My life as a reborn monster

I woke up to the sounds of chains dragging and the feeling of my body being pulled. I look around and see that I am in an area filled with cages each one having a different monster or a humanoid looking figure held within. I was hoping that the past day was just a dream but after seeing this my heart dropped. Soon after I see a message pop up.

[User is blocked from accessing skills]

[Object Identified; Object classified as : Dampening Collar, Remove to access skills.]

seeing this I start to feel the collar on my neck it felt heavy and testing it out I tried to activate my Electric scales only for a extreme shock to go through my entire body causing me to scream out in pain.

"Ah the main product for the night has awoken, and to boot you just saved me the time to warn you against trying to use your abilities hahahaha. Now just be a good monster and wait to be sold off, we wouldn't want to have to reduce your price because of having to many wounds now would we."

The person dragging me said as they open up a cage door and then throw me in, the chains unlatched from around me and slithered off to wrap around the man. It seems the chains were actually his skill or magical item, that I wouldn't know for sure. But looking around I could see others occasionally going through intense pain as I saw electric currents emit from the collar.

"Hey why are you still trying to use your abilities its pointless, you just end up getting shocked right?" I ask a demi-human girl next to me that had bright green feathery wings for arms and 2 talons at the wingtips, her feet were also 3 front talons with a large dewclaw coming from the back. freℯ𝓌e𝚋𝐧𝘰vℯl.𝐜𝚘𝗺

"I am a proud harpy and this will not stop me from escaping and going back to my home." After she said that another arc hit her body but this time I could see her feathers start to faintly glow before dimming again.

"Hold on I just saw your wings glow are you able to use your abilities?" I was shocked seeing this but also I was hopeful at the idea that if I could just persevere I could eventually escape aswell.

The harpy ignored me and just kept focused on her own things so I took that as a sign to stop bugging her and instead start focusing on my own escape. So I start off by trying to use mana absorption, which led to the shock happening but this time the pain was less intense as a I got a pop up.

[User has been subjected to intense electrical currents. Users skill Lighting Resistance has increased. 0% -> 15%. User is will now be able to handle the power emitted from the Collar.]

'Sweetness this will come in handy, but wait didn't the system say it was classified as a dampening collar? Then why is it only just shocking me whenever I try and use my skill?' That question was shortly answered as I completed a successful use of mana absorption and after a few minutes my MP had only refilled by 1 instead of normally refilling.

'So that's what it meant by "Dampening" it doesn't just shock me but it also lowers how effective my skills are as well it looks like whoever runs this operation has either gotten lucky with this collar or had this particular thought in mind while making it.'

Still being hopeful about the situation I continue to resist the shocks, even though I didn't get another notification about my resistance increasing I was still able to feel the power decreasing with each shock.

After a few hours I start to hear loud noises from up above, it sounded like clapping and excited yelling as a man clearly speaks.

"Ladies and Gentleman, I humbly greet and welcome you to the Forbidden Crows Auction house. We have for this evenings items a special prize. We recently acquired a dragon, but this is no mere dragon, It has been appraised by our in house beastmaster as a variant dragon with specialties lying in the smoke and space magics. This ofcourse leads us to increasing the opening bid but before the main event let us bring out some appetizers to loosen up those coin purses."

During that speech a man had come and drug away a large rabbit like beast that just waiting. It didn't fight or anything, I got a look into its eyes as it passed by me and all I saw was a deadness that scared me. It had no fight left and just gave up on life.

Using that as motivation I waited until they left and the man above started the bidding for the beast I continued trying to break free every now and then looking over at the harpy and seeing with each shock her wings would grow brighter and brighter and then I started to feel a slight breeze pick up but it would only pick up to a point of ruffling her feathers before dying down and she would get shocked and have to start over.

I changed from using absorption to instead activating my scales. Using that I stopped feeling the shocks and instead was slowly drawing in the power of the electricity into my scales which in turn gave me more power until finally after a quick outburst I was able to break the collar into pieces. With a loud bang I broke through the bars and was about to run away before a voice from behind stopped me.

"Please help me, you are powerful please." It was the Harpy, I could see by looking in her eyes that she was slowly losing the motivation to keep going and that this was her last resort as a small flicker of hope was dimming.

