It was strange how natural being a werewolf was to me. Learning to walk with a completely new and different body would be… Insanely irritating at least. But I could feel certain instincts that translated my instinctual and mental commands into movement just as a normal human body does. And muscle memory as well, that was the main force behind going on four legs as I padded into the hole in the dirt at a way greater speed then walking on two would ever get me with a lot more control. Humans really were nerfed with their two legs, but I supposed that hands made up for it most of the time.

  This however was not one of those times, as I was crouched low on all fours in my werewolf form as my rampant furious emotions fueled my transformation. ‘The age of the human starts when the monsters no longer need to fight…’ I pondered to myself, wondering at the speed of the world around me and the speed of my mind. It made everything seem almost boring, but that ended rather quickly when I entered a branched off path and spotted a large mass of webs and a dozen small creepy crawlies started to spill out as they felt my approach. Small being about the size of my face that is. My werewolf face that was much bigger than my human one.

  I let out a growl as I looked at the colorful markings all over their bodies and the shells on a choice few. The tanks are the shells, teaming up with the poisonous to take down prey much bigger than themselves… Smart. That's nature for you.

  I grinned my stretched out face and I felt my gums being pulled back into a snarling smile with my pointy teeth very visible instead. I let out a growl that seemed to give them pause. ‘Poison wouldn't be a bad resource to have in some situations… I might even work it into a weapon or trap if I can plan it. The shells… well I supposed they looked cool? They might even be decently tough. Or maybe they will surprise me and they will become important to something.’ I thought clinically despite the raging emotions going on with my body.

  ‘But I suppose having the remains intact is not feasible.’ I noted a bit sarcastically, rising onto my forelegs as my claws stretched out on both hands, bearing down on the spiders.

  To their credit, they didn't back down and they gave chitters as they started arranging themselves exactly as I thought they would. The shelled spiders moving in first and the fastest, the colorful ones slinking along beside and behind them as they charged with the rustle of their many legs against the dirt and walls as they moved to attack.

  I moved instantly, grabbing one of the shelled spider's legs and throwing it to a cluster on the wall before proceeding to do the same with another one that was closing in, throwing it at the cluster on the other wall. The ones on the wall fell to the ground with the impacts, with one or two actually dead just from the impacts. Then all I had to deal with was the lungeing spiders on the ground, flying through the air after jumping themselves towards my torso. I swatted them aside and into each other with some disgust. This was incredibly easy… They were just too small and I was too fast for them to be a challenge.

  I felt my emotions ramping down a bit as they fueled me just a bit less and I let it, decreasing the power I could use and conserving my strength as I felt the ease of smashing my fists and claws into their carapaces and those carapaces into each other, tearing through them with ease that didn't really change much as I found the world around me speeding up a bit and my strength decreasing as well. But I didn't transform back.

  Soon enough I was left alone in the webbed up and goo covered passageway with the last monster curling up and dying. I gave a growl as I shook my hands, trying to get the spider gunk off of my hands without success. Annoyed now, I started moving again through the cobwebs, breaking them with only a bit more effort then I would have expected and tossing the tangled mess aside, clearing the tunnel.

  I growled again in annoyance, starting to move quickly down the passageway on all fours once again.

  I let out my latest growl of being pissed off in the last few minutes. All that I had fought during the entire time I had been in the twisting earth, was pest control. Small bunches of beetles the size of a cat, spiders the size of a dog, a bunch of flies the size of tennis balls with teeth, and more disgusting insects besides. But that was it. And I couldn't find anything in the burrow either as I was pretty lost. Well, I could find my way out easily enough if I traced the airflow, but I couldn't find the breach that the system was so worried about!!

  In fact, I think I have gone through this exact tunnel before. I couldn't even find a single path that did not lead to a dead end farther down.

  Now that I couldn't hear or smell any more monsters nearby the surface however, I started playing it smartly by marking tunnels with my claws. Lines in the dirt that aren't hard to miss if you didn't know what to look for, but I did know where to look so I was fine.

  That was when I found out that I had gone in a circle when I saw a branch in the tunnel I was in that was marked by me. Only one path that wasn't marked yet, to my right. If this is a dead end, I swear I am just going to collapse this entire burrow and forget about the entire thing and hoping that the ‘breach,’ if it even existed, collapsed with it.

