I sailed through the air emerging through a swirling vortex of aquamarine clouds that parted to reveal a clear blue sky, bright green trees, and ground.

  I flew through the air and smmed down onto the gravel hard, curled up on my side. I groaned, as I rolled onto my chest and pushed myself up onto my feet. A barrage of senses assailed me the moment I opened my eyes. I could see, somewhere beyond the courtyard I found myself, a rge stone wall, and birdsong beyond that told me there was some kind of forest on the other side of it. Smells attacked my newly acquired sense of smell with a vengeance, only some of which I was actually able to recognize. Dirt, grass, woodsmoke, a pie somewhere in the distance, baked goods, shit, mulched leaves, cedarwood, moldy hay, rusting metal, and more scents hammered into my nose. It was even more of a whipsh given that in the real world, I essentially didn't have a sense of smell. It had been going even before the pandemic hit, but after six or seven rounds of COVID within three years... whatever sense of smell i MIGHT have had in the real world was as good as dead.

  My eyes went wide, and i nearly felt my pupils dite as I caught scents I thought I had forgotten entirely, memories smming into my brain from younger days when I had still possessed a working nose.

  This one was cranked into overdrive, and It took a long time before I could actually force myself onto my feet.

  Two humans stood before me, wearing what was clearly some kind of city-guard attire, with red and yellow tabards, simple jack-chain armor with domed steel helms. They were carrying spears, which briefly pointed my way before one of the guards shook his head and rushed over to me, extending a hand to help me up.

  "Sorry ma'am, you just... startled us. Most travelers... don't come flying through at high speed to sm into the ground. "

  I rubbed my head from where it had collided with a rger stone than the rest of the gravel. I could see other swirling portals opening around me, people stepping out of the blue mist in all kinds of shapes. A giant-kin strode out, easily two heads taller than me, and right next to him, a small portal opened to let a portly gnome stride through with all the confidence of the world. It was an endless stream of fantastical beings, elves, Tieflings, even on angel kin who fred his wings triumphantly before taking to the sky.

  I noticed we all had, essentially, the same tunic and simple leather pants, which expined how the guards seemed to recognize me as a traveler. I accepted the offered hand, coughing in embarrassment as i dusted myself off.

  "Sorry, I was... in a bit of a hurry."

  The guard furrowed his eyebrows, gncing behind me at the crystalline spark that marked the entrance to the portal.

  "Should we be worried? Was something chasing you?"

  I waved a hand dismissively as I rolled my hips to get all my joints into a comfortable position after the rough nding.

  "No no, nothing like that I was just..." I grasped at words. "I apologize, I'm not sure how to express it in this nguage." Or any nguage, I had no idea what had happened to me, and I wasn't exactly in a hurry to figure it out. The guards seemed to accept that answer, having heard pyers speak in other nguages before, no doubt, as I wasn't sure how the AI of this game handled pyers from multiple countries accessing the servers all at the same time.

  "Ah, good to know. We suffered from a demonic invasion some months ago, and... there are still pockets of demonic activity that fre up every now and again."

  I nodded.

  "I'm not really familiar with this city, where should I... go? From here?"

  "Ah!" The guard smiled. "A true new-soul! It's getting a bit rarer these days, but I'm gd to help! There are several small problems that have come up throughout the city- solving any number of them will give you inroads with many of the local communities, and those communities will doubtlessly assist you in the acquisition of gear for your use."

  I nodded, flexing my fists, bouncing on the balls of my feet.

  "what's the closest problem to us right now?"

  The guard frowned.

  "well... It's a bit risky but... the closest problem would be in the woods outside the main gate of the city."

  "Oh?"

  "The border guards atop the wall have reported sighting s of Goblins darting about in the trees. The problem with goblins is that they know to avoid the stronger true-born, those who have been in the world for a while, fighting, getting stronger, so on. They only target weak caravans, and they know to hide from our patrols, which makes rooting them out extremely difficult."

  I grinned, and the guard hesitated, probably upon seeing the four fangs visible in my upper teeth.

