Chapter 1: Chapter 1: First, eat the babies

Objective: First, eat the babies

Devour the others.

Targets devoured: [0/10]

Reward: 100 XP

The notification floats in front of my eyes, the text the only clear part of my vision. I blink once, twice, every movement sluggish and slow.

Liquid. The thought flashes through my mind. I’m suspended in liquid. Viscous, thick liquid, and I can only see far enough through the deep crimson to make out the shapes of other small figures around me.

The other babies.

I know what liquid is. What babies are. Information floods my mind, telling me I know much, much more than that, but even sifting through it, I can’t find anything relating to me.

Who am I?

I toss the thought aside. The others are moving, and I’m not stupid enough to think that I’m unique.

If the mysterious text—system text, my knowledge fills in—appeared for me, the others probably have similar text in front of them.

It’s hard to move in this liquid. I open my mouth—I have that, apparently—and find that I cannot speak in it.

I am, however, assaulted by a coppery-iron flavor, one that should offend my senses but instead sets the pleasure centers of my mind aflame.

With the unexplained understanding in my brain, I realize what that is.

Blood.

And there are other parts of me that react to that. Warmth blossoms in my chest as I gulp the tangy liquid down, and I don’t stop.

A moment later, that feeling crystallizes, and I Devour the liquid around me.

Devour granted +5 XP!

More of that warmth sinks into me.

There’s that text again, and there’s that word again. XP. Short for experience points, I realize, and if that sensation in my chest caused the text to appear…

I focus on it harder, willing it to expand. At the same time, I start moving. Now that I’ve gotten myself more focused, I can see that there’s more than just the liquid separating me from the others.

There are solid surfaces. Transparent ones, but solid.

I’m surrounded by glass, and there’s no way to go but up.

As I kick upwards, I continue using Devour. I don’t know how I’m doing it, but it’s instinctive.

Devour granted +5 XP!

Devour granted +5 XP!

The tube is longer than I thought it would be. Either that, or I’m not kicking as well as I can. Around me, the others have come to the same conclusion, and they’re also rising.

But I was the first one. I’m the highest up—as far as I can tell, at least.

Devour granted +5 XP!

With the newest infusion of XP, I feel the warmth coalesce into something more concrete. Text appears in my eyes once more, feeding me valuable information.

Devour (Legendary)

Tier: Bronze

Level: 1

Consume and gain power. When you use this skill, you will gain 25% of the XP of what you kill and devour.

Bronze. The lowest tier, something tells me, but Legendary is powerful. That means… this skill—how I know that it’s called a “skill”, I still can’t tell, but I’m not going to bother figuring out why until my knowledge fails me—hasn’t leveled up at all.

To level up skills, I need to use them.

But that XP is something else. It’s not meant to be used on skills. I fish around in my mind, looking for the answer, and it comes readily.

That XP is for me.

I’ll figure that bit out later. The blood around me is thinning, in part due to my Devour and in part because I’m reaching the top of the—the tube? I think this is a tube.

Devour granted +5 XP!

Devour granted +4 XP!

Suddenly, my head feels cold. Something chilly brushes against me, and I realize a moment later that I’m feeling air.

The world seems much clearer out here, and it feels like my perspective shifts. The tubes aren’t actually that high up—I must just be small. I am, after all, supposed to be a baby.

I frown, treading blood to get closer to the edge of the tube. I’m fairly certain babies aren’t supposed to have cognitive function this high.

Magic. It’s probably that.

Not a priority. I’ll figure that out later.

For the time being, I continue Devouring as much as I can even as I prepare to push myself over the edge.

In order to eat the other babies, I need to kill them first.

For a brief, fleeting moment, doubt crosses my mind, but it vanishes instantly when I see the others begin crawling out of their blood slurries too.

Devour granted +3 XP!

The amount of XP I’m gaining is decreasing. Whether that’s because my skill is hitting a barrier or because the quality of the remaining blood is decreasing, I don’t know, but diminishing returns means searching for alternate sources of fuel.

Without hesitating, I throw myself over the side of the glass tube.

The fall lasts too long. I’m not in a body that fits me, though I don’t know what body would. This is, after all, the only memory I have of my existence.

A sharp sensation flashes through me as I land, and I take a moment to register what it’s meant to be. Pain. I shove it aside. It is a useless feeling.

My body is small. Two feet tall, perhaps. It’s unwieldy. The senses, however, all appear to be functional.

I’m in a place that might be a laboratory. Apart from the blood-tubes, there’re dozens of workstations, scientific tools. Every last one of them is abandoned.

I can’t tell how long it’s been since someone was last here. Dust gathers on countertops, which indicates that it’s been quite some time, but I’m not sharp enough to glean the exact passage of time from dust buildup. Sad.

My attention is pulled away when another baby drops, covered in blood, I see what might be a mirror of myself. A mockery of a human being, its limbs too long, its teeth too sharp, and its body shaped more like an insect’s form. Built to kill. Nothing at all like the helpless flesh-sacks that human babies are.

