I didn’t have time to really process that the huge pool around us was a stomach. No, the thing that made me quiver in fear was the feeling of frenzied movement in the water around me.

Auren floated closer to me. I could vaguely sense that he was still trying to calm me down.

You know, I’ve started calling the creature we’re in Big Bertha. He told me conversationally. I found calling her something silly makes her less terrifying.

This isn’t the time for that! I yelled at him mentally.

Shhhh. Auren said. Look. There’s nowhere to run. The best way to beat the fish swarm is to stand very, very still and not attract attention. Like this.

Though I could feel Auren floating in the water next to me, his presence was hard to notice since it was so still. I probably wouldn’t be able to tell he was there if I hadn’t already known.

I tried relaxing. Think about something else. Having some nice memories to dwell on would have been nice, but I came up short.

Still, I tried to control my shaking to the best of my ability.

Good. Auren said.

The first fish from the swarm darted behind me. Then another somewhere in front. The fish began to fill the spaces all around us, swimming with a panicked haste. I tried blanking my mind, but my jellyfish instincts weren’t helping. I pretty much only had one sense, the sense of movement in the water, and that sense was filling up my head right now with flaring signals of danger from every direction imaginable.

Though some of the omnivorous fish were pretty small, most of them were still larger than I was, and I didn't want to test my luck on whether they saw me as predator or prey..

One brushed against Auren’s body. Another one hit my tentacles, making me jolt in fear. I felt a tingle pass through my tentacles and the fish flinched and darted away.

Ack! I think I stung him. I shivered again in revulsion and fear before getting my feelings under control again. Whew. So that’s how that works, huh?

Keep it up. Auren said.

How long? I asked, my voice strained.

Better not to think about it. Auren replied. I don’t think Big Bertha chews her food when it’s this small. They’ll slow down as her digestive juices do the trick though.

Most of the fish ignored us as they darted around Big Bertha’s vast stomach pool. Jellies probably weren’t on the menu for these fish, and if I were them, I wouldn’t be thinking of my next meal anyways as I was being melted alive in pitch black darkness. They were probably swimming around looking for a way out. I’d have felt worse for them if I was less terrified.

Auren was right. Eventually, the fish slowed down and they started bumping into us less and less. That digestive juice worked fast. For once, I was thankful not to have eyes to be spared from witnessing the nightmarish feeling of twenty or so fish drunkenly swimming in various states of disintegration all around me.

Alright. I think we’re in the clear. Auren told me. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

Uh, no, that was pretty bad. We were almost live bait for a school of fish.

How often does this happen? I asked. It seemed as though Auren was fairly used to this situation.

Auren gave me a mental shrug. Big Bertha eats all sorts of things. Usually, she eats a constant trickle of fish, but eating whole schools at once happens a few times. Sometimes we even get weirder creatures that resemble… well the closest thing you've ever seen to octupi and sharks I guess.

Great, so this wasn’t even the worst thing. And magical sharks? It just kept getting better. So those bite marks…

That was a turtle. Seems like they’re a natural enemy of ours in this world too.

It didn’t seem like Big Bertha was really concerned about her jellyfish stowaways if she was eating turtles whole. Not a comforting thought.

Great. So what now? I asked. It seemed that the fish incident was over, but there was still a lot to think about. How do we survive this?

For now, eat and level up. Auren stirred and started pulsing his body, pushing himself toward the bottom of the pool. Come on. The other jellies are going to start moving too.

Eat? Eat the dead fish? Did jellyfish normally eat dead fish? Now that I thought about it, I felt kind of hungry at the thought. I guess I really could eat fish then, somehow.

I wordlessly followed Auren as he moved, trusting in his sight. I noticed some movement in the water and guessed that a few of the jellies around me were starting to stir as well and move in our direction.

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Here’s one for you. Come to where I am. I obeyed and moved to where Auren was and grabbed what was probably a half-disintegrated fish corpse with my tentacles. It felt like it was a third of my size.

Make sure it’s really dead before you try to eat it. I made that mistake once. Auren warned. He swam off in another direction, presumably looking for his own, slightly bigger fish to snack on.

I couldn’t really imagine the fish still being alive in this situation. Were there zombie fish in this world? The thought made me shiver so I decided to follow his advice just in case. I felt a surge of tingling in my tentacles as I stung the fish as hard as I could. It didn’t move. Yup, dead.

Ok, so how do I eat this thing? I thought to myself as I held the corpse awkwardly. My mouth was definitely under my body, but it didn’t really seem suited for the job. Was I supposed to nibble on it or something? I didn’t have teeth though.

Ah, I should probably start before it disintegrates any more. Auren would scold me if he came back to find me just floating around, wasting a precious meal.

I gingerly brought the fish corpse to my jellyfish “mouth,” which was more like an opening between my tentacles. I could feel the strange sensation of what was left of the fish begin to digest inside of my stomach.

