Exploring as a falcon might attract more attention than I needed. It would also probably get back to Willis, since it didn’t seem terribly common to keep falcons in this town.

  Guess I’ll switch up my form again, I thought with a sigh.

  I wanted something low-profile. One of my rodent forms would have been best for that, but since unlocking the Wings field in my Loadout, I couldn’t disable them. That meant I would be exploring as a rodent with bird wings, which would certainly attract attention if I was seen.

  Oh wait! The flying squirrel profile! That should work.

  I double checked my available stored mass; I had accrued quite a bit, now that I had a wealth of space in my [Chimaeric Core], and I’d get back around half my lost mass if I shrunk, so I’d be able to switch back to full without issue when I was ready.

  That was something I wanted to remain cognizant of, moving forward. My stored mass carried through on a [Time Loop], and being caught with no mass banked at the start of my next loop would make life a lot harder. It would be much safer to ensure I keep at least 1000g on hand at all times, if possible.

  I had been eating tons of rabbit lately, so that wasn’t an issue, so with a quick change to my Loadout, I leapt off the windowsill outside as a .

  Throwing out my arms and legs and extending my patagium to catch the wind, I zipped out, engaging [Flight]—and shot up like a rocket.

  Whoa, what the hell, I thought as I floated up into the sky.

  The interaction between passive gliding wings and [Flight (Minor)] had been a bit of an unknown to me, but with [Flight (Major)], catching the wind in my “wings” seemed to give me a ton of lift. I couldn’t “flap” this wings the same way as a bird, though, so controlling this flight was awkward, to say the least. I could intentionally disable the skill, and thus glide, or I could tuck my arms and legs and dive while the skill was active, but it took a bit of testing, high in the sky among the clouds above the town, before I figured it out.

  Overall, this form and skill probably wasn’t the best choice for controlled flight, so I canceled the skill and made my way to the ground—before a falcon or the like made a surprise meal out of me, the magical flying rodent—gliding my way into the shadows of an alley between some buildings.

  Whew, I thought, shaking off my little misadventure. Now time for some proper recon.

  From down on the ground, the people making their way around town seemed much larger. Scampering down the street, taking my time to browse, I checked out the stalls, listened to conversations among the people, and tried to learn what I could about the country I had found myself in.

  Turned out that people didn’t regularly drop convenient information like the name of the country while buying food or going about their regular day. I picked up a few details like the price of a skewer of meat or a loaf of bread, but my town espionage was a bit of a bust.

  I slinked back into an alley, taking a break to nibble on a piece of meat a kid had dropped. Deer again, I noted absently. Not bad.

  My instincts kicked in, surprising me. I dropped the meat, [Mighty Leap]ed, and popped my wings open with a quick deployment of [Flight] to put some space between me and my attacker. What’s coming at me in the town? A person?

  A cat looked up at me, eyes like saucers, whiskers twitching.

  I canceled my [Flight] and glided back down, perching on a wall out of the cat’s range, glaring back down at the feline hunter.

  How rude, I thought at the cat. I ought to transform and eat you.

  A cat form would be convenient, although I would still be dealing with the wings issue. I wasn’t sure I could take it, though, even in falcon form.

  Plus, this was a town cat. It might have been someone’s pet, not a stray. You’ll live to see another day, cat.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  If I could get a slightly larger form and catch a wild cat out in the forest, I’d revisit that. I wondered if Timothy would like a winged cat companion. Thinking about the tower, I recalled that I had killed a caged cat there, one doomed to be experimented on by the wizard or to die in stasis, but I hadn’t been able to eat it at the time. One of these loops, as I worked my way up to larger and larger creatures, I could get the profile that way.

  Somewhat unsatisfied and with little to show for my excursion, I scampered along the wall out of the alley and then back down the street until I found the building I had started from. The doors and windows were open for ventilation, so I sneaked inside, keeping my eyes open for anyone who might try and smack me with a broom while I sneaked over to the tables of people eating, looking for more information.

