The next day, I woke up from a deep trance with a revelation. When I giggle or joyfully shout at my only companions, the bugs, they seem to ignore me or perhaps come over to play with me. But yesterday when I was angry and cursing the gods, they flew off and stayed away from me. Could they understand what I was saying?

They were only bugs. Surely this was not possible. I mean really who ever heard of intelligent bugs outside of some cartoon movie.

On the other hand, this was a different world from Earth. Apparently, magic existed. Even if I did not have any thanks to those lousy goddesses. No that was getting distracted. Anger was not going to help here. I was thinking about the bugs. Right. This was a whole new world. Anything could be possible.

I started with a simple experiment.

"If you can understand me, move up and down a bit!"

Well the first attempt was a complete failure. One of them might have moved up and down a bit but it looked like this happened more by accident than anything else. That was somewhat expected but still disappointing. There was no sense in giving up at that early stage though. I had nothing else to do anyway.

I decided to see what happened when I spoke with different emotions. If I laughed or had fun they came closer and flew around me as if playing. When I spoke with a normal tone or was serious nothing much changed. Lastly, I tried to speak as if I was angry and they all flew off. They only came back after about an hour.

They seemed to understand my emotions when I spoke even if they did not understand the words. I wonder if they couldn't understand the words because I haven't taught them the language. It would be strange if they understood a language from a completely different world without being taught at all. It was either that or the bugs were just sensitive to emotions the same way that house pets often seem to know when their owner is sad, sick, and so on. I knew the second explanation was way more likely than the first.

I decided to try teaching them my language. Everyday I would point at things or make a certain motion and give it a name. I kept repeating this over and over for years.

While I was at it, I told them stories. I did not want to forget my old life and who I was. I did not want to forget my parents or my older brother and sister. I did not want to forget the joys of ice cream or the pleasure of air conditioning on a hot day. So I told stories everyday about life on Earth. The stories started with me simply talking about my life and world. As time went on, however, I started to use my finger to draw words or pictures on the dirt and started acting out some of the more interesting parts.

The bugs were mostly a good audience. They stayed and listened throughout. Unless it was a particularly bad performance. I could always tell if they were bored as they would just leave part way through the story if I did not keep them interested. At least, they were honest about it. The additions of drawings and acting was totally not because they kept getting bored of my stories. I just liked them. Yep.

I would like to say that my days passed peacefully while I played with the bugs and told them stories. Unfortunately, that was not what happened. It all started innocently enough. As one would expect, I became curious about the world. I could see what amounted to a wall of green surrounding the tree I was born under. Under the tree was just bare dirt but as soon as the branches stopped there were grasses as tall as me, vines hanging off trees a hundred meters tall, and bushes everywhere. All the leaves were different shades of green and together formed a beautiful scene like one would expect to find in a picture of some untamed tropical jungle.

Soon after the disastrous affair with my status window, I decided to do a bit of exploring. I could toddle around a bit or just crawl at a fair clip so it was easy enough to get to that beautiful wall of green. There was a whole new world out there with magic and amazing races I had only seen in 2D. I really wanted to meet a dwarf or a beastman. I thought that this was a fantasy world so they will definitely exist here. I mean where I was seemed pretty remote given there was nothing but bugs and plants but it was important to get an idea of the local area before I set off on longer range explorations.

As I crawled toward the edge of the circle of bare dirt around my tree, I was staring at the plants in front of me trying to see if I could identify any of them. If they were the same as plants on Earth then I could eat tasty food for the first time in a long time and not poison myself. Of course, I knew next to nothing about plants so my efforts were essentially hopeless from the start. I'm pretty sure I couldn't identify a potato if you plopped one down in front of me. One never knows unless you try though so I gave it a go.

It was as I was curiously staring at the plants from a few meters away that some of the grass was brushed aside by a creature sticking its head out to look at me. It immediately made me think of a dinosaur. The head was a good two meters above the ground and the mouth was full of sharp teeth. It stared right at me and made hissing noises with a few clicks thrown in for good measure. The head reminded me a lot of a Velociraptor or similar predators in the Jurassic Park movies.

Needless to say, I stopped right where I was and even tried to back up. Of course that mostly amounted to falling on my back. There may or may not have been a puddle of liquid under me afterward. That is a secret I will take to my grave.

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While I was lying on my back, a second and third dinosaur I had not seen leaped at me from my left and right. Of course, the one in front of me also jumped forward towards me. We are talking an easy three meter jump on their parts. It was an incredible act of athleticism. They were so fast it was more akin to teleportation than movement but there were a few afterimages in the air that hinted at what had happened. I wondered if they had to practice jumping like this lots of times or if it just comes naturally. It was pretty clear that I was going to be eaten by these things and yet the things that came to mind were utterly ridiculous in hindsight.