  "Oh that sounds like fun - which way to the main gate?"

  The second guard pointed to one of the four gates that exited the courtyard pyers were appearing in.

  "Exit through that gate, then take a left. That will put you on the main road leading out of the city. It would also be a good chance to get a glimpse at the myriad shops and vendors that sell their wares here within the Capitol. I assume that you'll accumute funds retively quickly, it will be good to get an idea of what those funds are worth."

  I bowed - more or less reflexively - to the guards.

  "Thank you, I'll be off then."

  They nodded back awkwardly, and I paced off.

  I felt... alive. Each step was filled with explosive energy, a spring in my step I genuinely had a hard time describing as I bounced on my digitigrade limbs. Each breath brought new scents- mostly good ones, as it seemed the pyers usually de-selected the ability for their sweat to smell bad. Ah, the joys of digital reality.

  I reached the end of the road leading away from the gate I had exited through, and I came up on the main courtyard.

  It was BUSY. Peasants in all kinds of colorful attire pulled handcarts, or led animals, and my ears flicked involuntarily as the sounds of multiple shop-keepers calling out their wares reached my somewhat more sensitive hearing. The pyers themselves were all but impossible to miss. Towering figures of ornate armor, elegant robes, magical light drifting off of their items, or scrolls, or weapons, as they ran, dashed, flew, or strode through the streets with the confidence of an immortal.

  Given that if we died, we would just respawn, I suppose that was a fair assessment.

  I hesitantly joined the flow of traffic, string wide-eyed at the town around me. Each rock, each line of mortar, every cobblestone I looked at snapped into sharp focus with a detail that had to be impossible. I ran my finger over a brick and shuddered at just how real the sensation was, and I giggled despite myself as I darted past a wrought iron fence, each bar cnging exactly as it should as I thumped my hand against them on my way over. I started running, ughing, free of the pain in my knees for the first time in years, as i surged forward, leaping and darting from fence to fence, railing to railing, leaping up over the head of a slow-moving pedestrian to roll on the other side of him to his great surprise, ughing as I raced downhill like a madwoman for the front gate of the city. Each breath was euphoric, as if I was drinking energy directly into my lungs, and I barely noticed the shops I was supposed to be checking out on my way down the hill.

  I still caught glimpses, but I was too excited, too eager to reach the bottom of the hill, to reach the challenge that I was about to present myself.

  According to the stats, the Beast-Kin had improved senses, at the cost of lowered inhibitions. Those senses should give me an edge in tracking down the goblins in the forest, and I had no need to buy weapons of my own yet. I wanted to test out my martial arts. The digitigrade feet were going to make things strange at first, but my hands and arms were still perfectly humanoid hands and arms, and I had so many things I wanted to try out.

  I reached the main gate, eyes wide as I stared up at the towering stone structure.

  Another city guard stood on either side, and they snickered.

  "First time?"

  I nodded dumbly, and they nodded in satisfaction. "Welcome to the Gate of His Majesty's glory - the gate leading to the main road of the Kingdom, and it's Way of Doors. There's no where in the world you cannot reach from this road- at least, that's how it seems."

  I grinned, beaming at the guard.

  "Excellent! This is the forest with the goblin problem?"

  He blinked.

  "Um... yes? But, ma'am... you have no weapons? Surely you do note mean to-"

  I pushed past the guard with a wave behind my back.

  "Thank you! I appreciate the help."

  I slipped between the trees, passing between the shoots of some kind of broad-leaved bush, and I broke into a run, ughing the entire way into the tree line.

  I dropped the ughter only a short way into the woods, flexing my fingers to extend the cws of my hands. I wanted to get familiar with this body. The changes were pretty significant, even having kept my height at the same 5' 11" I was used to in the real world, there were countless other small changes that were guaranteed to throw off my fighting at first, so I needed to take this slow, for now.

