Intelligent Design: A Monster Evolution LitRPG

David rested comfortably on Claire’s shoulders as they crossed the long concrete bridge into Riverport as the sun began to creep below the horizon. Despite her earlier protestations, she had suggested he hitch a ride for a little while when he received a notification about being inflicted with |Fatigued| and he started having difficulty staying airborne. David was simply too tired, he had been awake for far longer than he had any reason to be, even managing to doze slightly in the last 2 hours. Claire’s rattling hiss of suspicion had woken him as she began to move across the cracked and pitted concrete, water rushing past loudly below them. She stepped gingerly at first, slowly testing each step before she began to trust the entire thing wouldn’t collapse into rubble under her weight.

“It should be fine, just…don’t run, probably.” Kai called as he hauled his half of the bear over their heads steadily toward the other side, “I’m gonna go set this down. Meet you over there.”

David watched him go, waiting until he was out of earshot before he started talking, “Seems like he’s on the level, but I’m not sure I wanna join the circus if you know what I mean.”

“Yeh.” She replied eloquently, “I uhst anna ook arun. U nah?”

“Yessss? We’ll look around, talk to some of these Hunting Team guys, and see if it’s worth working together. If not we get some sleep and split in the morning, sound fair?”

“Fhrrr.”

David nodded happily, almost forgetting Claire had an entire monster in her jaws during their little conversation despite needing a second to translate her mumbling. He stayed where he was, resting comfortably on the thick armored plates on Claire’s back, the motion of her stride almost soothing if it weren’t for all the little hornlike ridges on the plates themselves. David poked his head around her neck and blanketed the area ahead of them with Echolocations, happy to see that the bridge seemed to be sturdy and nothing appeared to be lurking around it. Kai set the carcass down gently on the other side before they cleared the halfway point and sat waiting for them politely as Claire took her time crossing.

“Alright, we’re basically inside the safe-ish zone now. You may now unclench your orifices.” Kai said when they finally stepped off the bridge with the type of laugh brought on by inside jokes, “We’ll start seeing people soon, go ahead and leave that here Claire, we’ll send someone to come get it. They gotta earn their keep somehow.”

Claire immediately dropped the beast to splatter against the ground in an ungainly heap, working her jaws several times before clacking them together loudly.

“Oh my god, that’s so much better. It wasn’t so bad at first but it started to get annoying after a while.” Claire rumbled loudly in relief.

David started to stand and hop down to join them when she swung her head back over her shoulder and fixed him with a tremendously effective glare of her own. David slowly sat back down and folded his ears flat before she nodded curtly.

“No, your stupid ass has been awake for like two days and three fights. Chill out for a minute, I'm big enough I literally can’t even tell you’re there. I was just fucking around before.” Claire growled protectively at him.

David just nodded and settled back down, “You know I’d usually go off on a tangent about how I had a workaround for that but I’m beat. I’ll just sit on my hands until we get there, okay?”

Kai ruffled his feathers, the tinkling sound managing to get their attention while he began to stalk off the road, hopping nimbly over the highway barriers and turning to look at them pointedly. Claire simply took two steps and caught up with him, gracefully ignoring the barrier entirely and just walking over it. David shot a few Echolocations ahead of them down the gentle hill that led to the opposite shore of the river below them as Kai continued purposefully forward. The pair of them followed a short distance behind, David keeping a careful eye on everything from his perch as he swept both his gaze and even more Echolocations around them constantly.

“Alright, it’s just up through there. I think it’s Ezra at the front gate tonight, he’s a chatterbox. Good guy.” Kai informed them with a bit of excitement in his voice, “We’re gonna swing left into those trees there, then the ‘entrance’ is just on the other side. You two are gonna be pretty popular, like I said, Forest didn’t spit anyone else back out. Plus you guys managed to evolve. It’s gonna make convincing everyone that it’s possible to survive out there a lot easier.”

