Rebirth: I became a tentacle monster

The dense forest is strewn with thorns. The dark, ancient trees cast a ghostly shade. There is no telling how many creeping horrors lurk behind them.

It was in such a frightening place that Levi slowly woke up.

"Where am I..." He looked around and instantly sensed that something was wrong.

"My eyes...?" The sight he was seeing was not something that a human's eyes could present.

Moreover, he was at a "height" that was almost as close to the ground as if he were lying on his back.

"I'm... I've become..." After moving his body a little, he finally understood the situation.

He had turned into a tentacle monster.

Maybe it couldn't be called a tentacle monster, after all, compared to the fierce tentacle monster with countless thick tentacles in some works, he was now like a baby, and even saying baby was an exaggeration of him.

Right now, Levi was like four tentacles of about the same length that had been roughly put together. If he were spread out on the ground, he would be in a perfect "+" shape.

These four tentacles were only about a metre long and about two or three centimetres in diameter. If they were balled up, they could fit in a washbasin. Such pitiful tentacles would definitely not add up to more than five kilograms.

Judging from his physique alone, the current Levi was a weak chicken - he really weighed about the same as a chicken.

"What have I done to deserve this!" Levi wailed aloud in his heart.

At the same time, by a ghost, he stretched out a tentacle and called up a window interface.

Tentacle Monster

Level 0 Tentacle

Strength: 6

Agility: 9

Toughness: 4

Constitution: 13

Perception: 11

Intellect: 6

Mental: 3

Will: 4

Total: 56

Growth: +1 to constitution; +1 to each level of free attributes

Racial Talents: None

Professional Abilities: None

Acquired Skills: None

Spells: None

As this window appeared, a small piece of information suddenly flashed through Levi's mind, allowing him to understand the various stats within this window at once.

"So... Not only am I now a level 0 pure new, but I'm also the kind with a spam weak template set?" After reflecting back on the information in his head, he couldn't help but smile bitterly.

The information in Levi's head told him that a standard level 0 human, although not having any special abilities, should have all of his basic attribute values taken as 10, for a total of 80 points.

Levi's attributes, on the other hand, only added up to a total of 56 points, only 70% of an ordinary human's. This basically meant that an ordinary person with bare hands could easily defeat it.

Moreover, his highest attribute was still Physique, an attribute that had the least gain in frontal combat ability until it took shape. It represents the body's ability to circulate internally, which in combat is mainly reflected in increased power of certain talents that rely on the body's organs to achieve (such as Dragon's Breath) as well as the ability to recover.

And as Levi has neither the ability to use it, nor is his physique high enough to see the effects in a short battle, these 13 points of attributes are approximately equal to nothing.

What's even scarier is that even a normal 0th rank profession can have a combined 4 points of growth per level, while he only has 2 points.

"This is great, even if a chicken did come, I wouldn't necessarily be able to beat it, right?"

The newborn tentacle monster began to reckon - I don't know if it was due to the extra information in his brain, but Levi was now rapidly substituting his identity, even he felt that Levi, the name that had been with him for over twenty years, was now dispensable, he just felt like a tentacle monster.

According to the information in his head, he relied mainly on two ways to become stronger.

One was to eat things that provided energy and further convert that energy into experience. Considering the tentacle's weak digestive ability, the "various things" in this case only include regular food such as fruits, vegetables and meat.

The second is... Sucking the bodily fluids of a woman, as any tentacle monster in any little yellow book would do. This method will keep sucking the victim's power, similar to a 'Succubus' that draws on a man's essence.

However, he will only suck the victim all the way down to level 0, and will not drain the person dry like the 'Succubus' in some works. So his method is much more efficient than the 'Succubus' kind, sucking a human female dry with as much power as eating dozens of beasts of the same level. However, he had neither the ability to subdue a human, and there was not a single woman to be found in this desolate place.

So, he began to study how to fight and upgrade. And soon, he discovered a little trick

Firstly, as a tentacled monster, he relied heavily on his skin for breathing. Although it was not impossible to actively inhale, that was an alternative, and only useful when the skin was too dry to continue breathing.

The air in this forest is quite moist, and with the mucus on his body, his skin is hardly dry to that extent.

This also means that the tentacle monster hardly makes any noise as long as he is lying there. Coupled with his unique body structure, it is difficult to spot a tentacle monster lying here even when you get close.

Silent and undetectable, this is perfect for concealment and ambush.

"Still, the breakage is there." The tentacled monster muttered.

That break was the smell.

From my own experience in my previous life, I vaguely remember that tentacle monsters tend to have one common characteristic, and that is a great smell.

If he had inherited this trait, he would have been lucky not to be eaten by the various beasts that arrived at the smell, not to mention catching something to eat.

One often can't smell what one is wearing, so this is something he can't immediately confirm.

So now...

"It's time for me to do something about it." The tentacled monster muttered.

What was to be faced, sooner or later, he soothed himself.

Moving his four tentacles with trepidation, he took his first steps in the world.

The tentacle monster watches his surroundings carefully, always ready to crouch with his head in his hands.

It could not help that it was too slow to crawl with its tentacles and could not escape from danger.

"Chirp..." The wail of an unknown beast came from the distance.

The tentacle monster shrank into a ball in fear, and it took a while before it cautiously began to look around.

"So it's not around here..." He breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief, and then began to wonder if it wasn't too unsafe for him to be creeping and crawling on the ground like this now.

Couldn't there be a different way of travelling... Like climbing a tree?

But the tentacle monster quickly dismissed this idea. The forest he was in looked like a temperate deciduous broadleaf forest, and the trees weren't too far apart, so even if he could jump from tree to tree, the noise would be enough to make all the predators around him notice him.

Or... Drill the ground?

The tentacle monster soon gave up on that idea too. His body wasn't really suited to digging, and the mud would rub off the mucus on his body surface, exacerbating his energy drain. He would probably have starved to death or even suffocated from the overproduction of mucus before he could dig more than a few metres.

There was no other way out at the moment, so in the end he chose to take it one step at a time: crawl slowly forward.

Following the direction of the sound he had heard earlier, the tentacle monster moved a little.

Soon, he heard a rustling sound.

The sound was tiny and sounded... It was like chewing.

As he continued on, the sound became clearer and clearer. The sound of chewing was interspersed with the crisp cracking of bones, torturing the tentacled monster's nerves.

"Or let's not go there..." The tentacle monster was scared to death.