The thumping continued.

  “Is that a bomb?” Samsara asked, slithering away from the mech’s chest.

  No idea. But I wasn’t going to find out. Was this a safety measure to blow up feral Kaijus? I ran behind one of the massive trees, dragging Samsara along with me, waiting for the sound of an explosion. A sound that never came.

  The thumping subsided, and both of us took a peek at the mech’s corpse. Tiny red meaty hands dragged themselves out of the hole at the bottom of the mech’s torso. Like a slime that was uncompressing after being squished, the meaty form began to expand. Only a little bit though. A cacophony of arms, legs, and heads jutted out of the meat creature. But there was no skin anywhere — it was entirely made out of meat. The bottom limbs propelled it forward.

  “What the heck is that?” Samsara mentally gasped.

  I took a sniff and my instincts told me one thing: it was edible. One of my tentacle hairs reached out to grab it. It squirmed in my grasp, the heads on its surface screaming, but no voice came out. No vocal cords? Each head had no teeth either. The limbs and heads were stripped of skin, leaving only the sinewy flesh that somehow wasn’t leaking blood. All the heads looked identical, as if the creature were a fusion of several twins.

  “You can’t be serious about eating that,” Samsara winced. “That is the most grotesque thing I’ve ever seen. And what was it doing inside the mech?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe it’s a power source or something?” That would make sense, since the mechs were far more capable of fighting Kaiju than their other war machines. Although I had no idea how the humans would get their hands on this.

  The meat abomination looked like it had a soul. Perhaps it was a powerful one. Actually, speaking of souls, I [Tracked] our souls. Huh? 1003. That was weird. We had eaten two prey, but only got one soul.

  “Do you think they got it from a Dungeon Rift?” Samsara asked, slowly slithering away from me. She was getting uneasy with this thing around. Which, in turn, made me feel uneasy as well. Time to get this over with then.

  I brought the meat thing up to my face. It was about the size of a mouse to me. Taking a bite, the texture was halfway between raw steak and gelatin, chewy and rubbery, fused with a metallic taste. The creature continued to spasm in my tentacle’s grip as more and more of it was torn away. At last, the final head remained attached with a single flailing arm. I plopped it in my mouth and chewed on it like a grape. Not that I could have grapes.

  “Did you really have to eat that?” Samsara asked, her arms folded.

  “Well, it didn’t seem like you wanted to eat it,” I replied back, also folding my arms. “Unless I misunderstood your thoughts?”

  “No, I definitely was not going to eat it,” Samsara replied, shaking her head. “You know what, let’s just get out of here.”

  “Hey, I was just trying to protect ourselves, alright?” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “If that thing really was a power source for the mech, then it's better I get rid of it, right? The Monster Purifiers would just come and put it inside another mech. Now, all that blue metal is just a bunch of junk.”

  Samsara sighed. “I get it, I get it. Still, I just don’t feel comfortable with this. Can we please just go?”

  I nodded and began walking away from the metallic corpse littering our first battlefield.

  We pushed deeper into the forest. The canopy swallowed most of the sunlight, leaving only fading streaks of light to guide our path. The ground turned damp and soft, with the occasional Collum tree root jutting out of the ground. The roots were so strong, they didn’t break under our weight. Maybe the humans should have built their houses out of Collum wood.

  “Have you ever seen a Dungeon Rift out when you went hunting?” Samsara wondered, slithering beside me.

  “No, but I would have told you back at our apartment if I had seen one ,” I replied, watching the foliage for any suspicious movement.

  Dungeon Rifts were the origin of monsters. Emphasis on were. Now, they were the source of monster girls. In addition to spawning fearsome female Aberrations, they also transformed any animal or human nearby into a monster girl. Monster girls transformed from animals and aberrations remained feral, their ever-growing hunger for meat amplifying. Luckily, for previously human monster girls, we got to keep our sapience. That wasn’t without its downsides, however, as we still were forced to eat meat, and the Monster Purifiers didn’t draw a distinction between a feral and non-feral monster girl.

  Of course, all of the Dungeon Rift stuff was just hearsay I had gathered from humans and monster girls. I had never seen an Aberration, and I had never seen a Dungeon Rift either.

  “Yeah, it’s weird how we somehow became monster girls but never interacted or got close to a Rift,” Samsara agreed, nodding her head. She turned to face me. “You would think that we would have at least seen the Rift.”

  Mom had guessed it was due to a Dungeon Rift that formed underground. Although we had no way of verifying that. No one wanted to go digging underground to find a bunch of Aberrations spawning into this world.

  Which brought into question the origin of that meat abomination. If it did come from a Dungeon Rift, why didn’t it look like a girl? There were chimeras, but even then, you could tell that they were a fusion of multiple monster girls. Something wasn’t adding up.

  I decided to [Track] how many souls I got from eating that meat abomination. The information materialized in my mind: [Souls: 1013]. Wait, what? I blinked and checked again. Ten more souls. Did that thing have 10 heads? Dammit, I should have kept track of that.