  Here, I finally had some luck. I quickly learned that this place was called the adventurer’s guild, and that it was an organization that was spread across the country. Many of the people staying here were, like Willis, travelers from other areas, so these people did talk about the country and town; this town was Potchuk, and it was at the northeastern edge of a country called Dolom.

  Further east, across the border, was a country called Qist. Apparently tensions were elevating between the countries, though people weren’t worried about a war just yet. Not that it would affect me, I thought.

  Mapping it out in my head, I realized I had come from the east. The wizard’s tower might have been across the border, in Qist, I noted to myself. I wonder if his research was sanctioned by his country or not.

  In addition, I learned a bit about the types of people that called themselves adventurers. People seemed to have something called “classes,” which Willis and Hilda had mentioned in their conversation. Mostly it guided what skills they could learn and potential blessings that could be earned. Among the adventurers I eavesdropped on, there were other hunters like Willis, and a few fighter and warrior types, but also some magic users, like the wizard had been. It seemed that rather than doing strange research, these mages used their powers offensively to fight monsters.

  The burroworm, as it turned out, was a monster. These were different from animals in that they had magic stones, the thing that Willis had cut out of the corpse, and they were sold or exchanged at the guild as proof of death in the case of a quest.

  As far as I could tell, my system didn’t treat animals and monsters that differently. I could kill them for experience, eat them for their profiles, gain their skills with my skill points, and use their profiles to create my [Amalgamation]. The difference, as it concerned me, was largely in the skills themselves; animals mostly had basic skills that conformed to their biology, whereas monsters had skills that could be magical.

  Maybe that’s how I can defeat the wizard!

  Having finally acquired the beginnings of a plan, I made my way back to Willis’s room.

  The next day, Willis and I set back out into the forest to hunt. Willis was a bit of a freestyle adventurer, from what I could gather; he hadn’t set out on any specific quest, instead just letting the winds of fate carry him. If he came across monsters, he shot them and took their cores for sale. If he didn’t, he’d either hunt himself some small game to eat or, if he was lucky, he’d bag larger game like a deer and sell the excess in town.

  Apparently he was a competent enough hunter to survive this way, though I assumed if his purse ever got too light, he’d take on a higher paying quest as needed.

  My short term goal was to try and acquire the profile. Not because I wanted to be a burroworm—because, gross—but because I wanted to see what skills it made available to me.

  I had overheard quite a bit of conversation about burroworms in the guild’s meal hall and tavern. They were a serious problem in the forest, so the adventurers hunted them regularly. From the sounds of it, these monsters used earth magic.

  Burroworms tunneled through the soft forest earth, seeking out vibrations on the surface from small creatures. They would burst through, catching these creatures by surprise and gobbling them up in one fell swoop.

  The burroworm tunnels could cause instability in the forest, causing trees to topple in storms and creating sinkholes and mudslides from the erosion of loose soil. If left unchecked, they could cause an entire forest to fall and wash away, so adventurers tried to manage their numbers. They could sometimes be baited out in order to do this. They were generally considered a nuisance, but mostly avoided people.

  Yet, when they got hungry enough, they would emerge for larger game.

  In that case, they employed more earth magic, and that was where my interest lie. Some adventurers had mentioned a magic stone projectile the burroworms would shoot at larger game.

  I want it! I want the skill!

  A stone shooting skill would completely change my ability to hunt. It was a huge upgrade.

  Unfortunately, burroworms were slow-growing monsters. They took years before they were large enough to emerge and hunt game. The small ones never emerged, instead preying on other small tunneling creatures, as well as eating the ground itself, which actually enriched the forest soil.

  By the time they were emerging, they were fairly big. Given how much I had been able to eat of the first one Willis had hunted, I would need something like thirty encounters total worth of eating my full. I had gone back to try and eat more of that first burroworm, the next day, but between other creatures scavenging and the speedy decomposition of the worm-like monster, it was basically gone.

  So: I needed to hunt another twenty-nine burroworms with Willis. Simple in theory, but without communication, planning, and a shared goal, not necessarily quick and easy.