Trust me I'm normal (Lie)

Oh also sona ig

Literally just me if my genes were mixed with a marshmallow

so, let's start off with the main guy and face of DoD himself: Pursuer, isn't he such a cool looking guy, I mean, everyone and their moms know that pursuer is a feral apex predator in the woods, right? Nah, your WRONG, he's actually a HUMAN :0000

ok whatever lemme get into it, let's start off by looking at him:

wow look at that weirdly smiling fella. Hey wait a second, I never knew that he had a sword strapped to his back, whaa??? How is it staying there tho??

Well the only explanation for this is that Pursuer, a supposed apex predator, is wearing a sort of back scabbard, which is that type of sheath strapped to someone's back thats used to hold their sword, lemme find a photo of that:

Bam, there it is, holding a sword against someone's back. Now, clearly, you can see that Pursuer doesn't visibly have this item physically on him, but we're looking at it from a biological standpoint and a Roblox model made in 20 seconds with a face decal and recolored sword doesn't give much hints to biology, so we can simply infer that he does infact wear a back scabbard. How does he know how to wear it and why? We'll get back to that once we cover some of his skins

Now, on the topic of his sword: his sword! How does he use that thing? As far as we're aware, he just has it, we'll explain how he even got it in the first place. In the meantime: his cleave, let's look at that animation rq

Now, in this gif, you can see he takes the sword out from his scabbard and stabs it forward, before spinning it while putting it back (I think I'm hallucinating, but I'm pretty damn sure that he spins that thang before putting it back

In my research, I found out that while yes, the thumb is an important part of wielding a sword, it isn't the worst finger to loose if you're a sword fighter, but it would infact be important if you're performing fast and agile slices or stabs, because it keeps the sword stabilized and makes sure that he doesn't drop it or it slips out of his hands while slicing and stabbing. The reason I bring this thumb point up is because what sparked this idea was the fact that I thought "hey you have to have an opposable thumb in order to wield a sword" (later found out this isn't entirely true, you don't need an opposable one)

But still, back to that point (I just wanna show my research i did for this useless theory about a silly backflipping feral monster), in order to stabilize a sword, you need a thumb to hold onto it and prevent it from slipping out of your hand. E.g:

(all of these screen shots are from blumineck btw, really cool fella I really like his stuff) but yeah, if he were to cut off his thumb, it'd probably be MUCH harder to stabilize, hold onto, and efficiently slice and slash with this sword

Also, wait a second, let's talk about that sword: Pursuer is supposedly an animal, and yet he uses a sword. Now an animal could hypothetically be able to wield a sword of they had an opposable thumb or a strong jaw (immediately off the table, Pursuer doesn't use his jaw to wield a sword), but even then if you gave an animal with an opposable thumb a sword, they would lack the knowledge and awareness in order to even use the sword effectively, HOWEVER, HUMANS. CAN. humans do infact have the awareness and knowledge to use a sword, I feel that's a give in

So now, back to the scabbard and how he knows how to wear clothes, lemme direct your attention to the bling pursuer skin

Look at this guy, he's literally wearing a hat and BRASS KNUCKLES. how TF would he know not to wear a hat on his ass, or know he know how to even use Brass Knuckles as a supposed Apex Predator? Hell, if you showed me brass knuckles with no context, I'd probably say "ey, that's a pretty cool bottle opener you got there", that isn't even a joke tbh. So how would an apex predator know how to wear both BRASS KNUCKLES, a HAT, and a back scabbard, let alone know what to do with them? The only way we could explain this is either

He saw someone wearing them (unlikely, who would bring some medieval sword and back scabbard into a forest, and also who would bring some flashy expensive brass knuckles and hat into a forest?)

Or TWO, he had prior knowledge on how to act like a human and perhaps even WAS one, which you'll find out is a more likely scenario later on into this theory

Now let's look at something else, something like pursuers eerily close proportions to a civilian

I want you to look at these 2 guys and see some similarities, you'll notice first how similar their body proportions are; they're both Robloxian shaped

"oh, but it's for consistency!!"

No it isn't! Wanna know the ONLY other non-civilian character in-game that looks like one? Artful, and he's LITERALLY a civilian. The other killers, Harken Killdroid and Badware, are all not civilians and they clearly don't have a similar body shape to the civilians either (you can make an exception for Killdroid, but thats canonically a robot). Every civilian uses the default blocky body, including artful, which makes you wonder "why does pursuer have such a similar body shape?"

This must mean one thing: biologically, Pursuer is really close in proportions to humans (civilians, civilians are basically just humans no argument about it). You may excuse this as "well maybe he's just an animal that looks like a human to disguise itself as one!", but that doesn't usually happen in nature. As far as primates (monkeys, gorillas, apes, etc), no animals resemble humans as eerily as Pursuer, hell, look at this:

Pursuer has an EXTREMELY close appearance to humans, even down to his face, which has human-like teeth and eyes. It even resembles a human head-shape wise, having a rounded square-like head with a short to non-existent snout.

also, Pursuer is a bipedal hunter. In order for us humans to be bipedal, we have to have a curved spine, a pelvis bone, and the foramen magnum (that's the opening at the base of a skull in order for the skull to stay connected to the spine, basically). This bipedal proportion suggests that pursuer has a human-like skeletal structure, and considering that one of the only other animals that are based solely on bipedal traversal besides humans, birds, are well... Birds. Lemme just say it here: I dunno about you, but I don't see the shape of a BIRD when I look at Pursuer, I see a human man

Now you may be saying "ok, well he's probably just a divergent species of primates" well that's my next point

I want you to look at this fact right here:

Ok nevermind I apparently didn't take the screenshot cos I'm a fucking idiot and forgot to do so, but you're just gonna have to trust me on this, hell go look at the wiki it will confirm this

