[Existing Skill Modified: Climbing (Basic) > Climbing (Basic - Feline Enhanced)]

-Grip strength optimization and instinctive route-finding added. Climbing surfaces previously considered impossible may now be traversable

Both modified skills are the ones I use the most. Makes sense.

The thing from the south hit forty meters.

Eren’s hands twitched toward the meat but he forced himself to wait. Two more minutes and both pieces would be properly cooked. If he pulled them now the inside would still be raw and eating half-raw elemental python meat might give him a new Poison Resistance level but it would also give him six hours of stomach pain he couldn’t afford.

Thirty meters.

He could see it now. Through the gaps in the brush a shape was pushing through the undergrowth with the casual slow power of something that wasn’t afraid of anything.

It was a gorilla. But not the fire-element gorillas that lived in the area he was staying near a toxic mushroom valley.

Eren had stolen fruits from those elementally strong but physically weak clans twice in the last two weeks. And even teased a few of the younger ones this morning during his cat-chaos phase, tapping them on the head and running, tripping one with a quick ankle sweep, generally being an asshole.

Those usual gorillas from around were big and aggressive but they were also mid-tier in his mental danger ranking. Level 20 to 30 range based on what his Observe skill could feel.

This one was completely different. Wider shoulders and longer arms with scars across its chest and face that looked like they came from fighting things with claws as big as kitchen knives.

The muscle on its frame wasn’t the puffy inflated look of the usual gorillas. It was dense and layered like slabs of rock stacked under the skin. And its eyes had a focus that the southern ones didn’t have. When it looked at Eren through the brush there was calculation behind those eyes, not just hunger.

His Observe skill tried to read it and gave him nothing. Not a number, not a feeling, not even the "too high to read" response he got from the colorful bird. Just a wall. Like trying to look through a thick glass of darkened window.

The bird gave me "too high." The turtles gave me "exceeds threshold." This thing gives me nothing at all. Is it blocking me?

So, there are also privacy skills and I learn it right now. Great...

His primal senses were screaming. Every hair on the back of his neck was standing straight up and something in his spine, some deep animal part of his brain that existed before humans learned to talk, was telling him to run right now.

In those Spider-Man movies Peter Parker’s spider-sense tingled when danger was close. It looked cool on screen, a little buzz in the back of the head and then he dodges the punch.

My cat-sense doesn’t tingle but screams. And right now it’s telling me this thing could kill me before I finished standing up.

This gorilla wasn’t from around here. The southern ones and this area’s gorillas were elemental, mostly fire-based but also some water elemental ones from the south. And they were tied to their territory like every other clan in this part of the forest.

This giant one had the scarring and the rock-dust smell of the northern regions, the dry, less forested area with more boulders and exposed cliff faces that Eren had only seen from the top of his tree.

Northern gorillas were bigger and more physical because their environment didn’t have elemental energy to rely on. Pure muscle and pure aggression.

And this one was a top-tier specimen even by northern standards. Eren could feel it in his bones without needing a skill to confirm it.

Eren grabbed the stick with the snake meat in his right hand and yanked the wood handle on the stone piece with his left. The hot meat burned his palm through the wood but he held on and shoved both pieces against his chest before launching himself upward.

His legs compressed and released in a single burst that sent him four meters straight up. He caught a branch with his right elbow while holding the stick and swung his body upward, feet finding the bark of the main trunk with a grip that would’ve been impossible a day ago. The Feline Enhanced Climbing kicked in and his toes dug into textures he couldn’t have felt before.

Three seconds, and he was on the inner trunk of the safe tree and almost release a big breath with this safe feeling.

At the fourth seconds, he reached the outer branch zone where the fire birds lived.

At the five seconds, he was at his sleeping platform and finally safe completely.

Then he let that breath go out and he smiled with his insane body’s speed. It was good to improve and prove that you are getting better every day.

This lifestyle was insanely more satisfying than being a salesman on Earth.

He dropped both pieces of meat onto the clean wood slab he used as a cutting board and looked at his hands. The left palm was red from the hot meat. It hurt but Pain Resistance turned it from a burn into a warm throb.

Then his hands went to his mouth.

He didn’t decide to do it. His body just moved. His tongue came out and started licking the grease and the grime and the ash off his fingers with quick short strokes like a cat cleaning its paws after a meal. The motion was so natural and so fast that his human brain didn’t catch up until he’d already cleaned three fingers.

