It took me a solid minute to dig my way out of the tomb. That was more than enough time for Harold to hover his butt out and figure out where I would emerge. Good thing I wasn’t a complete idiot and had a plan. A basic plan, sure, but at least I had an idea of what to do so I didn’t exit into a barrage of magic.

Oh, and on top of basic, it was incredibly stupid. See, all I did was stick my arm out and wriggle it around. Harold took the bait and blasted my arm to smithereens. This hurt quite a bit, the only saving grace is the second part of my plan.

There was a decent size sheet of shale stone and I had used that for cover. So while my arm did get blasted, most of the rest of me stayed out of the line of fire. Then, when the magical explosions finally stopped, I burst out of the ground and made a run for it. Harold was not too happy about this.

As I ran from down the hill from him, Harold had more than a few choice words for me. Stuff like how I, “was the lowest worm and should stand still”, so he could finish me. All the while I was zigzagging to avoid as much damage as possible. I still ended up with more than just a few burns on my back. While Harold wasn’t the best shot, the floating shoulder mounted auto turrets more than managed to make up for his failings.

Oh, and I learned something new. Like, at the time I knew that my form was malleable to a point, but I had been limiting myself to the classic human form factor. Anyway, all it took was me tripping to find out I could shift into a four-legged form. Good thing too, as soon after Harold gets a lucky shot with some sort of slicing spell that managed to cut off my left leg at the knee.

Yeah, that sucked, but at least I could continue running away. I didn’t have a plan, but I did have a course of action that might save me and the discovery of a four-legged form gave it more weight. Though it also led to Harold insulting me more and calling me a beast not worth being called human. Which I’m fine with, being human isn’t the end all be all. He did let drop that “maybe my degeneration was why his spell was spotty on tracking me”.

Anyway, at this point most stories would lead you on for a while and have a dramatic scene of someone, their back to a cliff, and a bit of monologuing. Fuck that. Harold had magical auto turrets and he had already revealed enough for me to escape.

I didn’t give him a chance to monologuing and so the moment I reached the ravine where the river plummeted into a cave; I dived off the side. Then, after a brief fall of a couple stories, my arms shattered on impact with the water. At that point, by design if I’m to be honest, I lost consciousness.

See, as I was running away the blabbermouth revealed a few things that pointed towards me wanting to do some serious damage to myself. Harold couldn’t help but to go on about how even if his tracking spell was on the fritz, his life sense spell worked fine. That doesn’t really say much, except for the fact that he mentioned when the spell started to fail and it lined up with the times I lost large parts of my original body.

My guess? The tracking spell used my blood or some such and it didn’t have a lock on my gel. So the solution to avoiding him? Remove the rest of my flesh and blood. With that in mind and not having a better plan, I shifted from plan B to C.

Instead of getting into the river and trying for an aquatic form, I would let the rapids tear me apart. I gave myself a low chance to survive, but then again, most people have a pretty low chance of survival when the plan is to remove their body from their body. But I’ve gone on about this long enough.

The next time I could put more than one brain cell together, I had lost a ton of mass. My trip in the river shredded more than just flesh and blood, it took my gel as well. Oh, and I was stuck on a stalagmite next to a small section of rapids.

At some point, the river clearly split up, as this was more like a stream of water. Though it was turbulent enough to throw what was left of me out of it. In fact, this likely helped me survive as the constant splashing of water kept me moist for however long I was out of it.

Not that this was the first thing I thought about. Rather, it seems whatever Harold used to monitor whether I was alive or not worked off of a different tell than the tracking spell. Otherwise, I doubt he would have spent the Mana and money to send me a message.

[I don’t know what you did, but I will find you! Don’t think escaping into the Underdark will save your life. Once I get close enough, not even the interference down there will protect you from my spell. My backers will make sure of it!]

Which was stupid of him because it told me a ton of stuff. For instance, he thinks his tracking spell stopped working because there is interference underground. Also, they are calling it the Underdark, which has connotations all of its own. However, most importantly for me, it told me that Harold was still after me. Oh, and he was likely being forced to hunt me, for what that’s worth.

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Except, none of that would matter if I stayed as a bit of slime coating a stalagmite. So after another undetermined amount of time, which when added to the last, likely added up to around three to five days, I pulled myself together. Literally. Though as I mentioned, I lost some weight on the way and so my new form likely only reached mid-stomach on my original body.