Shortly after I started hearing more pleas for help from the surrounding cages as demi humans of different types woke up from their stupor and with a renewed hope pleaded to be rescued. Knowing that there was a short time until the next beast would be auctioned off I quickly went around and started breaking the bars on the cage which surprisingly on some of them were only just wooden poles fastened together.

But starting with the harpy I just broke them free from the cages and didn't waste time with the collars. I had successfully gotten 20 different creatures freed before I heard a door slamming open and I heard the footprints of atleast a few different people running and screaming towards us.

"Stop right there, Boys stop the merchandise from escaping." Shouted a man that was fairly well built with a large upper body and thick legs that was carrying a large axe across his back. There were 2 other men with him who I assumed were "the boys" that he mentioned but they were just your typical goon types. So I just did what I always do and used a smoke breath that filled up the room while me and the 20 others ran out of a side door behind us.

[User has killed their first Human. Now generating reward]

[User has gained the skill: Man killer]

I was happy I got a new skill but now was not the time to really look into because after exiting through the door we found ourselves in a large underground tunnel with multiple offshoot paths leading to who knows where.

One of the escapees speaks up after we stop running to catch our breath. It was a small mole like beast. "If you want I can scout ahead and with my abilities I can sense which path leads to the surface, I would just need you to get this collar off of me."

Seeing no other alternative I send a quick shock back through the collar and it disintegrates.

"Ok, now that the collars off go searching through the next tunnel, go as quick as you can we don't know if those goons back there were the only ones. I hope my smoke stopped them but judging by the aura the big one had I highly doubt that, now go."

The mole quickly digs through dirt going down one tunnel while I look at the others to see if there are any that could provide help aswell. "Are there any here who can use Illusion magic or perhaps control earth or help with healing or scouting?" I ask while looking and see a few hands raise up.

One was a short and pudgy rat like beastman. "I can help scout ahead I have a skill that senses danger approaching and I am also skilled in sneaking should the need arise."

"Good ok lets send you down the opposite path the mole went, but first come here and let me take care of the collar, but before you go I need you to wait here I have a plan." He nodded and stood behind me.

Next after that was a slender fox beastwoman who came up to me. "I can use illusion magic what were thinking?" Looking at her I could see that she had a desperate look in her eyes but brushing that aside I took a second before responding.

"I plan on creating a tunnel using the mole as a scout ahead but we need to cover up the entrance think you can do it? if not its fine we can just cover the hole back up after we all go through the entrance, I figured that way we can lose the humans while also escaping to freedom without the need to always watch our back and reduce the amount of stress on the others."

She looks around and after thinking for a few seconds she nods. "I can do that but it would be better to go ahead and cover up the entrance after making the tunnel, My illusion magic is just that Illusion if they so much as touch the fake wall it will disappear and reveal the tunnel behind it."

I knew that this was probably the case so after putting her to the side after talking a bit more I turn towards the others and find a large demihuman with that looked like an armadillo that stood on 2 legs. "Hey my name is Sondar I am a armadillo demihuman who specializes in Earth magic. I can do what your talking about if you'll free me from this bullshit of a collar."

After a few more minutes of speaking with the others I find out that atleast 4 of them including Sondar can use Earth magic and volunteered to create the tunnel, I also found out the harpies name is Sylvania and is from a mountainous region to the far south.

There was a brown furred bunny, another mole that until now was very shy but after a few minutes of convincing by another blue colored mole it finally spoke up and volunteered for the tunnel duty. There was a brown scaled snake that specialized in mud and sand like magic so I had it help out with the tunnel entrance and lay down a few traps near the door leading to the cages.

Other than that there were a variety of different humanoids ranging from Lamias to lupines to beastmen and then intelligent monsters ranging from the moles and bunnies to larger creatures like snakes and even a green salamander.

After an hour or so of conversing with the others and solidifying the plan, the mole came back to report. "I found an exit but its guarded by a squad of humans that are looking around, I guess the news of our escape already is widespread so we have to be careful."

Hearing that I changed around a few of the details but overall kept the same plan and I informed the mole of the plan aswell. Thankfully he agreed and even was eager to get started, After making sure everyone's collar was removed and they were in top form we started the escape.

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[Man Killer] lvl 0 0/10 - User gains increased damage to humans.