  I crouched in the shadows of a particurly dense patch of bushes, and tried of focus on one sense at a time, closing my eyes. The forest was humid- hotter than I would like, given that I lived in one of the driest deserts on the North American continent- but not unbearable, overall. Kind of like Missouri in te April. Not nearly as bad as it was in Salvador Maza, Argentina, in high summer. Of course, that was hard to do. 43 decrees Celsius was by far nothing to sneeze at

  Nothing was as bad as Santiago del Estero in mid-summer. Of this fact, I was convinced. I was still dumbfounded the number of people in that city who had told me "It's not bad, it's dry heat!"

  They had no idea what dry meant. They literally had and actual honest-to-got RIVER that passed between Santiago and La Banda. It was not a small one either- not the few times I'd looked at it, anyway. I'd been a bit busy with other things. Pnts could grow without massive DUNE level irrigation projects and water preservation ws. For me, the city had been down right muggy.

  I spped my cheeks with my hands.

  "Focus Fang." I growled to myself. "Goblins! Find Goblins!"

  I closed my eyes again, focusing on my ears, leaning on the meditation training I'd undergone as a first degree. Clear thoughts, let sounds happen around you. Most of the sounds that I could perceive were normal forest sounds. Birds in the trees, squirrels fighting over territory or food, branches snapping under the feet or hooves of countless animals. Normally, when I meditated, It took a good thirty minutes before I could start picking up sounds a quarter mile away or more, but these ears... they were like gods-damned radar dishes. It didn't take long at all for me to catch a sound that didn't fit in with the others.

  My ears flicked in the direction of the sound as I turned my head, eyes shut.

  Words. Guttural, followed by the wet squelch of something penetrating meat.

  I opened my eyes, and grinned.

  I crept through the brush in the direction of the sound, and soon I caught an unfamiliar odor. It was almost like particurly bad body odor, but... not quite. A bit to the side, you could say. The wind was blowing from the direction of the sound towards me, and I got a feeling that I was picking up the smell of the Goblins.

  A new smell hit my nose.

  This one I hadn't smelled in a long time, but I knew it well from countless hard hits, nose-bleeds, and encounters with barbed wire.

  Blood.

  I licked my lips.

  They were close, that meant my fight was close.

  I could feel my tail still as I crept forward, hands lowering to the dirt as I crawled along the forest floor, creeping under pnts and keeping to shadows, until I saw them.

  Two green-skinned creatures, with rge, mangled ears and mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. Each had bulbous yellow eyes, and they wielded crude metal knives as they argued with each other.

  A deer y dead on the floor between them, blood soaking into the ground, the intestines and guts spilled out over the loamy soil. I winced. Clearly, no one had taught these goblins how to clean their kills.

  My tail began to flick back and forth as I readied the muscles in my legs.

  I pounced, unching myself forward with a snarl as one hand snapped out in a cw-hand strike into the throat of the first goblin. For the firs time in my life, I aimed that attack at something other than a training dummy, and a thrill ran up my spine as I felt the monster's windpipe colpse, the creature gasping in a futile attempt to breathe as it crumpled to the dirt.

  I ignored it and spun on it's companion, catching the clumsy thrust towards my abdomen with my right hand, the edge of my hand gliding along the creature's wrist as I gripped, before smming a palm into it's elbow- the limb bending the wrong way in an instant with a gloriously sickening crack, the bone breaking through the skin as blood began to pulse out of the wound.

  Ooh - I'd gotten an artery.

  I had other things to try though.

  I danced around behind the goblin, deftly gripping it's chin with the left hand, the back of it's skull with my right.

  I twisted.

  It's neck cracked.

  A corpse dropped to the forest floor.

  I padded towards the gasping goblin, his eyes wide.

  "'Nite 'nite." I cooed sweetly, gripping it's chest and tossing it up into the air - with considerably more effort than I was expecting - to sm a side-kick into it's chest hard enough to send the pitiful creature smming into a pine tree, it's back folding with a snap.

  I purred as I rolled my Shoulders.

  Oh... oh that felt good.

