I cautiously made my way into the dark. Not too cautious, though, I did have to traverse an area the size of a city, after all. At least there was a guiding light, quite literally.

Directly in front of me and about two-thirds of the way across the room, a weak ray of illumination shone down on a jumble of rocks. Not proper sunlight, mind you, but more mushroom light. It seemed to me that the roof had collapsed at some point, probably because of the monstrous fight. And as luck would have it, the stones piled up to the ceiling, so all I had to do was some climbing.

Sure, it was a bit of free solo climbing on a treacherous and likely unstable pile of rocks. A pile that was many stories tall, but I figured I could survive whatever it might throw at me. Of course, looking back on it, I have to question whether I would have survived if a giant rock fell on me and smashed me into a fine paste. Anyway, to even try my hand at it would require crossing the room first and that wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.

While the lit up areas had been mostly barren, the local wildlife preferred to remain hidden. This was not the case in the dark. I made it a block in before something ambushed me. Please excuse my less than stellar description, it was kind of dark at the time.

Anyway, this gray-black blob surged up at me, the beast having been resting in a likely self-made hole. There were some nasty metallic claws slicing at me and I certainly couldn’t block the attack. So I made the most sensible decision!

The claws scythed over me, digging into the stone right where I was just standing as I dove towards the monster. There was some sort of tentacle sensory organ in my way that really didn’t like it when I slammed into it. Then, as the beast reared back, I made my escape by ducking under its armpit and running away from it. And thankfully, instead of chasing, it grumbled and settled back down into place.

My best guess as to what that was? Some sort of monster version of a star-nosed mole. Though that would be another ambush predator after I just said things were more active. Well, running introduced me to a new monster that was sadly more my speed. Both in terms of fighting ability and more importantly, how fast we could run. So no running from this problem.

Anyway, it was some sort of kiwi raptor. Why kiwi specifically? Well, if you’ve ever heard a kiwi, you would understand. As for the raptor part? Those claws are pretty distinctive as well, though I guess it might have been something else. Not like I saw it all that well to begin with.

Oh, and unlike the kiwi, this monster seemed to hunt similar sized creatures. After all, its head was up to my chest and wanted a go. Then again, maybe I just smell like something else. At this point, I didn’t smell too human anymore and slimes tend to be on the small side. Whatever the case, it was ready to rumble and I couldn’t say no.

At least the bird was more of the stand and fight type. This brought the fight to a much more even playing field as it attempted to disembowel me with powerful kicks. A little odd considering the impressive beak the thing has, but kiwis are like, one of the only birds to have their nostrils at the end of their beak as they hunt by smell. So yeah, I guess I wouldn’t want to shove my nose into the bodies of others, either.

It, however, wasn’t shy about using said beak to defend itself and my vaunted claws, capable of slicing through mantids and smash skeletons, weren’t quite up to the task of breaking this beak. Quite unfortunate that, as the beak allowed the bird to keep a distance between us that I very much needed to close. After all, as I had found out, my regeneration isn’t free and I was hungry.

As far as I was concerned at the time, I had no choice but to accept being hit to finish the fight quickly. So I speared myself on the damn thing’s beak. Suffice it to say, the monster was not expecting this move. It tried to shake me off, but by the time the monster managed to react, I had pushed myself farther onto the beak and grabbed its head.

From there, the fight ended quickly. With the bird’s head in hand, it was simplicity itself to jam one of my claws through the eye and into the brain. The critter couldn’t even flinch back as the beak was well and truly stuck at this point.

My eyes glowed as the last bit of fire in the bird’s other eye dies. And no, I don’t mean figuratively when I mention my own eyes glowing, they literally produced a bit of illumination. At the time, I didn’t know what was up with that, but it painted a bit of a target on my back.

Hell, the glow wasn’t even to where you would notice it in a room that was even moderately lit up. This place was not that. Instead, my eyes created a small pool of light, likely drawing attention from those all around. At least it didn’t last more than a moment or two, during which I used my claws to carve off the flanks of the bird, not even bothering to remove the beak from my side.

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Then, once the glow was gone, I grabbed the chunks of meat and jumped back with all my strength. This was quite an impressive leap now that my legs are full-time digitigrade. And it needed to be, as while still in the air, there was the sound of something large smashing down next to the bird and of a massive maw chomping down on the corpse.