  But I started down the path with a long suffering growl building in my throat. ‘I hate mazes…’ I moaned internally. It was strange but as the emotions I was using to fuel myself started toning down and my power was reduced, I seemed to feel more and more human even with the fur and claws and the teeth of the werewolf form. It really made everything worse and added a kind of edge to the agony of boredom and disgust.

  I paused. Looking down the tunnel, I noticed a strange glow on the wall before a corner. I heard a low chitter and the sound of something big moving. I grinned, feeling all the power of the Pendant flow through my body again in full. I howled and I started picking up speed, ready for a good fight. Looks like I finally struck the right path. I can't believe it was the very last one I checked.

  ‘Maybe I should have turned human and just gotten out my hatchet from my backpack… that was still on my back. Huh, I didn't even feel it.’ I thought to myself as the weight of pushing myself into being a werewolf for this long, even at the low level of power, pressed back on my body and mind. Hunger. Muscle pain. It bit at me and had been for a while.

  I grunted as I ran, the blue bioluminescent glow coming from the other side of the tunnel coming closer by the millisecond. The chitters and thumping of the creature beyond also seemed to be ramping up in volume as I bounded forwards like the massive wolf that I was.

  Just as I was about to reach the corner, the cause of the glow rounded it first at a speed that made me stumble and nearly faceplant as I looked up.

  It was similar to the centipede that had killed the rabbit by the entrance, but there were very clear differences. It was longer, thicker, and its plating was a darker blue alongside its large set of jaws that put the original to shame. Clearly more… grown? Stronger at the very least…

  And it was coming fast, some kind of glowing thing foaming from its mouth as it locked its gaze on me. It was moving almost as fast as I was when I was running on all fours in werewolf form, and even with my sped up brain it seemed it was moving as fast as a professional runner. I had less than a second to react, but my body seemed to decide my course of action for me at the shock. I kept going forwards at an even faster pace to meet it head on. I let loose a howl before it was on top of me.

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  Then under me as I leaped over its jaws and pincers quickly to avoid being pierced through and eaten like a snack. I landed with a thud just below its head, by a crest in its interlocking thick armour plating. I grabbed hold of the crest and held on tight as the long armoured bug reacted to my movement by starting to thrash around against the walls, hoping to shake me, but I remained firm with my grip strength. But as it did, I wasn't idly hanging on.

  The more fleshy parts of its body was covered by the thick chitin armour, but as history has proven, all armour has weaknesses. And I had found one rather close to the head, where I was clinging on. The crest of the armour that I had hanging onto to be precise. Beneath its crest and just before the head plating, was unprotected insect flesh. So naturally while I kept one clawed hand firmly planted against the body of the centipede alongside my legs that I hooked around underneath this particular section of plates, I dug my other claws into its flesh.

  I dug like the flesh was sand, and I got covered with the green goo that the insides of the monster was made out of, but it paid off when I ripped chunks of the monster's head free from the inside, negating the armour entirely. It thrashed for a little while more while I dug in, but eventually it stilled on the ground, its legs flattening against the ground and its glowing shell growing dim slightly as it died.

  I climbed off somewhat shakily, from a combination of disgust and weakness in my entire body. I could feel that I almost transformed back while I dry-heaved uncontrollably and fell to the ground. ‘God… I miss killing the spiders now…’ I thought as I looked at the chunks of green and blue insect flesh all over my body and the head of the monster itself. ‘I changed my mind… I don't actually want a fight anymore.’ I thought weakly, and again I felt the press of the unnatural hunger caused by fueling my transformation. It was geting to the point of too much. I couldn't keep this up for much longer…

  ‘I got to find that damn breach…’ I growled out in my mind, as I growled out in the physical world. I was having a really, really bad day. I just need for it to finally be over… ‘Just keep going until then.’ I forced myself to my feet, looking at the monster and the tunnel it came from with determination. I let out a growl again, this time stronger as I leaped forwards and up, starting to run over the corpse to get past it.

  ‘Is it weird that actually fighting isn't what is the most tiring? It's using the Pendant just to be able to fight and win. It's way more tiring and demanding than even that last fight I just had.’ I thought to myself with annoyance as I ran, the pressure of the Pendant increasing minutely by the moment. I had minutes at best to stay in this form…

  So I needed to be fast.