  But given that thing had no teeth, I’m not sure if it could even eat other creatures. So it was probably somehow an amalgamation of ten different meat monsters.

  Why would someone shove ten souls into a meatball? I thought.

  “Someone?” Samsara tilted her head.

  Yeah, someone. It was way too deliberate to be just some random Aberration. The humans definitely needed it as a power source. If mechs really are powered by things like that, then some mad scientist decided to grow them. Meat reactors.

  “Eww,” Samsara hissed. “Imagine a lab full of those twitching meat blobs.”

  Plus, the way the meat blob’s heads all looked identical, the fact that it wasn’t leaking blood, and its inability to actually scream supported my idea. They needed it to keep quiet inside the mech. But who came up with the idea of creating these abominations? And how did they get the idea that growing a giant meat blob would power a mech?

  This did give me an idea. Maybe we could raid that lab and steal all the meat blobs. And then there would be no more mechs.

  “The lab probably would be defended by a bunch of mechs,” Samsara shook her head at me.

  It would still be worthwhile to destroy that lab. We would need to get stronger first. And this forest was a great place to do that. Lots of weaker prey, along with a small portion of Kaiju. And if they were feral, we would have the upper hand.

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  “Fighting another Kaiju?” Samsara questioned. “That sounds very risky. You almost had your throat crushed by the mech here. And that’s not including the fact that each Kaiju girl will have their own physical and skill mutations.”

  “It’s going to be unavoidable,” I said, ducking under a thick Collum tree branch. “We are bound to run into a feral Kaiju eventually. But don’t worry, I’ll do my best to protect you. They’ll easily be our prey.”

  Speaking of prey, a piercing screech ripped through the forest canopy.

  “Vultures,” Samsara thought.

  But not normal ones, the sound was wrong. Too high-pitched and too fast. I sniffed the air while Samsara forked out her tongue. The wind carried a metallic rot. Blood.

  Tiny vultures. Sounds edible.

  “Everything sounds edible to you,” Samsara pointed out, coiling her tail.

  “Not true,” I said. “I don’t plan on eating myself or you.”

  “Well, everything except us is edible to you,” Samsara corrected herself.

  “Now you got it,” I replied. “I’ll also make sure to cut some of the prey up for you too.”

  We followed the sound through the forest, stepping over thick roots as the light dimmed. The air grew sticky and humid. A haze of rot hung thick as we crept past smaller trees the size of bushes to us. Then I saw it, something scaly lying in a clearing ahead.

  A reptilian Kaiju girl’s arm, cut clean off from the shoulder. Her scales glimmered a dull green beneath congealed blue blood. And perched all over it were vulture girls. There had to be at least a couple dozen of them. Their bodies were covered only in black feathers that fully hid their skin up to their collarbone. Two large feathery wings were attached to their backs.

  They were small, bug-sized compared to us now, and completely absorbed in their feast, tearing strips of rotten meat from the Kaiju limb with their sharp beaks and taloned hands.

  Samsara grimaced. “There’s a whole horde of them! And they don’t have any clothes either. They must be feral.”

  I stepped over a root, grinning. “Perfect, let’s eat them before they notice us.”

  I lashed out with my eight hair tentacles, each one grabbing a vulture girl. As I pulled my captured prey towards us, each of the remaining vulture girls looked up towards us and stopped eating their previous meal. Soon enough, a swarm of vulture girls was upon us.

  Samsara coiled her tail around my torso as the vulture girls impacted us. I tried covering my face, but these vulture girls were fast. Many of them tried to bite Samsara’s pink, scaly tail. A few nicked us on our faces. Another one rammed straight into Samsara’s left eye, leading to a searing pain. Samsara grabbed the vulture girl and threw her away.

  Anger boiled inside of me, and I activated [Serrated Tentacles], cutting through the rest of the vulture girls. Split corpses fell from our bodies as the vulture girls crashed to the ground.

  “Samsara!” I panicked in my mind, “Are you alright?”

  “Not really,” She said, covering her left eye. I could still feel the pain from the stab as her eye healed itself. “Maybe we should have planned this hunt out better.”

  “Do you want to kill the Vulture girls I have?” I asked, offering the vulture girls squirming in my hair tentacles to her.

  “What?!” I felt her mentally gasp. “How would that help?”

  “You could get revenge on them,” I explained.

  “I think I’ll get revenge on them by eating them,” Samsara replied, uncoiling her tail from my body. “You can just cut them up. And please don’t torture them. Just get it over with.”

  I carefully crushed each of the vulture girls squirming in my tentacles, making sure they didn’t explode into a pile of guts when dying. Then, I dropped them onto Samsara’s hand. My tentacles sliced each of them into small pieces of meat, bone, and feathers. Small traces of orange light shone out of the pieces near the sternum. Tiny monster Cores. Samsara tossed the pieces into her mouth, causing a blend of sourness and salty taste to grace her tongue. For whatever reason, the feathers tasted sour like a lemon, even though I’m 100% sure they were nothing like a lemon. Weird.

