The lizard's lungs rose and fell in calm rhythm, but Narakul, curled around its spine and controlling the body was alert.
He had felt stillness before.
But this… was control.
He moved slowly through the jungle undergrowth, each footfall silent, tail balancing each twist. The leaves shifted above, casting fractured light across the forest floor. Heat pooled in the damp air. Insects hissed somewhere unseen.
He paused beside a rock slick with moss.
Eyes adjusted. Muscles calibrated.
He started testing things first.
First, speed.
He sprinted, darting from one bush to another. The muscles coiled and released with excellent timing. The Ground response was light. He zigzagged through roots, avoiding a fallen log by scaling and leaping over it in a single bound.
Sprint capacity: functional. Limb recovery rapid.Acceleration: good. Cornering: sharp.But lungs overheat quickly. Thermoregulation inefficient.
He made a note, need better stamina.
Then, vision.
The lizard's eyes gave him a wide arc. He could see nearly all around him at once. Predators wouldn't sneak up easily.
But the image was flat. No depth. No focus.
"I can see… everything. But I can't judge distance. Can't hunt far.Eyes wide, but blind to precision.I need something sharper." Narakula thought.
Then came the real test: hunting.
He scanned the underbrush. Where is detected a movement, a skitter. A shiny black beetle, dragging a leaf twice its size. Slow. He stalked low and struck fast, jaws crunching down with surgical efficiency.
It died in a heartbeat.
He consumed the entire beetle whole.
And then... came the changes.
His body twitched. A flutter at the edges of his feet.
Tiny fibers, setae, sprouted along his toes. He flexed them. Noticing the increase in Gripping power.
[Grip enhanced. Vertical climbing now viable. Terrain advantage acquired.]
He scaled the nearby tree trunk with newfound ease, his claws gripping the bark like a spider, a stark contrast to the strenuous effort it used to take.
He stayed low, hunting not to eat, but to evolve.
Each kill brought a gift.
A thick-bodied centipede gave him sensitive vibration hairs along his flanks. Now he could feel motion through the ground, mapping nearby footsteps better.
A frog-like creature yielded pressure-adaptive skin, allowing his body to subtly redistribute impact when he leapt.
Each fall or jump now took less strain on the body.
[Mobility preserved.]
A worm, absurdly soft and weak, held within it the ability to breathe through skin. Narakul didn't need to surface as often now. He could move through wet soil, hold still underwater.
[Hidden longer. Less traceable.]
He was becoming a machine of stacked, optimized biology.
But he needed more.
A second lizard, spotted basking nearby, carried stronger legs. Narakul didn't care for the meat, just the muscles. He crushed its throat in silence and devoured only what mattered.
The upgrade came within seconds.
Jump range expanded by 40%.
Useful in chase. More useful in escape.
He kept moving. Every few steps, a new opportunity emerged.
A Brazilian Wandering Spider spider, known for their highly potent venom and aggressive behavior. He killed it quickly by ambushing it.
When he absorbed it, he felt it, the new ability : Venom secretion
He climbed into a hollow log, settling in the cool dark, surrounded by the crackling sound of beetles and bark.
His body pulsed gently, recalibrating.
[Grip. Vibration sense. Jump distance. Surface respiration. Tail balance.Stacking. Slowly. Venom]
Piece by piece. Layer by layer.
He felt the momentum.
The jungle shifted around him, noisier now. The sun had dipped. Predators would move soon.
He crouched in shadow, still and low.
And far beneath his crawling silence, in the matrix of his growing body, something ancient stirred.
A Blueprint
Not made of ink or thought, but of Narakula's intention.
A creature not yet entirely born.
But it was starting to take shape.
And Narakul would build it.