A body which after I inspected myself, was completely gone. In its place, gel had replaced everything. There were those opaque scales I had grown on my lower body before now covering everything, so at least I wasn’t like one of those transparent fish. Still, if I had to describe myself, I would go with “kobold made of jello”.

And how did I see this? Well, with the stream, there were enough pools of water to get a decent look at myself. That, plus a bunch of fluorescent mushrooms coating the ceiling meant not only could I see myself, but I also noticed something was approaching me as said pools of water did that ripple thing. You know the one, like the glass of water in the one dinosaur movie.

Suffice it to say, I wasn’t ready for a fight, so I hid myself deep in a corner behind a small collection of stalagmites. Excellent decision on my part, as a beetle as tall as I currently was came into view. Not sure if it was based on any beetle I knew of, as it had certainly diverged from normal beetledom. If you could even call it a beetle in the first place.

While the monster had the basic shape, that was about as far as it got. For some reason, it has only four legs. Odd, but maybe it just lost a pair. However, it also lacked wings and two pairs of extra large mandibles in an X shape. Oh, and going by the shine, it might actually make its shell of metal or at least a bio-alloy of some sort.

Good thing the beetle monster was just in the area for a sip of water. Then it left and against my better judgment, I followed at a distance. This was definitely a situation where I preferred losing it over being discovered. Thank goodness it only went through a couple intersections before arriving at what I was looking for, a large cavern.

Except the caver was too large. I was expecting a decent sized cave, maybe a little more. This was a full-on fantasy “world within a world” style cave. Oh, and I learned how lucky I had gotten. Because there were a few visible waterfalls falling directly from the ceiling.

I survived because despite the damage, my gel stuck together. A fall from that height? With water crashing down on me? That would have reduced me to a very dead mist. Hell, if I had been reduced in size too much more, I would have died. Though at least I was now beyond death by decapitation. So, instead of a thousand and one ways to die, I only needed to worry about an even thousand. Well, that plus all the new nonsense magic introduced.

Anyway, I let the maybe-beetle vanish into the undergrowth, which yes, was big enough to hide it. This, in turn, meant that when I went into the room, it did an extra good job of hiding me. Useful when the lizards that seemed to make up most of the food chain stood around two stories tall. They weren’t giant in the way the beast above were, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

These were clearly just large reptiles with a couple that looked suspiciously close to dinosaurs. So, I killed one of the veggie eating dinos. It wasn’t hard as they weren’t exactly expecting something my size to be a threat. And I would like to say that by eating said dino, I was able to recover my size. That was not the case.

I did manage to eat a decent portion before being chased off by more sort-of-beetles. The problem was my body prioritized filling the tanks over reforming my body. This isn’t a bad thing, per se, but it did mean I was going to be fun-sized for a while longer.

Oh, and no more easy kills. One of the herbivore dinosaurs kicking the bucket seemed to alert the others. They spontaneously gathered into groups. Well, as spontaneous as they can be when I actually tried my luck on them a few more times. I suspect there was a bit more of a mind behind their dull eyes than expected.

So, having ruined this cave area, which has to be the size of a large town or maybe a small city, I moved on. Harold wasn’t going to slow down his hunt to find me and I was the weakest I had been since thrown into this new world. Anyway, this “Underdark” proved to only match some of my expectations as over the next week I didn’t find a single sign of “insert surface race, but dark”.

Though it certainly had a surfeit of magically large caves. Not all of them were the same size as that first, but even the smallest cavern areas tended towards being bigger than one of those pro sports stadiums. The only constant and honestly ironic feature of them was the glow mushrooms as they made the Under“dark” anything but.

Not that I didn’t find more than enough fungivores chomping away at them. They just grew back extra quickly and caused intense intestinal distress. Which brings me to where I currently find myself. The room is dark and after so long that is honestly unsettling.

Not only does it represent the unknown, but going by the markings, two powerful beings fought in this city sized cavern and were strong enough to blast clear a good nine-tenths of the ceiling. Oh, and I can’t tell if whatever caused this was still around, what with it being dark and all. The problem?

This was the direction I wanted to go. While the terrain down here was shockingly flat, I had found a path leading upwards and it led me here. So, using my genre savviness, I figured there were distinct layers to the Underdark and the steep incline I just climbed had led me up to a new area. Whether this ended up being actually true is completely up in the air, but at least heading upward means getting closer to the surface, which I wanted to do, at least at the time.

..