They both made tired sounds of agreement as Kai led them to a narrow game trail that wound through the trees near the park. He ducked into the growth as Claire paused for a heartbeat then simply started brushing the foliage aside as she forced her way after him in a steady crunch of wood. David could almost feel the ‘fuck it’ radiating off of her after the long day and he couldn’t help but agree, though he continued to pulse the area around them just in case. His sensitive ears picked up the sound of something clattering against the dilapidated road that Kai fluttered onto as soon as he cleared the trees, dropping down onto the pavement and turning to ensure they were still following.

“Kai! Welcome back, buddy! You get anything toda…” A melodious voice began before trailing off with a strangled sound as Claire emerged slowly from the trees and turned to look at the noise.

“Ezra, don’t piss yourself. The gigantic nightmare is Claire, and the smaller nightmare is David. They’re runners. I found them fishing for those turbo-pike down by the river.” Kai screeched quickly.

David and Claire looked at the stranger curiously as he tried his best to hide behind the short stone wall that separated the park from the rest of the world. The shaggy herbivore was about the size of a small car, with large sweeping antlers that reminded David slightly of a moose. It had a broad, sturdy-looking head and face, though its limbs were stocky and short, giving them a low profile despite the relative bulk they possessed.

Huh. Looks tough, honestly. That must be why they have him guard the gate, you could almost block off the entire thing with how wide those antlers are. We should probably say something, we’re just staring at him all creepy. Uh–

“Hey.” David squeaked loudly while he twiddled the talons on his wings in his best imitation of a wave.

“Uh…Hi, I’m Claire.” Claire did her best to look non-threatening and failed on every level as Kai began to usher them through the gate.

“...Hello. Kai, do you have, like two seconds? Just ah, wanna discuss something privately…” Ezra replied after a moment, clopping out from behind the wall and into full view.

“They’re fine Ezra, they helped me bring food. David fought off a bear-thing by himself to buy me time when a second one crawled out its own ass to ruin my day.” Kai called back to him as he continued past him without slowing, “I’m not joking, they were doing just fine with only two of them. They’re here to take a look around, I’m gonna take ‘em to see Herold.”

“He’s training, same place as always.” Ezra replied with a shake of his massive antlers as he trotted off the asphalt and onto the grass to give Claire room to move freely.

“We’re cool, I swear.” David chittered reassuringly at him as she stomped past, being sure to give him a winning smile.

Kai began to make a loud chirping sound and he hurried down the road toward where David could see the warehouse where the city kept all the random stuff they put out for holidays. Everyone had always thought it was an eyesore, and it was, an obvious lowest-bid contract slapped together out of aluminum siding and just enough metal to stand up straight. Before David had time to ask him why he was making so much noise a small stampede of Hatchlings came barreling down the path from the direction they were heading. Their gazes were locked firmly on Kai before a few of them screeched quite literally to a halt as they fell over themselves in an attempt to backpedal when they noticed the murdersaurus following him.

“They’re with me, and they brought food. It’s over by the bridge, round up everyone you can and go grab it before something else does. Take Ezra with you just in case, tell him I asked as a favor.” Kai reassured the crowd as they began to shout questions at him.

“Where did they come from?”

“Who are they? Are there more people somewhere?”

“Something is riding it! Look!”

“I’m taking them to Herold, fuck out my way, seriously I got shit to do move it. Go get the food we humped like ten miles back here for you.” Kai finally screeched impatiently as they scattered, flowing around him and only slowing slightly to rubberneck at the pair of them before vanishing down the road behind them.

Both David and Claire gawked openly at them in the rapidly fading twilight, eyes skipping around as they tried to get a look at everyone before they rushed off, the Hatchling's hunger overpowering their curiosity. David was annoyed to see that there weren’t that many Small-sized creatures with them, with the bulk of people being Medium-sized even if they were still Hatchlings right now. A full third of them were slightly larger than David was, even with a whole special evolution under his belt and it rubbed him the wrong way. Within 30 seconds of arriving they were gone, an absolute ruckus of gossip following above them like a storm cloud as the mob began to bicker about their new visitors.