  Samsara and I split up the rest of the vulture girl carcasses. I savored their esoteric taste as I thought about what went wrong here. I couldn’t have used [Color Camouflage], as we were still covered in Kaiju blood, which would have completely negated it. And there hasn’t been a source of water for us to wash it off. Plus, [Color Camouflage] was better for a sneak attack from foliage. I couldn’t make myself go invisible. Hmm. I guess I could have tried killing all of them first with [Serrated Tentacles], but they were very quick to react, and a majority of them might have managed to attack us anyway. Maybe I should tell Samsara to cover her eyes next time since her body is armored.

  “But that still leaves you unprotected,” Samsara said, a frown forming on her face. “I’m not sure we could have expected them to be that fast.” Clearly, we needed a defensive mutation to solve that problem.

  And what better way to mutate than to get excess mana? I eyed the detached reptile arm lying on the ground, salivating. I grabbed it with my hair tentacles, making sure to share, and cut it into pieces for Samsara to swallow. The flesh was unbelievably rich, both in taste and mana. As I consumed it, I felt the mana course through me, burning pleasantly in my veins.

  [Tracking] our mana, I saw it reach full capacity at 10,000, and then 2,500 added as excess, of which we had 5,000 already from the Kaiju tiger girl. This brought us up to 7,500 excess mana. Originally, I had a mana capacity of 1,000, and Samsara had a mana capacity of 750. Since becoming Kaijus, our shared capacity had increased to 10,000. Eating the corpse added 8,250 to increase our mana to full capacity. Then 10,000 excess was used in the mutation, leaving 5,000 left as excess. Adding that up, the Kaiju girl gave us 23,250 mana. If we found the rest of the Kaiju’s body, then surely we could get an upgrade from it.

  “I’ll trust you on the math,” Samsara exhaled slowly. Even though I was a dropout, I was still good at arithmetic. “Still, that’s a good amount of mana.”

  I wiped my mouth with my arm. “And it was a tasty meal too. Not sure if I prefer the arm or the vultures. Actually, the arm didn’t try attacking me or you, so I would say it is better.”

  “I thought you would have preferred the vulture girls since you wanted revenge,” She replied, poking me in the cheek.

  “Not sure if the sour taste was that good,” I replied, pushing her arm down. “But that also brings up an interesting question.” Why was the arm here of all places? Kaiju don’t just randomly fall apart in forests. Either a mech got to it, or another Kaiju killed it. But I hadn’t seen evidence of either. More and more weird coincidences keep happening. First, a Kaiju appeared in the middle of Utlond City. Then, we found out the mechs are powered by weird meat blobs. And finally, we found a random Kaiju limb deep in the forest.

  “Like, what are the chances of that?” Samsara wondered.

  Our questions went unanswered as we left the ravaged clearing behind. However, the stench of blood lingered in the air, growing stronger the deeper we went. Our stomachs growled, sensing food nearby.

  “Ughh, I just ate,” Samsara whined.

  “Look on the bright side, there will probably be more food for us to eat if we follow this scent. And if they are vulture girls there, we’ll be more prepared this time.”

  Our path took us to a dead end in the forest, surrounded by thick Collum trees packed tightly together. We would need to return the way we came. But before that, our full-course meal was in front of us. Sadly, it was being stolen by vulture girls.

  The remains of a reptilian Kaiju girl rested at the roots of a Collum tree. While I could make out the scales covering her, I couldn’t see what her face looked like. Most likely, it was already consumed by the vulture girls swarming over her carcass.

  But that wasn’t the only thing of interest, because Samsara spotted two figures fighting desperately a few meters away. A turquoise turtle girl with a cracked shell and a dark green lizard girl missing half her tail were surrounded by a dozen vulture girls. The turtle girl wore a brown leather robe, while the lizard girl wore a gray dress, with bloody tears ruining their clothing. Each of them held a long metallic spear.

  The vulture girls took turns charging at the non-feral monster girls, each one getting a slice in before getting deflected by the spears.

  “We have to save them!” Samsara cried out.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “We can’t let the vulture girls eat them first.”

  “Ramona, we can’t eat them!” Samsara shook her head. Even though she hadn’t said the words out loud, I felt a sense of disgust emanating from her.

  “Why not?” I asked. “They look like they wouldn’t be that hard to catch and eat.”

  “That’s not the issue! They’re non-feral just like us. Look, please just spare them.”

  “Fine,” I relented. “I’m not sure why you are insistent on this. You and I are the only people that matter. But if it really makes you upset, then I won’t eat them. Also, cover your face.” Samsara shielded her face with her hands. That still put me at risk if the vulture girls attacked me, but better me than her.

  I activated [Serrated Tentacles] and sent my tentacle hairs to cut the vultures near them. The vulture girls’ bodies broke apart easily. The reptilian monster girl duo gasped as they saw us. And then, they turned towards the Kaiju corpse.

  Or more specifically, a vulture girl on the Kaiju corpse. A growing vulture girl. Uh oh. She must have eaten the Kaiju Core!