And soon enough, my assumptions were proven correct as the tunnels narrowed down to just a single bare tunnel of stone. So in theory I could just walk out, at least going by the info dump to the brain I had received. I was... a bit cautious about it.

  After all, the place I got this information from had been abandoned for quite a while. Maybe that was how it was supposed to work, but I didn’t know if it still did l. And so, I tried to sneak up on the thing.

  Uh yeah, that didn’t work. The snake tail had eyes on me the moment I was in the chamber. Hell, it had likely been alerted to my presence well before it could even smell me. Not like there was anything else in this area making noise.

  I still worked my way around the outer edge of the cavern, though. No way was I going to die from trying to brush past it all nonchalant. It was still a living creature, from what I saw. Artificial, of course, but a creature nonetheless.

  And I did make it out of the chimera boss fight arena alright, even if the snake tail kept its eyes glued to me. I guess it probably has to do that so people inside don’t try and help those who are still outside. Or rather, so that if they do help, the chimera can attack them right away.

  Whatever the case, I was past the beast and into another rock tunnel. Though on this side, things look a good bit more desolate. If on the other side it was clean and maintained, this side is desolate.

  While there aren’t signs of dead people attempting to escape the chimera. There aren’t any signs of people at all. No campfires or similar. This disturbed me a good bit.

  After all, how could there be recent signs of people after the chimera and none before it, especially when you can literally just walk past the beast? Even the small spiderwebs in the corners of the tunnel looked old and in disrepair!

  The actual answer was that the tunnel to the chimera wasn’t the same for everyone. I was in an unused tunnel out in the wilds, while the people from the city had an entrance right on their doorstep. How do I know this? Maybe it was in the info dump?

  Of course not! That would make sense. I didn’t find this out until later on. However, it would be pretty boring for me to detail my treck through that empty tunnel as I jumped at shadows.

  So yeah, I made it through there and found myself at the entrance of the tunnel, which was half collapsed and overgrown with vines. There were even a couple trees that had grown up right in front of the thing. Those proved useful as I was completely lost.

  And while climbing a tree didn’t really get my bearings in relation to my old stomping grounds. As old as a place I only stayed a couple days can be, I could see what seemed to be the city. Or at least, I assumed the bright spot against the night sky was as good of a place to head towards as any other, because of course I exited the cave at night.

  I honestly wasn’t too surprised at that. My sleep cycle has always tilted more towards being a night owl. No reason for turning into a scaled ectoplasm monster should change that. Though I just thought of something. I’m still alive, but I am made entirely of ectoplasm, does that make me a ghost at this point?

  Meh, I didn’t think of that at the time and so to keep up with the story we’ll ignore the implications and keep following along. Because this wasn’t going to be the easiest of trecks. There was a reason they abandoned this entrance to the underground.

  As I soon found out, a nasty danger zone had formed between here and the city. The first signs of this was a mosquito swarm. Said mosquitos being about the size of a thumb. However, I didn’t have blood anymore and it wasn’t like I was sweating. Though my breathing did seem to attract their attention for a moment.

  Either way, they passed me by in the search for prey they could actually drain. What followed them wasn’t as picky, though. Seems giant bats, specifically vampire bats still saw as prey me.

  Pretty certain there was more to the “vampire” than normal as well. Though it did solidify the area’s theme for me, bloodsuckers. Which some might think would make this an easier time, but they’d be wrong. After all, it isn’t like they had to play by the rulebook for normal nature.

  This bat proved it well enough for me. Dang thing swooped in and took a bite out of me. Now, I probably could have dodged it, but not with some excuses about how “if I saw it coming”. No, like most bars, the thing was using echolocation and my entire body acted like a membrane for picking up sound and such.

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  So, I knew where it was coming from. My problem was that its damn echolocation ended up acting as a bit of a flash bang for my senses as well. Thus, any attempt to dodge on my part quickly became a jittery stumble and the bat nipped at my one arm.

  Oh, and when I said “giant bat”, I wasn’t kidding. The beast pinned me down and its weight alone was enough to keep me down. Except it still wanted to feed on the softer inner ectoplasm and so had to let my one limb up.

  With one arm free, I was more than able to reflect on the beast’s two biggest weaknesses. Those delicate wing membranes and the weakness to loud noises. So, as the beast wrestled me into a position that it would be able to feed without worry, I let out an ear-piercing whistle and swiped my claws back.

