Chapter 2

Bear looked around his surroundings, not seeing anything of particular value to him in terms of achieving his goal, but he did see a body of water up ahead which he took note of as it would be useful for surviving in this new world. 

Not wanting to venture too far from the cave he planned to live in until he became stronger, Bear made sure to not walk anywhere that he couldn't see his new home from.

"There isn't anything around here is there Griswald?" 

"I don't know, you'll have to find out, unless you ask me nicely for a hint..."

"I think I'll pass on that one."

As there wasn't much around his cave, and he absolutely wasn't going to beg for a hint, Bear only had one option, and he walked over to the river which he had noticed previously.

It was the direction he was saving for last, mostly because he felt that it would be the most useful to him, and he wanted to ensure he didn't get too fixated on the stream.

Once he reached the stream, he noticed that it wasn't particularly deep. It was so shallow in fact that, even with his relatively small body, only about half of his legs were covered by the water.

Although it was cold, the stream was relaxing, and it tasted okay too. Bear decided that it wouldn't be the end of the world if he lay in the stream for a while, so he allowed himself to lie down fully.

He lay calmly for a moment, but out of nowhere, he was disturbed. The feeling of being gripped by something quite powerful suddenly came over him, and he jumped out of the water in shock. 

Once he was able to look down at himself, he saw the culprit behind the attack. A small blue crab monster was grabbing onto his skin. The reason he thought of it as a monster and not an animal was due to its huge right claw in comparison with its weak, almost shrivelled looking body.

Using his claws, Bear grabbed onto the crab's body and ripped it off of him. However, due to the strength of the crab's grip, the body was ripped off, and the claw was left gripping onto him.

Seeing as he was now a bear, he saw no issue in his next move, as he put the whole crab inside of his mouth, and crunched down on it. This shattered the crab's body, and he swallowed it all in one go. After this, he used his claws to pry the crab's claw off of himself and chucked that into his mouth as well.

"Well done Bear, let that crab serve as a reminder of your goal, there is no time to be resting with the Demon King's resurrection on the horizon. However, I am happy to inform you that you have gained your first level from killing and consuming the crab. Your stats will have automatically increased, and if I may give you some advice, next time you kill something try activating one of your skills, it will let you do more damage and it'll be easier too."

"I appreciate the help, and I guess you're right, if I ever want to get back to my body then I should probably try my hardest to get stronger. Seems like its time to power level."

"That's the spirit m'boy, I know you can do it."

"Don't try to act inspirational now, you've only been with me for a bit but you've been nothing but a little bastard."

"No need to be rude, although you're right."

Bear just sighed and started to walk a little further than before. He had dreamed of such a fantasy-like situation in the past, there was no way he wasn't going to take full advantage of it now that he was actually able to.

As he got further from his cave, he noticed that the wildlife was becoming deader and deader, and he began to realise why there were no animals around. He reached a clearing which had been seemingly destroyed in a battle. On one side was a force that seemed to be made up of dark-grey-skinned humanoids with horns and wings on their backs. On the other side of the clearing was a mixture of pale-skinned humanoids, with long pointy ears, as well as creatures which he assumed had lived in the forest before falling in battle.

"It seems you have come across a battle between the elves and a group of demons, it is likely that they were attempting to invade the forest and were stopped in their tracks."

Bear continued to look around the area and came across something interesting. Two bears, significantly larger than him were lying dead on the side of the elves. As he had not seen his parents in the cave, he had no choice but to assume that this was them.

"Griswald, did you say earlier that I gained experience from eating that crab?"

"That is correct, as a juvenile monster you can gain experience from eating as well as killing enemies, once you evolve you won't be able to anymore. Why do you ask?"

Bear grinned, "Don't you see Griswald, this is an experience treasure trove."

"You are a clever one, aren't you? Maybe being created for such an interesting hero wasn't such a bad thing after all."

Bear dug his teeth right into the flesh of what was very likely his new body's parents and tried to tear a chunk of flesh out of them. However, he found that their skin was too hard to penetrate normally. He thought back to what Griswald had said, and he tried to activate his skill, "Bite."

After saying this, Bear could already feel the change, as he felt a lot more power coming from his jaws, and he attempted to bite through the skin once again.

This time his teeth sunk into it, and he ripped a large part of flesh away from the body. It didn't taste as bad as he had thought it would, in fact, the raw meat was actually quite nice. Bear chewed on it for a few moments, before swallowing it, immediately being able to tell that he had levelled up again.

It was no surprise, he was still a baby, and eating part of a grown adult version of his own species would yield a huge amount of experience for him. 

He continued eating, not stopping for anything, not that there was anything to stop him around. He only managed to get around halfway through the huge body of one of his parents before Griwwald interrupted him, "Congratulations Bear, you're a high enough level to evolve now, and it only took you a few hours. Just to make sure you know, this is an incredibly quick pace, but don't expect your future evolutions to be so fast, you won't be able to get experience from eating anymore once you evolve."

Bear pulled his face out of the corpse, his white fur now covered in deep red blood, "Give me a second, I just want a bit more."

He continued eating, only intending to take a small bit more, but when he bit into the flesh, his mind went blank, only coming back to his senses once he had finished eating. 

When he looked around himself, he noticed two things, the first was that it was dark now, to the point where he could barely see anything.

The second was that every one of the corpses in the area, from both sides of the battle, was gone, with only gnawed bones left where they had previously been.

"That was impressive, I didn't think that you'd be able to make such an achievement in just one day. It's my pleasure to let you know that by consuming all of these corpses, you have acquired a special evolution for going over the evolution threshold by a significant amount, solely from eating corpses."

"What even happened, I don't remember eating any of this." Bear asked.

"It seems as though you were overtaken by your bear instincts, don't worry though, as you evolve more you will regain normality within your mind. Speaking of evolution, would you care to undergo yours now, you have levelled up quite a lot and will be reset to level one again. Don't worry though, you will probably still have higher stats than you currently do, and you might even gain some new skills. What do you say? Want to evolve?"

"Sure, I'll go for it."