After stuffing myself with the snow bear, I felt fantastic. My belly was so full it looked like I'd swallowed a boulder. I glanced at what remained of the bear—just a pile of bones and scraps of fur. Poor guy didn't stand a chance once I got going. Well, survival of the hungriest.
Licking the last bit of meat from my paw, I stood up, stretched my limbs, and let out a satisfied burp. "Alright… time to move on."
Now that my hunger was finally under control, it was time to focus on the next phase of my journey. I had a lot to figure out:
First, I needed to get familiar with this shapeshifter ability. I had no idea what the limits of my Human or Werewolf forms were. I also needed to test out my skills properly, so I wouldn't be caught off guard in a fight. No point having cool powers if you don't know how to use them.
With all this running through my head, I continued south.
Days passed. The further south I traveled, the less snow I encountered. The landscape slowly transformed—patches of green began to appear, new kinds of creatures showed up, and the trees became denser and taller.
Of course, I didn't pass up the opportunity to hunt along the way. Anything that crossed my path became dinner. There weren't many creatures that gave me much trouble—except for this one damn Snow Yeti about two weeks ago. That thing was a tank. Took me longer than I'd like to admit to bring it down. Worst part? The meat was disgusting. I actually spat on the ground just remembering that awful taste. "Bleh… never eating one of those again."
Anyway, I pushed on. Two whole months went by like this—walking, hunting, exploring.
Eventually, I reached an area that was completely green. Thick forests, lively animals, warm weather. A nice change from the freezing north.
At one point, I stumbled upon a massive snake den. The snakes were about my size and there were way too many of them. I considered trying to fight them all but quickly decided nope. Not worth it. I backed off and continued on my way.
Then came the goblins.
I found one tiny goblin—barely a foot tall—darting through the trees like a damn race car. For such a small creature, he was surprisingly fast. But hey, I'm a wolf. No one outruns me. I followed his scent and soon found myself at a small goblin camp.
They had tiny homes, wooden barricades, and… well… a lot of strange activities. I swear, one goblin was trying to ride another goblin like a horse. I just stood there watching for a few seconds, completely dumbfounded. "What the actual hell is this place?"
Unfortunately, one of them noticed me and shouted. Suddenly, the whole camp swarmed me. They didn't stand a chance. In the end, I wiped them all out.
That's when I found it: a storage ring.
One of the goblins had it on his hand—well, it looked massive on his tiny fingers. Once I killed him, I took the ring and spent days trying to figure it out.
At first, I was like, "What is this thing? A toy?" But after a lot of trial and error, I finally understood. The ring responded to my thoughts. If I thought about storing something, it would magically suck the item inside.
Since then, I've been using it to store monster meat. I have no idea what the storage limit is, but who cares? It's awesome. Now I wear the ring on my right paw like a bracelet. Looks pretty cool if I say so myself.
After some more traveling, I eventually reached a clearing—and noticed that I was finally out of the forest. Ahead of me was just open grassland.
That's when I spotted a road in the distance. A proper road.
That could only mean one thing: intelligent life nearby. Probably humans.
Not wanting to rush in like an idiot, I turned back into the forest to scout for a safe place to rest. After searching for a bit, I found a perfect cave. The entrance was hidden by thick grass and tall trees, and the inside had plenty of space—at least 100 meters deep.
I was exhausted from my long journey, so I decided this would be my base for now. I flopped down inside, stretched out on the cool cave floor, and let out a long sigh.
"Finally… time to rest."