Did I just lick my hands clean? Like a cat does after feeling it’s body is dirty?

He looked at his fingers and they were clean. Genuinely clean, not just wiped but like his saliva had cut through the grease and the dirt faster than water ever had and his tongue had found every crease and fold between the fingers with a precision that hands alone couldn’t match.

He ran his tongue along his gums and everything felt normal. Maybe slightly sharper canines but he couldn’t be sure if that was new or if he’d just never paid attention to his own teeth before.

The cleaning instinct itself was the weird part. His chest had been tight with a strange anxious energy the second he’d noticed the grease on his hands. Not rational discomfort but a deep physical unease like an itch behind his ribcage that he absolutely couldn’t ignore. The moment his hands were clean the feeling dissolved completely like it had never been there.

Cats groom themselves because being dirty messes with their hunting. If they smell like old food every prey animal knows they’re coming. Is that what’s happening to me now? I can’t handle being dirty because my new brain thinks I’m a predator?

He didn’t have time to think about it more because the gorilla was at the base of his tree.

Fifteen seconds. That’s all it had taken from the moment the rock was thrown -

Wait.

He replayed the last few seconds. He’d been sitting at the fire reading skills. He’d grabbed the meat and jumped. He was now on his sleeping platform looking down through the branches.

But he hadn’t dodged a rock.

The gorilla hadn’t thrown anything. It had just walked to his tree and now it was standing at the base of the trunk looking up with those calculated eyes and Eren’s Primal Senses were going absolutely insane.

The tree. It’s standing next to my tree. Nothing stands next to my tree. Nothing has come within ten meters of this trunk in four weeks.

The gorilla put one hand on the bark, then the other and then it started climbing.

Eren watched it happen with his new eyes tracking every movement in high definition. The gorilla’s massive fingers gripped the bark like it was a ladder and its body pulled upward with the kind of effortless strength that didn’t come from a Level 20 or 30 creature. This was something much higher and it was climbing his tree and nothing was stopping it.

No invisible repulsion and no magical barrier. Whatever kept the insects and the birds and the fire snakes and every other creature away from the inner trunk wasn’t stopping this thing.

He bit into the snake meat on the stick because if he was going to die he was at least going to taste his first real meal in a month.

The meat was incredible. Hot and rich with a smokiness from the fruit wood and a faint electric tingle from the elemental scales that made his tongue buzz. His enhanced taste buds broke it down into layers he didn’t know food could have. Protein and fat and mineral and something sweet underneath all of it that might have been the python’s natural diet leaking through the meat.

Oh my god. This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten in this world. This is better than the raw grubs by about ten thousand percent. This might even be better than my mother’s lamb.

He got one full bite before his entire body seized up.

Not from the food but from behind him.

Something was almost on him!!

Something biological and warm and close enough that his Primal Senses exploded with input so intense his vision whited out for a quarter of a second.

His head turned at a speed that should’ve snapped his neck. Predatory Reflex maxed out and his brain processed everything in the space between heartbeats. A shape behind him on the branch. Not the gorilla because the gorilla was still climbing below. Something else. Something that had been on this platform before he got here or had come from above or from inside the trunk itself and he had exactly zero time to think about what it was.

Every skill fired at once.

His legs pushed off the branch with every point of Strength his body had.

Featherfall Reflex activated the moment he left the surface. Absolute Equilibrium rotated his body mid-air so he was facing the correct direction. Kinetic Flux Runner synced with his landing trajectory and Primal Senses scanned the ground below for the safest landing zone.

He launched himself north off the tree like a bullet. Clean open ground with no large roots or rocks in the way. He cleared six meters of horizontal distance before gravity pulled him down and hit the ground on all fours without making a sound. His fingers and toes absorbed the impact across all four contact points and he was running before his palms left the dirt.

The meat on the stick was left behind sadly but he was trying to save his ass right now.

The gap between landing and full sprint was less than half a second and he ran north with everything he had.

Kinetic Flux Runner pushed him to maximum speed instantly and his bare feet found solid ground between every root and rock without him looking down.

Behind him, up in the tree, something heavy shifted on the branch he’d been sitting on two seconds ago.

And below it the gorilla was still climbing.

Two of them.

There were two things hunting him and one of them had already been inside the safe zone.

He kept running and didn’t look back.

How?

Nothing was supposed to come near that tree. Almost four weeks and nothing came close. Not even the birds. So how...?

He didn’t have an answer. He just ran.