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My reference point for bodies is human. Good to know.

Looking down at my own hands and running my tongue against my teeth, I find my own figure to be as misproportioned and sharp as the other’s. My body, however, feels different. Less insectoid, maybe, but still edged, lethal.

Neither of us are human, and somehow that irritates me.

The other creature raises one arm, gesturing to me, and I consider speaking to it.

No. Talking is a waste of time. Without another word, I charge forward.

Clearly, this startles the… demon is the word that comes to mind. My action startles the demon-baby not ten feet from me, but it raises its hands in time to try to fend me off.

Maybe it didn’t get the notification from the system. Maybe it did and thought it could reason with its peers.

Bad luck for you, I think, deftly batting its sloppy block aside with my own elongated arms and sinking my too-sharp teeth straight into its neck.

My bite is surprisingly strong for my size. I cleave straight through flesh, the tangy-sweet taste of blood dancing over my tongue.

The other demon screams, and the sound irritates me.

I bite again, this time pulling on the skill within me.

I eat the baby.

Devour granted +4 XP!

Enemies devoured: [1/10]

Twenty-five percent. That was the number, wasn’t it? I find myself disappointed. The other one didn’t spend nearly as much time as I did. Couldn’t it have fattened itself up some more? No wonder I took it off guard, incapable as it is.

I wonder how much XP I need to gain a level.

There are more of them jumping out of their tubes now, though, and I see that not all of them are the same as the insectoid baby. Some of them fall out as barely coherent lumps of flesh. Others have more than four limbs, and not all of those extra limbs appear to be a true part of their body.

Some latent part of my brain tells me to be terrified. I ignore it.

There are ten of us remaining. Nine enemies.

One of the intact insectoid ones jumps on a malformed blob. I’m honestly not sure how the malformed ones managed to make their way out of the tubes, but I suppose there’s something to them.

It sinks its teeth in—and then it stops. I look closer, and I see that the blood that all of us are coated in—is moving. The flesh-blob with no limbs quivers, and that blood shapes itself, pooling forth and forming into a simple, sharp blade.

The blood-knife slices through the insectoid baby, and then it does it again. All the while, the blob feeds.

Well, that’s one question answered.

Targets devoured: [1/9]

Warning: XP reward reduced from 100 to 95.

Interesting. Even though I didn’t kill it, it still counted towards my goal. It reduced the amount of XP, yes, but that’s not too bad. If it all proceeds like this, even all the rest of them dying to each other will mean that I still receive 55 XP, far more than I’ve been getting.

But I want XP. I don’t have access to my status sheet yet, I’m fairly sure—I try to focus on it like I did to access the description of Devour, but I find that I can’t. Maybe I’ll unlock it at a higher level.

That means that I don’t know what level I’m currently at, nor do I know the amount of XP I need to advance.

I move forward cautiously, peering at the blob that took control over the blood. The others are giving it more space now.

I wish I could tell how its skill works. I want to know. I want to know so bad that I draw on that warmth within me, focusing on the idea of knowledge in a peculiar way—a way that feels pre-trained, somehow—and I pull.

New skill unlocked: Appraise

Examine others at a surface level. Starts at Bronze tier.

Not quite what I want, but I’ll take it. The warmth within me has dissipated a bit, and I understand on an instinctual level that it’s going to be a bit before I can do something like that again. I didn’t spend XP, but gaining skills isn’t free.

I use it immediately, finding it as natural as Devour.

Name: EV2

Age: 0

Race: ???

Class: Bloodspawn

Level: 0

Hmm. That’s it. No display of skills, nothing else. I suppose it’s level 1 and Bronze, so it makes sense.

Still. Irritating.

There’s other possibilities, though. I’m scarily good at intuiting the mechanics behind the skills—was that part of whatever process presumably created me within these tubes?

Maybe I can level Appraise up. Maybe I can find my own version of the blood-shaping skill that the blob-thing—EV2, apparently—used to kill another.

Either way, my path out of here is going to involve killing everything else in the room with me.

Some of them apparently feel the same, leaping at the freshly-created Bloodspawn next to them, but not all of them, with some of the others trying to retreat into the lab’s nooks and crannies.

I snarl and rush forward at one of the stragglers, catching it off guard as I tear through its throat in a single savage motion. It punches me in the face, sending me reeling back, but pain is nothing in the face of advancement.

I hug it with one arm, my overlong fingers scrabbling for purchase on its bloody body, and I bite it again and again until it stops struggling. I take a scratch to the face in return for my troubles, gashing my skin open, but I react to the pain much less than the other demon does to its own.

I’m going to make it out of here alive.

There’s a single truth burning at my core: no matter the cost, I will advance.

I know not where this thought comes from, but I step forward anyway, using Devour.

Yet another one eaten.

Devour granted +6 XP!

Targets devoured: [2/9]

Devour advanced to level 2!

Now grants 27.5% of XP consumed, rounded down.

I brush the notifications aside.

Time to earn some XP.

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