Welp, I wasn’t going to keep a couple of targets on me, no matter how much I needed to eat. So, as I landed, I tossed the two bloody chunks to my sides before taking another powerful leap back. This was the correct decision on my part as I heard the almost metallic snap of teeth in one of the directions.

Not needing the situation spelled out to me, I turned tail and ran as I heard another snap of teeth. That wasn’t one of the nature-like forces that darkened the cavern in the first place, but to me it might as well have been. Though as I ran, a smile stretched across my face almost painfully.

It hadn’t hit me until now, not really. Sure, I had seen beings of unimaginable power, but they were all special. Beasts and insects bigger than buildings would obviously be strong, but that beast? I couldn’t see much, but the face was distinctive. That was likely at one point a normal dog! A beagle!

I could just see it. Some criminal or sentimental old dude decides to bring their pet with them and when out and about, it gets away. But instead of the dog ending up dead, it survived and grew stronger. I could grow stronger!

Oh sure, I was quite strong by that point, at least compared to regular humans. But I was in a land of giants and magical machine guns! I needed more than just a little bit stronger. That dog, though? It promised me growth as it had to be the size of a small house.

I was hopeful that this didn’t require actual growth as I had guessed that there were undead of great power yet human stature. But that would be a bridge for me to cross later. For that moment, though? Desire blossomed to not only kill my hunter, but reach for power beyond those who armed him as well.

First, though, I need to pay more attention to where I’m going. As I flee, there is a moment where another of those suspected star-nosed moles sprung up. It didn’t catch me as I didn’t stop running. That could have gone much worse and the shock forced me to drop my daydream of unlimited power and shooting lightning right back at a certain mage. Don’t judge me! Popular fiction only has so many depictions of mind powers that aren’t simply telepathy or telekinesis.

Anyway, after that I slowed down and reoriented myself towards the light. I didn’t run away from it, thankfully. But my escape didn’t bring me closer, either. A bit of a wash all around and now I was hungrier than ever. Oh, and killing things made me a target for any number of reasons, which would make finding food much harder.

Well, much harder if I stayed in this dark area. So, since I wasn’t a muscle-brained type and with one last look at the light in the ceiling, I turned away and towards one of the lesser lights which represented the tunnels connecting to this place. Restocking my gel supply was critical to make it through this maze of death and darkness.

I even resorted to eating some of the glowing mushrooms in the tunnel I arrived at. On one hand, they thankfully didn’t have any nasty effects on digestion for me. On the other hand, I got hardly anything from them and it even felt like some of my gains were used to dissolve the remnants of the glow shrooms.

That just left me to go further into the tunnel and hope to find other edible options. A task that ended up being oddly hard. Sure, there were all kinds of things growing down here, but most of them were patently hard to eat. The lichens were a film on the rocks and those tree-sized mushrooms seemed to almost be harder than the rocks they grew out of. Now, my jaw strength had improved, but straight up chomping on rocks wasn’t on the menu.

It was thankfully easy to keep track of where I was. The tunnels mostly stayed flat and most intersections had four or less connections. If it weren’t for the odd angles the tunnels often met at, I would have suspected this place had been all laid out on a grid. But no, while everything seemed to be spread across a flat plane, it was more like one of those ant farms for kids that had been turned on its side.

Which meant that eventually I ran into another chamber. Oh, and I mentioned ant farms for a reason. So yeah, guess what I found? Ants! Ants from the size of a cat to the size of a horse. At least it didn’t look like they were the ones that dug out these tunnels, because that would likely mean there were even bigger ants out there. Not that there aren’t, but I didn’t feel like worrying about it at the time.

After all, while they hadn’t noticed me yet, I needed to do something right away or what few choices I had would be taken away. At least this didn’t seem to be their nest or even connected to said nest. Rather, it appeared this was a raiding party out hunting.

The horse-sized ants were clearly warriors, while the rest were simple haulers. From the smallest carrying mushrooms and unidentifiable gibbets, up to some the size of a large dog all working together to carry entire corpses. Most of which seemed at least dinosaur adjacent, which was bad for me as it meant I looked like food.

Good news? I certainly didn’t smell like food, otherwise I wouldn’t have had time to make those observations without being attacked. However, I knew my lack couldn’t last forever and so, after a quick glance around the room, decided to hide on top of one of the mushroom trees. This wasn’t easy, but thankfully, one of them was short enough that I could jump up and grab the rim of the cap and pull myself up. From there, I was able to easily get on top of one of the taller mushrooms and hide.