Yama slowly opened his eyes. As he roused from a heavy slumber, he was first aware of the coolness of the air and it's loamy fragrance. The ground was lumpy and pitted with holes and controlled destruction. His body felt as damp as a flower in the dew of the dawn. He half wondered if he was still dreaming as he sat up with struggle to take in the shafts of light that burst through the gaps in the leaf canopy above. As he soaked in the view of the destruction around him, he knew he was awake, every thought in high definition.
The whole area around the log was uplifted and filled with broken parts of plants and nearby vegetation. Yama could not believe it, he was still alive? There was a deep feeling of powerlessness in his body, however he was alive. What happened? How could be living? From the amount of nutrients he had left in his body, he should have been killed by his starvation. The game could not have made a simple glitch as it was a very advanced and it needed to be fully functional for its intended purpose. There could only be one reason he survived and that would be that something gave him energy needed to hold on to his life. Looking at the lack of vegetation around him and the feeling of mud on his tongue, he knew how he got it. He did not know what to feel.
Suddenly, Yama felt another rush of hunger pains attacking his body. He knew he needed more nutrients to stay alive. He did not want to feel the touch of death once again. The feeling of pain that burned like fire fading away to an icy numbness. Black filling edges of his vision and the only thing he could hear was his own heartbeat. His breath came in ragged, shallow gasps. Seconds passing as he laid there, waiting for the inevitable. Yama once again forsook his dignity and started to eat the vegetation around him. He grasped the nearest plant around him and shoved it down his throat, chewing it furiously then gulping it down to his stomach. The taste of the plant was unexpectedly not that bad, it even tasted a little bit sweet. The alkaline taste of the dirt mixed with the harsh and herbal juices of the plants was an unfamiliar yet not poor nourishment for his body.
Yama did not have any energy to move, so he kept lying down in the ground and slept. His exhaustion came in both forms, physical and mental. His mind needed to rest yet his body needed it to move, to eliminate the eminent danger. He could, log out and make his autopilot body eat grass at interval times but this action would cost his auto-piloted body to waste 10 times the energy and be less effective. This was done to make sure players would not be abuse this function to do tedious tasks and gain rewards without them doing any actual work. All he could do now was continue to eat the vegetation around him.
The first day of his routine, he didn't have any energy after uprooting a single plant and its consumption. He had to rest about 30 min to digest it and start feeling strength on his limbs. After the repetition of eating and digesting, he had finished the nearby vegetation. He expanded his radius and kept continuing on his efforts. He kept trying to find new sweet vegetation but only encountered hidden horned rabbits.
The second day, he had more energy so he started to get more meticulous with his choice of plants and parts. He specifically started to choose heart-shaped orange leaves as they tasted like sweet maple with a hint of honey.
The third day, he took all the strength he had in his body and migrated to a different type of forest. He dragged himself to the bushier part of the forest near his log. However, he found a cluster of horned rabbits concealed inside the logs. He tried to catch one of them but they all escaped very quickly. So he sat there, eating the plants. He started to have enough energy to do basic movement but he would not risk exhausting himself by doing tedious tasks like running. Thank god, he did not chase the rabbits that far.
The fourth day, he started to get more energized and was actually enjoying the processes of eating grass. "It's one takes minty with a hint of sourness", " What! This one tastes so salty", " Hmmm..why does his not have any taste? "This feels just like eating cardboard."
As the days kept piling on, the fat and muscles of his ant-body kept getting bigger. He made a full recovery from being almost dead to adequately fed. While his body kept getting bigger, his energy reserves and freedom of movement kept expanding.
Suddenly, on the sixth day, he felt a qualitative change in the process of absorbing nutrients from his quantitative process. He was greeted with a surprise when was in the middle of eating the nearby tree leaves.
Ding!
Through certain repeated actions, you have developed a new racial skill 'Chlorophyll Consumption'. You have used up one of your skill spots for a racial skill. You have 2 more remaining chance.
Both shocked and curious about this new ability, he clicked the blue screen that popped out at him before arriving at another blue screen.
