Whether still being able to feel the humidity was good or not, I soon found the source. That water I was looking for? It arrived in the form of a small waterfall coming out of the ceiling and creating a small flow down the middle of the tunnel.

As for the heat? Well, water ended up forming a pretty straight tunnel and off in the distance I could see an orange glow taking over for the mushrooms’ more blue green tinted light. I didn’t go all the way down there, so I don’t know the truth of the matter. However, video games had given me some expectations for that sort of glow and I assumed magma would be the answer.

It would explain the heat and also seemed like a stupid way to die. So, I only drank my fill, took a bath, and left. Though I will note, my “fill” was much greater than even my prodigious appetite for food. I guess it makes some sense? While the human body is mostly water, my gel certainly has it beat.

Oh, and at this point I can finally confirm the big creature I first met in the dark area is, in fact, a star-nosed mole. That being because I ran into one on my way back. Dang thing took up half the tunnel by itself and the rude critter wasn’t going to let me pass by.

I’m uncertain it knew what to do with me? I didn’t look like food, smell like food, or react like food. Of course, none of that stopped it from trying to eat me. Except unlike the last time I fought one, I could actually see what I’m doing.

As the mole lunged at me, trying to entangle me in its nose tentacles, I dropped to the ground. I can feel the tentacles swoosh by as I dig my claws into the ground and thrust myself forward. The mole did not like this, as while I’m sure magic had a hand in making it so big, it didn’t provide any kind of belly armor.

Yes, they were quite tough compared to non-magical animals, but then again, I had shed the “mundane” classification an entire body ago. So as I squeezed underneath the beast and rolled over, my mystically sharp claws began to slice through the moles pelt with frenzied abandon. Blood poured down on me as I worked my way through skin, fat, and muscle to get at the vulnerable vital organs beneath.

Moles aren’t exactly designed for jumping, but this one certainly gave it a try. Which hurt. Believe it or not, having a giant mole lift up and then slam down on you is not pleasant. If I had my old body, I would have died. As it stands, it still did some damage.

To itself, that is. In raising itself up, the mole allowed me to get my arms up off the ground. Then it impaled itself on them. Pretty certain I got deep enough to reach organs, but at that point the mole realized things were not working out for it and took off.

That resulted in me being dragged under it for a few body lengths before I could extract myself and let me tell you, it wasn’t pleasant. Left a bloody skid mark on the ground. Well, bloody in the sense that it was my blood. Definitely didn’t look like blood, more like someone smeared some jello across the ground.

Maybe I should have gone after the mole, but at the time I just wanted to keep exploring the dark cavern. While I had been doing alright so far, this area was going to kill me if I stuck around too long. The presence of those ants, let alone the fact that they weren’t the undisputed rulers of the area? Some oversized critters would be the least of my worries if I stuck around too long.

So, after getting out of the tunnel without any further incidents, I hightailed it towards the rubble mountain with the light coming down from on high. While I wasn’t certain it would be somewhere safer, I was leaning heavily on tropes from fantasy stories at that point and it didn’t even occur to me that maybe up would lead me to worse monsters.

Of course, my hurried journey into the darkness did that just fine. For as much as the giant star-nosed moles were dangerous, I soon came across their predators about a third of the way to my goal. I had been doing fine.

While the moles would attack every once in a while and I still couldn’t manage to kill them. My strength was enough to drive them off. It was during such an occasion that my first encounter happened. The most recent mole was scampering away when a giant maw came down and took a bite out of it. And by giant, I mean twice as wide as I was tall.

Even to this day, I’m not sure what their deal was. My best guess is some abomination of a naked mole rat as the base and then magic screwed around with it from there. Though even that guesswork is mostly based on them being hairless and wrinkled. Maybe they were actually based on those hairless cats? Or more horrific, maybe humans? What is important is that they were four times my height when standing and had some gnarly choppers to go with its silly wide mouth.

Their teeth just made no sense. In a natural creature, teeth tend to make sense or at least follow some form of logic. Not with these abominations of the dental profession! It was like they grabbed teeth from every creature you can think of, mixed them all up in a bag, and then took turns grabbing one out and sticking it into the next available spot on their gums. I swear one even had a section of baleen.

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The only good thing that came of this was the star-nosed moles were less willing to stick around for a fight. With predators in the wing, most of the moles would run away if their first attack didn’t work. However, this did not balance out the fact that now those abominations were attacking me as well.

