[Maxim POV]

I progressively slowed down until I was immobile, I was probably meters away from the seabed, my snout pointing downward. My gills filter the clear, pure, and cold seawater.

I don't know what below me exactly looked like but for the little I saw, it was something similar to arthropods, if they even existed in this world.

In any case, I will call the equivalent of this world arthropod. Same name but different things, probably.

Another thing that I noticed was that they had a lot of physical similarities with horseshoe crabs, in particular their overall body shape.

They also all have this same energy in them but it was in such small quantities and of such 'poor' quality that it might as well be nonexistent.

I hear the click and clack of their pinchers and felt them slowly moving away from me, trying to run away. While some buried themselves in the sediments with the same purpose.

I swam a bit closer to one, opened my jaws wide, and hesitated for half a second. I wasn't a picky eater in my past life and loved seafood but this... this is on totally different levels.

'Urgg, it smells good… but… arg! Food is food!', I internally berated myself and with a strong flick of my tail, I propelled myself forward.

I violently bit into a crustacean walking in front of me. Making sediment and other smaller crustaceans fly everywhere.

*crunch**crunch*

Its hard shell cracked with ease before my teeth and biteforce and its inside literally explode inside... my mouth, its legs, and pinchers uselessly moving around my snout and muzzle.

The creature I just bit was trying to defend itself in vain, I chomped on it again, killing it in the process and then I swallowed its body whole.

I felt it pass in my throat where muscles unknown to me until now contracted and crushed it even further. Odd to feel this but okay...

'It's good... like really good...', I thought, expecting it to have no taste or be disgusting, it blew away my expectations.

It tasted like a lobster if a bit sandy, the last part strangely not bothering me in the slightest. I know from experience, that having sand in your mouth is not very pleasant.

While a part of me was disgusted by what I did, it was fully alive and I ate it whole, organs and all. But this part soon got used to it and enjoyed it as well.

I was still ravenous, and so I continued to feast, biting one a bit bigger than the last but this time I directly swallowed it.

I crushed it with my throat, this time consciously then I felt it disappear in my stomach.

Similarly, I bit into another then another repeating the process, I continued until there was none in my close vicinity.

I used my snout to dig and ate one hidden in the sediments. As if it was the most normal thing to do, it is but I... it's me doing it.

All semblance that I was human was gone during this time, and I didn't care, couldn't care. And all of it was strangely liberating.

I was too preoccupied with my meal when smaller fish of all shapes started to come picking on the little bit of flesh I left, this caused bigger ones to come.

It was the start of a feeding frenzy. My ears twitched as the cacophony became louder and louder. It spurred me to continue, to eat.

The smell of blood was... so fucking exciting for some reason. Making me somehow hungrier. And that was when I started to lose track of time and control, not that l had a lot of it in the first place.

One fish passed too close to my jaws and I bit its head off, briefly savored it then ate the rest of its body before continuing to tear, reap, bite, chomp and kill and eat everything in front of me.

I continued like this for an undetermined amount of time, I was starting to get myself back together when I was satiated.

'Hmm… finally full.', I thought happily and satisfied with my body probably looking like a ball. I never ate this much.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I must have eaten more than two times my body mass, everything in my surroundings smelled strongly of blood and death as a testament.

The interstice between my teeth was also filled with bits and little pieces of flesh, gut, and everything in between. All should be disgusting to me in some way but it wasn't. Far from it.

Then it hit me like a truck.

'I acted… like some sort of feral animal...', I thought, a bit aghast. It was appalling for a prior human who was taught since birth norms to live by, not that humans didn't sometimes act like this way too.

But again this was me... not someone else.

It wasn't the first time I acted this way in this new life of mine now that I think about it, and it probably won't be the last. I will need to get used to it or control myself better.

With this in mind, I flapped my flippers and swished my tail from side to side, rapidly swimming in a straight line.

I paused as I saw a small area where hundreds of thin lava rivers were covered by volcanic rocks in the middle emitting steam, fume, and bubble, and they were containing the same energy that was in me but it was…

Impure and weaker compared to mine, for lack of better terms, and this new sense is pretty blurry for me at the moment making it difficult to interpret what I perceive.

Those rivers were full of this energy, which I will name it bio-energy, and they were dispersing it in their surroundings, diluting it even more.

Making the life surrounding them flourish from corals, worms, crustaceans, sea sponges, cephalopods, small fish, and more, I even saw a swordfish of my size.

It had a pair of red eyes and its scale was made of what appeared to be obsidian. It was fascinating in so many ways how life adapted.

I would have thought the same if it was on Earth and it was Earth's life forms but it's an alien world, no, Earth is technically an alien world to me now… This one is totally new to me, it's full of mysteries and wonder.

I stayed there the smell was funny but weirdly pleasant, I swam around for several minutes taking in its beauty until I realized that I should probably move on with this. I swam up, going to where the ice was probably located.

