Though the throne room was actually mostly loot free, barring the throne. No, all the really expensive stuff was in the place’s last room. Directly behind the golden throne was a final chamber with the door blocked by a heavy stone slab. That last room was the treasury.

Now, while there was a lot of good stuff, numerous gems, and a few magical trinkets. You could definitely tell the mummy had not been happy with the size of its collection. Treasure had taken up less than a fourth of the room.

And it would stay that way. I didn’t exactly have a method of lugging it all around with me. Not that I paid it much attention beyond sticking some of the more expensive looking gems into my body, which was an interesting experience. I didn’t know it would work, but I was now made of gel, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to try.

It was quite shocking to me when it didn’t hurt at all. You would assume shoving sharp crystals into your skin would hurt, especially when getting cut still hurts. Good thing what was actually happening was the gem sinking into my body with the skin surrounding it. Not the most pleasant to see happening, but no worse than holding something under your arm.

Then, once the local undead decided to slow their roll, I needed to go out for food and water. I even had a plan for that first once, since I knew where the water was. All I needed to do was follow the water. Presumably I would eventually find something edible, whether that was plants or animals.

And it worked! What started as a small trickle of water, gathered together until it was a proper river. Then that river flowed into the mantis grass forest, because of course I would end up back there. At least it seems that the border between the two territories was at peace. Though I guess it isn’t like the undead care about the grass and the mantids aren’t going to have anything to eat within the burial mounds.

Well, I didn’t care about the grass, but I was looking for some land crab. Or maybe lobster? Shrimp? Eh, they’ve got an exoskeleton and I was going to eat them. Land crab? Seriously? Even at the time I knew about literal crabs that live on land.

Anyway, there were mostly hand size and forearm size bugs around. Not the best, but as I traveled further into the grass forest, the river bank turned into a steep canyon and I didn’t want to lose my way. So I stuck with the smaller mantids, even if the amount of meat from each was pitiful.

Plus, I wasn’t exactly an insect butcher, so I lost a lot. Still, I hunted the mantids like crazy. My hunger was unnatural and I only bothered settling down to roast the first few batches of bugs. After that? Well, let’s just say I refilled my gel tanks and then some.

The only downside was that I lost a good chunk of time to this. In fact, originally, the mage should have already caught up to me. Except the fool was having some problems. His method of tracking me down seemed to have suffered a problem or two on his journey. Not that I’m complaining.

Anyway, that wasn’t going to buy me much time and besides, I didn’t know it so it isn’t like my choices were affected. More important to me? Someone had come along and taken my cave!

I mean, sure, it was to be expected. Leave a place like that alone and it was bound to happen, but I figured I would have at least some time to hunt. Of course, then I went and took more than just “some time”. That meant more skull bashing for me.

I say that, because the undead that took over my cave was some kind of skeleton mage. Not a lich, mind you. This one died and never came back to haunt me. Still, I’m not exactly designed for fighting skeletons.

Claws are wonderful! No complaints on my part, they kept me alive after all. I would have liked a nice hammer for the fight. I had to slowly claw my way through the mage’s minions. All the while, said mage was throwing spells on me.

That kind of hurt. Though I did learn a few things. For one, fire and heat doesn’t hurt me all that much until it does. Then I boil, literally. What with being made of a gel, I guess it was one of the more likely outcomes. That, or I was flammable and would burn like a pool of lighter fluid.

I’m happy to boil. This did make me a bit leery of the skeleton’s more powerful cold spells. Except, I’m apparently much more resistant to being frozen than I am to boiling. It did slow me, but my gel got denser, which honestly made me more effective at smashing skeletons.

Oh, and I’m immune to acid at the time? The question mark is because I’m assuming there was a catch or a limit. The fire? The ice? They both hurt, even when not doing anything in particular. Acid just splashed over me like water.

Poison did a better job, but my body’s new nature altered how it worked. On the one hand, I was more susceptible. My gel isn’t as good as regular skin at keeping it out. Splash me with poison and I’ll suck it up. The difference at that point is my body works on diffusion.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Well, okay, there is a circulatory system, but that was much more protected. My gel just also worked as an open circulatory system like, well, a mantis. Okay, bugs in general, but come on, I’ve killed enough mantids to name drop them at this point.

Anyway, the poison would soak into my gel, causing nasty damage. However, gel is much easier to replace than flesh. Of course, it is sort of a problem that I had to replace it. That actually created a bit of a problem because the undead all seemed to catch onto the fact poison did work on me.

While easy to heal if I just eat something. I could create a potentially never-ending cycle of reclaiming my cave and having it taken while out healing. So instead, I chose to stick it out and defend my temporary home.

