Charlemagne savored the stench of burnt hair and charred simian flesh as he surveyed the aftermath of the brutal contest. The fight had been a good one, although he would have preferred taking fewer spears to the chest, and the entire affair had been over all too quickly. The rooster’s rage still burned white-hot but there was nothing else around for him to vent his rage on. Thankfully, he was distracted by the squiggles.

  The trio of hairy kind of humans must have been fairly high level, as they had given Charlemagne a level and two skill increases. But something about the System was bothering the rooster. In fact, it had been for some time, but he had only very recently grown the appropriate synapses needed to express the thought coherently. As he cleaned up from the battle (which to Charlemagne meant eating the corpses), he asked the squiggles why sometimes it seemed that he got stronger faster than others.

  The rooster mulled over the squiggles’ response as he finished eating the final chimpanzee, which tasted much better than the other two. Charlemagne remembered that the humans from before he became Grimfalk’s Champion would often put their food over a fire before it went into their mouths, and he now understood why they had done so. As he dove in, he found that the insides were nice and warm, although they were still raw. Maybe there was a skill he could learn that would help him prepare humans for consumption, the young rooster wondered, thinking that such a skill would be very useful once he was strong enough to assault the human city Francois had mentioned. It was somewhere to the east…but Charlemagne didn’t know where, and he was not about to go on another “adventure” without sufficient directions.

  Charlemagne was feeling rather sluggish by the time he finally finished eating the third Chimpanzee. Perhaps it was the undigested cucumber, which was actually a Settlement Token, still rattling around in his stomach, or perhaps it was because he had put away his own body weight in rich chimp flesh. Either way, the rooster was planning to take a nap to recover after his latest meal. The squiggles appeared as he waddled off to find a nice, shady spot to roost.

  Charlemagne rested his eyes as he digested the latest messages that the magical symbols conveyed to him. It was a hot, muggy day, just like it was pretty much every day in Benin. Full of former enemies and pondering what it meant to be “highly social”, the rooster dozed off.

  He dreamed that the squiggles themselves appeared to him, pulling him into an endless black void and offering him unfathomable power if he would but renounce his Patron. His dream self was torn by indecision, desperately wanting to ask someone else for advice but having no one he could turn to. He recalled how willing Sidney, the rabbit, had been to give him information for free. Regret and a huge burp welled up from his stomach as he recalled that, in his haste to escape the city of animals, he didn’t even get to eat her body. Charlemagne then thought back to the friendly adversary, the pangolin Champion. They would probably have something to say about the offer. Looking even further back, the rooster found himself even missing the ramblings of Francois.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  But there was no one to provide counsel on this imaginary quandary: Charlemagne stood alone in front of a crowd of squiggles that had surrounded him and was demanding his compliance. He whirled around, searching for but unable to find a way to escape the encirclement and growing more desperate and confused by the moment. Then, the squiggles came rushing at him from all directions.

  Charlemagne jerked awake, panting. Had he been a human, he would have been covered in cold sweat.

  Unable to shake off the bad dream, Charlemagne found himself thinking about companionship, his thoughts unusually clear due to the recent influx of simian grey matter. His hens were always available for him, but they were limited by their own experiences. His instincts toward them were an odd mixture of protective and possessive, but in no way did he consider them his equals. On the farm, he was the king, and the king was not truly allowed to have friends. Charlemagne didn’t know what a king was, but he did feel lonely at the top.

  Maybe when his chicks were born, he would feel better. Idly, he wondered when that might be.

  There was a long, long pause as Charlemagne attempted to understand what the squiggles were saying. What were “pending offspring”? Had he successfully reproduced?

  Charlemagne instantly forgot all about his loneliness in his excitement. He was going to be a father! A chicken daddy! He couldn’t wait to tell…well the only ones he could tell were the hens. But now that he was returning armed with precious information and a Settlement Token. Once he figured out how to use it to create a city, they could build farms and put the girls to work. Soon there would be more than enough food for him, his brood, and the hens too.

  Thinking about the different tasks that needed to take place to ensure the safety of his children took up much of the bird’s mental capacity on the flight back to Parakou. There were so many things to do before his offspring hatched. He needed to pass off the Settlement Token to the triumvirate of hens holding down the fort, train up a whole lot of new combat squads, send out foraging parties throughout the city, find more sources of fresh water in the area, and resume the daily routine he’d enjoyed before he set out on his mission.

  He spent some time thinking about the way that his farm would run once his offspring had grown. His daughters would have to compete to become the alpha hen, replacing the trio of older ladies. But the males…well, Charlemagne decided to leave that decision for another day. At the very least, he’d ensure that all the males knew that he was in charge of the flock. While a typical, pre-System rooster would be satisfied with a flock of about 10 hens, the rebirth of Charlemagne’s primal instincts and his enormously increased vitality had led to the awkward situation where he genuinely believed he should keep all 25,000 hens in the farm for himself. He didn’t want to share, even with his own sons.

  While his mind was still enjoying enhanced clarity of thought, the devolved rooster also acknowledged that his own personal growth had taken a backseat during this adventure, with the exception of the Special Area near N’dali. Once the first round of offspring had hatched and things had settled down, maybe he could find more powerful monsters in the radiation-soaked zone to the south that would let him continue to level up. If what Charlemagne had experienced in the north was any indicator, there should be a Special Area somewhere in the ruined city.

  These and similar thoughts continued to occupy Charlemagne’s mind until he reached the outskirts of the city of Parakou. It was there that the special sense from Food for the Stomach and the Stomach for Food began to tingle, pointing him straight toward the farm and growing stronger by the moment. He slowed down and tried to catch the scent of whatever it was he was being drawn toward, but the wind was coming from the north. After a few moments spent sniffing in vain, Charlemagne sped back up, determined to protect his soon-to-be born offspring.

  There was something floating in the air just in front of the farm. No, Charlemagne realized as he flew closer, there were two somethings. A moment later his eyesight adjusted to the distance and he realized that one of the objects was a strange-looking human. The other was a very annoyed looking large cat with rich, golden fur that was especially long around the head, neck, and shoulders. The devolved rooster guessed that the cat was angry because the human had trapped it in a net.

  Charlemagne used Identify on the pair. For some reason, the skill did not work at all on the human, but it worked just fine on the cat.

  Confused as to what exactly was going on, and unsure if both the human and the lion were planning on fighting him, Charlemagne landed a bit away and proceeded on foot. The human descended, his feet spitting out great gouts of fire as he came in for a landing. The net holding the lion reached the ground first, and the great cat immediately sprang free of its confines and literally disappeared into thin air. The rooster could still sense its general location, however, as it began to circle around.

  The human landed with a thump, his right palm slamming into the ground with a metallic clang. Then he straightened up to his full height. The human was taller than any that Charlemagne had ever seen before and every inch of his frame was packed with muscle. It was no wonder that the physical specimen before him was making his Special Ability go crazy: eating this human would certainly yield some sort of reward.

  But before Charlemagne could rush in and attack, the human spoke. His voice was deep yet somehow melodious.

  “My lord was right to command your extermination. I fear that if you are left unchecked, you will overrun the entire Earth with your filth. And yet I will still offer you this mercy: surrender and I will grant you a clean death.”

  Charlemagne understood that the human was ordering him to submit and die. He had just one thing to say to that.

  “Bawk!”