I was in front of the ice, likely thick ice, and now that I pay attention only a small part of it is actually colored and this was where the caves were.

The ice making those cave up was glowing and ranged in color from pink to purple, and lastly red.

Each was regrouped by color, pink with pink, etc. And these groups were quite far apart from one another, probably two or three kilometers if not more.

It was breathtakingly beautiful. Though I didn't see the real surface rendering the whole place quite oppressive and scary for those who would need to breathe air.

The ever-present smell of blood had become much fainter now, I also saw small translucent shrimp-like creatures with only some of their organ visible, small white bioluminescent dots adorned their bodies.

They looked like skeleton shrimp, but American-sized. Skeleton shrimps are normally, way smaller like a hundred times smaller, the ones from my previous life were on average a bit smaller than a human fingernail.

Even though I didn't have a real way to measure things, I was sure that they are way bigger than their Earthling counterparts. I can just tell.

Those shrimp were wandering on the nearly endless ceiling of ice. I observed them for some time before continuing on my adventure.

I was utterly lost. Not that I had a destination in the first place. I could follow my smell back, but the track stopped just in front of literally nothing. The rest was blurry to my nose at best.

I love my new superior sense of smell but I'm still not used to it. By the way, I instinctively knew by smell that I was male, even if a sex swap would be the least of my problem.

And I didn't really have that much problem with my new reality, yes I'm not human anymore but I'm still fundamentally me, I will undoubtedly change, which has already started and it's scary but I will still be me.

Changing subject.

As I remarked some time ago. I'm lost. My sense of smell is certainly powerful, exceedingly so but... it's all new to me.

I'm still used to locating myself in my environment with visual input and everything here... is pretty similar and also being mostly black due to the nearly non-existent light.

To add salt to the injury, I didn't know where I was before diving, and how much time had passed since then.

Not forgetting that I moved quite a lot when I ate earlier this day or night. Can't tell since I can't see the sky.

I wonder what the sky from this planet looks like. However, wondering about how beautiful the night sky must look won't be of any use here but...

'Bah. Don't care, I'm just gonna enter a random cave.', I decided, I'm starting to feel a bit drowsy anyways, and that means that I want to sleep.

Sleeping after eating delicious food, this without the chain of expectations that society put on your shoulder, not needing to be weary of consequence, etc.

It's probably one of the most common dreams of any sapient species that work in societies similar to humans' modern ones.

I swam a bit more until I found one I liked, it was purple. I entered it and couldn't help but notice that it smelled like my mother's species. As expected but it was a tiny bit different, hmmm need a name for them too.

They look like a pig and a dragon mated together, pig and dragon, hmmm. Pigron it is. A bit silly I know. This would also mean that by this logic I'm a fishron or sharkon. Huh.

I looked around the cave, this time taking my time to really study it, the walls looked like they were melted off to then be solidified back just after.

The other where I was birthed also sported this peculiarity. The low cracking sound of the ice outside was absent here, however.

Do pigrons dig them? Does it connect to the surface? Maybe I can do the same but how? With this in mind, I swam closer to one of the purple ice walls and bit a chunk off of it as instinct kicked in. I did it with such ease as if I did just bit into tofu.

'Right, my jaws are pretty strong now, not that human bite force isn't impressive for their anatomy...', I thought as I looked up to the floating piece of ice I just tore off.

The chunk had slightly melted off in the area where my teeth sunk, these areas were now tainted emerald green instead of purple or ice normal blue-white color.

'Huh, that's pretty neat.', I then looked at the area on the wall to see the same emerald green on the ice.

My instincts kicked in again and I bit into the ice wall, repeatedly, the ice instantly turned liquid with whatever was in my mouth.

Twenty or so minutes later I finished my small and ugly cave. My first and very own ugly cave was made with my own jaws.

And I was freaking proud of it for some reason like a child who made a very 'artistic' drawing of their family... no, bad thoughts. Latter, cave and sleep first.

The entrance was just big enough for me to fit in if I fold my dorsal and pectoral flippers against my body.

The inside was of bright emerald green with a slight green glow too, it was not very large, only being my body length and a half in depth and four-time my body diameter in width.

It was what I judged as enough for a temporary home. And I wanted to sleep in peace, not needing to take useless but... exciting risks by sleeping where pigrons will pass by.

They probably also ate those crustaceans on the seabed and other critters close to the lava rivers. So many things to discover!

I entered my temporary home, turned myself to face the exit, and let myself sink until my belly touched the comfortable icy bottom of the cave.

The fact that my smell was overpowering anything else in here was oddly comforting.

I made a big yawn that caused bubbles to come out of my mouth and snout, then my eyes closed shut. And it was soon followed by me rapidly falling into the world of dreams.

And I dreamed of eating pork, lots of pork, in all of its forms. Hmm, pork...