Upside? The Undead stopped challenging me a lot sooner. Downside? Well, in theory, there wasn’t one. I simply had to sit around in my cave, preparing it for my fight with the mage coming to kill me.

Instead, I let the quicker drop-off of challenges, only three in about an hour, convince me to go eat some more mantids. Stupid, stupid, stupid decision on my part for so many reasons. Most important of which was that I forgot how damn dangerous the mantids were.

I just assumed that I could take a quick jaunt down to the forest and pick up some snacks. You know, instead of finding that killing a bunch of them would cause the older and much bigger mantids to respond. Which is exactly what happened.

Now, these weren’t the two plus meter tall mantids, but waist-high versions of them are still pretty deadly. Oh, and they gave me enough rope. When I first entered the forest, there weren’t any mantids around. Should have clued me into the fact that something was up, but I simply assumed I had cleared the area.

Yeah, they were just letting me walk into their ambush. One moment I was wandering through the forest, looking for a snack. The next I had a swarm of about thirty waist high mantids charging at me from every direction. That includes maybe three of them from above. I didn’t exactly have the time to count.

Aqua gel bursts out of my body. Though with so much of my body having already being gel, it was less a burst and more of a rapid oozing at this point. At least it seemed to be faster. Kind of important when in the middle of an ambush.

So, as I raised my arms to block the overhead attacks, my claws were in place fast enough to prevent me from losing said arms. I guess I should also be thankful that at this point my claws were already tough enough to block mantis blades. Those things are sharp!

Not that I had time to pay attention to these details. After defending against death from above, I had to combo into defending against death from the sides. Though I used the attacks on top to help. They hit first and provided a push that allowed me to drop to the ground fast enough.

I watched as numerous green blades slashed through where my body had been less than a second before. Except now, a few mantids occupy that space. Too bad for them.

Once the blades had passed through the space above me, I thrust my arms directly out to my sides. This tossed the remains of the mantids that attacked from above and slashed through a few mantids to each side.

Then I lost an arm. One of the surrounding bugs brought a blade arm down right around mid-bicep. That blade was sharp enough and the swing fast enough, my arm probably could have done that cool cartoon thing where it looks like it wasn’t actually cut, only for the parts to separate dramatically. Except unlike a weapon, mantid blades where a part of the mantis and the spine was much wider than the rest, forcing my arm away from the stump.

This was not pleasant, but compared to losing myself from the waist down, not the worst. Plus, after my experience with the rocket ticks blasting holes through my body, there wasn’t much flesh left. Sure, the gel could still feel pain, but it definitely knew when sending those signals didn’t really matter as much.

Almost worse than losing the arm was that it messed with my balance. There I was, dropped back, yet still on my feet and I couldn’t quite manage to stand. Instead, I gave up trying and used my remaining arm to push myself into a roll, knocking into a couple dead bodies and one living mantid.

The living mantid got knocked over as once again I avoided a barrage of arm blades. Many such blades sank into the ground with weighty thunks as the bugs tried to take me out with overhead swings. My one leg I bring up to my chest and slam it down, the claws on my foot slicing through the disoriented mantid’s guts.

Then I use the momentum to spin myself into a roll in the opposite direction as I bash into the few blades that got stuck in the ground. Not the most pleasant experience as those blades are sharp enough to cut you just by pressing up against them. My saving grace with this particular stupidity was that many of the blades were faced away from me, something about how they had swung around me.

Anyway, I flailed my claws outward, slicing off the hand blades of about five of the mantids. That removed them from the fight, sort of. They would continue to attempt to chomp on me with their mouths, but their attempts were utterly useless all things considered.

Of course, rolling back and forth on the ground doesn’t exactly allow for all that much dodging and I take a slash to my side and lower hip. My side parts easily, spewing a foamy aqua, pink gel as I ooze out a mix of blood and gel. The attack to my hip goes a lot better for me, the opaque scales located there prevent any more damage than a scrape. It is a pretty nasty scrape, but certainly better than being cut open and my gel quickly solidifies and stops leaking.

Around me the twenty-ish remaining mantids flair their wings and whip up dust off the ground. Maybe to block my sight or maybe an instinctive preparation to take flight, it gave me enough time to get back to my feet. My arm stump has at this point stopped bleeding and a lump of dirty gel has formed on it. And by dirty, I mean that literally. Dirt, leaves, and twigs had gotten stuck in the sticky gel I had been leaking.

No time to pay attention to that though, as I had a plan for how to win this fight. My legs seemed to be resistant to their weapons, so all I have to do is use kicks to fight the mantids. Except there was a problem. I was hungry.