"I am sorry to say this, but you are dead." a voice booms from above a man, kneeling by his lonesome atop a sea of white clouds. As the man looks up, a humanoid figure of pure light burns his eyes. He looks away, blinking.

"Is that so... Tell me, what is my name? I can remember everything from my life except names and faces." the man looks up, a slightly nostalgic look crossing his face.

"You will not need your old name in this world. With past revived souls, having the names and faces of their loved ones still in memory hurt them emotionally." the being softly responds to the man.

"I see. I could understand that. However, I did not live the greatest of lives. Out of all people, why revive me?"

The humanoid figure does not move, but the man gets an odd feeling it's smiling. "Simply because of that. You understand the worst parts of humanity, and the best. Through yourself you saw the worse, and with your lover, until the end, you saw where the best traits of humanity lie."

The man looks thoughtfully, then sighs. "Is there some reason you need me in the world?"

"Let us just say... Humans lacking humanity."

A light begins to envelop the man's sight.

"You may not like me at first, but soon you shall see..."

Consciousness returns to the man, and he awakens in the middle of a forest. This is weird. My body does not feel normal... He checks his body, and sighs.

I'm a monster. "Hello" he says aloud, and a quite frightening and monstrous voice emanates from his throat. Remind me to never speak. Standing up on his four legs, he begins to learn about his body, almost instinctively. His entire body can change its shape and structure, as it is made of some shadowy substance. Though his body is not actually shadow, it is some dark substance. Touching it, one gets the feeling of fur with skin underneath, almost like a dog but slightly rougher. Stepping into a nearby shadow, he feels slightly stronger. Noticing this, he decides to step out of the shadow and into the light. As he does so, he notices that he feels slightly weaker in the sunlight. I guess I'm some sort of shadow beast. The beast learns to control its body to some degree. Though it cannot morph as well as something like a slime, its body can change itself to some degree, as long as it has structure.

Nearby, a small splash can be heard. The beast begins to slowly walk towards the sound, adjusting to its strange body. Wait. It stops and feels underneath, then sighs. At least I kept my gender.

As he pushes some shrubbery aside, a beautiful river covers his vision. The river borders the forest and some flat plains. The daylight tingles his skin, and makes him feel slightly weaker. After taking in the sights of the surface of the clear river reflecting the light of the setting sun, he turns and walks back into the forest.

Walking through the darkening forest, a loud crash emanates throughout the trees. The beast begins to gallop towards it in a half-beast half-humanoid form. As he arrives, a girlish scream pierces his ears as he sees a knight killed by some bandits. Behind the knight, up against a tree, is a girl in her young teens. She is wearing beautifully embroidered, but highly expensive clothing. Her hair is long and beautifully blonde. The bandits begin to encircle her, leaving no escape. To the left of the ordeal is a brilliantly decorated, but destroyed carriage.

"What should we do with her?"

"She seems like she's a noble, think we can kill her and steal everything?"

The girl takes in a deep breath and yells, "HELP ME!"

A bandit knocks her upside the head and she collapses, on the verge of passing out. The bandits laugh and, presumably, their leader, steps up to the princess with a knife in his hand. The beast leaps out, growling. All of the bandits quickly turn and take out their swords.

"It's a beast!"

"What do we do?"

The bandits are in disarray as an unexpected monster appears. The beast lunges into a group of bandits, tearing through them with the brute force of his massive body and shadowy claws. From behind the beast, a bandit stabs him, penetrating deep into his skin. A dark tendril grows out from the beast's back, grappling then chucking the man, the bandit coughing up blood as his back breaks and he dies from hitting a tree at high velocity.

The bandit leader chants something, then thrusts out his hand at the beast as a ball of fire flies out. The fire weakens the beast, but he continues to brute force his way through the bandits. He endures stash after slash, stab after stab, and fireball after fireball as he cuts down the number of bandits.

As the beast makes his way to the leader, a fireball engulfs his face. He blindly swipes a shadowy claw, then feels the warmth of blood flowing down it. The fire dissipates, and the beast is surrounded by multiple bandit corpses. Curiously, he notices a faint blue light near where there heart is. He begins to feel a strange urge to consume it, and as he reaches down, his hand goes through their body, and pulls out a wispy, blue orb. He begins eating the souls, and interesting screens show up in front of his face for a few seconds as he eats the souls of each bandit.

[ Learned Skill: Bowmanship ]

[ Learned Skill: Deception ]

[ Learned Skill: Disguise ]

[ Learned Skill: Forgery ]

[ Learned Skill: Intimidation ]

[ Learned Skill: Thievery ]

[ Learned Skill: Swordsmanship ]

[ Learned Skill: Quiet Sneak ]

So it's like a game... He thinks to himself as these popups continue coming up. Each time he eats a bandits with a similar or the same skill, the skill "levels up". After eating the souls of each of the bandits, he turns to their leader. The leader's soul is beginning to drift away from his body, so the beast quickly snatches it out of the air to eat it.

