In wolves clothing

The wolf leaps toward me, a hulking beast the size of a compact car, its fur a mottled gray streaked with dirt and blood. Its amber eyes gleam with a predatory intelligence that feels almost human.

My whip-hand lashes out, a blurred arc of pale sinew and bone, but the wolf twists mid-air, dodging with fluidity. It lands lightly on its paws, the impact barely rustling the forest floor. The movement is almost elegant—graceful in a way I wouldn't expect from a creature this big.

Smart cookie, this one. The fact that the rest of its pack dropped dead the moment they brushed against my flesh tendril probably gave it something to think about.

The wolf growls low and guttural, a sound that vibrates through the air like a drumbeat. It doesn't waste time posturing. Instead, it charges me, weaving in a zig-zag pattern that makes it a blur of fur and fangs.

Too fast.

My dead legs are sluggish, unable to keep up, and there's no dodging this time.

I smile and let out a breath as it slams into me like a battering ram. The force drives the remaining air from my lungs, and I hit the ground hard, the impact rattling through my ribs until they creak under the weight of the beast pinning me.

Its jaws are already clamped around my neck, the sharp sting of teeth breaking both goblin and human skin. Blood wells up in hot rivulets, trailing down my collar.

Too bad for the wolf that it's already dead.

The moment its body touched mine, its brain turned to pulp. Its growl died mid-snap, the light in its eyes fading as its body went limp, slumping heavily against me.

"I know, I know. It's cheating," I whisper, coughing against the pressure on my throat. "But who told you to attack me?"

With a grunt, I shove the carcass off me, using my one good hand to push it aside. Its body thuds against the forest floor, and I sit up slowly, rubbing at the indentations its teeth left on my neck while sealing the skin and the broken veins underneath.

The next hour slips by in a flurry of work. Fresh flesh is far more pliable under my control than the rotting goblin meat, so most of the old tissue gets discarded.

Thank you, GMKS0, you piece of trash.

Wolf muscle, dense and taut with power, replaces the slack, decayed fibers I had been relying on.

They will need to be replaced as well in a day or so, but that's a problem for future me to deal with.

I also take some bones, extracting them from the biggest wolf carcass. Each femur and rib is stripped clean of excess tissue and shaped into plates, their surfaces smoothed where they'll press against my body. Using the marrow channels, I embed small slivers of goblin bone to create interlocking seams—crude but effective hinges that allow the plates to shift without breaking. These pieces are then layered into the goblin leather covering.

For my head, I make a helmet. The wolf skull is sawed down and reshaped into a bowl-like structure, reinforced by fragments of its spine to add rigidity. Thin strips of goblin leather are fastened inside as a lining, minimizing discomfort and preventing the bone from digging into my scalp. The end result is functional, if grotesque, with jagged edges and a faint smell of decay.

The whip-arm gets the final touch. I channel the limited self-tissue I've regenerated into reinforcing the tendons and musculature of the whip. The bone core is extended slightly, and overlapping thin sheets of cartilage are woven around it for added flexibility and tensile strength. More thin sheets of skin are wrapped over the entire structure, reinforced here and there with rings of wolf bone on top of the skin. While far from perfect, the whip now feels sturdier and responds more fluidly to my will.

By the time I finish, my legs move with a newfound ease, each step less clumsy than the last. The restructured muscles contract and relax with something approaching natural rhythm. The additional plates on my armor make me feel a little less vulnerable, their weight offset by the slight boost in structural stability.

That's the good news.

The bad news? I'm starting to feel the strain. I didn't realize this during my first experiments, but Fleshcrafting, for all its wonders, comes with a price. Even with my high constitution bolstering me, the constant mental effort takes its toll. The fatigue is subtle at first—a lingering ache in my temples—but it compounds, gnawing at my focus.

I somewhat expected this, but come on, I slept so fucking much...

I clench my jaw and push through.

Rest can wait. I'm almost done with my preparations and every second counts.

