I opened my eyes to find myself in a new type of void. Whereas before, there was light suffused throughout the in-between place as if I was standing on a dark ocean under which was deeply buried a rival sea of light whose brightness barley battled to the surface, now it was just black. I waved my arms about and could barley scrape rock on both sides. My legs could barley move however as they were each trapped in a dirt coffin of their own. I lay suspended on a pudgy stomach like a turtle upside down on it's shell, although my impressive belly was definitely not a similar consistency as hard shell- the buried legs only helped me balance. It was at this point that I realized a more active lifestyle was best, and how crap it was that in every bloody book story where they ended up reincarnated on a new world they weren't fat, but I was. Choosing not to cry about all the drunk milk though, I reached ahead of me and pulled my legs out of their tombs. While rock walls surrounded me, ahead of me was a wider tunnel of packed dirt. What was strange though was that once I removed my legs from their prisons I kicked back at the wall to find the dirt had been replaced by rock. How the system had got me here was unknown, but it appeared it had placed me in some kind of rocky dome underground with the exit being just ahead of me and my body partially stuck in the chamber, temporally at least. I was confused as to why such measures were taken and why I was underground at all. I justified Its actions with the logic that it probably couldn't just materialize me in the open where my spontaneous creation could be seen by others and that it created the dome of the rock to prevent the collapse of thousands of tonnes of earth that would come about from this instant soil removal. That was unfortunately not the case, but new to this carnival of misery and murder thats what I took it as.

I began crawling forward into the tunnel I could feel ahead and into the encompassing darkness. Eventually the ceiling of the 'cave' I was in (I'm using that term loosely as it barely qualified) shrunk forcing me to go from crawl to wiggle for the rest of the way forward. As I set forth I had a-lot to think about. My old life and the people who would grieve for me at the forefront of my mind. I even had the time to dwell on never starting a family as I went. There was no way for me to count the time passing in the black tunnel but after a while I started to feel hungry. Before this, my body had been on some sort of auto pilot as thoughts of my other life swirled around my brain, but now I snapped back to awareness. How long had I been crawling for? Almost tangible fear filled me. I don't know where the system had placed me, but it wasn't in some cave. I had crawled for hours and I seemed to be no closer to the surface. I had never been a claustrophobic person, and yet suddenly it felt as if the dirt around me was definitely trying to squeeze me into oblivion. Sweat ran down my flushed face. Whatever assumptions I held about the system and it's benevolence needed to be forgotten. I had no time to mourn or wallow- I was on a bloody alien planet. Pausing my mindless army crawl I started thinking about my options.

Where was I?

a tunnel underground

Where could I go?

Forward or backwards. One way to a dead end and the other to who knows what.

Did I have any other options?

Stay still and starve to death.

Safe to say this wasn't an ideal situation. However, I had some experience grinding away the days in a dead end job while suppressing all thoughts of my future so hopefully this skill translated. There really was no other option apart from onwards and hopefully upwards, so there was no real choice but the one to crawl.

I'd love to say that after I made this decision to continue the crawl; the sun began to shine on my face, the tunnel suddenly started to steep upwards and light could be seen ahead igniting the pitch darkness. But that would be a lie- this wasn't a fairytale, reality was much grimmer than that. I wanted to pray, but I didn't know what to, and I'd be damned if I showed any reverence to the thing that placed me here- which funnily enough was why I was here in the first place. My second life was turning out to be much more of a drag than I thought it would be. It seemed I was destined to die in this tunnel in obscurity and darkness.

As the crawl continued it became easier not to think. I lost myself in the repetitive shuffle forwards and my lapses in consciousness grew longer and longer. The only thing that brought me out of the fugue state being a noticeable turn in the tunnel or a rock big enough for me to have to stop and maneuver around. The pangs of hunger became more painful but after a certain point they receded to just an ache in the stomach. Eventually, even these twists and rocks weren't enough to draw reactions from me. The times of lucid thinking had come to an end and now there was only the crawl uninterrupted.

Time stretched down in the dark and I do not know how long it was I crawled. I had shed weight like a snake sheds its skin and yet I still moved forward at the same frustrating glacial pace, my body too exhausted to change it. When I finally stopped there was no way to know how long I had slithered, the only indicator I had was the rawness of my fingers and the frailness of my body.