Weasel-thing, a couple of flightless bird things, lots of freaky looking reptiles, a frog thing, is that a fucking giant dragonfly with a scorpion tail? That’s kinda cool, I should talk to that one. I bet they’d have good advice about crosswinds. What an acid trip, how do you even organize all this?

“Hey, keep up! We’re almost there, Herold is the guy who put everything together but refuses to be in charge. David, if you have a knack with the System he’ll be your absolute best friend. We all kind of organize ourselves but Herold organized and led the first few hunts a couple days ago to stop people from nibbling their neighbors.” Kai informed them as they passed out from under the trees and over the flattened remains of a rusted-out chain link fence.

“Probably gonna be a couple of the Hunt members in here, I’ll introduce you guys.”

Kai fluttered his wings and half hopped half glided his way to the huge slightly open door before pausing. David could hear some sort of ruckus going on inside, excited voices swelling and falling every so often as though in response to something going on. He had to admit it sounded like a good time.

“Yeah, I’m not gonna fit in that unless you can get it all the way open,” Claire remarked bluntly as Kai studied the door with a stupid look on his face as he glanced at Claire.

“That’s…Okay, David, you wanna come with me? I’ll introduce you and then we’ll come back out and they can meet Claire too.” Kai called up to David before adding enticingly, “After that, you guys can get some sleep. We’ll show you around in the morning.”

“I love that last part, yeah, sounds good. Claire if you hear anything weird…” David agreed slowly.

Claire clacked her jaws together and nodded as David slithered off her back and fluttered to the ground, oddly uniform grass flattening under him as he landed. He shot her a fair approximation of a thumbs up with his wing talons and loped off after Kai, who had ducked into the structure happily when David had agreed. He could see the bird's tail and legs waiting for him just on the other side of the door as he approached the metal building and the smell of rust and…all sorts of other scents filled his nose. He recognized the vague ‘mammal’ scent, as well as a scent he recognized as reptilian from his time with Claire and a few others he’d never smelled before. He walked across the cracked concrete sidewalk and ducked under the partially open door to join Kai on the other side.

David immediately soaked the large empty space in Echolocations before he was fully through the door, scrabbling excitedly after Kai when the waves returned.

Kai was standing placidly and watching as a small ring of creatures joked and laughed while three others fought in the center of the warehouse. David’s eyes widened as he took in the collection of evolved creatures while they milled around in a loose group, all watching the fight unfolding as they talked. An iridescent green beetle the size of a van was handily fending off a pair of coordinated herbivores that were working to flip the insect over. They shouted and taunted each other, hooves and clawed insectile feet scraping and pounding against the floor as the beetle swiftly angled its armored carapace into every ramming and shoving attack. The two herbivores fell back, the larger stag-like opponent simply bounding directly over the beetle to land behind it before the smaller but sturdier two-legged goat creature hurled itself forward to smash its curling horns into their opponent.

He tore his eyes away from the ‘training’ in the middle of the room to get a better look at the rest of them as Kai finally began to walk towards the group. Something that vaguely resembled a wasp was busily talking to a turtle with a heavy hooked beak big enough to give Claire a run for her money. A six-legged panther with a tail that ended in a sharp spike was snoring hard, sleeping like a log on the floor next to a crab the size of a refrigerator with what looked like an anemone growing out of the top of it, which pulsed and flickered with bioluminescence as it watched the fight.

“HEY GUYS!” Kai suddenly bellowed at the crowd, “I FOUND SOME RUNNERS! THEY MADE IT AND EVOLVED!”

Silence descended over the small gathering as the sparring screeched to a halt instantly and a truly bizarre number of eyes locked onto Kai for a heartbeat before settling instead on David. Try as he might his mane instantly engaged in maximum floof, a subconscious attempt to make him look bigger.

“Hi!” David chittered brightly with forced enthusiasm as he was put on the spot.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!”

“HOOOO-SHIT! I ALMOST DIDNT SEE IT!”

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! DONT LET IT GET ME, ITS JUST LIKE IN MY DREAM!”

–Unnerving Mutagen has leveled up!–

–Gained 3xp!–

Naturally.