  Now, if I had normal bones and flesh, I’m mostly certain that at best I would have a dislocated elbow or shoulder. Instead, my arm flexed back uncomfortably and as my whistle distracted the bat, my claws slice through a wing. This wasn’t the end of the fight, though.

  While it wouldn’t be flying away, that just meant it couldn’t retreat from the fight, either. This made the bar a little mad and so it tried to chomp down on my neck. Well, “tried” would imply that it didn’t manage to. Nope, the bat got a good grip on my neck.

  Except in exchange for this, the bad gave up even more of the control it had over my body. And well, my body was one giant weapon so losing control over any of it spelled doom for the bat. Once released, my feet claws easily took out chunks of the beast’s legs and it was downhill from there.

  Though I did end up stuck under the damn bat’s corpse for a couple minutes. And I’ve got to say, that was the perfect “fuck you” send off by the bat. Remember, this was a danger zone focused on blood sucking.

  So while my own wounds weren’t attracting trouble, the bleeding corpse on top of me did the job just fine. By the time I got out from under the thing, the night was alive with all kinds of horrible howls. Though the mosquitos were the first on the scene and they thankfully had still ignored me, despite having bled out some of my ectoplasm.

  Not smelling like dinner is a ten out of ten perk. Would turn my entire body into ectoplasm again. Though joking aside, even if the mosquitos were ignoring me, not all of the creatures that got attracted to this mess were so kind.

  In particular, there was a small pack of chupacabra. And not just the pack was small, the actual cryptids themselves were small. I doubt they would have come up to my waist when I was a human if they stood up straight. Now they were knee high on a good day.

  They took to the phrase “ankle biters” like fish to water. If I still had Achilles tendons to snip, they would have taken me down. Instead, I ended up having to scare them off as I retreated from the scrum going on over the bar corpse. Good thing for their cowardly nature as it would have been quite tedious to actually kill them.

  Those chupacabras might have looked all skin and bones, but they had some dense muscles. If I got a claw on them, I would have crushed them, but swipes were just leaving angry red marks on their skin. Guess you can’t underestimate any of the mythical critters, no matter how weak they might have seemed.

  Anyway, soon after I chased them off, I decided it was time to settle down for some rest. This mostly involved finding a tree with broad roots that I couldn’t slice with my claws and digging out a burrow. Yes, it seems every main character and their grandma goes and hollows out a tree trunk or finds a cave, but none of that is safe in my opinion.

  No, a sturdy tree you can’t hurt so hopefully others can’t. Then you make a small space to sleep in that uses the roots as a natural defense. Just make sure you only dig out a place that you can barely fit through. I combined that with some fallen branches to cover the hole and managed to sleep till the sun came up.

  Not sure how long that took, but during the day this section of forest was a lot calmer. Sure, the mosquitos still swarmed all over the place, but they were ignoring me still. In fact, when I ran into some sort of sabertooth tiger which seemed to have hollow fangs, I managed to avoid a fight by ducking into a nearby mosquito swarm.

  This wasn’t pleasant and some bugs did bite me, but they didn’t like the taste. The tiger wasn’t as fortunate. It tried to stay away, it really did, but something about the tiger attracted a swarm. That sent the big car running off, squalling for all to hear and probably having lost more blood than healthy despite the short time.

  I mostly ignored these dramas after the first few and in doing so, made fantastic time towards the city. And it was the city I was looking for. Maybe after the initial wall got set up, more creative freedom was allowed in building your own home. Though I guess having a standardized blueprint for the outer wall’s construction is probably a good idea.

  Now to do something stupid!

  I walked right up to a gate and waited to gather some attention. That didn’t take long, I guess an aqua dragon man isn’t the most common sight. The guards on the wall aimed various implements and even a few guns at me, but from what I could see kept decent trigger discipline.

  Now, there were enough gates so once the crowd noticed me, the mess in front of this gate cleared out and a silence fell. I guess the guards were waiting for someone with actual authority to show up as the first to speak was a pudgy guy who looked like he just ran from a desk job. “Oye, you coming in or staying out? Don’t be like my cat! We won’t hold the door for you.”

  Time for that stupidity I mentioned!

  I cross my arms, look at the gate and shout, “I am Alvin and I’m here to challenge Harold! When I got dumped here unprepared, he had fun hunting me. Now I’m going to face him because this has been going on for too long! I only wonder if he is brave enough to actually face me now?”