I froze, unable to go any further. For the first time in what could only logically be three days I had stopped moving. I felt ready to die, feeling I had been crawling for eternity. Unfortunately, you don't get to spend three days desperately searching for freedom in the pitch black with no adverse affects to mental health. So as I finally chose to give up on my endless journey and rest, my tortured mind finally had the freedom to torture me.

It started with a wiggling between my fingers. My arm was outstretched as if to pull me once again while my other limb was between body and wall. In between my throbbing index and ring finger I could feel something wiggling in the soil. I whipped my head up from the ground and for a split second saw a pale white face staring at me with sickly yellow eyes from far down the tunnel. It had a lipless grin and red makeup encircling each of its' large beady orbs with two gaping slits in replacement for a nose. As soon as it was seen it jerked out of sight giggling, except its mouth stayed locked in that toothy grin and its faux laughter came from just behind me. I kicked out weakly behind me but met nothing but the roof of the tunnel and empty air. The writhing beneath my fingers grew frantic and suddenly there was wriggling beneath all places where skin met ground. Sweat ran down my face in incredibly small amounts. There was so little moisture in my body and it was now being stolen from me by fear. I closed my eyes and shoved my face into the ground- screaming into the dirt.

The wriggling kept multiplying beneath me and now was spreading underneath my skin. It felt as if thousands of worms had buried into my muscles and were now slowly working their way out, bursting out from underneath my skin to form an entirely new suit of writhing flesh. My head flew up and once again my bloodshot eyes tore open. This time it's face was right there in front of me. Its yellow eyes inching closer and closer to me. They were huge to such an unnatural extent with their tiny black pupils focused directly into mine. The blood red make up surrounding the orbs almost unseeable due to both how large and close the things eyes were to my own. I closed my eyes to make it disappear, to be safe, but the darkness I saw didn't change and therefore it could not truly be gone.

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I once again tried to scream but my throat was bone dry and the croak I produced merely cracked it, causing the sensation of warm blood to pour down it. My mouth stayed open in its silent scream as I felt a rough pressure rub across my face. I rolled and thrashed around the tunnel in agony but I could still feel its tongue licking the sweat slowly off my face. I slammed my arms against the endless coffin I was sealed in. I tore at the ground and ceiling above me desperately, willing to bury myself in the earth to escape the creatures torment. My boiling skin was agitated greatly by my excursions and the creatures underneath thrashed in displeasure at the disruptive movements. I dug my fingers in the ground and ripped into the earth's skin in anger, intent on causing it the same tearing pain I felt. It was on my fourth handful of dirt that everything changed around me. The sensation of the monsters rough tongue scraping the sweat from my face, the millions of bugs wriggling and stretching my pale skin, it all vanished. In my closed fist I could feel the wriggling I had felt inside of me. I opened my closed shaking hand and my red bloodshot eyes simultaneously. There was something there, a shade of grey in the usual black. A simple worm, silently glowing.

I opened my eyes painfully even wider in shock and rolled over as much as I could to my side. I erupted into laughter, crazed laughter. I had found something else, something living. Down here in hell I was accompanied by other forsaken life.

I continued my choking coughs of 'laughter', ignoring the blood welling in my mouth and spilling out down my chin.I raised the slightly luminescent worm to my face and used my other hand to pick it out of the soil. My dry lips split into a smile, cracking all over. Blood gushed from my mouth and lips as I held my manic smile, reflecting the grimace of the apparition that had just so terrified me. I spat viciously onto the ground in front of me, emptying the blood inside my mouth and dropping the soil in my now free hand, wiped the blood surrounding it too. I slammed the wriggling animal into my gaping maw and started to chew, a smile once again creasing my bloodstained visage. The mush inside my mouth resembled the consistency of mushed banana and the slimy bloody mix I swallowed tasted of blueberry dipped iron. It burned all the way down, from scarred throat to empty stomach. My expression did not change throughout the process. I held my grin. I had finally eaten, tasted.