  I dashed off into the underbrush, nose to the air as I kept my ears on a swivel. I heard more guttural voices, and I scrambled up a tree, flexing the cws on my hands and feet for a better grip into the bark, tail swishing back and forth as I waited above the goblins in the tree above them. They held crude machete like weapons, longer than the rusty knives of the previous two.

  No matter.

  I leapt from the tree, nding directly on top of one that he folded with a sickening crunch, and I unched a hand forward in a true cw-hand strike, sinking my new talons into the creature's chest, causing it to screeching pain, almost making me gag as I got an enhanced nose-full of horrible breath, and I lifted the creature up, snapping several quick punches into it's chest and face, blocking the crude swing of it's machete at the wrist before I twisted the weapon away from it to bite the weapon deep into the goblin's shoulder. It died, light leaving it's eyes as I walked away, leaving it's own weapon embedded halfway into it's torso.

  I began to run through the trees at a breakneck pace. I spotted a lone goblin. He had a crude machete sword as well, but he was more prepared, likely due to the screech of his dying companion before. He swung, and I barely dodged out of the way, gripping the goblin by the throat, as I hosted him into the air, and smmed him down, crushing this throat and neck with a palm as my fist and the ground tried to meet while his flimsy neck stood in the way.

  I picked up his macheted, testing the weight. It was, in a word, horrible. But... it was a sword, and I was curious to try out some other techniques I'd been working on as well.

  I kind of lost count, lost to the thrill of challenge, of combat. A few goblins managed to ambush me, and I actually had to put some effort into those fights, tossing goblins over my shoulder to sm them into the ground, hacking at them with my machete, somehow ending up with a second, one in each hand as I danced through the trees where my prey resided. along the way, I ughed. I leapt from a tree to snap a spinning roundhouse kick into the jaw of a goblin, snapping it's neck, I smmed a stomp-kick through the knee of another, sending it screaming face first into my machete. Countless small battles, countless small deaths.

  I raced off again with a ugh, bounding through the underbrush. A trio of goblins rushed me, and I deflected one strike as I twisted around, sinking my cws into one goblin's leg and flipping him onto his back. I deflected another strike, sending the goblin's arm wide with his lesser weight compared to mine, and I flicked the machete forward, biting most of the way through his neck, blood pouring out onto the ground as the body began to spasm. I drove a foot into the chest of the goblin on the ground, rewarding with a satisfying crack of something important, and I intercepted four clumsy swings from the goblin before I simply hacked at his wrist, gouging into the flesh, causing him to drop his weapon.

  I rushed forward, driving the dull machete through his chest with a grin, meeting his fanged scowl with a fanged grin of my own.

  I ripped the bde free to find the goblin on the ground crawling away. I felt my tail flicking pyfully behind me.

  "Where do you think you're going?" I asked sweetly. "We're not done pying yet, are we?"

  I grabbed the goblin by the back of it's crude armor, fingers curling around the hide straps, as I lifted him into the air. He writhed in a desperate attempt to flee. I could smell it- his fear. I felt the thrill of battle, of combat, of victory as my prey squirmed impotently in my grasp.

  I sank my fangs into the goblin's throat with a brief snarl, my fangs breaking it's skin as It filed and shrieked wildly.

  My prey had no chance of escaping. He was so inferior to me, to think he had even a hope of defeating me. I was a predator, and this was a forest. This was my domain. His blood filled my mouth in an explosion of savory copper tang, and I felt myself swallow the ambrosia that was his life, and again, and again. His writhing became less desperate, less intense. Then there was no writhing, then there was no more blood. I released my death grip on his throat, teeth leaving his skin as I tossed the goblin into the underbrush. flexing my cws as my ears flicked to and from.

  Silence.

  AnnouncementTutorial Area: Goblin Camp, Cleared!I stood panting, breasts heaving as I crouched there in the forest, still in my starting tunic and leather pants. Notifications chimed around me, saying I'd reached level one, and had an attribute point to assign. Experience notifications chimed around me about the kills.

  I didn't notice them.

  I blinked. Voice weak.

  "What the fuck did I just do?"