Next, I turn my attention to the three wolf corpses I left mostly untouched. Their bones are fused and repositioned in a way that allows them to stand upright, resembling scarecrows. Their hollow eyes are staring blankly into the surrounding forest.

The effect might be morbid but it should be functional—a perimeter meant to distract predators long enough for me to assess the situation with either Flesh Perception or my own eyes.

Digging a shallow hole takes less time than before. It's not as deep as the grave I used earlier—just enough to lay down while remaining ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. The thought of burying myself six feet under again makes me a bit nauseous, but it's understandable.

That level of immobility would be suicide if I were to be discovered, so I won't do it again carelessly.

I take a long, deliberate breath through the palm-length bone snorkel I crafted earlier, calming my mind as I cover myself with dirt.

Ever since I woke up from my near-comatose state a few hours ago, things have been... strangely peaceful. Too peaceful.

No matter how I frame it, I basically wasted around sixteen hours by sleeping through the bulk of Day One.

After something like that, I'd expected a harsher punishment—maybe a swarm of monsters or some escalating catastrophe to drive home the point that wasting time might as well equal death.

And yet, today's haul so far consisted only of this lone wolf pack. No towering beasts, no freakishly fast goblins, no unrelenting ambushes.

Just wolves, and not even particularly strong ones at that, even if they were bigger than the ones I killed yesterday.

I'm not exactly wishing for the return of supersonic death-projectiles, but after coming so close to dying, this stretch of calm feels unnatural. My voices scream that it's the quiet before the storm.

Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe it's the system's way of easing people in, ramping up the difficulty slooowly, to give us time to adapt.

Or maybe it's something worse—a cycle of calm before chaos, where every few days everything explodes into violence designed to weed out the complacent.

I push my back against the packed earth of my pit, my hand-whip twitching involuntarily as my mind races.

Paranoia? Maybe. But better than being caught off guard.

Time will tell if my suspicions are right.

For now, I'll take this peace for what it is: a chance to prepare.

So, buried in the ground, I shall meditate.

I take another deep breath, directing my focus inward. The sensation in my chest is difficult to describe—cylindrical, almost solid, yet radiating a faint, persistent pressure throughout my torso. It's strange, alien, and annoyingly intangible. Beyond the dull ache it produces, I can't interact with it in any meaningful way.

Fleshcrafting, in comparison, is instinctive—a natural extension of my thoughts, like flexing a muscle I've never known was there. But this? If this is the so-called Soul Well, it's completely unresponsive. Still, I refuse to be discouraged. I was able to condense the Soul Mist of the Dead just fine, and the skill even leveled up once, so it's clearly doing something.

I center my mind and attempt to grasp the feeling. Again and again, I probe at the intangible presence, seeking any reaction, any sign that my efforts are bearing fruit.

Perhaps I should have paid more attention to this skill earlier. But to be fair, Fleshcrafting has more than proven its value. It's tangible, versatile, and, most importantly, effective. The Soul Well didn't protect me when the goblin shaman's spell nearly erased me from existence. It didn't help me kill said shaman or keep me alive during the aftermath.

Why waste time fumbling with an unknown tool when I could sharpen the weapon already in my hand?

I don't have anything against betting per se, only against losing. All in all, relying on unknown odds in the middle of a monster-infested forest seemed like something only a delusional person would do.

That was my logic then, and I stand by it. Even now, I'd still be testing Fleshcrafting's limits if not for this persistent, suffocating pressure in my chest.

But the time for delay is over. The Soul Well clawed its way to the top of my priority list, so there's no use for what-ifs anymore.

I focus harder, bracing myself against the rising frustration as I feel nothing but the void pressing back. It's like grasping at smoke in the dark—elusive and formless.

Ten minutes pass, then thirty, and soon I lose track of time altogether.

My determination doesn't waver. I press on, probing the boundaries of this unseen presence, clawing at it with my will.

And then, without warning, something clicks.

A shock runs through me, as though the pressure in my chest has burst wide open.

The world around me vanishes, replaced by a yawning, infinite darkness.

And I am falling straight within.