a 180 and switched.
Unlike before, where he would most likely have run away after just stabbing the beast a few times due to certain events in his past, he instead confronted the beast head-on and managed to win in his female form. This wasn't like himself, and he acknowledges it as well.
Even so, Kyriaki lacks the data to deny or confirm his theories.
Well, I have my hunch about all of this mess, but it is sure great to have the ability to cook.
She started off by skinning the feathers of a large bird that she caught earlier in the day. The bird did not resemble any modern-day species of birds so it could have been an extinct or undiscovered species. Though Kyriaki would have gladly dissected it with curiosity and many questions, currently, as she pulled out the internal organs, she merely stared at them with blank, almost bored eyes.
"Wait!" she cried out, just before she tossed the organs into the fire. "What am I doing? This isn't like me! Why did I try to throw away these precious organs when I could study them?" she questioned herself.
Setting the bird organs aside, she retrieved some grass from the outside and plated the organs. Delicately, she placed the plate of organs in a safer location, treating them with newfound reverence. Kyriaki observed his transformation with a mix of amusement and interest. It seemed the scientific curiosity within his female form had momentarily been overshadowed by a more powerful instinct, one that he had not experienced before.
As the fire continued to crackle and cast dancing shadows, Kyriaki continued to prepare her meal. There was no other option other than to cook it over a fire—without seasoning as well. But beggars can't be choosers after all.