I dug my hands through the soil once again, but this time reverently, expectant. It wasn't long until my hands halted their sweet caress feeling once again a telltale wriggle. I gently closed my fist around the gift given to me and lifted it out of the grounds sacred embrace. I opened my mouth wide in anticipation- nothing else mattered but this. I shook the soil out of my fist calmly, There was no hurry. I bit down on my lip to stop the cackles as a shiver ran through me. Alas, the anticipation was too great. I shoved the glorious being into my mouth swiftly and once again began to chew. I was deprived, a beast deep beneath the earth, a ghost to haunt the imaginations of children fearing what crawls in the dark. But as I combed the land beneath me I did not care, the only thoughts running through my mind were those of how delicious the next morsel would be.

I don't know how long I spent at the worm cornucopia but it was enough for me to leave gorged, gleeful and grasping handfuls of wriggling sustenance. It appeared I had reached some point of breakthrough in my journey to surface; whereas before there was nothing but dirt and monotony, now there was an occasional wriggle beneath my mass letting me know I had gone somewhere and that I was progressing. Life was looking up. Compared to what I used to live like this existence couldn't be seen as anything but hell, but now it seemed a close approximation of heaven. I once again was on the long crawl to freedom! now with food readily available days past faster and even happily. I was not capable of thinking much past the next tugs forward but I knew for sure two things: I was getting stronger, and I was gonna make it out alive. The struggle to out didn't even feel like a struggle any more.

I spent what was maybe a week in this state. For a long time I was just content.I ate worms when I was hungry and slept well when I needed to, a far cry from the starved life I lived before and the fitful exhaustion naps I'd taken before when my body forced me too. I wasn't even in pitch blackness anymore as the very faintly glowing worms I liked to grasp onto helped to change my view to greyscale. Eventually though my life of joy had to come to an end. At first I didn't notice the change, it was too subtle for my animalistic mind to process. The wriggling beneath me had started to lessen and the numbers of worms available thinned. It wasn't until the worm supply I maintained in my hands dropped to a record low of four that the faint smile on my healed lips faded. I felt panic again for the first time in a while and had to take deep breaths to calm myself again. I steeled my resolve and crawled faster with renewed vigor. My limbs had strengthened off of the glowing worms diet and I was able to speed faster through the tunnel than ever before. My legs kicked efficiently and in time with my arms pulling forward. I was now a lean efficient crawling machine, reborn with the purpose to army crawl! Yet that wasn't enough. The amount of worms was simply shrinking too much. I watched with despair as my supply fell from four to three to two to none. I was forced to eat whenever I could, the hunger I so feared slowly returning. I was circling the drain of despair, and this time I was diving straight in without a struggle- I'd done that enough. Luckily, this world wasn't done with me yet.

Scratching. Ahead of me I had heard scratching. I quickly devoured the worm I was holding and plunged myself back into the familiar darkness I'd dwelled in for so long. Complex emotions swirled in my stomach. Fear and excitement and curiosity alike all flapped their wings inside my hollow belly. This was something new, unexpected, and I didn't know what to feel. I steadied myself and once again took deep breaths, slowing my heart rate and anxiety to mediative levels. If there's one thing you learn on a crawl through hell, it's how to stop worrying about what your future will be. Unfortunately, no amount of deep breaths prepared me from the sudden scuttling of thousands of legs and the impact of around 20 point of pressure on my upper hand. I quickly yanked back my arms trapping them between my body and the walls beside me in my haste. This however, did not in any way solve my problem. I screamed in terror, the sound sounding awkward coming from my unused vocal chords, and thankfully didn't damage my mouth or throat thanks to my juicy worm diet. The creature screamed back in its own way and I felt the air shift as it lunged toward the mouth I had just opened to scream. Naturally, with my arms trapped by my side and unable to spring out fast enough to protect me, and my legs not having enough leverage to pull me back enough to dodge, I did what any rational human being would do. I headbutted the bug all the way down into the ground. Surprisingly, this worked. I felt brief pain as a pair of pincers began to dig into the bottom of my cheeks. I quickly slammed my head into its malleable own ,continuing the headbutt all the way into the ground. I effectively crushed its tiny skull and baptized my forehead in alien blood and brain matter in the process. I lifted my head out of the brain juices of what I assumed was a millipede I had just annihilated and stared into the empty space ahead of me- for it was there that I could see a message backlit by some sort of blue.

Class assigned: Headbutter

It was at this point that I spoke for possibly the first time in my recreation.

"what the actual fu-'