I awoke next to the staircase and immediately felt weak. It had been pretty bad in the void, but now that I was back in my actual body, it just felt that extra bit more real. I shuddered at the odd feeling that felt like I was sick. I’d love to snuggle up in a comfortable bead, drink some chicken broth, and ride this out, but that wouldn’t help in this case.

No, the only thing that would help me return to my former glory was leveling up. That, and using and abusing gluttony. On the third layer, I had gained an absurd amount of attribute points by eating tons of monsters, so I just needed to eat and not stop until I had regained what was stolen.

The biggest problem would be getting the food since I needed to defeat the monsters beforehand. I had learned that attribute points weren’t everything, skills, spells, and how you used them were just as valuable. Then again, I’d lost a whole lot of attribute points. I’d been dealing with the monsters on this floor relatively easily, but from now on I’d struggle again.

Which reminded me of my time on the first and second layers. It would seem like I needed to shelf my void spells for now and focus on my assassination toolkit. My poison wasn’t entirely reliant on attributes so I’d be able to do some decent damage, especially if I used Poison Assassination to apply deadly poison.

I remembered the voidling that had done this to me and suddenly got angry.

I know it was partially my fault, and I was still scared of ever crossing paths with that… thing again, but it was unfair! That guy must have tens of thousands of attribute points, why take what little I had? That guy was just a bully!

I needed to kill something.

It didn’t take long for me to remember that the mountain behind the research facility was used as the perch for a litany of avian monsters, and I immediately started down the stairs. I practically flew down the stairs and out the door at the bottom, changing direction toward the mountain. The only thing I could think about was fighting something and coming out on top. If I couldn’t do at least that much, I might as well just give up.

It didn’t take long to arrive at the base of the mountain. There they were, stupid birds whose only worry was who got to perch on the sunniest bit of rock, unaware of the massive creatures that were somewhere out there. Mere pebbles in the grand scheme of things. I was just about to start casting void javelin before I stopped myself. I couldn’t just throw my weight around anymore, I needed to remain hidden.

A bit annoyed at myself, I took a moment to calm myself down. If I just rushed in I would only get myself killed, finishing the job some stupid voidling started. I sent out a poison assassination to the nearest bird-adjacent monstrosity, which appeared behind it and penetrated without being noticed. At least I could still trust my spells to do their job properly.

Perfect.

For now, I could assume that I should be able to stack deadly poison twice, just like the regular poison. So I went from bird to bird, hitting them with two spells each before moving on. From my current position I could properly hit seven monsters before they got out of range, so after I hit all of them twice, I waited for a bit before repeating the process. I wasn’t sure about the duration of the status effect, but I wanted to try and keep it active constantly.

I finally saw some results when I finished my second application of the last bird. A sight I hadn’t seen for a long time unfolded before me, as the first bird I hit started to puke up its intestines. My poison had recently only functioned as a way to constantly lower the HP of my opponents, but now the full effect of my poison was on display. In fact, it seemed a bit more violent and aggressive than what I was used to.

Made sense, since I’d upgraded the potency since the last time I killed something with my poison.

I watched with glee as they began to fall one after the other. This was actually pretty easy, why didn’t I hunt like this all the time? I pondered the question while watching the birds keel over and came to a somewhat shocking conclusion. It wasn’t as fun as an all-out fight. When the hell had I started considering fights like these “fun”? I had noticed that I became a bit battle hungry recently, but fun? That was new, and, slightly concerning.

After my recent brush with an overwhelmingly stronger entity, I had to face my own mortality again. Had I become complacent? Did I become too strong, too fast? It felt weird having lost my strength, I felt incomplete without all of my power. I reflected on the past few minutes after waking up. The first thing I’d done after returning to the waking world, was rush out the door to fight, kill, and get stronger. I had been angry, mad even. I was lashing out.

I could practically feel the gears turning in my head as I arrived at the conclusion.

I was experiencing withdrawal.

Somewhere along the line, I had become addicted to being strong. Addicted to proving my strength by killing my enemies. Addicted to the thrill of the fight.

I watched as other monsters came over to eat my kills, but I couldn’t find the energy to intervene. In my past life, I had become addicted to gambling and it ruined everything. My addiction had cost me obscene amounts of money, my relationships, my dignity, and finally, my life. I had spiraled out of control until I slammed into rock bottom without having achieved anything.

Was the same thing happening again? Was I already spiraling? Falling deeper into addiction until my overconfidence got me killed?

Fighting felt good, there was no doubt about that. I really enjoyed fighting to the death, however, fucked up that may appear. Why? Logically, I should be appalled by having to live a life like this. All the values and ideals of my past life were against violence, against killing. But ever since I arrived on this planet, I had become some sort of twisted killing machine. Sure, it might have been out of necessity at first, a desperate attempt at survival.

But now it was about more than just surviving. I was chasing after more and more strength, killing other beings in order to achieve my goals. What was the point? Why was I doing any of this in the first place?

Because the system told me to.

Thinking back on it, I was just doing whatever the system told me to do. I achieved the tasks laid out before me and was rewarded appropriately without fail. This wasn’t like gambling. There were immediate, tangible benefits if I completed the goals laid out before me. Was it so wrong to chase after that high? The high of being rewarded for hard work? Could I justify extinguishing hundreds of lives just so I could be a little bit stronger each time I did?

I watched as the monsters tore apart the ones I killed, eating them to sustain themselves. They were the same as me, animals chasing after a higher power on pure instinct. This was their world. They had never known anything else and never would.

The only difference between them and me? I was a traveler. I am one of the “intelligent races”, as the system called them, trapped in the body of a monster. Yet, I was acting like a lowly monster, chasing after strength I didn’t have with wild abandon.

I remembered the memory I’d seen in the tower, of the ancient civilization that had experienced a massive upheaval. I was the same as them, being transformed into something I was not, with no idea what I truly was and no choice but to continue moving. Yet, while I was savagely hunting for my own satisfaction, they had banded together and studied their new situation, doing everything they could to figure out what was going on with them.

By now, the monsters I had killed were picked clean, the others taking off to go roost higher up the mountain. I suddenly didn’t feel like hunting anymore. I needed to think good and hard about what was going on with me, and how I wanted to continue from now on. So I silently returned to the tower, settling in on the top floor to contemplate the past, the present, and my future.