I had spent the first day or so, from what I could tell of the dirty light filtering in through the muddy water, eating my egg. It was similar to how some animals consume their embryos to give them energy. We were in an okay situation, but unfortunately, little tadpoles are easy prey. Thankfully, Momma Frog, that’s what I’m calling her, helped most of us by being nearby all the time. I tried to finish eating as fast as I could so as to quickly move about and protect myself.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. After about five or six days, I finally was able to swim around. I looked like…well, judging from my siblings, I looked like black colored sperm. Not an attractive description, but it fit.

I spent my next several weeks swimming around, eating food, and dodging predators. Just like high school. It was pretty easy life to get used to since I now had the desire to learn to survive. I was good, too. Out of the several hundreds of eggs, maybe only 50 or so hatched. And out of those, only like 10 remain. Kind of depressing. But we weren’t the only batch. There were something like 10 other groups, all about the same size as ours.

What made it worse was the fact that the other 9 tadpoles would follow me around like lost puppies, eating whatever I eat.

At this time, I had teeth and more skin, making me look more like a fish with a wide tail. I could feel my little back legs growing in, but they were more like pinky toes. With our new appearances, we could swim better and eat more beneficial food.

I would lead the little school of tadpoles around the pond, since I could easily swim the distance from one side to the other within the day, and we would eat at different locations. There was also a river flowing, but I decided to stay in the pond. I could see the other packs of tadpoles, but they weren’t doing what we did. They would stay in the areas near the edge of the water, where it was safer.

I could lead these guys thanks to my intelligence. I could spot traps that other animals had set up or notice the hiding predators. But from the very beginning, I had spotted a strange plant at the bottom of the pond. It glowed with a strange blue light. I tried to swim closer, but noticed a strange creature there. It appeared to be an old catfish.

I’m not sure it ate tadpoles, but I wasn’t going to risk it. They probably did. This one in particular. It was plenty big and surrounded the glowing plant at almost all times.

I had never seen or heard of such a plant where I came from, but since I reincarnated, I can’t be so sure I was reborn in my own world. So I set out to find any differences in this world from mine.

One, I was easily able to understand how to move my body. I could also understand what my siblings wanted even if they never said anything. There was also the time of the light from outside.

Even when it was night time, the pond wasn’t dark. My guess is the moon is really bright. I haven’t seen it, but that’s just my guess.

But, probably the biggest indicator was the strange little snake like creature that gave off electricity.

Yes, an eel. But this wasn’t just some current in the water, this was like seeing a static shock pass through the air! What worried me the most was that the electricity seemed to move by its own will. Even getting within several feet of this monster made me want to pass out. Fortunately, we found its weakness.

Catfish.

Well, not really. I just figured I could somehow lead the catfish to the eel, then that would give my siblings enough time to eat some of that strange plant. I don’t think it’s poisonous since the catfish stayed by it for so long.

I swam up to the strange plant, but the catfish woke up and immediately started to swim towards me! I had tried to time the moment to coincide with the eel getting close enough to the catfish’s territory.

It worked out well enough, at first, but the eel’s power almost conked me out! I barely had the time to use my training to agilely swim away. The eel tried to zap me and ended up hitting the big fish behind me, angering it and making the catfish change its target.

I made it away in time. I swam back to the plant and quickly ate a few bites. My siblings didn’t want to eat before me for some reason, so they ate for a shorter period of time than I had. I noticed the catfish was coming back and urged my siblings to swim away.

Thankfully we all made it out safely. But, we were all tired. We picked a safe patch of kelp and tried to rest.

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When we woke up, we each had grown considerably. Sure, it had been another couple of weeks, so we already had our back legs and such, but now we looked more like actual frogs! What would have probably taken us another week happened overnight! We still had our tails, but we were definitely growing faster than before!

What was that plant?

There was also something else within me, I could feel it traveling. I remembered my time from trying out meditation and Qi flow. It was a passing fling, but that was only because I couldn’t afford a person to teach me how to do it.

Every time I tried, I would do something wrong and feel a terrible pain in my stomach. Bad stuff. I didn’t have someone to teach me other methods. I only learned one type of rotation.

But here, I could feel the energy, yet it felt different. More cool and calm. I could also control it easier.

Besides that, I tried to use my hind legs for walking. Sounds weird, I know. I tried walking on my hind legs like a normal human being. It wasn’t going so well, the body structure and all that. But the funny part was that my siblings were, too! They copied every action I took, even when I was meditating.

Instead of just striking at the power coursing through my body, I attempted to just locate it. Watch it. Feel it. I would follow it as it traveled into my stomach and around my body. The process would take several hours, so I may have gotten impatient and tried coaxing it along.

I had managed to remember the path the energy took, but the feeling grew. I found the energy within me passed my previous level by at least twice! Sure, it wasn’t that big, like comparing an atom to a molecule, but it was something I could easily tell.

I tried to focus the energy into my webbed appendages, and saw the water start to swirl around me. I tried copying the motions, swirling the energy clockwise in my left hand, and counter clockwise in my right.

Soon, little vortexes were created in my hands, twisting the surrounding water flow into some cool looking whirlpools. I tried to ‘throw’ it, but that just ruined the effect. I spent more time trying to figure this power out, and soon a couple more weeks had passed. I hadn’t tried to do the rotations, because I was more interested in the miniature whirlpools.

Our tails had shrunk and our bodies began to develop markings, making it easier to distinguish between each other. Well, not really. I had no way of identifying them since no one had names. I could tell whether they were female or not, and that was it. But I did memorize their skin patterns after that.

There were 7 females and 3 males, counting me. Thankfully, I was still a male.

But, we still had only reached about halfway to adulthood.

We spent our days practicing our energy control and ate insects and plants all the time. Eventually, more weeks passed and I decided it was time to attack that damn fish.

Last time, it had eaten the eel in one bite and spent that entire time to safely digest it! How were we supposed to deal with it now? Well, we could manipulate the water now. I planned to have the catfish enter the whirlpool and get dashed against the rocks. But, when I tried it, the catfish wasn’t even moved.

In fact, it was just pissed off.

Fortunately, I could see that its gills were having trouble. I had heard that swimming backwards would drown a fish, since gills weren’t made that way. Could it work here?

I spun the whirlpool, sending the water flying into the lungs of the big fish. It struggled, chasing after me, but I had learned to use my whirlpools like jets, speeding me away from danger in the nick of time.

Eventually, the catfish collapsed to the bottom of the pond. I won!

Now it was time to chow down!