Chapter 4.

For the whole night Rey did not close his eyes even for a minute, he understood that if he fell asleep, he would in fact doom himself to death. Now the sun was already beginning to rise over the horizon. The beast below lazily indulged, as if mocking a half-dead man. Calling him half-dead was not an exaggeration, rather the opposite. During the night, he was tired and froze so much that he quite often thought about enduring the pain of death and jumping, but each time he remembered the feeling that his mind was literally tearing from unbearable torment, the guy stopped himself.

He looked around with his tired eyes. Now there was more light, but the landscape remained the same: everywhere were the crowns of trees, and below was an animal waiting to finish him at any moment. Rey understood that it was not so important for the beast to eat him, it just wanted to kill him.

Slowly twirling the stiff neck, the guy noticed something else. Previously, walking through the forest, he did not see any animals, except for birds rarely flying at high altitude, but now he was looking at a small nest, which was on a branch. Struggling with fatigue, the guy moved to the desired part of the tree, wanting to satisfy his interest.

Peering into the nest, Rey noticed a small animal, it was not a bird, but rather something like a ferret. Obviously, he was still a cub, though the parents were not around. The animal looked bad. Breathing was intermittent, and eyes tightly closed.

"Maybe something happened to his parents."

This option looked believable, because the baby was in the nest, which could not appear by itself.

"Is it possible to consider him truly alive?"

Touching the animal with his finger, Rey realized that he did not react at all. If he was also breathing, it was very weak, because the guy did not see his little body moving at all.

"I hope you won't feel as much pain as I do."

He looked at it as on an ordinary animal, but subconsciously the guy understood that this world is not real, so he undoubtedly squeezed the animal in his hand a little. That was enough to instantly kill the poor beast. Rey put him back in the nest, but a second later he noticed a slight gray haze rising from his body. Looking a little closer, the guy realized that it wasn't smoke. An almost transparent veil hid within itself a small silhouette of an animal that had just died. Out of ordinary curiosity, he touched this substance with his finger and, to his surprise, it entered his palm without any resistance. Instantly walking along his arm, it stopped at about the center of his chest, where disappeared without a trace.

"Eh?"

Touching the place where the gray haze disappeared, Rey did not feel any changes.

"What was it?"

"Is everyone in this world dying like that?"

The guy did not know whether this was a game moment or not, because the developers did not report anything about the creatures inhabiting the world. After sitting a little more, the guy came to the conclusion that this was clearly something uneasy.

"If you think, this phenomenon was something like... as if the soul had left the body."

"Maybe in this world, living beings have souls that can be seen after their death?"

In the real world, it was generally accepted that souls do not exist, but even years of technological progress could not completely convince deeply religious groups of society.

"Souls..?"

At this point, the guy remembered that in the Character Status he saw something like that. Mentally calling it again, he noticed a change.

_____________________________

Name: Rey???

Race: ???

Racial features:

[Immortal]

[Multifaceted 1 Lvl.] (Man, Kuring)

[Soul Master 1 Lvl.] [???]

_____________________________

"Interesting. This clarifies what "Many Faces" means, but how do I use it?"

There were simply no other game commands, except for the three main ones, and Status gave so little information that Rey became a little sad.

It slightly distracted Rey from his deplorable state. He had been sitting for some time and trying to figure out how to use this ability. He tried the most useless things, starting with pats and pats on the chest, from shouts of the name of an animal, which he learned from the Status. When almost an hour went unnoticed behind such an activity, the guy began to feel despair. The last time he hit his chest with force, he leaned back against a tree trunk and, with a sigh, closed his eyes. After sitting like that for ten seconds, Rey threw them wide open.

He had just seen a strange ... space within himself. It looked like Inventory. There were only two objects. Both were gray: a man's soul, which obviously belonged to Rey and the soul of a kuring. What was special was that the first one shone slightly brighter. The guy mentally focused on the soul of the animal and a moment later realized that the branch on which he had previously sat was huge.

His field of view became slightly wider, but it became more blurred. Head down, he realized that now he was looking at two paws covered with brownish hair with small claws on the tips.

"Incredible. This game is just something! "

If that happened in the real world, Rey would undoubtedly have thought that he had lost his mind, but here, although it was truly amazing, it was entirely appropriate. Trying to move, he realized that now he was moving on four legs. It was a bit unusual, but after a few minutes he was accustomed

to it and was already able to creep forward somehow. Rey also noticed that he was still hungry, and his thirst tormenting him did not go anywhere, rather the opposite - he became much stronger. But this didn't worry him much now, he tried to get used to the new body, which was the size of the palm of an adult. As Rey understood, kuring was not a predator, because the teeth in his mouth were blunt and were used for rubbing food than for biting. Another novelty was a fluffy tail, which felt like another leg, although it was as long as almost the rest of the body. Getting used to it a little, Rey tried to climb up the trunk, which to his surprise turned out so easily, like walking on ground.

"Maybe I didn't notice the animals while walking through the forest, because they were in the trees, and with such a color it's not difficult to miss them."

Climbing almost to the top of the tree, Rey played enough and decided to go down. Hunger and thirst, on which he tried not to pay much attention, pestered him more and more tangibly. At that moment, one thought occurred to him. Tearing a small leaf from a tree, he took it with his front paws and slowly began to nibble it. He suddenly liked the taste, and after a few minutes, he finished off four of the same leaves. While he was eating, Rey looked down. The predator that was down now was monotonously circling around the tree. It seems that losing sight of the prey, the beast became a little more serious, but it was not destined to catch the guy.

When he finished his meal, Rey mentally smiled at the beast raging below. Having chosen one of the very thin branches, he moved along it to another tree, and after ten minutes was already far away.

For a second, he even had a thought in his head to try to kill the beast, thus obtaining its appearance, but he threw it away almost instantly. There was no point in that. Not only did he have no idea how to kill such an enemy, but also the appearance of this small animal had several advantages. He could get food when he wanted, and since there was a certain amount of juice in the leaves, they also good quenched thirst, although he still wanted to drink. But in the guise of another beast, he would have to hunt, in which Rey had no experience at all. Secondly, he was not sure that the predator was the strongest in this forest and, if he had to fight, Rey understood that he would most likely lose. Kuring was quick and unnoticeable, so that he could travel in relative safety.

Continuing to move to the west, Rey began to notice that there were indeed other animals in the forest, although there were few of them. He even noticed several other kurings.

"By the way, if you think about it, we are of the same size with them, but the one that was in the nest was definitely born recently. So this ability does not give me the age that a deceased creature had."

This conclusion was quite interesting, but for a guy who had only one or two days left to live, it was not so important. But thinking about it, Rey understood something else. Stopping at the next branch, he looked up. A lonely green bird quietly soared in the sky. Let the eyesight of the kuring and was not particularly sharp, but the guy still could see it.

"If I'm lucky, I can even fly."

"I have no reason to hurry anyway, so I can try."