Fortunately for me, it seemed like as soon as these creatures landed they suddenly stopped and stood very still for a moment. Immediately afterward, they let loose some truly blood curdling screams and fell over writhing on the ground. They seemed to be in a lot of pain.

Needless to say I was a little surprised. Okay, shocked and I stared at them for a solid five minutes before I was able to move. After the shock wore off a bit, I scrambled away from them crawling for dear life back to the base of my beautiful, safe tree. I nearly kissed the bark when I got to it. I did not know why those creatures had fallen over like that but it was clearly the doing of the tree and I was immensely thankful for it.

The dinosaur like creatures did not die or run away. They just lay there screaming and twitching. It looked really horrible. I began to feel bad for them. The screaming was grating as well. I tried to think how I could help them or at least get them to go away but the noise was a huge distraction.

I could not just pull them away from the tree as they were way to big for me to move. A toddler can not move a dinosaur. I tried. I had nothing else in terms of plans so I gathered up my courage and eventually managed to force myself to touch the tail of one of them. When it did not react, I tried to pull on it to see if I could move it. However, I had no such luck.

I thought maybe I could just meditate to make time pass but the screams were way too distracting. I was getting really worn out from the excitement of the day and needed rest. Every time I tried to get that rest though the dinosaurs would make noise and I would be completely distracted. This went on not just for that day but that night as well.

By the next morning, I had had enough. Normally, I am the live and let live kind of person but this was just too much. They had tried to eat me and now they would not let me get any rest. I was going to put an end to this. In the middle of the night while I was desperately trying to block out their noises, I had an idea. I could cover their noses and mouths with dirt and then they would not be able to breathe. If they could not breathe, then they would not be able to scream. It would kill them but at this point it was more a matter of putting them out of their misery. They were clearly in enormous pain so I was just doing them a favour. Killing them was the right thing to do. It was not at all because I really wanted them to be quiet.

Getting up the courage to approach their heads was not easy. There were a lot of teeth and one bite would be enough to finish me off with ease. That is not even counting the claws on their limbs. There were quite a few false starts before I was able to throw some dirt at its face. The first handful went right in the creature's eye. Not at all where I was aiming. On the other hand, it did not seem to even notice.

Eventually, I piled up enough dirt to clog its nostrils and mouth around midday. It was both harrowing and exhausting. It was not like I had a shovel or anything. So I had to get the dirt with my bare hands. Toddler hands are not really large enough or strong enough to do this so it was a real struggle. Likewise, it felt like the dirt did not want to be carried by me. Every time I picked up a handful of dirt it would somehow manage to fall to the ground in a very short period of time. I ended up having to push it forward with my hands.

I only noticed that I had succeeded when I heard an incomprehensible voice emotionlessly recount something for a while. I really wanted to learn the local language. It would be enormously helpful to at least know what in the world that voice was saying. When I looked back at the dinosaur I had been piling up dirt on, it was no longer breathing. There was still a sizable space I had not managed to fill in yet. I guessed that it was unable to get enough air through that hole and had suffocated.

I decided to move the dirt from the first creature to the next one rather than digging up a whole bunch more dirt. However, as I moved over to the corpse, I noticed that my whole body felt a lot lighter. I tried standing up and walking rather than crawling. It was easy! I tried jumping and I fell over. Might have gotten a little too excited there. Still, this was crazy.

Then I had an epiphany. I had a status board like in a game. I had just killed a scary monster. Maybe I levelled up. If so it would not be strange for my abilities to go up. I could not contain my curiosity and opened my status window again. Unfortunately nothing had changed. No wait, I had a new skill, a new achievement and a new title. The skill was Acting, the achievement was Leech, and the title was Cheater. I will not be repeating what those toxic goddesses said to describe both of these. Acting was probably from all of the time spent telling stories to the bugs. While Cheater did not look like a great title to have, Leech might be a good achievement. Maybe I became stronger because of that.

I had a scary thought while I was looking at my status board. I knew the goddesses had not given me a job when I was summoned here. But under the description for experience it said "Well you are young so you can always try to get some later. Not that you will succeed but you can try." Did this mean I could never gain experience because I had no class. If I could never gain experience, I could not level up and become stronger.

I immediately closed the status window and sat down. It was not as bad as I was thinking. I mean they would not just ... okay if it was those goddesses they would leave me in the middle of a deadly forest filled with dinosaurs with no way to get strong enough to survive. No, I was thinking about this wrong. I had just gotten stronger. Even if I could not gain experience, I could gain titles and achievements. Rather than trying to level up, I just had to gain those things instead.

A scream from one of the two dinosaurs that were still alive woke me up from my contemplations. With the extra stats, I was able to quickly pile up the already excavated dirt in front of the other two dinosaurs and put an end to their misery. Unfortunately, no new messages came from the mysterious voice.

I went back to the tree and did my best to meditate in peace though it took a while for me to stop thinking about all that had happened that day.