Though things got really nasty about halfway there. I was sneaking along when suddenly everything got moist and claustrophobic. Seems those giant mouth’s of theirs weren’t just for taking a sizeable chunk out of the moles. Oh, and now that I had a closer look, it was clear the travesty that was their teeth didn’t just stop at their gums as I had a fair few poking holes into me.

I strained my arms, but they wouldn’t budge. The only movement I managed was to wiggle my fingers and toes. However, that was more than enough as on the end of said fingers and toes, were some nasty sharp claws which managed to slice up the monster’s mouth.

It in turn tried to gnaw at me, but in doing so, released some of the pressure on me. Now, I wasn’t able to pull the same trick that had worked on the mole in the tunnel. While my claws could certainly scrape up the monster’s mouth, I was nowhere near strong enough to penetrate too deeply and its mouth would have snapped my arms like twigs.

Even now, I honestly believe part of what saved me was that I didn’t taste like meat. Anyway, with the extra wiggle room, I flailed around like crazy. I’m sure what I did was more akin to paper cuts than actual injuries, just from the fact that there wasn’t any blood, but it caused the beast to spit me out and run away.

After that encounter, I decided to take a different approach to stealth. Before, I was mostly going with a human-ish style of sneaking. After that experience, I tried crawling so next time one of those things would at least have a harder time with venus fly trapping me.

This led to me finding out a new and interesting quirk of my power. I might not have been a full on shape shifter, but I definitely had the ability to take on alternate forms. That or this was the point where I unlocked the ability. Whatever the case may be, walking on all four caused me to transform into a more traditional dragon shape.

And let me tell you, suddenly having a long neck? That is weird. It certainly helped, though. Even gave me the flexibility to look over my shoulder as I was walking around. About the only unpleasant bit, was that I lost my thumbs as part of turning my arms digitigrade.

Good thing I didn’t completely lose my thumb privileges. Not that my actual thumbs stayed around, mind you. Rather, the index fingers had the joints shift and grind around a bit until they could offer some of the utility. Oh, and it was also at this point that I found out I still have bones, or at least bone analogs. Kind of hard for your bones to grind against each other if you don’t have any.

Now, this wasn’t as bad as the first time I fully took my more anthropomorphic form, but the first go at turning into this feral form wasn’t a walk in the park. Even if I did keep walking despite it. Well, scuttling might be a better term for what I was doing at that point.

Upside, it seems scuttling is stealthier for me than sneaking around on two legs. More than that, it wasn’t like this dark cavern was a flat surface like most of the other tunnels and such. However long ago the titanic fight was that broke everything, it wasn’t long enough in the past for everything to be smoothed out.

There were boulders twice my size and furrows that I’m pretty sure were made by an errant swipe of a claw. It was a shame most of those swipes seemed to go perpendicular to my target. The few I did find that went the correct direction made excellent cover as I could crawl along them and keep myself entirely below ground level. Which was much safer as even when I cozied up besides the boulders, those things still managed to attack me.

Though at least with a boulder to one side, I knew which direction they would be coming from. Their distended jaws snapping at me as I use any amount of protection I can scrounge up. Then the ground rumbled.

At that point, it would be nice if there was simply a fourth enemy type to deal with. So far, there were the kiwis, moles, and the hairless maws. What’s one more variable? Well, quite a lot, but it would be manageable.

Instead, I got to experience the weirdness of the caverns. That first time, the shaking was because of a monster in the style of one of those dinosaurs with a tail mace. The rumbling a result of said tail slamming into any boulders it passed by. And as with most everything else down here, it wasn’t a herbivore.

A fact it made abundantly clear with its meat tearing teeth and how it tried to take a bite out of me. Even once I was fully hidden under the nearest boulder that would allow that, it attempted to smash the entire boulder to pieces. Though the rocks were pretty tough and it gave up after a few swings.

Easy to tell why as well. I didn’t trust it to not come back so I remained under the boulder, which turned out to be an excellent decision as I had a couple new friends show up not long after. One was a seven limbed reptile monster with way too many joints and the other looked like a scorpion with four legs, three tails, and two pincers that was covered in that blackest black paint.

You would think something being black in a dark area would make it harder to see, but that isn’t really the case, especially if the color is uniform. This scorpion, even in the near pitch black conditions of the cavern, stood out. I don’t even really get what benefit it got from that.

Anyway, I would have likely been screwed if only the scorpion showed up, because the stingers would have definitely fit under the boulder. However, since they both showed up and I was hidden well enough, the two ended up exchanging some blows before retreating.

I think the lizard came out on top? It seemed like the scorpion’s sting couldn’t penetrate its scales. While it had no problem cracking the shell on one of the pincers. Though it failed to actually break the limb off.