I expected to feel full in the traditional sense, but I didn't particularly feel heavier or more dense. Instead, a warm feeling began trickling through my body emanating from my stomach and satiating my hunger.

Though I didn’t have any taste buds to make eating more fun, it still felt really nice to have the warm sensation suffuse my tentacles. Come to think of it, I even felt more energized and perhaps stronger.

Ah, sorry. Auren’s voice sounded faint, though it got louder as he swam back in this direction. I forgot to mention that we suck the mana out of food rather than eat it. Looks like you figured it out though.

This is mana? I asked. What I had felt like a warm and filling liquid substance, so I'd assumed it was fish blood. That little fish was a mana creature?

Every living thing seems to have some sort of mana. Auren said. Some creatures in this world seemed to have evolved to survive off of mana rather than regular flesh.

They’re like us? I wonder if they have skills and level ups too. I mused.

Maybe. I don’t know. Auren said. Anyways, let’s get moving.

Auren and I swam in silence for a while, dragging out food with us as we went to a more quiet corner of Big Bertha’s stomach pool, away from the minor chaos of other swimming jellies and possible newcomer fish. The number one rule of the animal kingdom was to eat in a safe place, after all.

As I ate in the dark, I started to think about the future. The first thing my mind drifted to was the immediate threat of being inside a creature’s stomach. Auren seemed way too relaxed about our predicament. I mean, even as small jellyfish, Big Bertha’s stomach pool was definitely still huge. I tried imagining what Big Bertha would look like and could only come up with mental images of kaijus and Lovecraftian horrors.

I didn’t want to imagine what climbing out of the throat could be like. Or even worse, getting digested by a vast labyrinth of magic intestines while trying to get safely ejected out of the other passage. I shivered in disgust at the very thought. I hoped that Auren at least had a plan and didn't feel the need to spend the rest of his life here.

On the other hand, Auren was someone who woke up in this world with nothing, just like me. Even more like me if I was his clone. Could I really just rely on him like that? Would I have been able to do what he’d done, all alone?

You okay, Buren? Auren asked. You’ve been quiet for a while.

Yeah, I was just thinking. It’s a lot to take in. Once things quieted down, I realized things hadn’t sunk in as well as I thought they had. Sure, I had a meal in my tentacles now and we were relatively safe, but the future seemed grim. We needed a plan, something to work towards that would give us hope.

Waking up as a jellyfish is pretty rough, isn’t it? Auren said.

How do you deal with it? I asked Auren, curious. If I’d woken up as a jellyfish, alone in the dark, with no idea how anything worked… I guess I’m just surprised that you turned out to be this optimistic.

Optimistic? Auren laughed. Maybe that’s true, but I’m pretty sure I’m just in a good mood because you’re here.

After chuckling to himself, he paused to think before giving a serious answer to my question.

Our minds are adaptable. He started slowly. His voice was somber. The longer you stay as a jellyfish, the less human you become. Over time, I’ve had to throw away a few ideals that bogged me down just to survive.

I was silent. I guess that made sense. If Auren went through a transformative survival experience, it would make sense that his personality could diverge significantly from mine, even if we'd been the same originally. Did that mean deep down I had the capability to be as strong and optimistic as Auren about our situation? Maybe, but it sure didn't seem easy.

It’s a miracle I’ve survived this long at all though. Auren said. His tone lightened up as he thought of something. Though now I have someone to talk to! I think I would have gone crazy if I’d gone alone any longer. Even though being a jellyfish is pretty boring, I still have a few stories to keep the boredom away for a while.

He beamed at me happily over the mental connection and I gave him a small smile in return. If lending him an ear would help him, I would gladly do it, since he was doing all the other heavy lifting. Plus, talking with Auren didn’t seem so bad. Maybe because we were apparently the same person, we naturally got along.

Time passed, though there wasn’t a way to keep track of how much. It turned out, we didn’t need to sleep much at all anymore as jellyfish, so the best way I could keep track of time was through meals.

For a while, things were uneventful. We weren’t attacked by any big swarms of fish or other weird creatures and had to eat the prey that came trickling in. As I spent more time with Auren, I started to get a better idea of what life as a jellyfish was like.

In short, life became boring but it wasn't so bad when I got used to it. Though I didn’t sleep, I could wander off into a thoughtless trance, which Auren described as the “primordial jellyfish state” and burn some time, which was pretty neat. Otherwise, I did a lot of thinking. Self-reflection, amusing myself with random thoughts, and making far too optimistic plans for the future… It was so easy to get absorbed in my own mind when I was floating in the darkness with hardly any senses to distract me. I’d bet that a lot of human monks would choose to be jellyfish if they really wanted to spend their years lost in thought.

It wasn't long before the time we had been waiting for came. A small ball of heat that had been building up within me over time had coalesced and had now finally imploded and spread through my body, shortly followed by the system notification telling me the news.

I had leveled up.