According to the lore of die of death, Pursuer isnt a species, it's a singular entity and creature with no relatives or other parts of its species

Now, this completely discards the idea of a divergent primate evolution, one that evolved to hunt in dark forest and stalk people, because wouldn't there be more species of a pursuer if it was a divergent primate species? And even if it had been a divergent species, and his entire species died out, well 1. That gets rid of the idea of him not being a species, and 2. How would Pursuer survive so long? His species would've either died out from famine or other natural disasters, or would've been hunted to death, which still gets rids of the idea of him not being a species

This leads me to believe that Pursuer isn't a divergent evolution, nonono, he's an adapted human and natural mutation of a human. But I'm gonna conclude that theory after more pieces of evidence

Ok, let's look at some trivia with Pursuer, starting with oh, idk, this one:

ok, so we know that Pursuer says the "ahh, fresh meat" line at the start of the round, and he ALSO says "I See..." During his stalk sound effect (slowed down, I didn't hear it at first tbh)

Also, there's this piece of trivia too:

Pursuer is literally capable of speaking basic, broken English, he is capable of learning, (presumably) writing and reading, and speech. He has basic human functions, and other animals (from my research) aren't able to speak actual real verbal English themselves

Now, while yes, Pursuer could have mimicked his prey (similarly to Parrots), but parrots cannot actually speak English with the same depth as us humans do. In order to speak English, you need all that tongue and larynx and shit, which parrots do not have (not really, they have a tongue and sort of larynx), but they don't use their syrinx (parrot larynx) to actually vocalize like humans. The only way for pursuer to learn the English from his victims is if he already HAD a functioning human-like throat, tongue, and larynx

Ok, two points here:

First of all, while yes, animals can infact do backflips as a survival tactics or through training, often it is the latter situation for animals that can do backflips, and idk about you, but I doubt anyone is going around training feral monsters. And while many animals can backflip, most of the ones that can backflip are either smaller, or reside in the water, which is conflicting against a creature that is confirmed to be both human-proportiomed AND taller than artful, who (last time I checked) is around 6 feet tall

Second of all, the second piece of trivia just slaps it in your face: PURSUER IS FLESH, he has human textured skin, what animal in nature have you seen have human textured skin? Ok, fine, a lot of mammals, but considering that pursuer has an eerily close body proportions, human-like facial features, and presumed thumbs, it seems unlikely that he's just an animal that has flesh. Plus, a lot of those animals have a hint of hair or fur, which conflicts with pursuers biology because it's established IN THE SCREENSHOT that pursuer DOESNT have fur, the trivia point is literally "Pursuer has no fur"

Ok, this one actually has two pieces of evidence on it

First of all, I did some research and found out that most animals are infact born having the knowledge or instinct on how to swim, such as dogs or turtles. The only exception for this are humans (and some other irrelevant animal idfk). The fact that pursuer doesn't and didn't know how to swim and instead just decides to flail around in the water confused me, if he's an apex predator, shouldn't have he been born with the knowledge of being able to swim? (Speaking of that, if he's the only one of his species, how was he even born?)

And now the second point: I also did some research about apex predators and found that most predators are known for not being picky eaters, they'll eat anything if it fills them up enough. And now that I bring that point up, you're probably going "oh, but maybe the fish aren't big enough to fill pursuer", but that's just wrong!, it explicitly states he "didn't like the taste of fish" (he's just like me frfr), not that it didn't fill him up, he just simply didn't like it. And even then, we as humans (and using the context clues of a similar body shape and biology to humans that pursuer has), EAT FISH, and fish are in fact good sources of protein and a satisfying food source that fills us up as humans. Go eat a fish (unless you're like me and you refuse to eat a fish because you don't like it). Anyways, a fish would've in fact filled pursuer up and satisfied him. And hell, even if you use the excuse of "Pursuer being taller than a 6 ft dude", BEARS MAINLY EAT FISH, and I'd say that bears are bigger than us, idk about you! But a bear is infact taller than an average sized being, and if fish can fill up an average sized knowledgeable human and a hulking furry beast, I'm pretty damn sure it can fill up a 6 ft + feral monster

And as said previously, apex predators are not picky eaters, but Pursuer (an "apex predator") doesn't like the taste of fish, he's a picky guy even if it can fill him up (god my hands hurt now), but y'know who are picky eaters? Humans, more evidence towards pursuer being a human

Now you're probably wondering "ok, crazy guy, what the fuck does this even mean about pursuer?"

Well here's my response to that question: pursuer IS a human, not some animal or divergent primate, no- straight human, just like the civilians in die of death. Let's look at all the evidence we found that helps this theory:

Knowledge of human clothing (Scabbard, Mastery skin)

Human-like proportions (bipedal, human-like face, Robloxian body)

Uses sword (with awareness and knowledge to do so)

NOT A SPECIES, one singular entity (no parents or relatives of the same species then)

Speaks English (no animal does that)

fleshy skin (no fur, no feathers, no nothin)

Backflipping

Not able to swim (most animals have an instinct or have knowledge on how to swim)

Picky eater (unlike most other apex predators)

That list seems like pretty damning evidence of my theory, maybe pursuer was once a human that lived so long in the woods, stalking and hunting people, that he adapted to the environment around him.

Thank you for coming to my ramblings. Is this wrong? Probably. Did I do too much useless research on this? Yeah. Is this theory prompted from the chaotic mind of someone who probably has undiagnosed ADHD who had a theory at 2 am and had 60% of his theories disproven after simple research yet still posted this? Presumably. Is this gonna be disproven by some guy on Tumblr who has actual knowledge? Maybe. Was it fuckin fun? Hell yeah