  I sped up a little more, pushing my werewolf body to its limits through twists and turns inside the tunnel that I knew led towards the breach. The air was damp and cold on my fur, rushing past my body and letting off some of the heat that my fur had trapped in. My mouth was open and panting, letting the refreshing air fill my large lungs and pumping in and out the oxygen repeatedly. The floor was slowly growing damper as well, which I noticed when I started almost slipping on it whenever I made a sharp turn. But only just a bit damper really, and it was nice.

  I kept going, and eventually I was sure I was almost there. Unlike the other parts of the tunnels in the burrow, this one had clear sections in the wall that had grey and yellowy stone poking out through the dirt in patches. And as I went farther down, I saw the amount of stone grow and grow. Then I saw what I knew for sure was the breach. It was a ragged triangle like a cave might have farther into it, rocks broken around it and a glow seemed to spread from some of them as they had a glowing liquid dripping from them. Dirt was scattered around like it was pushed and tossed in every direction around the breach that painted a sudan push from beyond this entrance and something emerging. Probably the centipede things. Beyond the opening, was a bright glow.

  I narrowed my eyes at the brightness, and looked back behind me for a moment as I realized something. ‘Now that I think about it… How was I able to see? There was no light and I am deep underground… Do I have night vision in werewolf form? I must have.’

  But I shoved those thoughts aside as the blue bioluminescent light beyond the rocky hole pulsed and brought me back to the moment. I found the breach… Now what?

  ‘The quest said I had to defend or block the breach and prevent anything from coming through…’ I thought hesitantly. ‘But it didn't say how long.’ I realized suddenly, mentally opening the quest again and making sure I was right… Which I was.

  I felt myself turning back human in that moment with the utter shock of the revelation making me distracted from holding the form. I cursed everything as I looked at the breach in front of me at the end of the tunnel with some horror and fear in my voice. It clouded my mind before I managed to pull myself together. I slung my backpack off my shoulders, dumping it on the ground and opening it in a flash. I dug around for a second, before withdrawing my good old hatchet. It wasn't much… Especially now.

  I was weakened by the Pendant now that my transformation was over, making me really, really hungry, a thirst that I barely managed to quench by drinking from the bottle of water that I had carried with me, and most of all my entire body was just tired. I doubted that I had any juice in me left for another fight. I couldn't transform back into my werewolf form either due to just how exhausted I was now.

  “You know… I think the quest was completed. Want to give me those stones to block up this entrance now or what?” I asked out loud, to the system, the pair of deities that had brought me here, anything. I was just about done as I sank to the floor, putting my back against my backpack with my hatchet balanced on my lap in my hands. I watched the glowing breach, guarding it. Not that I could do much now.

  I waited, waited for something to happen. I was cold now. My clothes stuck to my wet sweating skin uncomfortably. But nothing happened. Nothing at all. Everything was still and silent, other than my deep but ragged breathing. I felt the unnatural hunger kick against my stomach again, and I grunted. That hurt.

  I needed to eat… I had six MRE packs and the bag of raw rabbit meat that's in my inventory. I don't think I could cook if I wanted to, so I guess that leaves the MRE’s. That takes some of my emergency provisions, but that is what they are for. Situations like this. I reached behind me and pulled out one of them and tore open the packaging and started scarfing it down while making sure to watch the breach closely. The pulses of blue light seemed to be coming more frequently, but only just. That was the only change thankfully.

  I finished the pack, and reached for another as I could feel the hunger still hurting. The food that I ate seemed to be absorbed quickly, and used to start recovering. But I needed more. I ripped open the next one and ate it. Then one more. That was a full day's worth… Three meals.

  But it was worth it as the pains of hunger faded entirely and I could feel energy start to flow back into me once more. Though my head was tired, my body could keep going for a little longer if I needed.

  I didn't realize the importance of my thoughts that I would need more food then normal as the Pendants powers fueled my body. It was unreal the way I recovered after eating, and definitely some kind of side effect to the ability I had now. Some kind of improvement of my recovery to facilitate the Pendant feeding off my body and emotions to empower me in turn.

  I stood, closing the backpack behind me and holding my hatchet in my hand as I turned to look at the crack in the tunnel. I needed to do something to complete the quest… I just didn't know what.

  “I don't think I could get more information on how to complete the quest now?” I asked the air, and this time something responded. A system screen appeared.