[ Learned Skill: Fireball ]

[ Learned Skill: Mana Control ]

[ Learned Skill: Shadow Step ]

[ Learned Skill: Shadow Control ]

[ Max skill: Thievery ]

[ Max Skill: Intimidation ]

The beast smiles as he maxes two skills from the large group of bandits. He turns to the girl and lifts her head up with his claw. Her eyes open, and she sees the beast. She mutters something quietly then passes out. The beast begins rummaging through the bandits' equipment, taking a tent and a few cooking utensils from their packs. Seems as if they were on their way to make a new camp before running into the girl and her carriage.

The beast sets up the tent, albeit quite awkwardly as he is still getting used to the new body. He carefully tucks the girl into a bed in the tent before beginning to make food. The smell of cooked food begins to permeate the air as the sun finally disappears, and only the brilliance of a full moon lights the forest. The food attracts some other monsters, but the beast uses his maxed [ Intimidation ] to scare them away. After a while, the monsters and various beasts leave him alone altogether.

As the beast finishes the soup he's preparing, some rustling can be heard inside the tent. The beast carefully produces a dark tendril from his arm to reach into the tent and place the bowl near the entrance. A quiet shriek can be heard as he does so. After a while, the girl emerges from the tent and carefully watches the beast.

"Can you speak?" the girl says as she keeps her distance from the beast.

"I would prefer not to..." the beast's intimidating and monstrous voice responds.

She stares at the beast, and the beast gets a good look at her face. Her features are soft, and despite her young age, is already quite beautiful. Her stunning, green eyes would surely captivate the hearts of all men the future. Her right eye lights up as she stares at him. Information begins to seep into her mind as she does so. Shadow Beast. Level 5. Lawful Neutral. Skill list: ... She reads his skills, not enjoying the unpleasant combination. Her right eye still alight, she looks back to the beast.

"Nod yes or no to my questions. Do you wish to eat me?"

The beast nods no.

"Do you wish to harm me?"

The beast nods no.

"Do you wish to... do anything unsightly with me?"

The beast does a monstrous chuckle and nods no.

The girl looks down and sighs. The beast points to the tent and does a motion, signaling the girl to go back to sleep. She cautiously does so, and the beast sleeps in front of the tent, deterring any monsters and various beasts.

In the middle of the night, the girl quietly exits the tent. She carefully picks up the knife the beast was using to cook with, and begins to stab the beast with it. The beast awakens, and has surprise written all over his face. Though several of his earlier wounds healed due to him sleeping, and his shadow form slowly regenerating, a few were still there. She continued to stab him until she felt satisfied, then began to run away in the forest.

The beast slowly gets up, his back left leg giving out on him as he does so. Through some more effort, he gets up, and slowly drags himself in the direction the girl left. He finds the recently dismantled corpse of a human lying on the ground about a third of a mile away. The remnants of remaining clothes makes it look like a fantasy mage of some kind. It seems as if the body was torn apart be wolves. The beast slowly eats the soul and regains a small amount of strength, though his body is still severely injured.

[ Learned Skill: Telepathy ]

[ Learned Skill: Lesser Lightning ]

[ Upgraded Skill: Mana Control ]

[ Upgraded Skill: Fireball ]

He begins to smell bloodlust to his right as he continues to walk, and begins making his way there. In the middle of an opening, the girl lies on her butt, terrified as a pack of wolves surround her. One of the wolves, seeming to be the pack leader, pounces.

The beast's body moves instinctively as it warps to gain speed, then covers and protects the girl with his body. The wolf backs off, but growls then continues attacking. The whole pack of wolves begins to mercilessly chomp and scratch at the beast's flesh.

The girl looks up at the beast's face, tears in her eyes. "Why...? After what I did to you..."

The beast does a monstrous smile as he almost collapses from the pain. He grunts and lifts back up as to not crush the girl. Slowly, his body begins to weaken and he can barely hold himself up.

The pack leader pounces from the beast's side, then the beast falls over, blood spurting as he does so, and revealing the girl.

As this happens, a man enters the opening from the shrubbery, yelling in a heavy Scottish accent, "OI! Ya beasts! Get! Go!" He bravely waves a sword at the wolves, and they growl as they turn to him. He lights a small fire in his hand using magic, then the wolves begin to back off. He waves his hand in front of the wolves, pushing them back until they eventually run off. The man then turns to the unconscious beast bleeding on the ground, then raises his sword. "Let me kill this for ya."