Kael couldn't think through the pain as his muscles visibly shook. It wasn't a clean ache, not something he could grit his teeth through like a pulled tendon or a bruised rib. It was structural, invasive, the kind of pain that made his thoughts stutter and his vision pulse at the edges, as if his brain itself was being forced to accommodate a new body it hadn't agreed to live in.
His hands trembled against the rubble, fingers flexing and failing to obey, and every attempt to control the shaking only seemed to make the spasms sharper, like his nerves resented being told what to do.
His stats increased, which was a great thing for him right now. Especially since every stat got upgraded by ten points which was an insane achievement for a first-floor climber. He knew that even without fully understanding the numbers, because the Tower didn't hand out that kind of advantage casually.
Ten points wasn't "a little stronger." It was the kind of jump that changed how hard you could hit, how long you could run, how fast you could recover, how much punishment your body could absorb before it quit. It was the kind of growth that would normally take floors, kills, time, anything other than a single cursed notification and an irritated fucking rabbit.
The issue was, that stats increase will always physically upgrade a person, and this much at once is enough to make a person go mad with pain. Kael could feel it happening in real time, bone-deep and undeniable. It wasn't just soreness; it was the sensation of something being tightened, stretched, reinforced, and rewired under his skin. Bones and body being ground and reconstructed.
Like someone had grabbed the frame of his body and was wrenching bolts into place with no regard for what those bolts were attached to. His jaw clenched so hard it hurt, and his stomach rolled with the urge to gag, not from hunger or nausea but from the sheer wrongness of being rebuilt while still conscious.
Now that the goblins were wobbly and waking, they'll definitely notice the agonized Kael and make a feast out of him. His map had already told him what he was surrounded by, but the map didn't capture how close they were, how many little sounds were beginning to layer into awareness around him. A scrape. A grunt.
The faint clatter of something crude being lifted. Each noise felt like it was coming from right behind his ear because pain made distance meaningless. He could picture them turning their heads, sniffing, squinting, trying to locate the source of the weak struggling thing in the open.
'Fucking rabbit, if I ever get out of this one alive! I swear I'll make rabbit stew out of you motherfucker!" Kael cursed inwardly as he didn't dare raise his voice.
The threat was ridiculous and he knew it, but it gave his mind something to hook onto besides screaming nerves. He kept the curse sealed behind clenched teeth, breath hissing shallow through his nose as he tried to keep his body from betraying him with louder sound. The last thing he needed was to announce himself like a dinner bell.
Though the creatures were waking, not many of them seemed to notice him, and the few that were looking his way were looking hazily at him, as if something was blocking their vision. That detail slid into Kael's awareness slowly, like a small shape emerging from fog. He saw one goblin blink repeatedly, head tilting as if it couldn't decide what it was staring at. Another stared in his general direction but seemed unfocused, eyes not locking the way they should have if it had truly seen prey. Their bodies moved with that groggy stiffness of waking creatures, but the attention wasn't sharp yet, and that mismatch caught Kael's mind even through the pain.
He tried his best to remain as close to the ground as possible, as unnoticed as possible and think as hard as possible on how to get out of this giant clusterfuck of a mess he was dumped into. Swearing a couple of times at the rabbit with curses that would make sailors blush alleviated some of his pains, albite slightly, very, very slightly.
Only then did it hit him. Daylight, they don't see well in daylight for some reason. The thought arrived like the thinnest sliver of relief, the kind you almost don't trust because it feels too convenient. Light washed the broken street, harsh and honest, and Kael realized the goblins' pupils looked wrong for it, too wide, too slow to adjust, like nocturnal animals dragged out of their comfort. He didn't have proof beyond what he was seeing, but in the Tower, proof often came after the mistake, not before it.
This wasn't the case for the other tower as goblins were able to hunt during day or night. But this was a small silver of hope for him, all he needed to do was simply not move. The idea sounded so simple it almost felt like a joke.
'Don't move. Don't breathe too loud. Don't twitch. Just become rubble. Just become background.' His mind tried to latch onto it as a plan, because plans were the only thing that kept panic from turning into paralysis.
Which by the way was another problem on its own. The changes to his body were making him shudder, and forcefully stopping said spasms was as hard as holding one's breath underwater for too long.
He could feel the shakes rising from his core like waves, involuntary contractions that rippled out into his arms and shoulders. Every time he tried to clamp down on them, it felt like he was fighting his own heartbeat. The more he resisted, the more the tremors demanded release, as if his body needed movement to survive the transformation.
Suffocating, but needed. For survival, Kael thought, and immediately his heart went to overdrive. Beating hard, adrenalin began pumping in his veins which caused the opposite effect of calming down.
It was cruelly ironic: the moment he told himself to be still, his body reacted like he'd screamed "run," flooding him with energy he couldn't afford to spend. His pulse hammered against his ribs. Heat built under his skin. His breathing threatened to turn ragged, and he had to bite down harder just to keep from making noise.
But suddenly, once again, like every time his heartbeat went overdrive. It simply began to quiet down, beating in a normal rhythm, slow, steady, but powerful. He couldn't understand why, but it was a moment of respite for him, for now at least.
A low growl form one of the nearby goblins soon turned to a full burnt shout, he was noticed while in a crippling fetal position from pain and agony. The sound ripped through the street, sharp enough that it seemed to slice the air, and Kael felt it in his bones. He didn't need to look to know the others would react. One notice became two, then ten, then a swarm. His stomach sank as the growl turned into something triumphant, hungry, a signal that prey had been found.