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Chlorophyll Consumption
Mastery: Very Low (0/500)
Grants the user the ability to absorb plants or any being filled with Chlorophyll and gives energy to the user. As the level increases, the efficiency of gathering more energy from the consumed increases additional abilities may be unlocked.
Efficiency of energy gathered from eating: 5%
Yama was surprised. He had managed to unlock one of the racial abilities of Nyonye Ngana Hybrid. The process of learning racial skills was a unique procedure in Underneath. They were not like any other virtual game where the player got an ability when they arrived at a certain level. In Underneath, instead of getting an ability, they were given slots. A player had 2 racial slots if they played as a greater species and 3 slots if they played as a lesser creature. After gaining a racial slot, the player had to do certain activities for an extended amount of time to develop that slot into an ability. They could be unlocked by using mana in a specific structure, doing specific activities and achieving specific goals. Depending on the activity done, the same slot could be developed into various and diverse abilities.
Usually, players would be given instructions about how to develop their racial slot into a specific skill by an instructor. However, because Nyonye Ngana Hybrids were abandoned in the wild, he had no choice but to experiment and develop abilities by himself. This was a huge disadvantage as he had to learn everything by himself and could not use pre-existing knowledge. The only reason he even knew Nyonye Ngana Hybrids could control ants, change their color and release pheromones were that of information he and this team inferred from Nyonye Ngana's history.
One of the racial ability that he had developed was consuming plants and turning that into energy. This seemed to fit in with the information shown by Quora. Nyonye Ngana Hybrids were at least half Hymbros and they were omnivores, perfectly capable of digesting plants. The skill was very effective in helping him in his situation and, luckily, he developed a racial slot that increased his survivability. He still needed to be careful as his racial slots were limited in the beginning. There were set amount of slots received in the beginning and one was given at the intervals of 5 levels.
After several more days of Yama restoring back the body weight that he lost, he started to slowly travel along the grass path. He was increasingly getting suspicious as there were no living beings that inhabited this region of the forest. He, occasionally, only saw the horned rabbits and it seemed they were fleeing away from something. Yama knew, in his current state, he was very weak and any presence that made the entirety of the jungle flee from their habitat would barely have to out any effort to kill him. He traveled along the jungle footpath to flee from the presence in the jungle in hopes of finding a place to safely log out. He already had been in-game for more than the recommended amount of time. He needed to get out to the real world soon. The average recommended amount of time for him to stay in-game to maximize his efficiency was 24 hours or 5 days in-game, but he was inside the game more from than 10 days. This is neither good for his ant-body or his real one at Pity. In fact, he had been awake for several hours. He had fallen asleep fast, slept heavily and woken too early...he had the classic pattern of trans-Atlantic jet lag or as his physician had told him, one of the symptoms of staying in-game for too long.
The footpath edges were made shaggy by the undergrowth, already lying dark green from the summer sun. The mud was pale, almost the hue of clay with only the occasional lazy stone. The footpath laid from the jungle to the mountainous path towards the stony hills. On the way, he had been consuming the plants that he knew were safe and without harm. He was increasing his mastery while travelling on the trail.
Chlorophyll Consumption
Mastery: Very Low (48/500)
Grants the user the ability to absorb plants or any being filled with Chlorophyll and gives energy to the user. As the level increases, the efficiency of gathering more energy from the consumed increases additional abilities may be unlocked.
Efficiency of energy gathered from eating : 5%
He still needed quite a lot to level up.
Suddenly, he felt the panic blossom like a cluster of spark plugs in his abdomen. Tension grew in his face and his limbs, Yama's was mind began replaying the hidden rabbits. His breathing became more rapid, more shallow. In these moments before his personal hurricane, he understood something, something damming. He stopped the primal urge to flee and hid inside a log. He covered himself with dirt and flora and pretended to be dead.
...…..
It was near.
.........
It was coming.
...............
"SCREEEEEE"
Bursting through the noonshine, With a wingspan of over twenty meters and a body as large as any warhorse, a gigantic pitch black bat bored an impressive sight. It was the color of the night, not a coincidence, but merely a function to stealthily kill its prey without mercy.
Thank god, Yama had discovered something was wrong with the rabbits.