Ahh, so this is one of those stories.

“I’m unfamiliar,” responded Terynium from… wherever the hell his voice was coming from.

Same, dude, I never actually read them… Wait, did you just hear my thoughts?

“Of course. All my creations are linked to me. But you are the first sentient one I’ve made. And this, quite a gift, because it was an accident! I’ve been ever so lonely…”

Yep… definitely a coma dream. This is like Alice in Wonderland-level nonsense.

I never expected it to feel so real, though. I’d heard about how comatose dreams were, of course, and usually, they devolved into insanity, if I remembered right. So I was expecting, at any time, for Gordon Ramsey to arrive, riding a bear singing “Under the Sea”, and telling me that I’d undercooked the oranges or something. He’d then whip me with his flame whip, before sucking my blood to fertilize his alien children or something.

Huh, maybe my imagination was stranger than my coma’s. I should’ve been a writer…

“Dearest minion,” Terynium began, “We shall together conquer this well-hydrated world. With you serving me, I shall grow to unimaginable power!” He continued to ramble as I turned my eyes, scanning the area around me. The light broke through the water in arcs, twisting in the waves.

I could appreciate this view forever.

A glittering crystal, the size of a basketball, shined brightly atop a pedestal of the brilliant corral. Its light danced across the creatures swimming by, shimmering on their scales.

“That’s right,” Terynium said. “Admire my beauty! Appreciate my shine! Ah, it’s so nice to feel adored again.”

So the spherical crystal was his body, then. As I studied him, a strange shark, perhaps the size of a dog, with long white whiskers trailing out from all over its gunmetal body, swam toward me. Again, my eyes locked onto the creature by instinct and as it approached, I felt confused.

I should’ve felt fear. I should’ve run away.

Instead, I let the shark approach. It bumped into me, but I didn’t move. I felt a rumble in my body. Something… uncontrolled. Something… savage and deep.

“Ahh, that’s Leonard,” Terynium said. “He’s a good boy.”

I rumbled again. An automatic rumble. It was the rumble of hunger.

Around came Leonard for a second bump, and my body moved on its own.

Snap!

The shark vanished from my sight, and I could feel something wriggling in my mouth. With two bites, the movement abruptly stopped, and I swallowed the delicious and unexpected food.

“Leonard!” the dungeon core screamed. “No! How could you?! You’ll die for that!”

Did I just eat a shark? I wondered. How am I even big enough to do that?

Terynium either didn’t feel like answering me, or he was too furious to read my thoughts. They were probably strange to him anyway, as he was a crystal and all. I wonder if he even really understood the concept of eating.

“Where was that sub-menu…?” he muttered. “Vankaiser… Can’t have an aggressive, disobedient mob in my territory. Not at this level, anyway…”

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He sounded very human to me. And as he ignored me approaching him, he reminded me very much of Grant. I hated Grant. Seriously! Who the hell walks away from their coworker while they’re balancing on a sixty-foot ladder?!?

The anger built within me, something I wasn’t used to. It burned, and my gaze took on a reddish tinge. The world didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Grant mattered.

And this idiot that claimed to own me? This proxy that reminded me of Grant? He mattered.

“Ah, there it is!” the idiot chimed happily. “The delete button!”

Snap!

Coral flew off in all directions as I chomped down on the big blue ball. The idiot screamed once, interrupted as a viscous fluid suddenly leaked from his shell.

Ah, so more like an egg than a sapphire, I suppose.

The liquid actually tasted pretty good. Sort of like a mix between brown sugar and chocolate, or honey and peanut butter, even, which I think sounds worse than it is. And even though it went against what I felt like I should’ve done, I swallowed the shards, sure I was going to slice open my throat, and drown in my own blood.

Congratulations! You’ve leveled up! You are now level 2!

What? Levels?

As the rage died, I felt kind of bad. The poor guy I’d just consumed was my only company, and he was rightfully mad. I’d just killed his “good boy” Leonard, after all. Poor Leonard.

And what was that anger? Did the fall break something in my brain? Like the guy who got a pole through his head and lost all control of his emotions, or something?

I remembered the psychology teacher talking about that when I came in to empty his trash, once. I was going to have to be careful about that. It’s not like I wanted to be a monster.

Though… maybe it was for the best that I ended the sentient magical crystal. After all, he’d been threatening to delete me, or something.

----------------------------------------

Until this point, I thought I’d been moving simply by my will alone, because, you know, I still assumed I was comatose in the real world. But eventually, I’d been able to find a reflection of myself to look at.

It was a giant pearl that showed me the image, laying in the mouth of a giant open clam. The smart person I could sometimes be, I kept back from the reaches of the clam, but after I'd swam up to gaze at the beautiful stone, I finally caught a glimpse of myself.

And boy was I not ready for it.

Countless jagged teeth filled a dark maw beneath a pair of bright yellow slitted eyes, and small hard bits of cartilage stuck out from under my jaw, giving me what appeared to be an upside-down mohawk. A large three-pointed fin rose from my dark grey back, and four massive hooked fins jutted out from my lighter stomach. As I turned, I watched as they controlled my movement. It felt extremely natural.

From my back, tentacles sprouted, but I couldn’t count them, since they were small and tangled. Overall, my body shape was similar to a pear, with my front being the wide bottom, and the tentacles being the thin tip.

I saw a shark dart by me. He looked the same as my previous fish food, but he was much faster than Leonard. Poor Leonard. But this one was unnamed! Not that it mattered much… but it meant he was fair game!

And I was still hungry if the rumbling in my stomach was any indication.

I chased him, realizing now that if I was focusing on it, I could feel the subtle twisting of my body as I swam through the water around me. It was a strange feeling.

The shark was fast, but I was faster.

Snap!

My jaws closed around him and in two chomps, the shark became a bloody mist that oozed out into the water from between my teeth. More sharks came darting out from the forest of seaweed surrounding me, appearing like a pack of wolves, and staring at me with dead eyes.

Well? I challenged. Come get some!

One of the creatures was foolish enough to charge forward, and I consumed him swiftly. The others, seeing how quickly the first had died, tried to flee, but the idiots swam in a group instead of splitting up. Catching them and swallowing them all was far too easy. I made sure not to swallow any whole, though. I didn’t want to deal with one of them rupturing my stomach, if it was even possible.

Though, I had eaten shards of sharp crystal before…